which often is inevitably brought to bear on investigating committees.

It is reassuring to learn, also, that the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, which has done great service in ascertaining facts concerning the provision of munitions and arms and other military supplies, has reached an understanding with Mr. Hughes, so that its members can and will co-operate with him. The President performed a fine public service when he ap pointed Mr. Hughes, and we believe Mr. Hughes will perform an equally fine public service in the performance of his duties and his report to the country. Those Americans who have been genuinely disappointed by the airplane situation can now turn their forebodings over to the shoulders of Mr. Hughes and confidently await his findings.

A GARDEN AND A GARDEN

Whether the bird had actually waked him or had merely happened to be singing when he came to full consciousness was a question not for the Happy Eremite to answer. He felt no resentment toward the bird. Reveille from such a throat was more blessed than lullabies to tired limbs. He lay on his back, listening. Eight or nine notes-repeated and repeated and repeated-that was the whole of the morning song. It was not a very melodious song; there was in it none of the rich music of the hermit thrush who used to sing in the tall birch tree in the woods above Chocorua Lake, or the heartbreaking loveliness of the nightingale in some dark covert, hidden from the moonlight, in that dear garden on the Rhine. The singer was no aristocrat. He was just a plain, upright, kind-hearted New England bird saying "Good-morning."

The Happy Eremite took the hint and jumped out of bed. There were many excellent reasons why, a half-hour later, having shaved and dressed, he should betake himself to his study. He rejected them all.

The day, as it happened, was not at all unlike the song of the bird. There was no enticing loveliness of faint gold in the sky, no rapture of colors new washed by the night dew. It was just an ordinary day in an ordinary world. The sky was overclouded; beneath it the earth was brown or green, without brilliancy, without contrasts, quite sedate and commonplace.

The bird evidently knew his business. What he had been trying to say was, "It isn't a very wonderful day; nothing to get romantic about, that is; but nice enough, if you have eyes. Come on out."

The Happy Eremite looked about to see if he could discover anywhere the feathery poet who had been able so subtly to interpret the nun-like beauty of a gray dawn. But his song, having done its work, was silent now, and the foliage hid the singer. The Happy Eremite, who was not wise in bird lore, would probably not have recognized his reveillist if he had seen him; besides, seeing him was really immaterial; it was sufficient that he had heard his song.

He wandered idly about under the horse-chestnuts, then up past the willows by the pond, aware that since the day before the delicate budding of spring had suddenly expanded into the luxuriant foliage of summer. To right and left of the road that led to the barn the raspberry bushes were already a rank tangle. He marveled anew at the mystery of growing things.

He reached the garden, where day in and day out Bill, the farmer, prevented by his teeth from serving his country in France, served her with devotion on a sunward-sloping hill in New England. The Happy Eremite pushed back the high gate and walked amid the growing things. There they all were—the peas, row on row, the onions like an army with spears, the potatoes, sturdy and straight, the corn, th beets, the spinach-so firm and upright all of them, so vigoi ly aspiring toward the sun, that the Happy Eremite forgot for an instant that they were only vegetables and thought of battalions of marching

men.

“Good for you, good for you!" he murmured. “Over the top, little green brothers, over the top!"

It was still very early. Only the garrulous and boastful hens broke the quiet.

“There should be a placard on every garden this year.” he

said to himself: "This garden is dedicated to the defenders of liberty.'

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He closed the gate and walked slowly back to the house. At the stone wall that inclosed the sunken garden, where in other days hollyhocks and sweet-williams and phlox and roses and irises, and fifty other varieties of growing things whose names themselves were a fragrance, had bloomed in their neat borders, gazing like prim, old-fashioned ladies on their bit of well-kept lawn, he stopped, and looked over. The beds had not been weeded, and strange and savage growths were spreading rank among the struggling flowers. There was no lawn at all-only grass a foot high invading the borders here and there. The sprout of a maple tree rose above it like a barbaric conqueror calling to his devastating hosts.

"It was lovely last year," said the Happy Eremite, wistfully. "Some day, perhaps, it may be lovely again. For the present this desolation also is dedicated to the defenders of liberty. Until they come back victorious we have no time for flower gardens.'

