and me while we were counting how many boys had had the "regular dinner." "Well," he said, "when I got this uniform on and was doing my bit for Uncle Sam I wanted to keep away from the gang; but I couldn't tell my brother, could I? I guess it's good he's went to France. Well, I guess I'll be going. I looked up to see why he was leaving so abruptly, and saw Mr. Fitzgerald standing beside me. Mr. Fitzgerald is one of our volunteer workers, and is a very attractive man. Archie eviHently felt that he was intruding. "This is Mr. Archie Thomas, Mr. Fitzgerald," I said. " Mr. Thomas doesn't know any one in New York and doesn't know what to do with himself. What do you suggest?" “How would you like to go to a nice house for dinner, Thomas?" But Archie Thomas had changed. "Me!" he jeered. “Who vants me for dinner? I'm a bum, I tell you. What is she a Hy girl?" His tone was the tone of the streets. "She's not a fly girl, Thomas. Mrs. Woodruff is a very lovely woman," said Mr. Fitzgerald. "She asks us to send up some boys every week. Her husband's in the service and away. She's old enough to be your mother.' "Aw-what do I want to go there for? Send some other soldier boy," said Archie. "Oh, take a chance." That was Mr. Fitzgerald. Archie ooked up suddenly. Chances were in his line. 66 “All right,” he said. Give me the dame's name and tell me how to get there I'll take a chance." "She sent a car for you," said Mr. Fitzgerald; and they went off together. The next news came from Mrs. Woodruff. She called up to ffer another invitation. 66 That last boy you sent was a queer prize package," she said. Nevertheless the prize was there when you finally found it." "What did he do?" I asked. "Oh, he walked into the hall as if he owned the place and told ne he was a bum, and he'd always been a bum, and if I didn't want him he was going-he wasn't going to be kicked out." “And what did you say?" “I said I had always hated angels and to come right in. He was sick, too; and as he had forty-eight hours' leave I kept him ight with me. I think the rest did him good." "A little," I said. 66 Well," he said, she gave me a swell feed and said her ouse was my home. She's one lovely woman!"- echo of Mr. Fitzgerald. "She asked me to write to her. I called her bluff. And she answered me-here's the letter-and since then I've estered her with letters. I can't do nothing for her, though, so guess I can't go there so much. It ain't right.” I'm sure she'd miss you," I said. Archie became a regular customer of the canteen then. He ung over the candy counter and chatted by the hour, and the illen look was wearing away. One day he said: “I don't know hat I'll do after the war. I don't want to go back with the ang, but I bet I will." "Why don't you make something of yourself?" I suggested. 66 Me? 'What can I do?" "Watch your chance. It may come in the army," I prophsied. And two weeks later he came dashing in to Mr. Fitzgerald 66 "My Lord!" he gasped; "they're going to send me to Cornell! Me! What'll I do at Cornell? I never finished school." "You'll make good," I said. "What are you going to study?" Well, you see, it was like this. They called for volunteers who knew anything about photography. I thought about my little old studio in St. Louis and what you said about chances, so I volunteered. There weren't many, so I got taken." "Bully for you!" said Mr. Fitzgerald. "You must write to us. But he didn't write, and was gone so long that I thought something had gone wrong. Perhaps he wrote to Mrs. Woodruff, but I never thought to ask. There are so many boys, you see. But more than two months later in walked Archie a very different Archie too. He was as neat as a pin, with a starched white linen stock showing above his blouse. Gone was the slept-in look from his uniform. It might have been tailored. Even his hands were spotless. He was proud of himself, too, and ready to jolly us all. "Kept straight the whole time," he told us," and worked like the deuce. It was aerial photography." Then followed a long explanation of the same, from which, after a maze of something about studying angles and lights, I gathered that the aerial photographer hangs by one leg and takes pictures which only he and a few other privileged characters can understand even when printed. But we all know the value of those pictures. And this was our Archie! Suddenly he looked serious. "It's all the club," he said. "Where would I be if I'd never come in here? What made you do it?" And he shook hands solemnly with Mr. Fitzgerald and me. I can't deny that his new-found self-respect made Archie a little bit vain about this time. But we thought it did him good. It prompted him to spend a dollar and a half out of his pay once a week for a room in a hotel near by-because it had a bath attached and he could have it alone. He began to have friends, too-nice boys-they were other aerial photographers. Each time he came in there was some new discovery. "Just had a scrap," he told us. "Between here and my hotel there are three of those rotten booze peddlers. I was walking along, and he comes behind me and says, 'Say, can I get something for you?' I didn't pay no attention, but he follows along after and says,' What do you want, boy?' I got mad then, so I turned around and says: You're talking to me, are you? All right, walk right along and speak up so I can hear you. What do you want? You needn't act so fresh,' he says; 'I'm trying to do you a favor.' 