UNION HIGH SCHOOL

SAN FERNAN

1

BUY LIBERTY BONDS LIBE

Turn over these leaves and read the two songs by soldiers on another When page. have finished them, we guarantee you that you will want to buy another Liberty Bond. The spirit that these songs express pervades every camp of our Army and every ship of our Navy. Such soldiers and sailors deserve the very best backing that we who are compelled to stay at home can give them.

When these lines reach our readers, the country will have entered upon the third week of the Liberty Loan campaign. At this writing the work is being carried on with enthusiasm and with a patriotic response. No one believes that the loan will fail of complete subscription. But it is not sufficient for the American people to take the three billion dollars offered. Their patriotism and determination can be measured properly only by a large over-subscription. Do not hesitate to subscribe because you can take only a little. Every fifty-dollar bond counts. Do not hesitate to talk to your neighbors and friends about buying. This is no time for reticence, reserve, or false modesty. We have the men, the finest men in the world. We need ships, airplanes, shells, powder, rifles, machine guns, and other equip

ment.

You may not be able to fight, but you can provide these things-most of all, the ships. Buy another fifty-dollar bond today, and help the Government to build ships. Don't be discouraged, but at the same time do not be too optimistic. Do not refuse to buy your fifty-dollar bond because you think the banks are coming in with their millions. For two years we have lived in this country on the "Let-George-do-it" basis. Let's do it ourselves now. Three billion dollars is an enormous sum to raise. But the quicker, easier, and more completely we raise it, the more convinced will Germany be that we mean to see the thing through. If you have bought all the bonds for cash you can, buy some on the installment plan. Most Americans are afraid of the words "installment plan." No one need be afraid of the plan in buying Liberty Bonds. It is perhaps the most patriotic way in which bonds can now be bought. The man who buys on the installment plan is pledging a certain amount of his income for the next few months, to be paid regularly to the support of the Government. Make the last week of the campaign the best. Buy Liberty Bonds!

AUSTRIAN DUPLICITY EXPOSED

The resignation of the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister and Premier, Count Czernin, is a natural culmination of the recent revelations. These make it more than probable that Vienna has been playing a double part, both toward the Allies and toward Berlin. The simple truth of the matter is that, before the collapse of Russia, Austria was less afraid of Germany than she was of internal revolution, but that after the Russian collapse she

feared Germany more than anything else and dared not continue her disingenuous, attempts to talk peace with the Allies.

Meanwhile Emperor Charles undertook the part of an amateur diplomat, with disastrous results. The weakness and contradictions of the statements given out at Vienna about the letter from the Emperor to Prince Sixtus, the Emperor's brother-inlaw, in Paris, are ludicrous. Not for a long time have comic paragraphists had such a resounding mother-in-law joke as the Vienna report that the Emperor's mother-in-law wrote the letter and he signed it. It is perfectly evident that, whether the Emperor wrote the entire letter with his own hand or not, he certainly signed the letter, and it is unbelievable that he was not aware of its contents. This letter was written in March, 1917.

We have, then, the almost confessed fact that in a letter from the Austrian Court which passed under the Emperor's eye, part of which he wrote, and which he signed, the fact was recognized that France had just claims to Alsace-Lorraine, and that the restoration and freedom of Belgium should be assured. Whether Count Czernin was or was not aware of this letter is a matter of minor importance. A German paper scores severely what it calls "the Emperor Charles's meddling in affairs," and adds the interesting information that a letter from Count Czernin to the Emperor Charles was read in a secret session of the Reichstag, in which Count Czernin said, "Austria wants, and in any event must have, peace by the winter of 1917."

The exposure involved in the publication of the famous letter and in the former declarations of the French Premier as to the advances made by Austria, together with the knowledge we have of the belief in this country that at one time Austria was making advances toward our Government-all go to show the falsity and the worthlessness of Austria's secret diplomacy. It is an open question even now whether Austria really was seeking some kind of an accommodation for her own benefit without regard to German aims and purposes, or whether she was simply "dragging a red herring across the trail" in order to lessen by false hopes and visions of a separate peace the war energies and fixed resolution of the Allies. In either case her action was contemptible, and the result was not merely a fiasco, but a humiliating and mortifying loss of international dignity.

MR. LLOYD GEORGE ON THE BATTLES IN PICARDY

The clearest account of the broad and essential features of the fierce battling of March 21 to March 28 was that made by the English Prime Minister before the House of Commons on April 9. He seemed to take his hearers into his full confidence. He did not minimize or conceal the seriousness of the attack; but his speech was firm, confident, and resolute. Particularly eloquent was his eulogy of General Foch and his demand for unity under the new Commander-in-Chief's leadership.