SOLDIERS' MUSIC

If any reader is inclined to think that Walter Spalding, who writes on "Music a Necessary Part of the Soldier's Equipment," is prejudiced in favor of music because he is a professor of music, and head of the Music Department of Harvard University, and that the soldier himself might have another story to tell, let him hear what soldiers themselves think. We are going to step down from the editorial rostrum at this point and invite soldiers to address our readers in our place. Allow us first to introduce some one whom we are simply permitted to call a "Sammy," for that is all he calls himself:

I am one of the boys encamped at this port of embarkation. I wish to state that something good to read such as I find in my favorite magazine, The Outlook

We did not know that he was going to say that, but we will let him continue:

--along with a good smoke, and, last but not least, the songs that we sing, sustain and keep up the old "pep" that will lead us on to victory" over there." .. Songs like those will keep us in the right spirit more than anything else I know.

That is from a soldier over here. The following is from an American soldier whose testimony comes from "over there," and who, since giving that testimony, has died of scarlet fever. He is Lieutenant Arthur Broadfield Warren, of the Class of 1915 at Harvard. His testimony as to the value of music to the soldier is found in one of his letters which have been printed in the "Harvard Alumni Bulletin :”

We are now billeted again in one of the typical French villages of which I have now seen more than a few. The day we arrived was hot and glorious with blue sky and sunshine. The regimental band greeted us, as we marched into the village, with -military marches and popular airs; and although we were all tired from our lack of sleep, and dirty from our stay in the dugouts, we picked up our feet and held our heads erect when we heard the music. There is nothing like a good band, and we have a crackajack, to restore our spirits and freshen exhausted bodies.

We shall conclude this composite editorial by giving final place to the editors of the "Wadsworth Gas Attack and Rio Grande Rattler," published by and for the men of the Twentyseventh Division, U. S. A., at Camp Wadsworth, Spartanburg, South Carolina :

Some efficiency shark has figured out that the Twenty-seventh Division would save a lot of money by abandoning its bands. We don't like efficiency experts. Their veins are full of red ink. They usually have million-dollar heads and two-cent hearts. We are all for doing a job right and quick, and as for laborsaving, we are for that strong. But your efficiency man would reduce everything to figures, systems, and schedules. If you can't show him the dollars and cents value of a thing, out it goes. That explains why he would turn our bandmen into cooks, because he sees real tangible value in a plate of slum, whereas who ever heard of a man getting calories out of a Sousa march? Music has made more men soldiers than all the recruiting

Soldier's music. And soldiers respond to it as they do to nothing else.

speeches and recruiting posters. When all else has failed, the crashing, inspiriting notes of a band have cheered them on. The tune may be" It's a hot time in the old town to-night." It may be "Tipperary." Or it may be the "Marseillaise." It's music.

A

Now that the soldiers have spoken, Professor Spalding will perhaps be listened to with attention.

MONG the natives of Germany who are eternal enemies of the Hun is the upright old music master of Eisenach, Weimar, and Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach. Fortunately, the music of Bach is something the Hun can never destroy as he tries to ruin its counterpart in stone at Rheims; nor can the Hun silence Bach's music in America. Indeed, there is more reason than ever why America should cherish and foster the works of this great man, for he expresses in tones the ideals of order and liberty and beauty which the people who speak the language he spoke are now assailing. It is therefore most fitting that while America is at war with Germany there should remain alive the current festival of Bach's music at South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

To-day this institution is known throughout the Nation. Each year people from many States gather at South Bethlehem to hear choral works of Bach sung as they are sung nowhere else in the land. The thirteenth Bach Festival was held this year on May 24 and 25. On the sloping campus of Lehigh University stands the Packer Memorial Church. In its belfry there was assembled in the middle of Friday afternoon the famous Moravian Trombone Choir, who for about twenty minutes played old chorales of the Moravian Church, while a throng of people, in groups on the turf before the church door, listened. When the time came for the first session of the Festival to begin in the church, Mr. J. Fred. Wolle, Founder and Director of the Bach Choir, rose and led the choir and the people in "The StarSpangled Banner." Some of the music critics of New York, who had been hearing "The Star-Spangled Banner" performed before every concert during the city's musical season, may have found it possible to resist the effect of that singing; but there were few auditors who did not find it irresistible. Mr. Wolle leads without a baton, and his nervous arms and fingers seemed not only to be charged with electricity, but to electrify the whole body of people there, those in the choir seats and those in the pews alike. He made those people not only sing, but think the words as they sang them. After singing the five words with the emphasis Mr. Wolle imparted to them-"the-flag-was-still there "no doubt could remain in the minds of any American that where the American flag is raised it remains.

