Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 179, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1918 — MUST MAKE GOOD TO GET BIG JOB [ARTICLE]

MUST MAKE GOOD TO GET BIG JOB

Y. M. C. A. Workers Given Severe Test Before Getting Important Work. NOT WHAT THEY EXPECT Have Visions of Performing Heroic Services and Then' Find That War Is Not All Romance and Visions. By MAXIMILIAN FOSTER. Paris. —On the way across the ocean "the good-looking girl In the natty, new uniform sat In A steamer chair, her eyes hazy while she dreamed a dream of what her wort in France was to be. One had a hint of what that vision was, for now and then, her voice low with suppressed emotion, she would talk a bit about It. In her mind’s eye she saw herself somewhere out by No Man’s Land, crouching beside a wounded boy in khaki whose last words she was taking down while she ministered to his last, parting wants. It was a fine, heroic dream, that dream of hers. In a nearby chair sat another war worker, this one a man. He too had a dream, and the dream was even more heroic than the girl’s. Out In the frontline trenches he saw himself standing by with the boys In khaki, the air overhead filled with the puffs of deadly bursting sharpnel while he too.-hero-ically brave, ministered to the 1 wants of his charges. Altogether Different. The writer has just returned from a trip among a' line of camps. There was h Red Triangle hut near the entrance of one camp. One side of the hut was flanked by a steaming mess kitchen; across a rutted road, a channel of traffic filled with men, mules,

motors and trucks, was a stockade filled with German prisoners of war. A Y. M. C. A. secretary met the writer at the door. The secretary looked tired, fagged, worn out In spite of that, however, his air was cheerful, brisk, cordial. Inside all was spick and span. There was a scattering handful of boys In khaki, the majority colored soldiers, who belonged about the place. At the hut’s other end was a counter and behind the counter were two familiar faces. One was the girl who’d sat In the steamer chair, her eyes hazy as she’d dreamed her dream. The other was the man who’d come across with her —the fellow who’d seen himself framed heroically amidst the bursting shrapjnel. - A trio of soldiers was draped about the girl’s counter. The three, It happened, were whites. About the other counter were four other soldiers, and all the four were black. The man, a damp, muggy towel In his hand, was mopping off the counter. The look on Ids face was the same look one beheld on the face of the girl. It was a look of bored, excruciating weariness. “What’ll you have, eggs?” he. was murmuring to a big Galveston roustabout The girl, her voice even more listless, was saying: “Cigarettes are 75 centimes the pack. No, there is no chewing tobacco today.”

Their Bubble Pricked. As they saw the writer It would be difficult to describe the look that spread upon their faces. The girl was the first to regain her poise. “I’m very well, thank you. The work ? Oh, yes. It’s not exactly what 1 thought it would be, but then, C’est la guerre.” It took a struggle, though, for her to say It. sChewlng tobacco, chocolate and cigarettes—that instead of glory. The man was more brief. “The war —what do I think of it? It’s eggs, mostly—fried eggs.” Their bubble had been pricked. They were seeing the war, a large part of It anyway, face to face with Its realities. Outside, the hut secretary with a grin stopped to bid the writer good-by. “That’s the way with a lot of them from over home,” he remarked. “They come over here, thinking they’re going right up to the front where they can have a hand in the big show. But they’re all right. That- girl’s got the right stuff in her, after she’s been tried out here a while she’ll £ave a chance at bigger things. The man. too, is coming on. He’s had a jolt just as all of us get it over here, but' when he gets the romance all wiped out of him he’ll be a mighty valuable person for our sort of work. No. there’s mighty little romance in this man’s scrap. You can’t do much joy riding just now In France.” Ten hours 1s the legal work-day in Arkansas sawmill*.