Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 194, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1918 — Page 3

Y.M.C.A. WORK at FRONT NO “SNAP”

Men of the Red Trianole Must Be Reach to Do Everothino But Go Over the Top

£ N American soldier, harden ly more than a boy, was / > reading a letter which / % had just been delivered [ to him at a concentratlon camp In France. Six weeks before he had written to his father and to sweetheart * The censor had mixed the letter from his best girl ( ) and as he sadly tucked It «» —cr - o away in his pocket he was heard to murmur: “I wonder what the old man will say.” i. >- That Is what the Y. M. C. A. wonders, as today the association addresses to “the old man” an appeal for him to pick up stakes and follow his boy overseas to wear the uniform of the Bed Triangle. Before September 1 the Y. M. C. A. must recruit 4,000 men and women, to share the burdens on the western front with the more than 2,500 workers who are already there. To those who do not know that the British Y. M. C. A. has 40,000 workers In the British armies, and that the American Y. M. C. A. has been charged with the responsibility of providing recreation for the fighting men of the United States and keeping up their morale, It Is perhaps Inconceivable, says a writer in the New York Tribune, that the men of this country above draft age should be asked to give up their business to go overseas with their sons and their younger brothers who are not too old to fight. Part of the War Machine. The facts are clear, The outstanding fact is that the Y. M. C. A., while retaining Its Individuality as a civilian organization, Is an Integral part of the military machine. And the association Is a part of the military machine not only of the American expeditionary forces but of the French and Italian armies as well.

The Y. M. C. A. was In the great War long before General Pershing landed on French soil. General Pershing went to the western front with several clear-cut notions of how best the American troops could do their part In the winning of the war. First, he deter; mined that his army should be a clean army; he believed that the best use that could be made of a man in uniform was to put him in the fighting forces; he sought to transfer as many of the noncombatant functions of his army as possible to some responsible agency. The Y. M. C. A. got the job because the Y. fl. C. A. had the organisation. Since then other volunteer organizations have gone to France to help. All are welcome. Salvation Army, Knights of Columbus and so on. The “Y” bears the brunt because of Its size. Hut Keeper Does Little of Everything. This man with the Bed Triangle on bls sleeve Is over draft age. The **Y” would not have him there If he Were not He has ho rank, but even the officers salute him, because, they say, he is there through the Impetus of service. The shells may fall, all around him, but It is extremely unlikely that the Croix de Guerre will ever be pinned upon his breast. He Is unarmed because capture by the Germans under such circumstances means death Immediately. What is his job? , Well, his hut Is the club of the trench or billet. The “Y” Is the general store. It Is where the men meet when they are not on military duty. The man In charge sells or gives away some of the

CONDENSATIONS

One of England’s largest veterinary hospitals Is now run entirely by women. Argentina maintains a meteorological station at an elevation of 4,000 feet above the sea. ’, ' . \ Of 14,053 fires in New York last year only 152 were attributed to defective electrical installation. The government of Colombia has appropriated a large sum to encourage ■Uh production Intbat country.

920,000 pounds of chocolate that the American troops are eating every month In France. Or through his hands go some of the cigarettes and tobacco that are shipped to the western front In hundred-ton lots. When he is not too close .to the front he runs motion picture shows and lectures in the evenings. If his billet Is a small one and thqre is no sports leader assigned there, he leads the men In athletic games In which all may take part. An‘d under the same circumstances it may be his job to arrange religious services for Jew and Gentile, for Catholic and Protestant. He sends money back home fdr the boys without charge to them. In the “Y" dugout they write their letters, and the hut leader starts them' on their way. He listens to tales of woe, answers questions by the hour, admires the picture of the baby that was born since father answered the call to the colors, and works about three hours a day longer than the working hours of the man in uniform. If he be assigned to the tretaches near the front line, It Is the "Y” man’s job to make hot coffee and hot chocolate, late at night, fill his pockets with chocolate, gum and smokes and go through the communication trench to the front line so that the boys on watch may have their comforts from home. And If there be a listening post near by In No Man’s Land, he .goes there, too. The “Y” goes everywhere with the men except over the top and Is not far behind then.

