(c) WESTERN NEWSPAPER UNON AMERICAN ARTISANS WORKING TO RESTORE CATHEDRALS WRECKED BY GERMANS

The work of restoring European cathedrals defaced by German vandalism has begun, and America is helping in the work. The large plate glass is known as an easel; to it the patterns are affixed by wax. From this the exact sizes of glass are cut to reconstruct the church windows

different French ports at which enormous terminals have been erected at American expense with American labor.

These railways are equipped with American cars and engines, are operated by American soldiers, and it is said that one of them is being developed into a trans-European trunk line that will shorten the time between Havre and Rome by twenty-four hours. The accuracy of this statement cannot be vouched for, but from the meager information obtainable it seems safe to estimate the cost of our permanently productive investments in Europe at $1,000,000,000.

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An official statement from the War Department puts the outlay upon warehouse construction in the United States " pleted or in process planned to facilitate the speedy handling of materials for the use of the Army" at "approximately $218,000,000." Those who are amazed at these figures should inspect the reconstructed Bush Terminal in Brooklyn, which is said to have cost $42,000,000.

The warehouses completed or under construction are located at Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Hoboken (New Jersey), Jeffersonville (Indiana), Port Newark (New Jersey), Americus (Georgia), Chicago, Dayton (Ohio), Richmond (Virginia), San Antonio, Middletown (Pennsylvania), New Orleans, Boston, Brooklyn, St. Louis, Newport News, Little Rock (Arkansas), Schenectady, New Cumberland (Pennsylvania), Columbus (Ohio), Charleston (South Carolina), and Norfolk (Virginia). With a few exceptions, the buildings are permanent structures of concrete brick and steel, they are equipped with railway sidings and all the latest devices for the movement of goods in peace as well as in war times, and the facilities that they will provide will no doubt greatly increase the speed with which the vessels of the merchant fleet we are building can be loaded and unloaded both now and hereafter when we shall have recovered the place that we formerly held among the maritime nations of the world.

Other permanently productive investments that are being made as a result of the war include such enterprises as the plant for subtracting nitrogen from the air that is being built at Muscle Shoals at a probable ultimate cost of $30,000,000, a powder factory which will involve an outlay of $124,000,000 and which is being designed so that it can be used for the manufacture of fertilizers, and scores of gun and ammunition works that are owned by the Government and can be converted to the uses of peace. Finally, there is the capital that the Government has set aside for the War Finance Corporation, the Railroad "Revolving Fund," and the Grain Purchasing Corporation, which, though included in our war costs, is being safely and produc tively employed and will be returnable to the Treasury in the process of post-bellum liquidation.

In the case of a private corporation such investments would be charged to capital rather than expense account, and would be reckoned as an offset against any resultant increase in liabilities. Upon this theory of accounting, let us examine the facts and prepare a balance-sheet in which they will be set forth in their true relation.

The statement that " our war bill for two years will be fifty billions" is based upon the idea that all the appropriations made by the Sixty-fifth Congress for the two fiscal years ending June 30, 1919, will be spent and spent irrecoverably.

It is true that the appropriations for the year ending June 30, 1918, aggregated $18,879,177,012, and that the appropriations and contract authorizations for the succeeding year amount to nearly $30,000,000,000, but not all of these appropriations were for war purposes, nor does it seem possible that any such sum will be disbursed.

During the twelve months ending June 30, 1918, the actual disbursements of the Treasury were but

Of which there was paid:

For ordinary expenses of the Government, say

For interest on pre-war debt, say

For Panama Canal

For farm loan bonds

$1,000,000,000

23,232,376 19,268,000 65,018,296 4,738,029,750

$12,696,702,470

5,845,548,422

$6,851,154,048

The Treasury statement does not show what portion of this $6,851,154,048 represents an irrecoverable or unproductive expenditure, but we do know that prior to June 30, 1918, large payments were made for ships, shipyards, warehouses, terminals, munition plants, docks at various foreign ports, and the great foreign_ports, railway system that we are building in France, and that the bills appropriating

$500,000,000 for the War Finance Corporation,

500,000,000 for the Railway "Revolving Fund," 50,000,000 for the U. S. Grain Corporation, had all been passed before June 30, 1918, from which it under them. It is a guess, but a reasonable one, that our irremay be inferred that substantial payments had been made coverable or unproductive war expenditure during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1918, did not much exceed $5,000,000,000, if indeed it reached that sum.

