gcls_campsevier_100

TRENCH AND CAMP

President's Daughter
Sings To Soldiers

Miss Margaret Wilson, the Presi-
dent's talented and charming daugh-
ter, has captivated all the audiences
of soldiers before whom she has sung,
and there is every reason for believ-
ing that she will be accorded an
equally enthusiastic reception at all
the other camps and cantonments in
which she is soon to appear.

Miss Wilson recently announced
her intention of going to France to
sing to the American soldiers there.

Miss Wilson is making a tour of
the camps and cantonments to sing
for the soldiers under the auspices
of the Y. M. C. A. She is paying her
own expenses. Before starting on the
tour she gave several concerts in
large cities to raise money with which
to make the trip as far South as
Texas and as far West as Colorado.
She has been giving all the money
taken in at her concerts to charity or
to war work, but she wanted to make
the tour of the camps at her own ex-
pense as a contribution to war work
more personal than the mere handing
over of money.

Her first concert was given at Fort
Totten, near Whitestone Landing,
Long Island, New York."

"I'm awfully glad to see you," she
said, smiling down into the faces of
500 enlisted men. This is the first
audience I've ever had composed en-
tirely of men, and I like it. I never
had any doubt of what sort of sol-
diers you would be over in France,
but now that I have seen you, I feel
surer than ever that you and your
brethren in the other camps will
make the best fighters 'Over There.'"

Deafening applause greeted this
statement and the soldiers made the
rafters of the Y. M. C. A. auditorium
ring when she sang plantation melo-
dies and French love songs. They
joined her in the singing of "Over
There" and "The Star Spangled Ban-
ner." At camps and cantonments
where she subsequently appeared she
was tendered a similar ovation.

Miss Wilson's tentative itinerary
calls for her appearance at Camp
Doniphan, Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, on
April 1; Camp Bowie, Ft. Worth,
Texas, April 3; Camp MacArthur,
Waco, Texas, April 7 and 8; Camp
Travis and other camps near San
Antonio, from April 14 to April 19.

[headline spans columns 1 and 2]
THE NEXT GENERATION
By H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

He still was a young man, but he
looked haggard and old in the clear
light of his sun-flooded living-room.
All about him were evidences of
wealth and culture. His roving, rest-
less gaze swept swiftly over the
books and art treasures with which
the room was filled.

A moment more and an expression
of infinite sadness came into his eyes.
He was looking now at the figure of
a small boy, his only child, who stood
at a window watching some spring
birds flitting among the branches of
a nearby tree.

The boy, as though sensing that his
father's gaze had focussed on him,
turned uneasily toward the desk at
which his father was seated. His
face was strangely impassive, flat,
dull, almost wooden.

"It's all right, Jack, it's all right,"
the father forced a smile. But be-
neath the desk his hands trembled.
He knew it was not all right, and
that it never would be all right.

Staring up at him, from the ma-
hogany surface of the desk, was a
sheet of typewritten paper. It had
come to him a scant hour earlier, and
was the report of a famous specialist
in children's diseases. It begins:

"I regret to have to inform you
that your son is subnormal mentally.
For various reasons I fear it will be
impossible to effect any appreciable
improvement in his mental condi-
tion."

Then followed sundry medical
phrases, which brought back to the
sorrowing father a vivid memory-
picture of an episode of ten years
before.

He was not married at that time.
Like many another young man he had
been "seeing life" in a wild, undis-
ciplined fashion. And one day he
had found it necessary to consult a
doctor.

The doctor was brutally frank with
him

You have contracted syphilis,"
he told him. "You will have to pay
a heavy price for the way you have
been living. Look to it that you
cause no innocent person to suffer.

"Until you have been cured by rig-
orous treatment--and that will not
be inside of two years--you must not
[continued on bottom half of column 2]

U.S. Soldiers To Work
Gardens In France

"Lift up those clod hoppers of
yours, you big farmer. Whaddeya
think you're doing, plowing a field?"

This type of agricultural rebuke by
exacting drill sergeants will be out
of order among American soldiers in
France this spring and summer and
for all the other springs and sum-
mers it may be necessary to keep the
boys in khaki "Over There." The
man who shows an aptitude for han-
dling the hoe or the plow will be
quite as valuable as the sharpshooter
and expert marksman, for the United
States is going into the gardening
business behind the lines overseas.

While the government will con-
tinue to send beef, pork, other meats,
the ingredients for making bread,
jams and a great variety of other
edibles across the ocean to the boys,
they will be required to raise their
own "sass" or green vegetables. It
is impracticable to send these perish-
ables overseas. And then again, the
soldiers will have lots of spare time
while waiting for orders to serve
their hitch in the trenches. This
time can profitably be spent in gar-
dening.

Last year the French army estab-
lished garden patches in the training
areas and in the more quiet spots
back of the lines and raised enough
vegetables to supply 200,000 men
during the season.