The Kind of Men Not Needed. What kind of man Is the Y. M. C. A seeking, then, In this drive to keep pace with the rapid expansion of the military establishment of the nation? Surely not the kind of which a sample appeared at the offices of the National War Work Council, 347 Madison avenue, the other day/. “The Lord has closed all doors to me,” he began, “all except one, and that one opens to. France. The Lord has made it clear to me that It is my duty to go over there and preach to those boys." It happened that the listener was James A. Whitmore, who has been a Y. M. C. A secretary for years and who recently returned' from the western front with broad views Inspired by watching pastors of big city pulpits sell plug tobacco to soldiers on Sunday afternoon and the like. Mr. Whitmore was explicit in his reply. “Your kind Is the last that’s needed overseas,” said Mr. Whitmore. “When you go to France for the Y. M. C. A you go on a blind assignment, to do whatever Is most Important at- the time and always to do what the boys to uniform want" Mr. Whitmore went into details regarding the Y. M. C. A program of service, and as he proceeded the visitor palpably weakened.. He thought that he would be willing to go to France with a revised point of view. In fact, he said that he would be wining to do anything that he thought the Lord wanted him to do. “Well,” replied Mr. Whitmore, “tn that case you’d still be a bit restricted. The Lord gives his message to only one Y. M. C. A man In France—he’s Ned Carter, our chief secretary—and you’d have to take Ned Carter’s word for it that you were getting the Lord’s message straight.” Type of Man That la Needed. And as the messenger whose message never will be delivered went on his way Mr. Whitmore shot after him his notion of the kfnd of man who is needed to' France today by the Red Triangle. He said: “First of all, the man who is sent to France by M. C. A must un-

Baltimore is the first Southern city to have women street car copductors. v Several of the large retail stores of Newark, N. J., have hired women to drive their delivery cars. Slam produces more than 40 varieties of rice, some of which are ripened in 70 days from planting, while others -require six months. There is an opening in one side of a Michigan Inventor’s milk bottle through which cream can be drawn without disturbing the rest of the miUfe, -—l—_-

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER. IND.

derstand that he Is going to war. He must be ready to do the thing that comes to him to do. France is no place these days for the man who thinks he has a mission. There is just one Idea behind the whole work —and that is service, what our boys want and not what some missionary thinks they ought to have. The man who goes overseas must be a man of conscience, Integrity and high Ideals and ability. And he must realize that he Is tackling the biggest job that It was ever given “man to do. - “Second a man must go In there with the Idea firmly fixed in his mind that unless we win this war it were better that America should be annihilated than that she should retreat one step In the determination to prevent the barbarous Hun from Imposing his unmerciful sway over the world and sweep democracy from the earth. “Third, he must be a man who believes In the war work of the Y. M. C. A. and can grasp the meaning of its wonderfully human and spiritual program, and who, seeing all this, can be enthusiastic about his job and consider It a great privilege to perform It “And last, he must be a thoroughbred —a dead game sport in the best sense of the term—who can go through the whole war game and not flinch, in spite of the slaughter, the blood, the mud, the discouragements, desolation and horror of It all. He must go through it all by the sheer good nature that sees above It his high Ideals triumphant and democracy vindicated and scattering its blessings upon mankind.” Scope of Work Boundless. The scope of the Y. M. C. A. enterprise is practically boundless. The association has gone far afield from its traditional activities. Never In their wildest dreams of service have the leaders of the Y. M. C. A. conceived the possibility of their becoming manufacturers of chocolate and purveyors of tons and topis of cigars, cigarettes and smoking and chewing tobacco. Yet today the “Y” sign hangs over the doors of more than 600 post exchanges in France. Because of the difficulties of transportation only three to four thousand tons of supplies can be shipped from America each month. Hence the Y. M. C. A. has become a manufacturer by necessity. Raw materials are shipped from the United States and the completed products—chocolate, crackers, etc. —are made In France. The “Y" needs, therefore, not only business men who can sell goods, but men who are experienced on the manufacturing end. The scope of the work makes it possible for salesmen, warehousemen, accountants . and clerks of all kinds to go overseas and do their bit in this war. • Sports. If there 18 one thing that the healthy American young man, in khaki needs most In France It is good, healthy sport. Some of the most famous athletic directors and athletes of other years are in France today leading men-in mass athletic games. Herbert L. Pratt, vice president of the Standard Oil company, who recently returned from France to head the local overseas recruiting committee. Is authority for the statement that “there is no job In France too small for the biggest man in any American community." “No president of a railroad or a bank, or a college,” .he adds, “no lawyer or minister Is too big for the job of taking care of our boys overseas.” Mr. Pratt and others who have seen the work that Is being done In France sum it all up by saying that It means to our boys over there, first of all— America and home.

