tion; with three-quarters of a million of her youth buried from the Hebrides to the Falklands; with labor troubles and with Irish troubles; with a war-fevered and sometimes delirious Continent of Europe raising Cain just across the Channel, England is "carrying on."

Out in the countryside-in the little towns of the Sussex downs or the Devon cliffs or the Northumberland moorsthere are more granite war memorials and less young men than there were; but for all that a feud between the vicar and the lady of the manor is still an event of the first magnitude. The village barber may (and probably does) harbor memories of one night at Festubert when he picked up "the officer" wounded, and crept with him through a machine-gun barrage to the comparative shelter of a ruined farmhouse. day that same officer is very likely to be just what he was before the war-a "toff," and socially just as immeasurably far away from the barber as ever he was. The war has put tweeds in theater stalls hitherto sacred to evening clothes, but it hasn't given Shoreditch a card of admission to Mayfair. The real fact is that Shoreditch doesn't want one. Coster and peer alike turn to 1914 and the years before as the goal.

To

London, superficially, has changed little. Khaki and blue are off the streets

again.

"D.O.R.A." still imposes a few silly restrictions about closing hours; there is no gold coin in circulation; there are more badges on coat lapels. The vast sluggish current of London life apparently wanders on much as usual.

One sits at an office window in the crescent of Aldwych and watches the ebb and flow of the tide of street traffic from the roaring stream which is the Strand. The matinée crowds, as yet only half-conscious that they have left the make-believe world of the stage's illusions, swirl from the Gaiety and disrespectfully linger to chat beneath the frowning austerity of the "Morning Post's" unmistakably Tory façade. Huge, ungainly steam lorries, which for some unknown reason are allowed to lumber through London's streets, creep along with loads of girders for a new building which is rising, American fashion, at the foot of Kingsway. "American fashion," did one say? Conspicuously absent is the deafening clatter of the pneumatic riveter; stolid workmen slowly and laboriously bolt the I-beams together by hand. It is the gaunt steel skeleton, unfamiliar to London, where solid granite is the rule, that gives the American touch.

In the crowd that passes beneath one's window nothing is conceded to Paris or to Constantinople in the matter of cos

sucking a "short clay," proceeds a pace in front of a Guards officer. Sallow and bespectacled Hindus, never quite at ease in their Western garments, slide slimly past. An ample woman in a leopardskin coat with a tiny monkey cuddled in the crook of her arm appears, and draws not even a glance. (Am I right in assuming that she would cause a near-riot on Fifth Avenue?) Blandly unconcerned Japanese-London is full of them, now that Prince Hirohito has been here-add their touch of the Orient. As a filler there is the usual assemblage that one sees in any street, any time, anywhere in Europe all nonentities, by the grace of the vast and mighty unconcern which is and always has been London's.

"Ah, but you should have seen it before the war!" sadly comments the Londoner at one's elbow. "In 1914, now-"

There is a well-known story that when the London "Times" passed under the control of Lord Northcliffe an ancient reader of that paper complained to its editor that the "Times" wasn't what it used to be.

"My dear sir, it never was!" flashed back the editor.

Sometimes one cannot help wondering whether London ever was, either.

B

RADLEY laughed till he shook "like a bowl full of jelly." I did not see the joke; probably because I was it. Still, he was welcome to his laughter, for there was mighty little of it domiciled in mid-China at the time. Bradley, although he is no thin and ghostly ascetic, is a missionary, a physician by profession, and in practice a general handy man of civilization. when he and his fellow Southern Presbyterian missionaries found themselves in the midst of the great famine of 1906-7, the only white men and women in that remote part of China, he turned, American fashion, to the job of building roads in order that recipients of relief money might not be pauperized.

So

The tragic tales that had come down to Shanghai of the terrible visitation that had befallen the Kiangpeh region had of course lured the traveling newspaper man to the scene, via the Yangtze River and the Grand Canal. I well remember the panic in the American compound at Sutsien when Mr. and Mrs. Correspondent arrived from their houseboat by night; by night, when not even respectable Chinese ventured abroad because of the desperate characters whom hunger had driven into highwaymanry! A bad case was made worse because we had gone up the canal for a journey of several days without an interpreter, and so knew no better, when we reached

BY WILLIAM T. ELLIS

Sutsien, than to disembark by night. The only conveyances available were one sedan-chair and a wheelbarrow. Mrs. Correspondent was put aboard the chair and whisked briskly off ere Mr. Correspondent was fairly settled in his wheelbarrow. She arrived at the Bradley home long before her husband; and for a time there was interesting discussion as to the probability of the madman's ever getting there alive. Naturally, he did arrive, with no other wounds than those incident to wheelbarrow riding over a Chinese highway.

