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I n wl » Ift ywi v ■ v % Jw i/ ? It All my preconceptions went by the board when I settled down tor a while with my old regiment, the Thirteenth Pennsylvania Infantry, at Camp Han cock, Augusta, Georgia. I had known the Thirteenth intimately, from ten years of service as chaplain. When I laid down my commission* about four years ago, it was a typical National Guard regiment, well officered, proud of its traditions, but always somewhat ragged about the edges. Our annual encampments were jolly affairs, streaked with conviviality - (not to any excess, as National Guard units then went), and the serious side of soldier ing was difficult to sustain. The com missioned officers were wholesome fel lows, but civil occupations for fifty weeks of the year precluded the pos sibility of focusing much attention up on their men. ' It so happened that I was with the regiment on October 17 of this year, when the higher command’ moved about seventeen hundred men with their subalterns over to another regi ment. The transfer was a heartbreak ing affair—a mutilation which left the remaining officers stunned. One ma jor confessed that he had to go to his quarters and blubber. I met the cap tain of the machine gun company and asked him to take me through his com many street, as such a regimental unit had been unknown in my day. At first he demurred, then reconsidered. “I might as well go down there now; I’ve got to do it some time.” The mess hall was there and the equipment tents and the storehouse. Beyond those four tents stood in the street. Then tears came into captain’s eyes and a lump in his throat. ‘‘Only twelve men left out of the company!” he gulped. ‘‘God! isn’t it awful, after the work I’ve put into those men for fifteen months!” Such iS the new spirit of the army. The officers are brooding over their Page 10 CAMP HANCOCK As Seen By Joseph H. Odell, Special Cor respondent of The Outlook. Printed by Permission of The Outlook. MOTHERS, SISTERS. SWEETHEARTS GOL© EDGES- FITS THE POCKET '■ ;■ ' ' / - RICHL YBOUND QUICKEST WA Y IN TEXTILE TO LEARN LEATHER FRENCH SPACES UNDATED You may. start this diary any day—it never can become out-of-date. Other diar ies are useless after date specified. TRENCH AND CAMP men like a hen over her fluffy chicks. They know each man intimately, his eccentricities and idiosyncrasies; they guard him against his weaknesses and encourage his virtues; they are as so licitous about a blister on his foot or a cavity in a tooth as they used to be about the rating of the spring inspec tion of the entire company in tlfe days of old. The commissioned officers and even the battalion commander eat from the same mess as their men. All are bound together by vital ties, genuinely human affinities, and the result is a miracle in morale. That is the great outstanding future of new armies; if you have hay any experience in military life, you feel it the moment you enter the training camp. While writing about the old Thir teenth regiment I may as well make another startling statement. Although at war strength, there has not been a new case of venereal disease discovered in the six weeks they have been at Camp Hancock. The statement seems incredible, so I went to the divisional surgeon, Colonel W. E. Keller, and ver ified it with my own eyes on the daily health reports at headquarters. Such a thing is almost beyond belief. The Judge Advocate also told me that in six weeks there had been only four cases of “drunk and disorderly” in the entire division of 27,000 men. Naturally I wanted to know what lay behind this almost immaculate condition. The little city of Augusta is’ only four miles from the camp, and I determined to make an investigation. A newspaper man, writing for a syndicate of papers in a northern city, helped me consid-- erably. “This is a Sunday school out fit with a vengance,” he said. “Where can you get a drink? Why, old man, you will have to go back home for it! I’ve been here six weeks,, and I don’t know where you could get a ‘pony’ to /5 C One Coupon . SECURES THE BOOK save your life. There was a man here last week who had a bottle in his room, but he's gone now'. They tell me that if you make friends with exactly the right native, and he’s dead sure you're not a plain-clothes man, he might get a bottle of rye for you; but it would cost from six to ten bucks and be dam ned poor stuff at that! And wo men? Why, there isn’t a house in town, and I doubt whether there is a profes sional in the region. The local author ities have co-operated with the Fos dick Commission and cleaned the place up as I never saw a place cleaned up before. I don’t mean there’s absolutely nothing going on. of course. Soldiers sometimes find what they are looking for, but it is