Marvelous Grand Canyon.

Those who have lived with, rather than glanced at, the Grand Canyon become increasingly moved by Its glories. It has inspired more literature and art than all the other scenic places of America combined. It is the center of a steadily Increasing pilgrimage of painters. It perhaps may be said that the Grand Canyon and the region of which it is the climax inspire the highest as well as certainly the most extensive expression of landscape art ir America today. __—- -

CRADLE SONGS ARE ANCIENT

Many Very Gid and Were Handed Down From Mouth to Mouth for Generations. Almost all popular cradle songs are very old, some of them so old that, were they not familiar, they might be considered the veriest curiosities of literature. Through all the changes of language they have held their own upon the lips and In the hearts of the people, observes a writer in Kansas City Journal. From mouth to mouth they have come down through the years with an Irresistible swing of rhythm and patter and jingle of words* till they seem to have been rather a natural growth than a human invention. In all the melodies there Is a certain likeness of rhythm with a national, I might say a temperamental, difference of movement and of meter from the slow assured major of the German to the wild plaintive minor of the Scotch, characterized by the short accented notes of the weirdness of the Hungarian with Its sudden changes. That these old songs should have embodied and retained the-characteris-tics of the people among whom they originated gives them an importance which their crude words and the elementary character of their melodies scarcely seem to warrant. The words often seem a mere meaningless jumble, the melody Is always within the easy compass of home voices. No doubt both express, in some supernally wise way, the one unalterable sentiment of maternal love. It may be that even the words of these baby songs had originally some significance they have since lost. The mother little thinks that “Bye Baby Bunting” was once a tale full of verity. To her the rabbit skin is indeed a “fairy tale,” for she much prefers dainty muslins and silks and laces. While, though, “papa” may be a mighty hunter, it is well known that the game he bags is dollars. But in that time, antedating civilization, when this song was first sung, the rabbit skin was an important part of the baby’s wardrobe. It was then that it became crystallized in song so that muslins and laces have never been able to supersede it, and it has become ohe of those incantations that set baby off on journeys of his own through dreamland. It is but one of his many illusions.

Forgetting How to Think.

A college professor made the Remark to one of his classes In the Ohio State university that he noticed a marked deterioration in the mental capacity of young people of college-student age since he first began to come in contact with them some 25 years ago. He said they seem unable to concentrate their minds as they used to. What they seem to learn now, he said, they acquire parrotlike. In short, they do not think. We asked a high-school teacher of long and successful experience if this is true. She said it undoubtedly la. Both she and the college professor attribute the'unpromising status of boyN and girls to too much scattering of interest. There are too many different things for them to do, their attention is constantly being diverted from one thing to another and the result is that they cannot fix their minds on anything and consequently do nothing well. Not only do they have a wide diversity of amusements, but the school cup* riculum itself is given over in large measure to a very wide variety of so* called studies which by the farthest stretch of the imagination cannot b 4 considered vital or fundamental., A return to simpler courses in school and to simpler living outside is needed, to the view of our college professor and our high-school teacher. —Cheyenne Tribune.

Japan's Unique Population.