The next day I was out with Bradley and his road-making gang. It cannot be denied that prudence is not my cardinal virtue. The entire trip had been undertaken in the face of official and unofficial warnings of its dangers. All along the way I had been cautioned against the personal perils that inhered in the distribution of money, for I carried two big pockets full of copper coins for that express purpose. Out among Bradley's hunger horde I committed another indiscretion. Upon observing a youth with a tray full of native sweetswherever there is a market the world around, there is food of some sort to be had, regardless of famine conditions-I bought the whole supply, and began to distribute it.

At once the American Cræsus was

mobbed.

FAMINE

In their eagerness to get a morsel of the sweet provender, the men crowded upon me and crushed me and were fairly bearing me down to earth. My last sight ere I flung the food from me as far as I could send it, in order to relieve the situation by sending the men scrambling for the food, was of Bradley, up on a bank, laughing, earthquakewise, at the plight of this Smart Aleck of a newspaper man. But then he had gone through pretty much the same thing every day for weeks as he distributed the wooden tags which meant work to a horde of heads of families.

As somewhat of a specialist in human misery all over the earth, I must say that the Chinese peasant takes his hard luck man fashion. He does not easily become a sycophantic mendicant. When he has used up all the edibles on his place and sold everything vendible he owns, at times not excepting even the timbers of his poor dwelling, he loads his remaining family possessions, including nis baby and his grandmother, upon his wheelbarrow and sets out on a tragic trek toward the nearest walled town or city. In the meantime, with inherited wisdom, he has learned how to get a modicum of nourishment, or else that sorry substitute, a "full feeling," from certain grasses, roots, and barks of young trees. A compressed cake of

bean waste, normally fed to the pigs, becomes a prized food in famine times.

This tenacity of life is one of the unending marvels of Oriental hunger experiences. People live long on nothing, or little more than nothing. The marvel is not that so many die, but that so many live. China's capacity for endurance is famous; a famine reveals it to the uttermost. How a man can push a huge Chinese wheelbarrow over impassable roads with no food crossing his lips for days is beyond a Westerner's comprehension.

These

When the Chinese refugee, fleeing from the dread presence of famine, arrives at a walled city, he joins his fellowfugitives in a camp. Any vacant space will do, but the nearer the wall the better, for various obvious reasons, including shelter from winter winds. encampments of woe are a distinctive Chinese spectacle; but they are not on tourist routes. A square or two of matting is bent into a semicircular shelter, like a miniature of the great palace arch at Ctesiphon. Usually, the dimensions are about five feet square on the ground, the greatest height of the arch being perhaps four feet. Not a commodious home, manifestly; but possible because of the Oriental art of "hunkering." If the family is fortunate, there is a square of matting as floor-covering; otherwise, they sit and lie on the bare ground. All this is in winter, if you please! I personally have seldom been colder, despite a white man's seasonable clothes, than I was amid the famine refugees of MidChina, who themselves wore meager, cotton-wadded garments. These become unusually infested, under refugee conditions, with vermin, to add to the sufferings of the patient poor.

Chinese are not exclamatory. They do not wail and cry aloud and proclaim their sufferings to the world, as is the fashion farther west in Asia. Their language, however, is by nature pictorial. The ideograph is vivid beyond all other forms of writing or speaking. As I passed emigrant famine families in rural China there would be sometimes only a single word of comment from them; this very lack of volubility made their plight seem more desperate. Over and over again the same word was muttered by these men whose backs were bent beneath wheelbarrow straps. I think it was, "Yao-ming!" Anyway, it means, "It wants our lives!" Who says the Chinese are only unimaginative materialists? That one word was tragedy incarnate. These illiterate peasants had visualized the famine from which they were fleeing as a monster that would be satisfied with nothing less than life itself. It had devoured food store and property and home, still it relentlessly dogged the heels of the fugitives, insatiate until it had got the ultimate possession.