In his letter of June 5, 1918, to Mr. Kitchin, Mr. McAdoo June 30, 1919, at $24,000,000,000, which, added to the estimates the Treasury disbursements for the fiscal year ending $12,696,702,470 paid out in the previous year, makes the total outlay for the two years. bursements on account of the From this, in order to arrive at our diswar, there

should be deducted:

$36,696,702,470

$2,365,000,000

$34,331,702,470

972,000,000 $16,000,000,000

$18,331,702,470 36,696,702,470

8,000,000,000 $36,000,000,000

So that it would appear that approximately sixty-six per cent of our irrecoverable war expenditure, estimated at $18,331,702,470, will be paid by taxation amounting to $12,000,000,000, and that against the bonds and War Saving Stamps authorized amounting in all to $24,000,000,000, we shall have $16,000,

000,000 of recoverable or productive assets, leaving a net or uncovered increase in the public debt of only $8,000,000,000.

Of course it may be urged, and properly, that a large allowance should be made for the amortization and depreciation of these assets, and the policy of treating them as dead investments is undoubtedly wise, but that policy is keeping us in a position that will make the obligations of the United States Government the most besought investments in the world the moment that their further issuance becomes unnecessary.

The question is not one of their repayment, but of how rapidly they may be repaid without bringing about a credit contraction that will create depression. In fact, one of the things chiefly to be feared is that the lessons of industrial efficiency and personal economy learned during the war will enable us to reaccumulate wealth so rapidly that we will pay off the public debt too fast, and thereby deflate an undoubtedly inflated situation so suddenly that credit will be prostrated.

This was what happened after our Civil War and brought about the panic of 1873. Men can adjust themselves to almost any change, provided it is not too sudden. Deflation is desirable and inevitable, but it should not be so accelerated that it will result in shock and dislocation.

Including the men who are fighting, and the men and women who are working to keep them supplied with food and war materials, some 10,000,000 people are probably engaged in work that is, in a sense, unproductive. When these people are returned to the ranks of productive industry, the rapidity with which they will be able to create wealth will be astounding, for their efficiency will be greatly increased by the new methods that have been introduced and the devices and economies that have been adopted to speed up and augment war production.

The study that has been given to scientific economy and the results that have been attained are not generally understood or appreciated. In Washington there are two organizations within the War Industries Board that have done remarkable work along these lines. One is the Conservation Division, formerly the Commercial Economy Board, of which A. M. Shaw is chief. The other is the Resources and Conversion Section, whose chief is Charles A. Otis.

The function of the first-named board has been to eliminate the surplusage of styles and sizes made and sold in the manufacture and distribution of staple articles, upon the theory that a multiplicity of styles involved waste in production, unnecessarily stimulated the demand, and compelled merchants to carry stocks that tied up millions, and perhaps billions, of capital that was needed for the prosecution of the war.

To induce the manufacturers to make the changes and introduce the reforms recommended time has of course been required, but as their advantages became apparent the resistance has diminished, and in many different lines of trade the simplifica tions that have already been effected will save an enormous amount of labor and material, which means, in the last analysis, a more rapid creation of wealth. Thus about two thousand different sizes and types of plows and tillage implements have been eliminated and a great reduction in the variety of other agricultural implements hitherto manufactured has been effected. The sizes and types of automobile tires produced have already been reduced from 287 to 33, and it is expected that within two years only nine standard descriptions will be manufactured. There were formerly six hundred sizes and types of metal bedsteads made. Now only thirty are produced, and the metal tubing used in their manufacture has been standardized so that its cost will be substantially reduced.

The color, height, and variety of shoes has been reduced by at least half, with a corresponding reduction in the cost of production. Each manufacturer of paint and varnish is now restricting his product to thirty-two shades of house paint and ten grades of varnish, as against nearly one hundred different varieties formerly produced.

To save cans the half-gallon and many of the smaller-sized packages have been eliminated.

In the manufacture of hardware, where the number of styles and sizes hitherto produced was almost infinite, the reduction will average fifty per cent. The number of items in one saw manufacturer's catalogue has been reduced by seventy per cent. In the stove and furnace trade seventy-five per cent of the types

and sizes have been cut out, and those remaining require the least iron and steel for their production.