There has never before been a nation at once so numerous and so homogeneous as the Japanese, says a writer •in Scribner’s. Their population Is ee* timated at somewhere between 60,000000 and 75,000,000. Their territory, hardly so extensive as was controlled' by our Revolutionary colonies, contains from half to three-quarters as many people as inhabit the whole United States. This population, too, is remarkably’uniform. Those who know Japan best agree |j»at, if we except the negligible aborigines of some northern provinces, you can hardly find among the Japanese any difference much more pronounced than those which might distinguish New Hampshire from Connecticut Compare this with our own country, or with the widely various races and languages of China or of India, or with England* Scotland and Wales, and you will see that the patriotism of Japan has to sanction its intensity a population ♦het is unique to human record.

Develop a New Meta!.

A metal suitable for the very finest forms of cutlery has been developed from combining iron, chromium and cobalt, according to an announcement made by Prof. W. L. Goodwin of Queens university, Kingston, Ontario. Consul F. 8. S. Johnson, who Is at Kingston, reports that the new metal is easy to work and Is shortly to be put on the market in commercial quantities. I Professor Goodwin is chairman of the Canadian section of the Society of Chemical Industry, which organisation, in conjunction with Canadian chemists and chemical engineers, is working toward getting a higher degree of extraction of useful substances from ores and finding new uses for waste products. Canadian chemists were responsible for the discovery of the new metal, which Is peculiarly a Canadian product.

WORLD'S HIGHEST CAPITAL

LA PAZ, the dty of peace, and the metropolis of Bolivia, stands amid great and majestic mountains and in a region of the earth over which some of the earliest people trod. Only 50 miles from the country’s capital of today lie the ruins of Tiahuanacu, universally conceded to be among man’s post ancient. habitations. The whole region surrounding Bolivia’s unique capital is so hoary with age that a man’s imaginative brain is puzzled in attempting to conjecture the era of prehistoric construction, says William A Reid in the Bulletin of the Pan American Union. Scientists further tell us that once upon a time the Andean plateau was scarcely more than half as elevated as today, and that in lands where Bolivia’s *pr esent gold and silver lie secluded the prehistoric inhabitant tilled his fields of grain. Gradually rising higher and higher with the passing of geological ages, we find the Bolivian plateau at too great an elevation today for the majority of agricultural crops, but a region of the earth lavishly endowed by nature with almost every variety of mineraL It is near what might be termed the heart of this mineral plateau, an area of 65,000 square miles, that Bolivia’s modern capital has grown to be a flourishing dty of 82,000 people. La Paz de Ayacucho, to use the full name adopted after the country attained its independence (proclaimed Aug. 6, 1825), is not only unique in its undent surroundings, but the city lies so completely hidden in an enormous canyon or vent in the plateau that in journeying .thither we come very suddenly to the great abyss and are held breathless for the moment —until one’s senses are collected and the beauty of the panorama takes the place of awe and surprise. This great canyon Is about ten miles, long, three miles wide, 1,500 feet deep, and in form somewhat like that of an exaggerated letter U, opening southward. Some scientists believe that in past age? it was the outlet of Lake Titicaca, when possibly that body of water was connected with the upper Amazon river. Approaching La Paz by any of the three railways leading thither the sides of the canyon appear to be almost perpendicular; yet engineering skill has marvelously wound two railroads down these precipitous sides, presenting at every turn a gorgeous panorama. The clear, crisp air, the mineral colorings of the mountain sides, the red tile roofs and the bright shades of the houses in the distance, the green patches of trees here and there, the flowing rivulets and larger streams, the snow-covered peaks, together with the gay colors always worn by the humbler natives, combine to form a pleasing and lasting picture. El Alto, a term used to designate the little railroad station near the edge of the canyon, stands as already noted about 1,500 feet above the city, while the latter is 12,700 feet higher than the sea. La Paz being only 800 miles from the Pacific, we can form an idea of the steep climb made by the railways in order to reach this inland country. Supplanted Sucre as Capital. We speak of La Paz as being the capital of Bolivia and thereby confuse the minds of those not fully acquainted with the facts. Sucre, formerly called Charcas, is the legal capital of the republic, but largely on account of accessibility and growing commercial Importance La Paz became the actual seat of government more than 20 years ago. In the latter dty the president and his official advisers reside, the nation’s congress meets there, and it is the residence of the foreign, diplomats accredited to Bolivia; but the supreme court of the country still holds its sessions at Sucre. The distance between the two cities is about 300 miles; but the more rapid growth of La Paz, especially since the qompletion of the three rail routes to the Pacific, seems to accentuate the desirability of La Paz over Sucre as the capital of the nation. The coming of the first settlers to the location where La Pas now stands is enveloped in the mists of time. It Is said, however, that specks of gold in the streams that flow down from the mountain sides, and through the valley were a suffident attraction to draw thither the aborigines during the reign of the fourth Inca; and in former days, as at present, shelter was one of man’s comforts and necessities. Gradually little huts made their appearance along the streams, and thus Chuchlabo and Chuquiyapu, as it was called in turn, had its origin from •bout ÜBS to 1190. Later, the Span-