So it was a battle for life that the Americans waged. Belatedly, the need of China got to America-primarily, let it be said with full significance, because the missionaries were actually on the

scene in remote interior China-and money and food came. There was nobody to organize and distribute relief except these expatriates of piety; and right skillfully did they vindicate their national heritage. They knew the language and the people, and they knew that to feed the hungry was the best kind of Gospeling. Let me whisper in passing that the unique position which

PHOTOGRAPH BY AUSTIN O. LONG, Y. M. C. A. SECRETARY
ONE OF THOUSANDS OF REFUGEE WOMEN

the United States to-day holds in the esteem and affection and confidence of China is due less to the praiseworthy utterances of statesmen in Washington than to the noble character and conduct of American missionaries strewn all over the Chinese nation. Somebody will one day write a profound article or book upon the diplomacy of democracy, which is nothing more nor less than the popular diffusion of good will. America is unshakably in the leadership of China to-day for the simple reason that the Chinese have had abundant evidence of the real character and disposition of this country.

At least one man learned during the 1906-7 famine in China what sort of men and women missionaries really are. A British war correspondent, Captain K- left Shanghai with me, bent on the same errand. He confided to me his fears about the missionaries whom he would have to meet; for, said he, of course he did not believe in missionaries-they were persons who could not make an honest living at home, and they were possessed of no social qualities. I did my best to reassure him that, even though he would have to put up in missionary homes-there was nowhere else to go he would not be abridged in his liberty of opinion on that account. The point troubled K-, for he was an honorable gentleman and did not care to eat a man's salt and then pillory him in print.

Soon he had troubles of a different sort. In the mission homes the day begins with family worship, and poor

K, with all his cosmopolitanism, had never before run up against that institution, and really did not know how to behave. I especially admired the skill with which he concealed that precious part of his baggage which was carried in bottles. Worse was yet ahead. At Antung the China Inland Mission ladies took it for granted that nobody would ever penetrate to such a remote place on a benevolent mission without the constraining impulses of religion. At the first meal Miss Reed naturally asked, "Captain K- will you please say grace?" Doubtless Captain Khad often used the language commonly heard in grace before meat; but not ex actly in that connection. But he was prepared, probably by his. American wife, so he blandly remarked, "Miss: Reed, my family are all Quakers, and we use a silent blessing at the table." All the while he was at Antung that clever correspondent substituted a "silent blessing" for the usual grace before meat.

Blasé and worldly-wise and British, K- was not given to enthusiasms; !! but when he returned to Shanghai he wrote in the "North China Daily News" t a tribute to missionaries that was heart-, ier and more effective than is usually found in the professional literature of missions. And to me he said, specialcorrespondently, when we met: "As you know, I've been everywhere and mingled with all sorts of people; but that American missionary Patterson, at Sutsien, is the finest man I've ever known in all my life."

I cannot quite bring myself to tell tales of famine horrors: the monkeyfaced, pop-eyed babies tugging hungrily at the cold breasts of dead mothers lying on the frozen ground; the piteous old women and the stoical men; the inh credibly deformed starving waif whom picked up outside of the city of Tsing kiangpu; the boy on the wall of Chin kiang who was carrying home a starve cat for food, and in response to a query tried so hard to sell it to me as a delisa cate morsel; and such general concomit tants as the incidence of smallpo plague with the famine.

One of the unexpected aspects of work in the famine camps came while I wa accompanying Mrs. Paxton, of Chin kiang, as she made rounds to distribut medicine to the sick among the hungry As a matter of fact, relatively few per sons ever die in a famine directly frong, actual hunger, but rather from disease induced by malnutrition. Obligingly Mrs. Paxton freely translated for me a we went along, and we found, in pa thetic paradox, that the commonest re quest of these starving creatures wa for medicine to give them an appetite Even when they succeeded in getting bowl of food from the relief station, rar the repeated tale, they could not eat it. having no taste for food. To us thi meant, obviously, that the sufferers hac reached the final stages, where craving for food had passed away. They were not hungry, because they were starving!

IN

“ MINE

FE N The Outlook of May 18 we announced our third prize contest. We asked those of our readers who felt like entering it to write six hundred words on the subject of "Mine Own People." We asked the contestants to tell us what they really thought of their own families. "Do you agree," we said, "with Oliver Herford's dictum: 'God makes our relatives; thank God we make our own friends'? We should like to know what kind of environment you ed live in; does it stimulate you or does it depress you? Would you have chosen it if you had had any say about it? Tell us truthfully of your revolts, if any, against your home life; also of your enthusiasms. If you are a woman, what do you really think of your men? If you are a man, let us have a critical estimate of your women folk."

ted

d

Some of the letters were tragic; some of the letters were bitter; but, neverthe

is less, we found them a deeply interesting er self-revelation. Pen-names conceal the

OWN PEOPLE

identity of most of the six hundred and seventy-four aspirants who entered.