'Who asked you to?' says I; 'did I ask you? No, you didn't,' says he; but I guess you want something, all the same.' That made me madder, and I grabbed him by the throat and shook him. 'You're trying to sell me some of that damned whisky!' I shouts. Well, if any one asks you, you go get it for them, and don't go up to fellows who never thought of a drink and put the idea in their head. I could turn you over to the military police.' A crowd began to come up, so I kicked him off. The bum!" 6 "Why didn't you have him arrested?” 66 'Oh, well, I figure that if a fellow wants a drink it's none of business. I won't stand in his way. Only I didn't want my one," said Archie. The next time he came in his story was different. "Say," he said, laughing, “I just came in from Hempstead with a pretty girl. There was only one seat, and that was next to her, and so I took it. See? I stared at her, too, 'cause I liked to see her blush. When we got to Jamaica, all of a sudden she says: "You change here for Brooklyn.' 6 "Do you?' I says. Thank you;' and I jumped up and went out on the platform. When I got there, I realized I didn't want to go to Brooklyn at all, so I beat it back on the train and sat down behind her. You should have seen her face! So I says: "You needn't feel so peeved. I didn't want to go to Brooklyn, only you rattled me. See?' "But she wouldn't look at me. When we got to the Penn station, we got out, and she had a big grip. I says, I'm going to carry that for you,' and she says, snippy, I prefer to carry it myself. Look here,' says I; 'I don't mean to be fresh. I just want to talk to you. You don't need to be scared. I won't hurt you.' So she let me carry the grip to the street. Seemed she taught at a school on Twenty-ninth Street, where she was going, and before we got there she got real friendly and gave me her address. I'd like to get a letter from her in France. I'm going to write to her." E He will, too; and if she is sensible she will answer him, for Archie has all the virtues, including a sense of humor, which made it easier and harder to say good-by. He left us a picture of himself surrounded by the Bible, socks, sweater. and chocolate that had come from Mrs. Woodruff, and to-day he is Lieutenant Archie Thomas, no less, Aviation Squad ron, A. E. F.! THE FORGOTTEN ARMY BY GEORGE EVERSON EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, COMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL COURTS OF THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY OF NEW YORK CITY ARLY in the second year of the great war America awoke in a wide movement for adequate National defense. The first large public demonstration was New York City's stupendous Preparedness Parade. From nine o'clock in the morning till nine o'clock at night cohort after cohort passed up Fifth Avenue until the best estimates had placed the number at one hundred and fifty thousand. More wanted to march, but the day was not long enough. At the same time that this great wave of patriotism and devotion to our National ideals was surging up the avenue another procession, a never-ending one, was on its slow and straggling march. It was a part of that constant stream of misery, misfortune, ignorance, and vice that passes through our criminal courts at the rate of two hundred and forty thousand cases a year. This procession is in dark contrast to the demonstration for patriotic public defense. If some evil genius could, like a Pied Piper, draw together in one ordered review all of the two hundred and forty thousand that frequented our courts last year, and lead them up Fifth Avenue for us to view as we viewed our Preparedness Parade, we would be appalled. Let imagination picture the evil genius leading this procession. But let us observe the rank and file following brazenly or in shame, in evil abandon or in despair, in stumbling ignorance or with conscious evil intent. At the head are those whom the press and the sensational character of their crimes have brought to public attention. They have been drawn by our Pied Piper from the murderer's grave, from the steps of the electric chair, from the burglar's, embezzler's, briber's, and blackmailer's prison cells. They are only a few, but of the whole endless procession they are the only ones that have commanded public attention. Our seat on the reviewing stand must be comfortable if we review the whole of this ill-starred procession, for it will last longer than from nine o'clock in the morning until nine o'clock at night. The first rays of the dawn of the following