Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 154, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 July 1918 — Great Lakes Naval Training Station Band [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Great Lakes Naval Training Station Band

Famous Military Musca! Organization Which Aided ■ Thad liberty Loan and Red Cross Drives

Tn the Third Liberty Loan campaign and the lied Cross drive It was the part of the Great Lakes Naval Training Station band to play the dollars out of people’s pockets and into our war chest Its success is the subject of nationwide comment today. Capt William A. Moffett, commandant of the Great Naval Training station, had a big vision when he originated this band. Today this vision is reality, for the band has grown into one of the greatest single elements for constructive propaganda and compelling Americanism over brought forth. The organisation now is made up of one thousand expert musicians, all regularly enlisted men, including the only battalion band in the world. They are under the direction of America’s premier bandmaster, Lieut. John Philip Sousa. The band was divided into twelve units during the Third Liberty Loan campaign. In each unit were from twenty-five to two hundred men. These bands went into five of the twelve Federal Reserve Bank districts, making two and three wook stands in such cities as Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, St Louis, Kansas City, Duluth and Milwaukee. Various units toured Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kansas, Pennsylvania, lowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming and northern New Mexico, During the Liberty Loan campaign the Great Lakes Naval Training Station hand played before nine million, five hundred thousand people. They marched

GREAT LAKES NAVAL TRAINING STATION RAND ON PARADE, over throe thousand 1 , six hundred miles and played more than twelve thousand pieces. They were greeted everywhere by the greatest display of patriotic enthusiasm ever accorded a military organization in the history of America. Besides Influencing bond sales variously estimated at from five hundred million to a billion dollars, this band Is reported to have aroused the districts into which it went to a pitch of patriotism and solid confidence in the administration and all things American that nothing else could have accomplished. Into every section of the larger cities and into every community marched the bluejackets, flrm of step, erect of carriage, fighting men, every inch of them. Thousands of Americans who never before in this war had realized the caliber of men upon whom America depends for victory, saw these two-fisted seagoing young patriots and dug down into their purses for money to back them up. It was at the urgent request of Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo that the Great Lakes bandsmen went into the Third Liberty Loan campaign. In a letter to Secretary Josephus Daniels of the navy, he speaks ot the “extremely valuable assistance rendered by the Great Lakes Naval Training Station band.” . A . At the period of the two campaigns named, this country seemed to need visible evidence of where the money was going. Every highway and byway of sixteen states was visited by the Great Lakes band and every grown-up and -every little tot stood straighter and breathed faster at the sight of them swinging down the street, playing the fighting tunes of America’s time-tried race of fighting men. *