The object of the contest was to stimulate frank criticism of American life, and the result is an engrossing running story of American manners and human contacts, of enthusiasms and revolts, of all kinds of reactions to environment. This collection of letters is an illuminating survey of current life, emotions, yearnings, strivings, and restraints. It contains nearly half a million words of intimate observations and reflections-it is an almost staggering, close-up, composite picture of a multitude of lives.

It is curious how letters of self-revelation in American literature vary. The autobiographies of Dr. Grenfell and of Dr. Trudeau, both genuine pieces of literature, are happy and optimistic in spite of the fact that both of these men have seen more of the tragedy, sordidness, and misery of human life than falls to the lot of most observers.

But the autobiography of Charles Francis Adams, which has ancestry, cultivation, and wealth behind it, is the very refinement of despondency; in fact, at the conclusion of his biography, Mr. Adams tells us the story of an Oriental despot who, at the end of a reign of fifty years, said that he could only recall fourteen days of unalloyed happiness in the entire period. Mr. Adams, who was writing at the age of eighty, comments on this story by saying: "Like this Oriental ruler, as I look back over my more than fifty years of active life, I can only recall fourteen days of unalloyed happiness, but, at that, I have had more than any other member of my family."

Some of our contestants, to all of whom, by the way, we are greatly obliged for their response to our request, are Trudeaus and Grenfells, and some of them are Adamses.

With this brief comment we submit the results to our readers.

TH

FIRST PRIZE

MY CAVALIERS

BY ANNE MARSHALL

HIS is Monday. I spent Saturday in the city, tramping about in the rain, shopping for various members of hemy family, but especially for the young

est brother, who sails this week for a year in Europe. He is having too good a time to waste any hours in shops; 'be

I sides, "Sis knows just what I like."

I had a few minutes to spare and went to see a doctor. He was a child25 hood friend, this doctor. He lived next door, and he remembers very clearly the dark, silent little girl who looked on at the play of her five big blond brothers. He knows how the father and ile mother adored these boys and planned for their future and saw to it, in spite of the scarcity of money, that they had all the fun boys want-trips, horses, f bicycles, and all the other things. He knows that the little girl's future wasn't discussed, that her gifts were few and useful, but, in spite of that knowledge, it doesn't seem natural to him as it does to me that the boys should have taken their cue from our parents and have forgotten too. This often happens in the South. The Southerner still to a large extent regards a woman as a servant or a beautiful toy, rarely as just a woman. The doctor remembers how he lost a quaintly fanciful little playmate when I was twelve. The mother died then and I was told that I was the head of the house and that I must consider myself responsible for the youngest boy, a

stormy, willful, hot-tempered child. He knows how I have worshiped the boy, how I have fought that temper of which the Southerner is secretly proud and from which his women and servants suffer. It was with this doctor's help, and unconsciously as far as the boy was concerned, that I brought to him a realization of the weaknesses of the Southerner, of the dangers of his sensuality, his hard drinking, his gambling, his egotism that so often smothers ambition. Probably I'd have failed in all of it had he not in a fit of temper struck me in the face with a club and marred dawning beauty. For a long time after that he was remorseful, thoughtful, and very affectionate. The Southerner can be adorably tender, and for just a bit of this tenderness his women forgive much.

The Southerner flatters much in public and when wooing; in private he is frank. A Southerner worships beauty and resents a lack of it in his women. The Southerner of Anglo-Saxon descent is a brute, an inheritance from his faraway Teutonic ancestors. My brothers called me "Scarface" until they were old enough to be ashamed of it; but the name left a deeper and more lasting scar than any on my face. A sensitive, introspective person invariably withers in the Southern home.

Next to beauty, wit and the ability to flirt are demanded of the Southern woman. My brothers didn't see these qualities in me and they didn't believe that others could find them. A Southerner is chivalrous, but he is also loyal to his friends and he does not permit friendship to be imposed upon. There

fore I was dubbed a "lemon" and the men were warned off.