Among the statements which threw new light upon the course

of the earlier fighting was a recognition of the heroic and effective action of Brigadier-General Carey. It seems that General Gough, in command of the Fifth Army, which held the central part of the British line on the Somme, had fallen back, under the terrible impact of the German offensive, losing touch with the Third Army, under General Byng, to the north In his retreat there was also failure, it is charged, to destroy the bridges, as should have been done. Whether or not General Gough did all he could under the fearful attack is to be a subject of inquiry, and in the meantime he has been relieved from command. The immediate result, at all events, was that a gap was made in the line and for a time the road to Amiens was open, while the Third Army was desperately and gallantly fighting farther up the line. In this emergency, said Mr. Lloyd George, General Carey for days held the gap and blocked the enemy with engineers, electricians, laborers, signalers, and anybody who could hold a rifle. Another account says that General Carey improvised a staff as he went along, "officers learning the ground by having to defend it, and every man from enlisted man to brigadier jumping at each job as it came along." It is probable that there were Americans in this improvised army and that this explains the references in the despatches to " Americans fighting shoulder to shoulder with the British." Surely this whole episode is one that the world must later have more fully told.

Mr. George frankly stated that the German forces did not exceed the British in numbers when the battle began. They had, however, an advantage in that it was impossible to tell from which of three large German concentrations (north, central, and south) the attack would come. The level plains, the dry ground, the momentum of the massed attack, all helped the Germans' early success. It is a remarkable fact, and one creditable to the professional acumen of the new Chief of Staff of the British Army, Sir Henry Wilson, that he predicted to Mr. George two or three months ago precisely the attack that took place-a wide front, south of Arras, the object being the capture of Amiens and the severance of the British and French armies. The conduct of the British army as a whole was praised in the warmest terms. We quote one passage: "The House can hardly realize, and certainly cannot sufficiently thank-nor can the country-our troops for their superb valor and the grim tenacity with which they faced overwhelming hordes of the enemy and clung to their positions. They retired, but were never routed, and once more the cool pluck of the British soldier, that refuses to acknowledge defeat, saved Europe."

THE SECOND GERMAN OFFENSIVE

On a much smaller scale, the German attack upon the British lines north of Arras has been a duplication of their earlier and larger effort to the south. The maps of the first and second offensive show the occupation by the German forces of areas broadly similar in shape and in practically the same proportions. The new attack, like the first one, has not yet succeeded in its main offensive. It is supplementary to the first attack and is intended to support that attack.

When the advance toward Amiens was checked, it became

evident that the position of the Germans in the area newly gained could not be permanently held so long as their line was threatened, first, at the northeastern corner of the occupied territory, by the strong positions of the British forces to the north of Arras, and, second, at the southeastern corner of the territory, by the French.

Accordingly, the Germans first attacked at the southeast corner of their newly occupied area. They threw back the French from the woods of Coucy, but the only result was to leave the French in a very strong position on the southern side of the river Ailette. Then began the attack on the British in the section above Arras. This is still going on as we write, on April 16. The extent of the German progress from east to west has been something like fifteen miles. To the south the fighting pivoted on the little town of Givenchy. At the north the German waves have broken again and again upon the heights of Messines. At both these pivotal and critical points the British up to the time named had repelled or blocked the German efforts, with frightful German losses. But the capture of Bailleul, reported on April 16, was a serious loss; this, and the taking of other places near by,

led to the occupation by the Germans of some part of the Messines Ridge itself.

Every one remembers the brilliant and glorious fighting by which the heights of Messines were won by British valor. Equal valor and steadfastness have been shown in their defense. At Merville, near the apex of the German salient, many assaults have been delivered by the Germans, but the gains made in the first rush of their offensive have been only slightly increased. Armentières, the most important town taken in this drive, lies in a poorly defensible, low situation.

Reports from London under the date of April 15 assert that the force of the new and secondary drive has been spent and that the ultimate objects of the Germans are still completely out of their reach. These objects have been accurately outlined in orders taken from German officers made prisoners. They confirm the belief that Germany has been staking everything on breaking through the British lines and pushing to the coast either by the route of Amiens and Abbeville or, if the northern attempt proved the more successful, directly to Boulogne or Calais. Thus they would cut the Allies' forces in two, and then, in all probability, attempt to hold the French back while driving the British northward to the Channel.

There still remains at least a possibility that this desperate scheme may succeed; but as week after week has gone by since it was initiated on March 21, the danger of Germany's success has lessened and the exhaustion of German forces has increased. The Allies are now thoroughly awake to every purpose of the German General Staff, and can concentrate their resistance with far more certainty than at the beginning of the offensives. It is at least within the bounds of probability also that General Foch may at any moment begin a counter-attack at whatever point he may deem the weakest in the now dangerously extended German lines.