That is the way that Mr. Wolle has taught his singers to sing Bach. And that is why people from many parts of the country journey to South Bethlehem each year to hear the Bach Choir.

Such a festival in war times is among the war essentials. It is to the people at home what rest billets are to the soldiers at the front. Just as we have to dig the iron out of the earth before we can make our guns, so we have got to draw from somewhere spiritual strength by which to maintain our energy and resolution. It is not merely relaxation and entertainment that we need, but re-creation; and there is no power more re-creative than that of music, and no music more re-creative than that of Bach. The reason for this is to be found in the character of Bach's works. In one sense it may be said that such a consummate artist as Bach has even a higher function to perform than the philosopher or the prophet. The philosopher sees a world of disorder and thinks out the order that is behind it; the prophet sees a world in disorder and summons men to see the world of order with the eye of faith; while the artist sees a world in disorder and out of the elements of it proceeds to make in miniature an orderly world. This is why, in a time of war and disturbance, when chaos seems to have come again, we need not only the philosopher and the prophet, but the artist. And if we are fighting against the powers of confusion to re-establish order, it is an inestimable stimulus to turn aside and recover, not merely by argument or by exhortation, but by demonstration in the form of a great work of art, the assurance that

orderliness and duty are realities and are worth fighting for. And there is a special satisfaction in getting this demonstration from the very country which has succumbed to the power of disorder and against which we are now at war. There was a scientist, a very practical scientist, engaged in war work, who attended that festival. He told me of the satisfaction that he found in turning the scientific discoveries and developments of the Germans against Germany, and he cited instances in which America had learned from Germany effective methods for fighting the Germans. There is somewhat the same satisfaction in getting this spiritual recuperative power which we need in this war from a German source. And the satisfaction is doubled when we think of the sort of man he was from whom we derive it. The Bach family was the product, it might be said, of that war which up to this time was the most devastating in European history-the Thirty Years' War. That was an era when not only almost unexampled physical suffering and material desolation reigned in Germany, but moral standards collapsed. And yet, as Maczewski in an article in "Grove's Dictionary" has said, "The house of Bach exhibits an almost uniform example of moral worth, together with a constant endeavor after the highest ideals-qualities which are all the greater because in the circumstances of the time they could hardly meet with recognition or encouragment."

For this Festival the choral works seem to have been selected with special reference to this time of war. The very titles of those opening the sessions indicate this: the cantata, "My Spirit was in Heaviness," the "Actus Tragicus," and the tombeau, or "Ode of Mourning;" but the note of confidence and of victory was sounded, before the day ended, in the Double Chorus "Now Shall the Grace," and in the culminating glorious Magnificat." And the way in which these works were sung intensified the contrast between the solemnity of the present and the exulting confidence in the future, from the depths of that massive and gloomy chorus, "It is the old decree," in the "Actus Tragicus," to the power and vigor of that cry of triumph in the "Magnificat," closing with the splendid sweep and roll of the "Gloria."

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The second day was devoted, as one day every year in this Festival is, to what is pre-eminently and distinctively Bachthe Mass in B Minor.