I had a good mind, but the Southerner considers that a liability in a woman. I wanted to go to college, but it had never been done in our family, and the Southerner is very conventional. Of course my brothers are college men. Southern men of our class always go to college, and they major in highballs and minor in poker. I was needed at home. Woman's place is in the home. The oldest boys were through college; they liked to entertain a great deal, and competent servants are scarce in the South. I made many efforts to escape, but always I went down in defeat before my lack of funds and before their oratory. The Southerner considers a woman incapable of handling money, but is most generous as far as charge accounts go. The Southerner is a born orator; from him the spoken word is mightier than pen or sword.

Then came the war. The Southerner loves a fight, and all of the brothers enlisted. The father settled down into chronic invalidism. The doctor who had been the boy next door came home on a furlough and brought with him a homeless friend. Within ten days all the world had changed for me. Love had come. Gayly we told of our intention to be married at once. It was like throwing a bomb into their midst. They were willing to give their lives for their country; surely I was willing to forego a little happiness in order that their minds might be at peace, knowing that I was at home caring for our father and helping their wives with the babies.

Again their words defeated me. My beloved died in the Argonne.

On Saturday I shopped in the rain and I saw the doctor. Sunday I was up at dawn to prepare an early breakfast for a fishing party. The cook didn't come and there were eighteen for dinner. The Southerner is sentimental. He loves the home of his ancestors and delights in gathering his children about him there. In the midst of the dinner I had a hemorrhage. Later I told them what the doctor had said.

"Tuberculosis."

I didn't add, "Overwork;" I didn't tell that his face had made it unnecessary for me to ask how far the disease had progressed.

Monday. I have packed two trunks to-day, my own and that of the youngest boy who is going to Europe for a year. I am going to Saranac to-morrow.

I heard the boy say this morning: "Poor old Sis! We must get her off at once. Of course it will be hard on her—she has been such a stay-at-home. But she is a menace to all of us here." The Southerner is very romantic. I'll be good material for another traditionthe little sister who lost her lover in the Great War and died of a broken heart. Perhaps the next baby will be named for me.

I

SECOND PRIZE

A TRAGEDY OF RACE BY N. USAMI

LOOK out on life, as it were, with a double lens.

My father was born in Kyoto, Japan, of pure blood, the loyal subject of the Mikado. Trained in the University of Tokyo, he came early to America and settled in California.

My mother was daughter of a clergyman, was wooed by my father, and finally they became man and wife.

I was born in a beautiful valley of California, bounded on the west by the high coast range and thus protected from the trade winds.

The land of my father is very rich and brings forth fruit abundantly. Our crops are varied and profuse, from lemons to great acreage of potatoes.

Being the only child, my parents have taken much care of my education and showered their affection upon me. Both have much strength of character.

My life has been made up of a double idealism and a double patriotism.

The love of my father for the country of his birth is strong and abiding. When trouble would come between my parents, he would say in calm but strong speech that he thirsted for the day when he would go back to Kyoto, and he would recall the happy days of his life in the University of Tokyo. Then I would also feel as he felt and would so express myself. His country became my country and I was birth-proud.

My mother would make answer with much spirit, but not at all bitter, and

assert that America was God's own country, that on its soil she would live to the end, and that, when death overtook her, under its soil she would ever rest.

When she would thus speak, I would regret my feelings towards Nippon and, springing to the side of my mother, would take her part.

Those days, however, were few, for there was much deep love between them, and whatever sorrow came, and it was much, it came from another source.

Many times there were when I would discover my mother weeping in quiet corners of the home, and then I would nestle close to her and bring what comfort I could. But I did not dare to ask why she thus wept and mourned and looked so miserable and distressed.

But it happened one day that she told me the secrets of her heart and they opened my eyes to all her troubles.

Her father and mother had disowned her, and that is why she never mentioned their names in my presence. A feeling of great hatred to them entered my heart, and it is still there, fiercer than ever. Mother's God is a God of forgiveness, and I hope he will forgive the nursing of that feeling which I don't want to part with. Father's God is harder to understand, but if he can't forgive he is no God.

When mother took ill unto death, I hurried from the University of California to her side and was never out of her presence. To me she turned for her every want. Her religion was as sacred as a dram of radium and as silent and powerful in its working.

Once did she ask me to read to her words that were often on her lips, and I opened her Bible and read these words: "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." She wished to bury that sorrow with her, but I took it from her as a great weight.

With her life has gone out the light of my life.

"Mine own people!" How hard for one to speak of that which one has not. My heart, my mind, my soul divided!

As I look in the mirror and note the slant of the eye, the jet black, coarse hair, the strange tinge of cheek, I feel as if I would take wings and rest in the land of Hirohito.