In a section south of the two principal German offensives and near the great St. Mihiel salient American troops have been attacked repeatedly. They have borne themselves finely, have repelled assaults, and in one instance drove back Germans twice their number with German losses of at least seventy-five out of four hundred.

THE THIRD ARM OF THE SERVICE

The reports of the Senatorial investigation on aircraft production contain interesting information.

the

The report of the minority (Senators Sheppard, Myers, and Kirby, Democrats) states that soon after the war began Signal Corps arranged with the French Government for the making of 6,100 planes at a total cost of $127,000,000. Under this arrangement, it says, as the American air squadrons reach the front planes are supplied to them. More over, the Signal Corps has shipped to France 11,000 tons of various materials and has sent 7.000 mechanics. The Signal Corps arranged for the making of 11,500 planes other than training planes in this country. Of training planes there are some 3,500 completed.

Hitchcock, Reed, and Thomas, Democrats, and Frelinghuysen, The majority report (signed by Senators Chamberlain, Wadsworth, Sutherland, and Weeks, Republicans) states that we have manufactured 342 advanced-training planes, but that in combat planes there has been substantial failure. The report

says:

We had no design of our own; neither did we adopt any one of the European designs until months after we entered the war. ... Of these the largest and most powerful is the Handley-Page heavy bombing machine. The designs and specifications of this plane... were offered to our officials as early as May, 1917.

The Signal Corps finally decided upon the manufacture of a number of sets of parts of this machine about January 1, 1918. Officials of the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps testified that they do not expect the completion of the first set of parts in this country before the month of June, 1918.

With regard to the much-discussed Liberty motor, the majority report says that it is only "just emerging from the develop ment or experimental stage;" that 22,500 Liberty motors have been ordered, of which 122 have been completed for the Army,

142 for the Navy, and 4 shipped overseas. The report continues:

The production of Liberty motors to date is, of course, gravely disappointing.... In spite of the unanimous testimony of motor experts along this line, the Government officials having the manufacture of the Liberty motor in charge have made the mistake of leading the public and the Allied nations to the belief that many thousands of these motors would be completed in the spring of 1918.

The delay in production may be due in some degree to engineering and manufacturing errors, but the majority report points out what seems a more serious defect:

Your Committee is convinced that much of the delay in producing completed combat planes is due to ignorance of the art, and to failure to organize the effort in such a way as to centralize authority and bring about quick decision. A certain aloofness in dealing with persons possessing information based upon experience, an apparent intention of confining the actual production to a restricted number of concerns, and a failure of the officials in charge of the work to grasp the situation in a broader way and seize upon the best approved foreign engines and planes, and to proceed promptly to build as many as possible for the campaign of 1918, have contributed to the failure.

What should be done? The production of aircraft should be controlled by one executive officer. This has long been evident. In the second place, the matter of production should be taken out of the hands of the Signal Corps entirely. In the third place, no one who has any interest in a company manufacturing airplanes or engines should act as adviser or be in authority.

These three recommendations are made by the majority report. In order to put the first into practice, Senator Sheppard, one of the authors of the minority report, a year ago introduced a bill creating a Department of Aeronautics, with a Secretary in the Cabinet. But this proposed change did not meet with sympathy from the Administration. Representa tive Hulbert later introduced a joint resolution providing for the creation of a Commission on Aerial Navigation. But it did not receive sufficient support from the leaders in the House. Representative Gould, on April 12, introduced a bill abolishing the present Aircraft Production Board. It would create the office of Aircraft Administrator, who would have entire charge of aircraft production for the Army and Navy and who would have at hand several assistant administrators, and have authority to lease, buy, or build all necessary office space. To his office there would be transferred the aeronautic section of the Signal Corps of the War Department and the office of Naval Aeronautics of the Navy. Department. An appropriation of $25,000,000 would be made to carry out the provisions of

this bill.

Legislation passed by the British Parliament last autumn gives military and naval aeronautics a position of great importance. Although the British Cabinet has consisted of twentythree men, it has added a new member, who is Secretary of State for the Air Force. Whether our proposed Aircraft Administrator be an official like our Food and Fuel Administrators, or a Secretary with a seat in the Cabinet, his appointment should mark a new stage in the history of the Nation's armed forces— the official recognition that the air force has now become as distinct a department as is the Army or the Navy.

STEEL AND SHIPS

The course of the war has given to Japan a great opportunity for transportation as far as ships are concerned. As ships of every nation have been withdrawn from ocean traffic, Japanese ships have taken their places.