Of these Festivals it seems somewhat out of place to discuss the performance. It seems somewhat like appraising the value of inflections in the devotions of a congregation; there is no atmosphere of performance about the Festival; there is no applause; the soloists and the conductor never bow to the audience as a performer is expected to do; and yet the performance is the essence of the Festival. It is because the Bach Choir sings as no other body of singers I know about can sing that this Festival is worth attending every year. At no other of these annual Festivals that I have attended has there been so high an attainment on the part of the orchestra and the soloists. The professional musicians here are at a disadvantage, for to participate with intelligence and effectiveness they must have in addition to the skill of the professional the spirit of the amateur; and it is harder for the professional to acquire the spirit of the amateur than it is for the amateur to acquire the skill of the professional. In no respect has Mr. Schwab's generous financial support of this Festival been more productive of good than in enabling the professional participant to get that spirit through rehearsal. And it must not be forgotten that the academic atmosphere of Lehigh University, under Dr. Drinker, is a powerful factor in making for unity of spirit between the visiting professionals and the skilled amateurs of this great community chorus. E. H. A.

I

WAS born in the State of Maine and spent my boyhood days there. I became a member of the Salvation Army in 1896, at Worcester, Massachusetts (which is my present home), first as a bandsman and later as an officer.

When the war broke out, I naturally wanted to do something for the country that had given me birth. My first thought was to join the National Army, and I applied for the Officers' Training Camp at Plattsburg, was accepted, and should have gone in training on the 27th of May, 1917. When I notified my commanding officer in the Salvation Army of my intention, I was told that I was needed immediately for war work in connection with the Salvation Army in France. I went before Major Jewett, U. S. A., at Fort Bank, Boston, Massachusetts, and was relieved of my obligation.

On August 12, 1917, I sailed for France with the first contingent of Salvation Army workers. Our purpose, as we understood it at that time, was to work behind the American lines; but upon our arrival in France we were told that a petition had been circulated by the chaplains of the American Expeditionary Force requesting that the Salvation Army work in the American camps. We were hurried at once to the training camps of Fershing's forces and put to work erecting huts and entertaining the soldiers. The order that came from General Pershing stated that we would be a part of the American Expeditionary Force, and that it would therefore be necessary for us to put on the Government uniform, with a proper identification mark. This mark was to be the red shoulder-strap, on which is worked in white letters "The Salvation Army." The order closed with these words: "This uniform must be worn at all times and worn properly."

Our work during the four months' training period of the First Division consisted in supplying confectionery, biscuits, coffee, chocolate, etc., from our canteens, the conducting of Salvation Army services twice every week, and giving entertainments nightly. Games were also furnished at all hours when the men were off duty, consisting of checkers, dominoes, and chess. A phonograph with a large number of records was included in the equipment of each hut, also a piano.

These huts in the training area were in constant use. For instance, our first hut that was established was used at 6 A.M. as a mess hall for Company I, after which the kitchen police scrubbed the place thoroughly, and at 8:30 each day the regiment band practiced. At 10:30 a company commander had his school of instruction for his men. There were generally three companies in the hut for this purpose. Here instruction was given as to the proper care of arms, care and adjustment of gas masks, and general instructions as to maneuvers, sham battles, etc.

Following the company meeting our Jewish friends conducted their services for one-half hour each day during their special holy week. Following these services the hut was thrown open to the men until 3:30, at which time some staff officer, often the brigadier-general, conducted an officers' school. At five o'clock the hut was opened for entertainments, canteen,

etc., and continued until the call to quarters, which was sounded at nine o'clock. During the period that the hut was being used for company meetings and officers' schools our entire forces were in the kitchen at the rear assisting our lassies in the filling of pies, rolling out of doughnuts, etc.

It is impossible to get supplies in the quantities needed for the soldiers. Three tons of chocolate candies and biscuits will last but a few hours, and the truck does not call again for two or three days; this makes necessary the cooking of pies and doughnuts to meet the need. Two lassies, with the help of one or two soldier boys, usually make from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pies and fry two thousand doughnuts in about four hours. These are disposed of in about one-halt to threequarters of an hour, and are gone long before the end of the line is reached. Officers and soldiers take their places in the line, as our work is particularly for the enlisted men. The officers are not given precedence, but they are very glad to avail themselves of the opportunity of getting this home cookery.

I have seen four hundred and fifty men standing in line in the pouring rain at another place, where our hut had not been erected and where this cooking was done out under a small tent flap that was spread over the field kitchen under a tree. On other occasions I have seen the boys so impatient to get the doughnuts that they have crowded about the pots in the open and fished the doughnuts from the boiling fat with twigs from near-by trees. Three doughnuts and a quarter of a pie are the allowance to one man. Very often we have seen the foremost man on the tail end of the line after having consumed his allowance.