When I recall the great spirit of my mother, her holy passion, her god-like devotion to her only child, her loyalty to my father, I long to kneel in a quiet spot and pray to her.

Thus I am a man without a country. The few men and women who first entered our lives seemed to fall away from us, one by one. The pride of mother would not allow her to call them back, and father looked on with a strange smile on his lips.

Almost alone I pursue my work in my University, and, while I love her as mother, we live alone.

Thus I am a man without friends.

The greatest kindness that has been ever bestowed upon me was the work of a young Hebrew in my college life. He

has done more to soften my heart than any power other than my own mother.

At times the appeal of Shintoism reaches me like a faint, far-off cry, then the God of the Hebrews is heard in the life of the young man who befriended me, and then the God of the Cross comes home, in the spirit life of my mother.

Thus I am a man without a personal God.

Yet life is sweet and beautiful, and the spirit of living things, of love, of kindness, of enthusiasm, sustains me.

I am what I am. Working within me has been a biological law beyond my control which has made me what I am.

THIRD PRIZE

THE ROBINS' MINUET BY ARIES

Μ'

EDIOCRITY is the most diverting condition in life. My dog is not a neurotic prize-winner, but he is mine, and I love him. My father is not an indulgent millionaire; he is just "Father." And as for mother-well, words fail sometimes, don't they? Mother has self-manicured nails, does much of her own washing because the laundry is not properly reverential of our purple and fine linen, and reads intelligently whenever she gets the chance. The remaining member of our family is myself.

Once I intended, before sex intruded into my life, to be a pirate. At sixteen I wanted to be une grande amoureuse; and now I am just a high school teacher of English. Just! That is the way some people put it. But I glory in my life and its mediocrity. Confuse not mediocrity and stupidity, for the former has variety that mere genius could never attain.

Could you imagine any mere genius. doing the following?

I rise at five o'clock to plant peas in a very private back yard, come indoors and get an exciting breakfast on a new electric stove, try out a new kind of inexpensive face powder, pack some homemade sandwiches for lunch and for econ. omy, help mother with the dishes, walk six blocks to a remarkable car-line with novel service, wait patiently because three baby robins are dancing a minuet near by, and hopefully board the car when it arrives. Next I greet most of my eighty-two co-workers in our large high school, walk to my room (my very own domain, gay with priceless knickknacks-priceless because most of them never cost a cent), instruct five classes of winsome adolescents in the gentle arts of debate, public speaking, and the literature of America; hover like a cau tious guardian in a big study hall teeming with five hundred personalitieseach one of which presents possibilities of conduct ranging from the angelic to the devilish. At the end of the last bell I hasten to the school library to attend a parent teachers' meeting, and meet Johnny's mother, who is troubled be

cause Johnny prefers not to work his mind too much; from there I go back to my own room again to supervise a school debating society, place some work upon the blackboard for the next day, draw a few chalk cartoons to please the youngsters and oil the cogs and come away from school at five o'clock. I visit the meat shop and pick out with care three symmetrical pork chops; enter the grocer's and walk out with several un

usual bargains. Home appears enveloped in coleur de rose after the ride in the remarkable trolley; it is the greatest little home in all the world. I help prepare supper, assist with the dishes, correct a few school paperstreasure-mines in hidden humor-play the piano a little and decide that I like my technique on the Sonora even better, tease the one and only dog whose God I am, retire about ten o'clock to

read under my glowing bed-light for an hour in my select night school, and then sleep!

Friends! Well, I would not be a school-teacher if I did not like my own people the Common People. They are the salt of the earth. We both appreciate mediocrity, replete with thrills, crammed with opportunity, and rich with work. I am no Pollyanna; I am just sensible!

MAIN STREET IS US

BY A WIDELY KNOWN WRITER WHO CONCEALS HIS IDENTITY AT THE COMMAND OF HIS WIFE

URS is a college home town. What does that mean to you? Well, it is depends upon where you have lived. Our town is free from the foreign eleis D ment that hurts many larger places. jus Our religion consists chiefly in church attendance. You must live among us a couple of years in order that you may chd later receive a social call from our elect. We are provincial, who imagine oururselves widely traveled. We applaud lightly lest the performer may not know that we have both went and saw. We take our titles seriously, for many of us have just reached the badge stage. Our A club women prepare their papers from

Te

.