But this ship traffic development has been surpassed by the Japanese ship-building development. Last year Japan built nearly a million tons of shipping, a growth of almost five times the largest amount built in any year before the war.

For ship-building steel plates are needed. Pig iron is the basis of steel-making, but Japan's production of pig iron is less than 600,000 tons. Hence she must get steel from other countries. England is closed to export trade at present. The United States has not been closed as regards steel delivery, but our Government recently put an embargo on it. Of course this was a blow to Japan. According to a writer in the New York

"Tribune," it stopped work on no less than seventy-seven ships, aggregating 638,000 tons.

Japan needs steel. We need ships. Should not one need offset the other?

An effort has been made in this direction. It was emphasized by the Ishii Mission. According to the popular notion, the effort had three stages-namely, our attempt to obtain with Japan an agreement under which we should release from embargo a ton of steel for three tons of Japanese shipping, then a ton for two tons, and, finally, a ton for one ton. This notion needs modification. Three necessary factors have influenced the negotiations. They are the amount of steel to be released, the price to be paid per ton for ships, and the dates of their delivery. Thus the final ratio of ton for ton represents the compensation to the Japanese for more advantageous conditions to us in other respects, and also for a direct contribution of some 18,000,000 yen ($9,000,000) from Japan. The release of the steel ton for ton was a variant factor in the negotiations of the same character as the price per ton.

Steamers of about 100,000 tons capacity have now been purchased by us from Japan, we are glad to say. They will be operated by our Navy or by the Federal Shipping Board. They will fly our flag and remain in our possession. The first of the steamers will be delivered at American ports in May, and the last in December.

of 6.000 tons or more. None are over two years old, and some, With one exception, all these vessels are large modern steamers indeed, are still awaiting completion.

As to steamers for later delivery, our War Trade Board is now negotiating for the purchase outright of some 200,000 tons and expects to charter an additional 150,000 tons.

The relations between the private companies in America selling steel to Japan and the private companies in Japan selling ships to this country are not affected except as limited in amount by this arrangement.

The comment of the press in both countries-for instance, of such representative papers as the New York "Times" and the Tokyo "Jiji" (Current Events)-is that the furnishing of tonnage for Allied war needs is a patriotic contribution to Allied war purposes. We heartily agree.

TOTAL ABSTINENCE FROM WHEAT FLOUR

On April 14 amendments to the Federal Food Administration's baking rules became effective. The substitute content of all bread and rolls must be increased from its present twenty per cent requirement to twenty-five per cent. No less than eighty-four bakers in New York City alone disregarded this rule, and on April 15 were summoned to appear before the local Food Administrator. Moreover, during the previous week some two hundred complaints had been received against New York City bakers who had been lax with regard to the twenty per cent rule. The result of these complaints was that the business of nineteen bakery establishments was suspended for three days, and the Administration announced that even more drastic measures would be invoked if bakers persisted in disregarding rules. It is a satisfaction to report such summary

treatment.

Under the new rules, no public eating-place may serve more than two ounces of bread and rolls or more than four ounces of quick bread to any one person at any one meal.

These measures are, after all, only subsidiary to the Food Administration's present aim, which is total abstinence from wheat flour. It points out, in the first place, that there is an abundance of corn flour and corn-meal to supply our needs until after the next harvest. In the second place, on April 15

Mr. Hoover, Federal Food Administrator, telegraphed as follows:

In order that the food value of the present large available supply of potatoes may not be lost, and that it may be utilized to relieve the strain in our fast diminishing stock of wheat, which is so much needed by our Army and Navy and Allies, I hope you will do everything possible to promote the potatoes campaign.

Surely the present large supplies both of corn and potato substitutes for wheat should be utilized, especially that of potatoes, since the time is very short in which last year's supply

will be available for food.

WHEAT NOT INDISPENSABLE

We are in the habit of regarding wheat as an indispensable article of diet. "It isn't," asserted Dr. Alonzo Taylor, of the Federal Food Administration, in his recent address at Washington before the hotel men. "It is an article of luxury and absolutely nothing else." Dr. Taylor continued:

Wheat possesses over oats, corn, and rice absolutely no nutritional quality for man or beast. It has no more protein and no better protein. It has no more fat and no different fat. It has no mineral salt better or in larger amounts. It has no more fuel or better fuel.