In men's and women's clothing the simplification of styles agreed upon will reduce the material required by from twelve to twenty-five per cent, and by restricting the sizes of samples about 3,450,000 yards of cloth will be saved annually. The high price of tin has led to a great reduction in its use for solder, Babbitt metal, bronze, tinfoil, etc., and silk dyers have learned that they can get along with thirty per cent of the tin formerly used in giving luster and weight to certain grades of silk. Great economy has been effected by inducing manufacturers to standardize the size of the boxes in which their goods are packed. Waist manufacturers, for example, are packing two or three waists in a box instead of one. This will save probably twothirds of the freight space formerly used for shipping waists. Similar economies of shipping space have been effected in many other lines of business.

In the delivery of goods substantial economies have also been secured by the partial abolition of "C. O. D." and "on approval" deliveries, as well as by reducing the number of daily wagon trips, and price concessions to those customers who acquired the "cash and carry" habit have also reduced the retailer's cost of distribution.

The list of these innovations could be greatly lengthened, but from those described some idea may be had of the enormous saving in the cost of manufacturing and distributing goods that has been effected in almost every department of trade.

All these innovations are essentially methods of saving labor, and if they are not abandoned after the war they will add enormously to the wealth-creating power of the Nation, for wealth is but labor in a concrete and useful form.

The work of the Resources and Conversion Section of the War Industries Board is along similar but divergent lines. As a result of the specialization of industry practiced in this country there are hundreds and thousands of factories that make different parts of the things that are assembled and completed in other factories. The automobile industry, for instance, has become specialized to an amazing degree.

One consequence of this specialization has been a great waste of transportation. A simple instance of this is the pig iron required for the steel that will be ultimately used to make the saws in an Alabama cotton gin.

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It may be mined at Birmingham, shipped to Pittsburgh as pig," and there converted into sheet steel. Thence it might be sent to Philadelphia to be made into saws, and then again back to its point of origin, Alabama, where it is worn out taking the seed from the cotton.

In many other cases there is a still greater waste of transportation, and in one instance the same material transmuted by successive manufacturing processes is known to have been shipped back and forth over nearly identical routes some eleven times before it became part of the finished article and was put

to use.

To eliminate this unnecessary transportation where possible, in so far as the manufacture of war material is concerned, is the task to which Mr. Otis has addressed himself, and he is succeeding so well that he will probably effect a lasting revolution in American industry that will save hundreds of millions annually both during the war and afterward.

But it would take a book to describe all the scientific economies that have been learned or evolved from the experience of the war. We have been taught to save coal, to utilize by-products, to use corn instead of wheat for bread, to eat less meat and sugar and to live healthier lives, to wear old clothes and wear them out, and to earn more by increasing our production, and spend less by decreasing our consumption.

By the saving in labor thus effected we have been able to supply the man power necessary for the successful prosecution of the war, and by the practice of the unnumbered economies. that are rapidly becoming habits we have been able to follow a pay-as-you-go" policy in meeting the war's expenses and to loan some $7,000,000,000 or more to our allies besides.

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The experience has been salutary, its lessons will not be forgotten, and the record thus far indicates that we will be able to recreate the wealth destroyed and pay the debts incurred within a surprisingly short time after the re-establishment of peace.

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"NOTHING BUT A BOCHE"

BY WILLIAM L. STIDGER

(Written on board a United States transport coming home)

OME special experiences that one has in France during these war days stand out like the silhouettes of mountain peaks against a crimson sunset. One of these experiences was that with the major down on our line.

It was a morning in March, following one of the hottest raids that the American troops had endured and swept back up to that time.

The raid had started at 3 A.M. with a gas attack. This lasted for an hour, and then a heavy shelling began, after which there was a marked pause so that the major thought it was over for that day. As was the usual custom, he allowed two Y secretaries to go down into the front-line trenches with provisions for the boys. But about the time they got there and had unloaded their bags, which they carried over their shoulders, the Boche started his shelling again.

"You fellows will have to beat it back!" the young captain said.

The two secretaries started back through a communication trench which led into a woods through which they had already come that morning. From this woods the trench led across a field to a camouflaged road which was the exit of the trench into the little village. The shells were falling fast in the woods as they hurried through. They didn't know just how they would get through the open field that was before them, even though there was a trench there. They knew it to be within plain view of the German heavies. When they got to the edge of the woods, however, fate decided their course for them, for they found a wounded German prisoner who had both legs broken. He was lying on a stretcher, and lying beside him on the ground were two stretcher-bearers.

"We're all tired out and can't carry him a step farther. We've already toted him two miles, and he's nothin' but a Boche anyhow; we're going to leave him right here."