day will be breaking over the buildings on the opposite side of the street before the last troop will have passed before us. As hour passes into each succeeding hour neither hunger, thirst, nor fatigue diverts us. We are fascinated by the spectacle. Here are displayed to us the fruits of evil purpose, recklessness, thoughtless mistakes, ignorance, bad heredity, social injustice, greed, and vice. It seems the panorama of misdirected existence. We have plenty of time to analyze each group as it passes by. The second battalion is made up of a swaggering, reckless crew of petty disturbers of the public peace. Some have bloodstained shirts, others bandaged heads or bruised faces. They are the kind that "know it all," that can be told nothing. Some bear the marks of intoxication, others those of brute indulgence. They try judicial patience, they exasperate the police who seek to restore order without arrest. Some are good workmen, but always out of a job; some are worthless idlers; others are generally steady, with sprees of lawlessness as their one luxury. There are men of all nationalities-a cosmopolitan brotherhood of lawlessness. Here is a shamefaced troop among the rest. In a moment of annoyance or semi-intoxication they have lost control of their hair-trigger tempers. They are honestly sorry, and are appalled by the first serious consequence of their moments of weakness. Here are dogmatic, set-faced individuals walking two and two glowering at each other. An honest difference of opinio After half an hour the aspect of those in the processin gradually changes. The mark of dissolute and intemperate live is shown in the physical unwholesomeness of features. Inter mittent intemperance is drifting into habitual dissipation. W are beginning to note the vacant, lack-luster eyes. Soiled collar stringy neckties, a peculiar growing unkemptness of dress, inc cate to all but themselves how far they have traveled the pa toward habitual drunkenness. Then come the hopeless drunkards whom only dearth money keeps from perpetual intoxication. There are those c self-willed debauchery whose reputable families have striven vain to save from shame. There are the weak, the simp minded, whose only strength is desire for drink. There ar their stronger companions whose drunkenness is only a part their many-sided sensuality. Last come the stragglersowned derelicts drifting from the park bench to the saloon, the workhouse and back, incoherent in speech except whe begging for a drink. In the haze of their pain-racked and dulled sensibilities they have arrived at the absolute of inter perance and self-indulgence their final goal. We have watched this long, weary procession of drunkennes brought here by chance, by bad associations, by weakness, sorrow, by overstrain, by idleness, by losses, by over-confidence. by choice, or by ignorance. The division ends. But who are these following? The shifty eyes, the sleek c ning, hypocrisy of bearing, reveal the schooled criminal wit conscious evil purpose. They are the pickpockets and the "j tlers." These wolves of the crowds make their living from th money snatched out of women's handbags or cunningly cut a filched from men's persons. In close association with the pickpocket come the burgh the thug, the gangster, that new product of our slum frontier Blustering, over-confident in their bullying and swaggerin bravado, or slinking meanly along, reflecting the nature of the exploits, they pass before us. Some are old in crime, plain showing the marks of prison service. It has obviously not gon well with them; they look cowed and hopeless. Others with measure of success have "beat" the game and still walk with reckless confidence. Following are the young disciples in wrong-doing. They ar graduates of the street corner and cheap club-room schools crime. Their ignorance and idleness more than their perversity, CURRENT EVENTS ILLUSTRATED (C) KADEL & HERBERT THE ROOF OF AMIENS CATHEDRAL-A MARK FOR HUN SHRAPNEL The roof is of timber, in some places covered with slate. "When we turn to the roof," says a critic, "and see the vast woodwork which supports it, it looks as if a forest of oak and chestnut must have been sacrificed to provide material for this stupendous piece of carpentry." It is thus peculiarly liable to damage by bombardment A DRAMATIC SCENE AT THE TRAINING CAMP AT QUANTICO, VIRGINIA hese members of the Marine Corps are showing their enthusiasm for the war in no uncertain way. Note the discarded hats in the foreground; the Marines' hats are certainly "in the ring " both at home and abroad A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE ECLIPSE OF THE SUN AS SEEN AT NEW YORK CITY JUNE 8, 1918 The eclipse as seen in New York was only partial, but the conditions for astronomical investigation were unusually good. This photograph of course presents only the appearance of the sun as seen by the "man in the street" with the aid of a smoked glass, but this view proved interesting to thousands of observers |