The United States army has em-
barked upon a similar enterprise. A
captain, son of a former professor in
botany in the University of Chicago,
has been appointed head of the Amer-
ican Army Garden Service. He has
purchased thousands of vegetable
sprouts from the owners of French
hothouses and is recruiting a force
of gardeners from the ranks on a
basis of ten men with agricultural
experience out of every 10,000 Amer-
ican soldiers "Over There." An of-
ficer will be designated at each camp
who will be responsible for the pro-
duction of vegetables. When one
unit moves another will take its place
and continue the gardening.

If you like highbrow vegetables,
such as artichoke, cauliflower, ro-
maine, okra, asparagus, etc., you'll
have to pack a few seeds or sprouts
over the pond with you, for they are
not on the army menu.

[continued from bottom of column 1]
think of marrying. For your wife
would be in danger, and so would any
children she might have."

Recklessly he had disregarded this
advice. Seemingly recovering quick-
ly, he had entirely ceased treatment
within a few months. Then he had
married. There had been a child.

He looked again at the squat, un-
shapely, wooden-faced boy in the win-
dow, and groaned inwardly. There
flashed into his mind, with new and
bitter force, a sentence from the
Bible:

"I the Lord thy God am a jealous
God, visiting the iniquity of the fath-
ers upon the children unto the third
and fourth generation."

A mental crippling for life! That
was the fate his vicious pleasure-
hunting had brought upon the son
unborn in those wild days.

Just as this father penalized the
next generation, so may you penalize
it through lustful indiscretion in the
years of your youth. The hereditary
effects of syphilis are dire indeed.

"Of children under fifteen years
constituting social problems," I quote
a Massachusetts authority, "the con-
genital syphilitics constitute the more
serious problems.

"Among them there are more cases
of backwardness in school, there is
more feeble-mindedness, there are
more defects in the mental processes,
there are more delinquencies, there
are more defects in vision, hearing,
and speech."

And, says a physician of the fa-
mous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota:

"Hereditarily syphilitic children
are filled with the spirochetes, the
germs of the disease. They are in
every tissue and organ; the child is
literally riddled with them."

You are perhaps willing to "take
chances" as regards your own health.
You are intent on "having your
fling," be the consequences to you
what they may.

But think of the possible conse-
quences to the woman you will
marry. Think of the consequences to
the children she may bring into the
world.

Think of these things, and take the
one safe course. Steer clear of those
who would lure you to forget the
teachings of morality.

[headline spans columns 3 and 4]
Camp Travis Challenges The World
And Let World Choose Its Weapons
By W. W. PIGUE
(Editor Camp Travis edition of Trench and Camp)

It is to laugh! With the govern-
ment and newspapers and all the big
bugs howling for the conservation of
white paper, the attempts of certain
well-meaning fellows in other so-
called camps and cantonments to jus-
tify a flood of written gab make a
fellow in a regular camp feel like
going out and hiring a Texas bronco
to kick him just for the sheer joy of
being alive.

For these fellows down here are
from Texas, I gad suh, they're from
Texas! Maybe Irvin Cobb or Shake-
speare or somebody else from Mich-
igan or N'Yawk did come down here
and say we had "more cows and less
milk, more rivers and less water,
more sunshine and less need of it,
and one could see further and see
less than any other place on the
globe." Maybe they did. But one
Noah Webster says "creek" is com-
monly pronounced "crick." There's
no accounting for what a Yankee will
say.

Water Unnecessary

Maybe we haven't had any rain in
two years, and maybe our cows are
all bulls, and maybe the sun does
shine on the unjust as well as the
just, and maybe a calf does have to
walk nine miles through grass up to
his knees to get his breakfast, but
what is this thing we are in, anyway?
Is it war? or ping-pong? or tiddle-
diwinks? What's the use for water
if the air is so pure one never wants
a drink? What's the use for cows
when our own Uncle Sam will cuddle
us up and call us sweet things and
beg us to raise more bulls?

Suppose our trees do get up and
walk around over the landscape at
night and have to be coaxed back
into the ground next morning? Sup-
pose they do? Camps and trees don't
go together, noway, and all the
woodsmen have to do to clear a piece
of Texas ground is to stay up late on
a windy evening and fill the holes so
the trees can't find their way back
home. Even the elements serve us.

Bill Taft (and certainly you'll take
his word) came down here and gave
us the double "o." He said our sol-
diers were months and months ahead
of any in the camps visited by him,
and he had seen many--even Yap-
hank and Custer and Oglethorpe.
Only four days during the winter did
the boys lay off from their drill, and
then merely to kid themselves into
believing it was real winter time. A
man with winter underwear in Texas
[continued in column 4]

Projectiles Used to Send
Despatches Through Barrage

Projectiles are now being used for
the transmission of urgent orders to
troops in the front line trenches and
also for sending important informa-
tion to the rear in France. This new
scheme of communication was adopt-
ed because of the destruction of tele-
phone wires and laying down of cur-
tains of fire through which dispatch
bearers could not ride.