When the orders came to move to the front, several requests came from the officers for the Salvation Army units to continue with the men. The brigadier-general requested that our people move with the men to the front, but said that they must understand the danger in so doing and must volunteer for this service. As head of our transportation and automobile section, it fell to my lot to interview each of the officers at the different huts, covering a territory of sixty-five or seventy miles, and secure the names of our officers who were willing to take the risk of going to the front line with the boys. When I returned to our headquarters and reported to Colonel Barker, our leader in France, I had the names as volunteers of every Salvation Army officer with the American Expeditionary Force every man and every lassie had volunteered, and many had even sent special requests to be permitted to go with the troops to the front.

The work at the front is a lot different from that in the training or rest camp. The establishment of a hut means the clearing out of some cellar or partly blown up building, and the erecting of the roof, covered by proper bomb-proof material, which usually consists of six feet of earth and stones or heavy timbers or railway iron.

In these places the work is carried on ; many of them are right at the communication trench leading to the front-line or firing trench. From these posts coffee and cocoa are distributed to the boys nightly while on guard duty and while looking over the

ADJUTANT STARBARD, OF THE SALVATION ARMY, IN THE AMERICAN MILITARY UNIFORM WHICH SALVATION ARMY RELIEF WORKERS

WEAR ON THE WESTERN FRONT

top of the trench across No Man's Land. At these posts it is impossible to do any cooking. Fire, or even smoke, would draw the fire of the enemy. If there are windows, they are carefully covered with three or four feet of gravel bags to keep out shrapnel or shell splinters. Cooking is, however, done a short distance back and the goodies sent up to these advance trenches.

The transportation in this locality has, of course, to be done under cover of darkness, as the entire sector is under observation of the enemy. The pie wagon falls in line with other transports, ambulances, ammunition supply trains, and troops, and works its way up the line to supply these front-line huts.

There have been many narrow escapes. In one instance a Government truck next to our transport was shot to pieces by a direct hit, and at times we have had to drive over the dead bodies of mules, wheels and sides of wrecked wagons, etc., at dead man's curve.

wheels

As far as I know, only one of our supply trucks has come to grief; this was just the night before Easter. The lassies were sending up an unusually large amount of pies, doughnuts, cakes, and buns to the soldiers who were in the trenches; this truck was stuck in the mud, and, as the hour was nearly daylight, it had to be abandoned. As soon as light came it was seen by the enemy, and some four hundred shells from the Boche artillery were fired at it. The commanding officer at the near-by town asked for volunteers to go in daylight and try and rescue the truck. All that were off duty volunteered for the work, but it was impossible to move the truck. I am told, however, that the contents of the truck were not destroyed.

About March 1, I was taken sick while driving one of these transports, and was carried into one of our front-line huts in an unconscious state. The physician, Captain, brought brought me to consciousness and told me that I had been gassed. Later he called in First Lieutenant who before the war was a

specialist in New York City, and he declared that I was "all in." I was therefore allowed to come home for a short furlough.

Our lassies are not allowed at the first-line trenches, but are in places about three kilometers [two miles] back, where they are subject at all times to artillery fire, gas shells, and air-bomb attacks. They work during the still hours, but during the bombardment are ordered into the dugouts.

The huts are generally old buildings with some sort of restored roofs, and in many cases canvas circus tents, camouflaged, cover the top, these huts are on a much larger scale than those right at the front, and are made as cheerful as possible for the boys during the four days' rest while they are out of the trenches; here our lassies listen to the messages of the boys, write letters home for them, and accept and properly mark little keepsakes that they wish to leave to be sent to mother at home in case they do not return. At one of these places I have noticed under the counter of the canteen many tin boxes filled with these remembrances left by the boys; many of them have not come back, and many of these remembrances, with the last letter left to be delivered home in case they did not return, have been sent to friends across the water.

The cemeteries at these places are cared for by our lassies. Artificial flowers and little remembrances are placed on the graves, and when some member of the particular unit in which these lassies work has "gone west " the grave is marked by a line of little stones or boulders. There is no grass and it is impossible to plant or maintain flowers, but the French custom is to plant artificial flowers, and our lassies have secured a supply of these and are using them on the graves of our American boys.