either the recent numbers of "The Surola vey," The Outlook, "Literary Digest," the "Review of Reviews," or copy them bodily from the stern, scholastic prose of Britannica (early edition). Our chilhe dren all are "taking vocal," or making the neighborhood miserable with the wail of violin or groan of horn. We tried to read "The Four Horsemen," but are doing better by Main Streetwhich is us. We decry sex fillums; but they pack the opery-house nevertheless with a rare combination of saint and dd sinner. "The Miracle Man" rather overstept us. Our elect are taught bridge by a crafty female from the Capital, who charges heavily for all the tricks known to our lower element that inhabit Poodle's Pool-room.

for

We have yearly revivals, from which we emerge to overcharge our customers who have not learned that prices at the Capital, twenty miles away, have long since come to nigh normal. To achieve fame, one must do something local; the exile who does his stint abroad in the land is forgotten. We all belong to lodges, and none of us attend. Our wealth is held by retired farmers, who have retired likewise from any civic obligations. We think of ourselves as cultured because nobody plays either croquet or horseshoes. Our girls now show just as much of their bodies as do the gentler (or is it bolder?) sex in our greater American cities. Our music is only a year behind New York.

Our schools are teaching everything

and, therefore, nothing. We pay our teachers not so much in money, for we figure in the college atmosphere. We read two Capital dailies and our own little home-town sheet with an earnestness that is commendable. Some of us go to the Capital that our wide travel may reach the eyes of our friends and enemies. We applaud anything that savors of the flag; but the voting is light.

We ride in mortgaged automobiles of varying vintage. We profess disgust at the thought of county fairs; but we all attend later on.

All Gaul has nothing on us; we are divided into three parts: college folks, town folks, and North End. The latter is that part of our home town that hates sham. We call it "our worser element." But the North End feels just as exclusive as do our elect.

And yet we are good folk. Americans, trying to find ourselves, and not quite knowing how. The sufferer in our town learns he has neighbors. Out of our self-satisfaction, the growth of generations, we keep reaching out for God and truth. We follow the gleam in our blundering but hearty Mid-Western fashion.

A great National call came, and we fairly sprang up to sacrifice. And to be fair, out from US have gone dozens who have thrilled, in a score of varied callings, tens of thousands by the quality of their service.

CONGENIAL CAPTIVITY

H

BY CADUCEUS

ERE speaks the Army, the United States Army, the old-timers in service, and the most congenial family in captivity. (Captivity, by the way, is the correct term. Outsiders motor through our posts with the awed and interested expressions of children at the zoo. They crane their necks and watch us with breathless interest. It is unimaginable how tiresome it becomes. It is like being an organ-grinder's monkey! Our attitude towards these curious ones is the same as yours towards the rubberneck wagon of tourists-bored amusement; and we are reputed "standoffish" and snobbish by these same gazers.)

All real Army people are loyal to their corps and the Army, and they are very

scornful of upstarts-people who gain rank by other means than service or merit.

Neighbors may seem critical or undesirable in cities, but we appreciate our neighbors in the Army. They are so kind and willing in time of trouble. If there is a fire, if a member of your family is sick or has had an accident, you are overwhelmed with kind offers of help. Every one is more than willing and more than kind. Neighbors seem different after that.

At times we miss a real permanent home, and we find it hard to part with friends when we are ordered away; but there are many compensations. And then-we may come back some day.

There is a commonly heard statement which almost amounts to a proverb: "The Army takes care of its own." Nothing is truer. The Army gives us so many accommodations that civilians never dream of having. It gives the wholesale prices of the commissary, swimming-pools, tennis-courts, facilities for horseback riding, and it even takes the Army children to and from school. What city boy or girl who lives near an Army post does not envy the Army children their good times?

Traveling is a rich man's diversion. But not in the Army. This is another of our compensations. We see more strange things than our cousin, the marine, would credit, if he had not seen them himself. Few Army people but have been to the Philippines and Japan. And most of us have tried the Hawaiian surf.

There is more social activity in an Army post than even among the inner set of a big city. Every one is included and has a good time. The general's wife plays bridge with the captain's lady. "An officer and a gentleman" is the standard, and rank means nothing socially.

Army life spells opportunity. Traveling broadens the mind and adds to the education, and Army boys and girls win honors easily in their schools. They are bright and interested. They acquire their knowledge easily and have more experience to draw on..

We of the Army are more attached to our families than are civilians. They have homes and friends from childhood, and their neighborhood and homes mean almost as much to them as their fami