punishment have been imposed for drunkenness, in the effort to grapple with this evil.

Will the friends of our American boys away in France try to realize just the situation that confronts them? Imagine a thousand healthy, happy, reckless, irrepressible American youths put down in a French village, without a single place of amusement but a drinking hall, and no social life save such as they can find with the French girls standing in the doorways and on the street corners. Think of all these men shut up, month after month, through the long winter, with nothing to do to occupy their evenings. Then you will begin to realize the seriousness of the situation which the Young Men's Christian Association is trying to meet.

Here on the village green stands a big tent, with the sign "The American Y M C A," and the red triangle, which is already placed upon more than seven hundred British, French, and American Association centers in France. Inside the tent, as the evening falls, scores of boys are sitting at the tables, writing their letters home on note paper provided for them. Here are men playing checkers, dominoes, and other games. Other groups are standing around the folding billiard tables. A hundred men have taken out books from the circulating library, while others are scanning the home papers and the latest news from the front.

Our secretaries have been on the ground for a week, working daily from five o'clock in the morning until midnight. They have unpacked their goods and are doing a driving trade over the counter, to the value of some $200 a day. In certain cases goods are sold at a loss, as it is very hard indeed to get supplies under present war conditions. The steamer "Kansan" was torpedoed, and sank with the whole first shipment of supplies and equipment for the Y M C A huts in France.

Outside a baseball game is exciting rivalry between two companies; while near the door of the tent a ring is formed and the men are cheering pair after pair as they put on the boxing gloves and with good humor are learning to take some rather heavy slugging. Poor boys, they will have to stand much worse punishment than this before the winter is over. Just beside the present tent there is being rushed into position a big Y M C A hut which will accommodate temporarily a thousand men, before it is taken to pieces and shipped to some new center. The Association has ordered from Paris a number of permanent pine huts, 60 by 120 feet, which will accommodate 2,000 soldiers each, and keep them warm and well occupied during the long cold winter evenings that are to come. On the railway siding at the moment are nine temporary huts, packed in sections for immediate construction, and a score of permanent buildings have been ordered to be erected as fast as the locations for the camps are selected by the military authorities. Indeed, the aim is to have them on the ground and ready before the boys arrive and take the first plunge in the wrong direction.

What is the life that our boys are living here at the front? Let us go through a day with the battalion quartered in this village. At five o'clock in the morning the first bugle sounds. The boys are quickly on their feet, dressing, washing, getting ready for the day's drill. In half an hour they are tucking away a generous breakfast provided by Uncle Sam, of hot bacon, fried potatoes and coffee, good home made bread, and as much of it as a man can eat. They get meat twice a day, and we have found no soldiers in Europe who receive rations that compare with the food that our boys receive.

By 6:40 a. m. the men have reached the drill ground on the open fields above the village and are ready to begin the eight or nine hours of hard work and exercise that is before them. Half of each day is spent with the French troops, learning more quickly with an object lesson before them, and the remaining half day is spent in training by themselves. The French squad goes through the drill or movement; then the American battalion, after watching them, is put through the same practice. They are trained in bayonet work and charges, in musketry and machine gun practice, in the handling of grenades, and the throwing of bombs. There is evidence of speeding up and an apparent pressure to get them quickly into shape, in order to take their place in the trenches before the winter sets in. A few weeks at the front with the French troops will soon give them experience, and after a winter in the trenches, the men of these first divisions will doubtless form the nucleus for a large American army, and provide the drill masters quickly to train the men for the spring offensive.

On the day we were there, after a hard morning's drill, the Colonel assembled three battalions and put them through the first regimental formation and the first regimental review since landing in France. The men of the First, Second, and Third battalions marched by, and one could quickly contrast the disciplined movements of the veterans or old soldiers with the crude drill of the new recruits, some of whom could not keep step or smoothly execute the movements.

At the noon hour, after the men had taken their midday meal and had rested for a few minutes, the Colonel asked us if we would address the troops. Some two thousand men were marched in close formation around the large military wagon on which we were to stand. The mules were unhitched and the men seated themselves on the grass, while the band played several pieces. A great hunger of heart possesses any man with half a soul as he looks into the faces of these boys, beset by fierce temptations and facing a terrible winter in the trenches. At the beginning we reminded them of the words of Lord Kitchener to his troops before they left for France: "You are ordered abroad as a soldier. . . Remember that the honor of the Army depends upon your individual conduct. . . Your duty cannot be done unless your health is sound. So keep constantly on your guard against any excesses. In this new experience you may find temptations both in wine and women. You must entirely resist both temptations, … treating all women with perfect courtesy." [2] Kitchener's words furnish a text for the two-fold danger which confronts these men. Here for an unhurried hour, with the generous backing of the officers, we plead with the men on military, medical, and moral grounds, for the sake of their own homes and families, for the sake of conscience and country, on the grounds of duty both to God and to man, to hold to the high ideals and the best traditions of the homeland. Here, with no church save the great dome of God's blue heaven above us, seated on the green grass, under the warm summer sun, we have the priceless privilege of trying to safeguard the life of these men in the grave danger of wartime.

We were encouraged alike by the splendid support of the officers and the warm-hearted and eager response of the men as they broke into prolonged applause. The General in command attended one meeting and pledged us his support for our whole program for the men. He had already cooperated with us most generously on the Canal Zone, in the Philippines, and in Mexico. Three colonels presided at three successive meetings, and gave the work their strong moral support. Three bands were furnished in two days. The official backing of the authorities placed the stamp of approval on the whole moral effort for the welfare of the men. In no other army in Europe that we have seen have the officers taken such a keen interest in the highest welfare of the troops, or offered such constant and efficient cooperation with every effort to surround the men with the best moral influences.

After the meeting, the regimental parade and the strenuous physical drill of the morning, the Colonel called for a short break, and the men gathered to learn some popular songs. Major Roosevelt assembled his battalion, and Archie Roosevelt enthusiastically led the men in singing Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the modern soldier songs of the war.

After nine hours of hard drill, the men swung