At the front we never take off our clothing. Everything is mud and dampness, and sometimes for a week at a time we are never dry. We go into our dugouts at night, pull off our rubber boots or hobnail shoes, and try to sleep; but there is no real sleep in this locality. The shells are always exploding outside or overhead, and four, five, or six times during the night we are called out to adjust our gas masks; and every morning, just at daylight, there are one or more barrages, notifying us that a raid is on or raiders are being expected.

Our people seem to be standing the work there as well as the regular soldiers, and are determined to do their utmost to help by encouraging the soldiers and keeping up the morale of our boys.

We have, including our work with the Allies, from the coast to the Swiss border one hundred and seventy-five of these huts, and we need many thousands of them.

Colonel F. G. Lawton said to me as I was leaving for home: Tell your Commander that we want the Salvation Army, and we want them quick.

Brigadier-General G. B. Duncan also said in my hearing a short time ago:

We need the Salvation Army in every American camp. General Pershing has visited many of the huts, and I met him on two occasions in our huts, and heard him say on one occasion :

once

Our work is needed there, and is needed on a large scale. We need workers-fifty mechanics and automobile drivers at Christian men beyond the draft age, who have initiative and can adapt themselves to the conditions on the other side, and are willing to work, work, work, seven days a week, every day, fourteen to sixteen hours a day.

We want lassies who can put religion into apple pies, doughnuts, and coffee-women of good, sterling Christian characters; and with all we want the necessary cash to maintain this everRAYMOND C. STARBARD, growing work. Adjutant, Salvation Army.

Salvation Army Headquarters, 120 West Fourteenth Street, New York City.

NTO two great cantonments, Camp Funston in Kansas and Camp Doniphan in Oklahoma, are gathered the larger part of the soldiers from the agricultural States of the Middle West. Directly from the farms are coming, day after day, thousands of young men who know much about sulky plows and self-binders, but little of trolley-car schedules and labor unions. They are coming from country homes, often their only city experience being one or two trips to some Mid-Western metropolis. Tanned, broad-shouldered, clear-eyed, they make a picture of hearty young Americanism as they don their uniforms and become a part of the Army.

The evolution of the farmer-soldier boy has been one of the interesting features of the past six months of training. "See that man," pointed a secretary of the Y. M. C. A., as a husky youth paced back and forth on the white road through Camp Funston. "He came here so homesick that it seemed as though he would never recover. To-day he is one of our stand-bys, and when we want to cheer up a newcomer we call on him for assistance. He has a fund of humor and good nature that will get him far."

"Do many need cheering up?"

"A few, but not nearly so many as at first. In the earlier contingents there was an epidemic of homesickness, but now the boys come generally with determination and good courage. They seem to take it as a matter of course.

This very attitude is an indication of a different feeling on the part of the folks at home. The leave-takings of this spring are less mournful than last fall-and I have seen many of them. Mothers do not show their grief so openly; they seem stirred by a spirit of patriotism and are proud of their sons' part rather than regretful at their going. All through the Middle West this change in spirit is manifest. Three-fourths of the families now have some one in the service, and it is taken as a matter of course that every one must give his share.

"Which is quickest to take up training, city boy or farm boy?" was asked of a captain.

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Depends on the work," was the quick answer. "The city boy is probably quicker to mix with others; he is at home sooner. He is used to crowds and to fighting his own way through them. But when it comes to the large operations that require broad vision and initiative, the country boy has the advantage. He does not talk much, but he sees all the angles at once. He is accustomed to acting for himself. He makes a mighty good soldier, for he takes his task seriously."

Another change has come. The hostess house assistant put it this way: "Hundreds of family visits take place every week. Fathers and mothers drive from Nebraska, from Colorado, from Missouri, to see the boy in service. In the early days these reunions were rather heart-breaking affairs, with a great deal of wiping of eyes. They left the boy in a somewhat bewildered state of mind. But little of that occurs now. The father, mother, and son chat cheerily; some goodies are unpacked; and it is pleasant to see the scenes presented in every nook and corner on visiting day."