But the two secretaries protested and offered to spell the stretcher-bearers if they would take the wounded German on in. This agreed to, they started across the open field through the communication trench. Half way across they found that the shelling of that morning had caved in the trench completely. What were they to do? They must either go back to the woods or climb out and carry their wounded man along the parapet. They talked it over and agreed that if they carried the prisoner on their shoulders, being in plain sight of the German gunners, they would not be shelled, especially when the Germans could see that it was a German wounded man that they were carrying back. So on this supposition they started out along the parapet.

But they were new to the game of German warfare, and they soon found that they had started out on the wrong supposition, for in half a minute a terrific barrage of German shells was falling around them, some bursting within twenty feet of them. If it had not been for the fact that it had been raining for several days and the shells sank into the mud two feet before. they exploded, the whole crowd would have been blown to bits.

As it was, they dropped their wounded prisoner on the parapet and "beat it," as the fifty-year-old preacher-secretary described it to me the next day.

"And I never knew before that I could make a hundred yards in six seconds. I was like the Negro doughboy: I heard the shell twice, once when it passed me and again when I passed it. I was much older than any of those other fellows, but I beat them across that field.

"We reported to the major. He said to us, 'Boys, where is your wounded German?'

"We left him back there on the parapet,

sir.'

The major, a typical American officer, looked at them a while and then said something that makes me thrill with the pride of being an American every time I think of it:

"Well, he may be nothing but a Boche, but we're Americans, and you'll have to go back and get your wounded prisoner. If you men don't want to go, I must go my

self."

And back these two secretaries and a young lieutenant orderly went. The stretcher-bearers had disappeared. There was another barrage of shell fire, and the men lay in a shell hole for two hours; but at last they got their wounded German back.

"He may be nothing but a Boche, but we're Americans," is a sentence that ought to go down in history to the glory of the American officer.

But the officer is not the only man_with this spirit in the American Army. I can illustrate this by following this same German boy to the evacuation hospital. I saw him there a week later. His legs had both been set and he was lying in a bed between two Americans. His legs were propped up and weighted..

This boy was lying there and several American soldiers were giving him a little concert. I remember that one had a mouth organ, one had a guitar, and one had a mandolin, and several others were singing. The wounded German boy was overcome by this unexpected kindness and lay there with the big tears rolling down over his cheeks.

"Ah, he's nothin' but a kid," one of the Americans said to me as I came up to the little "He's nothin' but a kid even group. if he is a Boche."

The German told us through an interpreter that his officers had told all of the soldiers that the Americans were barbarians and that all men who fell into their hands would be killed. The morning that he was received into the hospital had almost convinced him that this was true, for souvenir-seeking Americans had actually stripped him of the buttons on his coat, had taken his helmet, his insignia, and everything that would make a possible souvenir. He was certain that this was the preliminary to the murdering that he had been told that he must expect if he fell into the hands of the Americans. But, much to his astonishment, he was well cared for at the hospital. He was washed and then dressed in clean clothes. He was well fed and well cared for by both doctors and nurses, and then the climax was reached when the soldiers serenaded him. This overcame him. The tears fell.

There are some who will scorn this kind of a story, and some who believe that it is bad policy, but I know of many thoughtful men in France who believe that if the common German soldier finds out that the

American treats his prisoners in this manner when they are wounded it will do more to destroy the morale of the German army than anything that could happen.

Then there is another silhouette memory of France.

It is that of a little graveyard in a French field where two stone fences meet. It was springtime. There were five lads to be laid away that fair morning in God's Acre. There were three privates, a captain, and a German boy.

A few of us stood around this little quiet place with uncovered heads while the chaplain read the service. Then the first body was lowered into the grave, the salute fired and Taps sounded. Then came the second boy. Then the third, with the salute fired and Taps sounded. Then came the American captain, with the salute and Taps. Then came the Boche.

The firing squad didn't know what to do about the Boche. The sergeant turned to the captain-chaplain and said, “Sir, shall we fire a salute for the German ?"

We waited anxiously to hear the American officer's answer. It was a tense moment. But we were not to be disappointed. Indeed, we seldom are in our American officers. No finer of men lead an army group in Europe than our American officers. "He may be nothing but a Boche, but we're Americans," illustrates the spirit of them all. They do not drive; they lead. Officers are just as much exposed to fire as anybody else. And this officer of the Church was no exception. He saw his great opportunity. He seized it; and in quick, short, sharp, meaningful sentences he spoke :

"Boys, we are not fighting this dead German boy; this poor lad is out of it all for good. And, after all, he is just some German mother's son. We are not fighting him. We are fighting the German military caste, the German Government, the German nation, but not this dead boy. He had died on the field of battle. Yes; play Taps for the Boche !"