Scene In La Paz.

ish proved to be as great lovers of golden ores as the natives, and in 1545 history records the fact that the Spaniard, Alonzo de Mendoza, and 12 companions founded the present dty of La Paz on the site of the old village. In the City's Streets. As already observed, the canyon in which La Paz lies is long and narrow; it is also extremely rugged and interspersed with many small tablelands and mountain peaks, the whole dominated by majestic Illimani, rearing its snow-covered crest to 21,350 feet. In consequence of this unevenness the streets of the dty running parallel with the larger stream are fairly level (Avenlda Arce, for illustration), while cross streets are necessarily short and in many cases elevated at the ends as they approach the sides of the canyon. Some of these streets are extremely steep, while others have been constructed in conformity with the configuration of the hills and are therefore more or less winding. One of the city’s widest and most popular residential streets lies in the southeast section and is known as the Alameda, extending half a mile along a level course and adorned with willow, eucalyptus, and other handsome trees. Shrubs and flowers are also to be seen, but the extremely high altitude appears to have a somewhat blighting effect upon such growth. The Alameda, always more or less animated, is especially alive in late afternoons and on Sundays and holidays, when the elite of social and official life are to be seen walking, driving, or motoring along its course. On passing through a picturesque gateway this popular avenue is prolonged through Plaza Concordia and the Twelfth of December Street to Obrajes. The latter is three miles distant, and the ride over a very fair motor road or by electric line is through an extremely picturesque canyon abounding in novel view? for the stranger.. The more important streets are well lighted by electricity, the use of which has been expanding considerably in recent years as the motive power for numerous industries. Where Murillo Is Honored. La Paz is not unlike other LatinAmerican cities in providing numerous and attractive plazas. The most noted one of the dty is that known as Murillo, so named in honor of the hero of independence, Pedro Domingo Murillo, who gave up his life on this sacred spot in 1809. The torch of liberty there lighted, however, spread over the continent, and finally resulted tn the independence of Bolivia as well as the sister nations by which she is surrounded. Today to the center ot this plaza stands a beautiful monument to Murillo, the patriot honored ’to the past as at present as one who surrendered life rather than the cause of the people. Once or twice a week a military band, grouped near the monument, discourses soul-stirring if somewhat plaintive airs that please stranger and citizen alike, as around and around they stroll or sit comfortably on the seats provided for the public. A few large trees and many varieties of flowers suited to high altitudes are found to this park. The buildings of La Paz usually strike the stranger with Interest Although many have been constructed along the lines of Spanish or SpanishMoorish architecture, the extremely rugged topography of the place has been responsible for local modifications and unusual features of construction. The cathedral of La Paz, which has been building for a number of years, promises to be one of the finest and largest of such structures to all Latin-America. It covers an area of more than 43,000 feet and is to seat at least 12,000 people. GrecoRoman to style, its great walls have now reached considerable heights, and these will be surmounted by towers and a central cupola, the former rising to a height of 200 feet above the Plaza Murillo, upon which the building fronts.

“Going .fishing?” “Yes.” “Can you afford to loaf in that way?" “I want to tell you that a man who can come home with several pound* of fish for the family dinner is no loafer.*

“Did you maU that letter I gave you yesterday T “N-no, my dear, I whistled to the man in the postal airplane, but he wouldn’t come down after tt." 1 '

Unjust Criticism.

New Excuse.