Once in a while we find one unconvinced. Said the pastor for one of the church organizations at the camp: "A father drove his car from South Dakota to see his two sons. He came to me and asked: Why must I give my boys to this war? I do not want war, and I need my boys at home." Firmly I told him why, explaining the demand on each of us, and what it all meant to American homes and to our National life. At the end he straightened his shoulders. Well, I guess you are right, but I never thought about it that way before. Where are my boys? I want to pat them on the shoulders and tell them to stand by Uncle Sam.' ." He was a type of some who have never had the real lesson clearly put to them, and, realizing the loss it means to them in their farm operations and in the family life, resent somewhat the service of sons.

But more and more they are getting the lesson. You hear out in the country communities very little talk of pacifism compared with a year ago. The man who is not truly loyal is quickly frowned upon by his neighbors. The farm

country is as sincerely in the war as any other section of the Nation.

2

You read considerable about the farmer boys "just rarin' to go" overseas and get into the fighting. When the first contingents of drafted men went to camp last autumn, their trains were decorated with huge banners, Kaiser Getters from Bitter Creek," "Bound for Berlin, Straight Through," and similar mottoes. You see none of that now. The troop trains are as undecorated as any on the line. I asked a sturdy member of the military police standing guard before a theater on the amusement zone-a wonderful street ablaze with light and containing stores and shops that would astonish New York by their vastness-how he felt about it.

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Well, of course I'd like to go soon, and so would the other boys; but we don't talk much about it. I've got sixty acres in wheat down in Missouri that my brother is taking care of for me. No knowing when I'll get off police duty-I may be here all through the war. But I look at it that it's a job that must be done, and I'll do what I'm told to do without kicking. If I go, all right; if I stay, that suits me. Most of us farmer boys feel the same way. It's our job to help where we can, and we don't think much about where or what it is to be. But we all hope to get one lick at the Huns before it's over."

It is that sort of tractability that is making for rapid preparation in the cantonments. Officers say that with the new men they are obtaining in three weeks results that required two months last fall. Perhaps some of it is due to the officers' better equipment and the smoother running of the system; but part comes directly from the acceptance of the war as a business proceeding, with less emphasis on the spectacular.

Going home to harvest ?" I asked the Missourian. “Guess not," was the prompt reply. "Most of us farmer boys want to stay in camp and get into the game as soon as we can. Somebody must fight. The folks will get along some way without us. It won't hurt some of the town men to go out and shock wheat a few days, if necessary. Besides, it is hard work to get these furloughs; and what's the use? We are here for business, and the quicker we finish it the better."

On the whole, the farmer boy has cleared his mind of the tasks of the field and given his attention to war in all sincerity. Sometimes there have been strenuous efforts to secure low classifications, but when the decision has been made by the boards the result has been accepted. Perhaps the boards have in instances erred and farmers who should have remained at home have been called, but usually it will be found that the questionnaire warranted the classification. As the months have gone by the system has become familiar, and the men have taken up their task without complaint. Often it has been a real sacrifice for the boy who had just secured a start. He has, perhaps, put in wheat on shares; he owns a little stock and is looking ahead to a future that includes the neighbor's daughter as part of the picture. But he is not alone. On the other side of the guard at the theater was a young man from Kansas City who last year was drawing a salary of $12,000 a year-he is now a private in the ranks.

Looking over the audiences of soldiers from the prairie States, one sees a splendid gathering of strong, courageous, obedient servants of the Nation. They are not given to boasting, but they are determined to win. They make blunders and are bashful at first, but so steadily are they settling down to their task that they are going to be towers of strength throughout the war. Behind them are the farmer families, immensely proud of their sons, and showing an increasingly generous spirit of helpfulness in every activity that tends to sustain our Army.

66

If you see my folks," was a parting request from a boy who had lived ten miles from town, " tell them I'm all right and not to worry. I like the job, and you'll see me with shoulder straps one of these days-just watch me."

That is American youth for you, whether from busy city street or from quiet fields. The farmer soldier is measuring up to the full stature of efficiency.

Abilene, Kansas, May 20, 1918.