The Outlook has asked a number of eminent dietitians whether they agree with Dr. Taylor's conclusions. Their letters to us show that they do so agree. We condense their opinions as follows:

gas

Certain food elements are essential to life. One of these is protein (from two Greek words meaning "first" and "in"), the first essential part of food, as found in the gluten of flour, egg, and fibrin of the blood, and coming from nitrogen, that which forms three-quarters of the weight of the atmosphere. As distinguished from Dr. Taylor's assertion, there is an opinion that wheat flour contains rather more protein than do most flours. But protein can be furnished in many forms. It is not essential that the body get it from wheat.

The second essential food element is that of carbohydrates. As the name indicates, carbohydrates are organic bodies containing carbon atoms and water. Barley flour, oat flour, rice flour, or rye flour can furnish carbohydrates quite as well as can wheat flour.

The next essential food elements are fats and salts, which are referred to above by Dr. Taylor.

Thus there are substitutes for wheat containing all the essential elements which serve equally well for nourishment.

A child grows perfectly well without any wheat at all up to the age of one year, and there is no reason why children should not be able to get along after this time if they live on other cereals. For people in general there is no danger if they eat every day from each of the following five groupsproteins, fats, cereals, sugars, and green vegetables.

As Dr. Taylor says: "Our predilection for wheat is solely a question of taste, comfort, and convenience; it is absolutely nothing else." It is true that wheat is easier to prepare than oats and rice and barley; it is true that wheat makes the most palatable bread, the lightest bread, the bread that is best transported, and the bread that keeps moist and sweet longest.

But it is precisely because wheat thus lends itself to the consumer's convenience that we ought to send it to Europe.

We are asked now by the Food Administration to treat rye just like wheat. Even with that cereal eliminated as well as wheat we have left cereals in abundance.

FARMING IN FRANCE

"The French soldiers are largely agriculturists, and nothing could comfort them more than to see their fields cultivated, only great material aid but contribute in a large measure to the planted, and harvested. Associations such as yours render not

maintenance of the good morale of the troops.

These words from General Pétain were fitly used in writing to an organization which, almost from the beginning of the war, has not only ministered to injured French soldiers, supplying more than three thousand hospitals in France, but has also ministered to those coming out of the hospitals and to their families. Indeed, the necessity for this latter endeavor has been so insistent as to lead to the natural transformation of the Civilian Committee of the American Fund for French Wounded (the organization in question) into a separate organization, the American Committee for Devastated France.

General Pétain assigned the region of the river Aisne as a field for the Committee's activity. The Aisne is an affluent of the Oise, as the Oise is of the Seine. The chief city of the Aisne is Soissons. The Aisne Valley is an east-to-west valley. It lies south of the present German drive. From this valley the Germans withdrew many months ago, leaving it desolate. They had destroyed crops and fruit trees. They had tumbled the houses down, stone upon stone. They had made farming tools and machines useless. The women and children and the aged had mostly fled the country. Those who remained were hidden in caves and shattered cellars of the ruined houses.

The work of the American Committee for Devastated France, however, has been emphatically that of the countryside. The only rebuilding it has done is to patch up half-ruined houses to make them habitable (sometimes the stones of a house bombed by the Germans can be set up again to shelter the very family that owned it) and to co-operate with the Government in the effort towards housing homeless people in temporary wooden structures. The French peasants have never lived in wooden houses, and some diplomacy has been necessary to get them to sign the contract required by the Government providing that the cost of the wooden house shall be taken out of their share of the war indemnity.

As we cannot ship enough food from America to France to feed all the hungry people there, we must help them to raise their own food. In the Aisne Valley, through the Minister of Agriculture, the Committee obtained tractors and plowed many acres of land that had been covered with barbed wire. It planted with grain some 3,000 hectares (about 7,000 acres) and set out over 7,000 fruit trees to replace those destroyed by the Germans. The Committee has also replaced farm implements, and has provided live stock of domestic animals, including cows. It has established dairies, dispensaries for sick children, and schools for manual training.

Women and children, who for three years have been without milk, are now getting a daily supply. Small boys have been taught to make the furniture for their new homes. Old men and women have had their courage restored. Above all, the soldiers' courage and faith have been restored because they see that their women and children, their fathers and mothers, eager to return home, have found conditions made possible for that return. As the recent report of the French Academy of Agriculture says, the American Committee has accomplished wonders in reconstructing the soil and in cultivating the fields.

We are permitted to quote from a telegram dated April 2 from Mrs. Anne Dike, who with Miss Anne Morgan is directing the work. It describes conditions as they have existed since the beginning of the present German drive:

Desperately busy caring for refugees in great distress. . . . More than ever we must be prepared to help a magnificent nation " carry on." . . . Morale of our evacuated families marvelous. All depending upon us to protect and help their interests. This work appeals greatly to American sympathy. It needs