The officers in the front line
trenches frequently come into pos-
session of valuable information
which should be rushed to headquar-
ters. Barrage fire, however, fre-
quently separates the men in the
trenches from headquarters. It fre-
quently happened that the command-
ing officer at headquarters wanted to
communicate with officers in the
trenches, but was unable to do so
because no human being could live in
the barrage fire and telephone wires
were out of commission.

The new system of communication
consists of shooting a projectile from
a trench mortar. A box containing
written information or new orders is
placed in a cylinder about fifteen
inches in length and an inch and a
quarter in diameter. The cylinder
and message box are put into a gre-
nade thrower, which launches it like
an aerial torpedo and speeds it to
headquarters or the front line
trenches.

HARMONICA OUSTS UKE

The War Department Commission
on Training Camp Activities is organ-
izing a harmonica band in every
training camp and cantonment in the
United States. The idea suggested
itself because so many soldiers can
play the harmonica, which is high-
brow for mouth organ. Because of
the fact that it can be stuck in the
pocket and carried so easily, the har-
monica has gotten the inside track
on the ukelele, banjo, violin, mando-
lin and guitar, which are too cumber-
some to be carried around from place
to place.

[continued from middle of column 3]
is considered an eccentric, or a newly-
arrived Yankee too poor to buy B.
V. D's.

The deliciously warm current that
radiates from milady's arm is not ab-
sorbed by sombre yards of cloth and
wasted on desert air, but rushes out
to meet you filtered through a single
strand of most fragrant silk. And
the babies--it's a pleasure to hear
them cry, for it's not often that they
can find an excuse!

Athletics? Camp Travis challenges
the world and will let the world
choose its own weapons.

Music? When you get "Over
There" keep your ear peeled for these
singing Texans.

Highly Spiritualized

Religion? That's where we come
strong, for it's easy to be good in
Texas. And this is not mere guff,
for a recent census taken at the in-
stance of the War Department show-
ed that out of 28,657 men only 518
had no church connections. Uncle
Sam made these figures, and who's
going to call Uncle Sam a prevari-
cator?

One cannot live through a Texas
sunset and not see the handiwork of
God. Men have lived and used buck-
ets on buckets of precious paints and
then died and gone on to their re-
ward without reproducing this won-
derful spectacle.

The beauties of heaven come down
to the earth's edge and kiss old Sol
to sleep. All the colors of the rain-
bow assemble and twine themselves
into pictures of gold and silver and
sapphire, and great cities and lands
of joy and honey glisten in the West-
ern sky as if to give the mortals be-
low a peep into Paradise. The souls
of Crockett and Travis hover over the
great cantonment and one can all but
hear them say, "Well done, thou good
and faithful servants!"

Is it any wonder that to suggest a
division of Texas is but to start a
fight? Is it any wonder that one can
travel hundreds and hundreds of
miles and never see a graveyard? Is
it any wonder that the bells never
toll in sadness, but lift their silvery
voices in song and praise? Is it any
wonder that the men of this wonder-
ful camp are filled and thrilled and
set on fire at the chance to lay down
their lives that their children and
their children's children may have
their share in this life of freedom and
love and song?

I ask you.

"THE NEW SPIRIT
OF THE NEW ARMY"

From Mukden to Mexico is a far
cry, and yet that gap, wide as it is,
which was spanned by the Y. M. C. A.
in the Russo-Japanese War, and in our
own Mexican troubles on the border
two years ago, is only a small part
of the circle that the Y. M. C. A.
spans today. That circle stretches
around the entire globe, all across
Russia, in stricken Roumania,
through Serbia, on the Western front,
and across our own continent from
ocean to ocean, this great work of
the Y. M. C. A. is carried on, and
that work typifies the driving force
of our army.

A splendid interpretation of this
spirit has been given by Joseph H.
Odell, in a book entitled "The New
Spirit of the New Army." This book
is one that should be read, most of
all, by the parents at home. It is
not possible for all the parents to go
to the front, or even go to the camps,
but as far as may be, they will catch
the idealism of the officers and of the
men; they will hear through the
thick night the bugles blow, and they
will feel the thrill of the spirit that
is making this colossal effort to
crush out the devilishness of the
Prussians.

Not only does Dr. Odell speak in
this book of what is being done in our
camps today, but he gives an extraor-
dinarily interesting light on the ac-
tivities of the Y. M. C. A. in the
Russo-Japanese War, and the appeal
that this Christian organization made
to the Japanese nation and to its
leading statesmen who at that time
were not themselves followers of the
Christian faith.

Of one thing we may be sure--that
out of this war will come a newer
spirit for and a new evaluation of
Christianity than ever existed before.

HAVE YOU?

Good morning! Have you sent
Trench and Camp home? If not, why
not? If so "continue the exercise."

[Along the right side of the page is is a narrow strip of illustrations that runs the length of the page. First, a man stands in front of a bare tree, an ax in his hand. Below that, one cloud in the sky and an explosion along the tree line. There are some men riding a motorcycle and sidecar, with an additional explosion in front of them. At the bottom, Uncle Sam sits in front of a cannon.]