clandestine and occasional. There is no commercialized vice.” Fur ther inquiry about town, interrogations of hack-drivers and likely loafers, and a more careful questioning of the mil iitary police confirmed the .correspond ent’s statement. I doubt whether any city near a large military establishment was ever as clean as Augusta. I found similar conditions in Spartanburg, S. C., but that is a much smaller place. I am now convinced that something more than the climate determined the choice of those southern states as the sites for the majority of our camps and cantonments. Where liquor is ab solutely banished from a region, the moral problems of the military com manders are reduced almost to the minimum. And I write the following deliberately about Camp Hancock: That I would rather intrust the moral character of my boy to that camp than to any college or university I know. This does not cast any unusually dark shadow upon the educational institu tions of the country but they have nev er possessed the absolute power to con trol their environment that is now held by the War Department. And it does not mean that Camp Hancock is con spicuously better than the other south ern camps. It simply means that I had unusual facilities for discovering ev erything I wanted to know in and about Camp Hancock, through person al connections all the way down from the divisional headquarters to the en listed men in the company street. . Soldiers are supposed to be inveter ate and irredeemable grumblers. But if you want to see a group of men without grouchiness go to Camp Han cock. Quite naturally, the men of the National Guard camps are more cheer- ful than drafted men; they enlisted from inclination or patriotism, after counting the cost But the cheerful ness is not all native; it is largely the consequence of satisfactory conditions. A sandy soil gives clean, dry streets' and roads; even the enlisted men have electric lights in their tents; the post exchange sells them all the little lux uries of life at a reasonable price; the food is good and plentiful, as I found by messing with the privates; play is liberally interspersed with w'ork; the officers show a spirit of comradery; health is far above normal; and the great adventure looms up as a real ex perience of the soul. The last item above I use after care ful reflection. When the majority of the Guard enlisted, they knew the issues. But no chances are taken. In one of the vast Chautauqua tents of the Young Men’s Christian Association I sat on the back row and listened to a lecture by Frank Dixon, of New York, on “The Causes of the War.” Three thousand men in khaki also listened and applauded. The speaker told about little Belgium, the men of Louvain and Antwerp, and how they fought and died for the sanctity of international law; he pictured the raped women and the orphaned chil dren and the desolated homes; he de scribed the ruined churches and demol ished universities and razed libraries; he stated the law of vicarous suffering —how those splendid heroes had borne all and given all to save us from the barbarities of a false principle of self expression known as Kultur; he sketched how England had obeyed the rule of honor when self-interest told her to stand aside; he lamented our early dimness of vision concerning the issues involved, and our slow enlight enment and ultimate awakening; and he finished by proving that everything worth living for, worth fighting for, W’orth dying for, was at stake. In con clusion he told the men that their cour age, their devotion, their discipline, their toll of casualties, were necessary, in the last ditch, to save civilization and Christianity from falling forever under the blighting curse of a triumph antly brutal paganism. When the men left the tent, their shoulders were squarer and their jaws firmer and their eyes brighter—they were crusa ders, and the pride of their consecra tion was clear. (Concluded next week). Every soldier and sailor will feel obliged to learn French. Everybody connected with the war shoulitreci. 4 events as they occur. This needs is best fulfilled by the handsome Soldiers-Sailors Diary and English-French Dictionary Now being distributed exclus ively by the The Augusta Herald Self - Pronouncing by Sound-Spelling Method Unique, being the first com bination of Diary and Eng lish-French Dictionary. Authoritative, complete, com pact, handsome and durable. Newspapers of the United States and Canada conduct ing this distribution desire that all shall obtain this book; but prompt action is neces sary because the campaign must end at an early date; therefore clip coupon and get copy promptly. Necessary at Home And at the Front ■ ‘ . • 1 >/ MAILORDERS Filled on terms explained in Coupon in this paper on page a. 3 Dec. 5, 1917.