I shall never cease to feel proud of that chaplain to the end of my days, and his short, sharp, manly, American, military sentence, "Yes; play Taps for the Boche!" shall ring in my heart and memory forever, and, I think, in the hearts and memories, too, of every man who stood in that little corner of a French field that shall be for always sacred to some American homes and to one German home.

A VIOLET IN FRANCE

ON PLUCKING A VIOLET FROM A DEMOLISHED
WAYSIDE SHRINE NEAR THE FRONT

BY VICTOR C. REESE
American Expeditionary Forces

I picked a violet in France,
Beloved of shade and dew.
I wish my idle hands had left
It smiling where it grew.

Beside a little wayside shrine
Demolished in the war
It steadfastly proclaimed its faith
That God would quite restore

Each lovely work of his that man
In churlish wrath destroyed,
And that new loveliness would fill
Each aching, empty void.

It was a little violet;

I held it in my hand

And marveled that its withering
Should make me understand.

ESS than two centuries ago the army doctor was still a "barber surgeon." His primary duty was to shave the officers of the line. No doubt he did that better than anything else, since modern medical science is little more than a century old. Quite naturally, the old tradition of him has died hard in the army. His uniform till very recently has remained a sort of fancy dress in the eyes of the public and the fighting man. It was not so many years ago, says the historian, that " British medical officer who had been rewarded for heroism in the field was contemptuously dubbed 'a brave civilian' by the commander of the British army, a man who never saw a battle." Heroism in the field is an incident in the medical service. Quite as many army surgeons (by percentage) have been killed in this war as officers of the line.

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The current achievement of our own Medical Corps might be recognized more generously. In its work at the front it is said to be already more efficient than any other; none excels it, we may safely say, in personnel, methods, or organization. After we entered the war, it did in a year what it had taken the British three years to do. We had their experience to go by and the experience of our volunteer units during the early years of the war. But we had something else the qualities we like to think of as American, the knack of adapting ourselves to new conditions and problems assets of initiative and flexibility, as well as of trained skill. The German medical service is a capable mechanism. The British service has been more or less hampered by the famous British conservatism. The American service at once showed itself ready to adopt old methods or invent new ones, as the emergency might require. It possessed an amazing volunteer personnel. We discovered, not long after the war broke, that a queer thing had happened "over there". an over-stock of American specialists of the highest class. Men of general utility had to be called for, to take the plumbing off the watchmakers' hands. A roster of our Medical Corps overseas in those first months would have been a sort of "Who's Who " for our most distinguished medical men in all fields. They were the first to be taken for service at the front. In a way, they had most to give. But the others were equally needed and equally ready to give what they had; and this we shall not forget.

But we ought not to let our pride in these volunteers obscure the merit of our Regulars. The American Army surgeon has always played an important part in our medical affairs, and has had little credit for it with the public at large. For example, it was Surgeon-General Rush, of the Continental Army, who made the first American studies in hygiene, insanity, and anthropology, His successor, William Browne, prepared the first American pharmacopoeia. Another army surgeon, John Jones, published the

first American work on medicine and surgery. Another, William Beaumont, was the pioneer in experimental physiology; his experiments in the physiology of digestion gave

him international fame. Major Walter Reed, of our Medical Corps, was the man who discovered the yellow fever mosquito and who had most to do with the discovery of the real causes and means of control of

typhoid epidemics. Since the beginning of the present war, Colonel Louis A. La Garde's treatise on gunshot wounds has demolished the old theory that the heat of ignition and explosion sterilizes a missile. His proof that the bacilli of lockjaw survive a journey by bullet, has led to the antitetanic injection as a first-aid measure. These names may serve to suggest the quality of the men who have worn the uniform of our Medical Corps from the beginning. The name of Surgeon-General Gorgas may well cap the list.

Few important discoveries in medicine or surgery have been made since August, 1914. There has been no such event as Lister's discovery of the value of antiseptics in surgery just before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. His method is still the main reliance of the army surgeon, though the best civil practice has swung from antisepsis to asepsis. Roughly speaking, one is the way of poisoning the flies in one's kitchen, and the other is the way of keeping them out altogether. The method of asepsis is the method of absolute cleanliness-of sterilizing, as it were, everything but the wound, and treating that with frequent and literal irrigation, with pure water. It is when this method could be used that the most surprising cures of this war have been effected. But there is neither time nor space nor leisure for these methods near the front. What is done must be done quickly with the aid of antiseptic solutions, the best of which, to be sure, are of our own time. With the methods and weapons of the new warfare have come new injuries and diseases. Most of them have to be dealt with by the application of old principles and methods to the fresh problem. One of them, gas gangrene, was studied by an American before it became an effect of war. As far back as the nineties Professor Welch, of Johns Hopkins, discovered the "bacillus Welchii," the malignant agent of gas gangrene. There are other effects of gas and of trench fighting-new wound infections and disorders of the nerves, and the baffling results of shell shock and wind contusion. These problems had to be faced before we came into the war, but our volunteer units did their part in working them out, and our Army service was ready for them when the hour struck. Our most distinctive contribution thus far in surgery has been in bone-grafting. "Simplicissimus "might do one of its delicately humorous pictures of the Yankee building a new jaw for the race! In a mechanical way, various Yankee notions have been contrived: a new hammock-stretcher for crooked trenches where the standard stretcher had proved useless, a standardization of surgical splints, and

so on.

After all, it is in the field of prevention that we have done most. Our British cousin is notoriously proud of his personal "tubbing." Perhaps we take that process a little more for granted, and are less inclined to be content with it. We got the habit of civic and domestic as well as personal sanitation some time ago, while the average Briton still fumbles for the idea of that slightly ludicrous thing, "American plumbing." By the same token the Tommy seems to have taken his French billet pretty much as he found it. American troops, we are told, insist on cleaning up the premises before they will tarry in them even for a night. Their fight is against the vermin

that transmit typhus and other ancient scourges, and against the flying germs that breed in filth. Not only typhoid, but the paratyphoids and cholera have fallen before their tiny hypodermic lance. Care, and more care, is being taken against the enlistment of diseased men, especially the tuberculous. Certain very recent studies and experiments even promise control of that elusive foe of armies in the field, the dreaded dysentery. And this is all of our generation. "At the close of the Civil War," says Dr. Osler, " we had no positive knowledge of the cause of any of the great scourges of humanity." During the Spanish-American War typhoid was still at large. A few years later our whole army on the Mexican border was jabbed in the arm-and the only case of typhoid known among those thousands was that of a teamster who had somehow dodged the needle.

What is the visible result of all this in a large way? During the Civil War there were six times as many deaths from disease as from violence. Undoubtedly there have been twice as many as that, taking an average of relatively modern wars. In the present war the figures read the other way. And our army leads the rest in health. As early as last March General Gorgas made an astonishing announcement, which seemed to attract little attention: "The world's military hygiene record for deaths from sickness has been reduced more than fifty per cent in the United States Army since we entered the war. The record until that time was held by the Japanese, and was twenty-one deaths per thousand. Deaths in the United States Army have dropped to ten per thousand." As for conditions at the front, we have the extraordinary recent statement, on good authority, that "the doctor has so dealt with the situation in the camps that the actual death rate from disease among the men in the camps, under all the hardships to which they have been exposed, is less than two-thirds of what it was in times of peace in the barracks." Besides its functions of prevention and salvage, there is the third great field of the modern medical service, "reconstruction -the care and training of the human flotsam cast back on our shores by the tempest of war. Military wreckage there must be; our new determination is that it shall not be moral and civil wreckage as well.

There is yet another aspect of the medical service. Pirogoff, the Russian surgeon, declared that war itself is an epidemic, and that "not medicine, but administration, plays the leading part in the aid of the sick and wounded in the scenes of war." As a feat of organization, the expansion of our Medical Corps has hardly been paralleled

in

any other branch of the Army service. It was prepared for war, and when war came it knew what was to be done and worked without delay or confusion. It keeps" ahead of the game "-manned and equipped for the care of far larger forces than are actually in the field. Its organization, we need to remind ourselves, covers far more than the relatively spectacular service at the front. As war loses its traditional glamor, we begin to see how much of it belongs to the rear. We have our great hospital system, our huge armies to care for, on this side of the water. And the heart and nerve-center of the whole big working concern, at home and abroad, may be found in the office of the Surgeon-General at Washington-an office covering seven floors of the busy "Arnex that flanks the Army and Navy Building, on the side away from the White House.