this war will have some questions to ask and some statements to make when they shall come home again. "The philosophy of suffering"-that you may think is a new quest for simple men; but the secretaries and the women of the huts will tell you that the fightingmen are asking: "Why? Why is mankind made to undergo this martyrdom? To what end? Admitting that good shall come of such apparent evil, how about the evil-doers whose evil brings about this good? What of the hideous human instruments who sack and rape and murder and lie? If certain millions of men are to become better men for this experience, what of the other millions whose infamy was necessary to regenerate their fellow men?" Here is a pretty question to solve as one serves out sandwiches and chocolate. The essayists and the philosophers have been in demand in the huts, but with all their wisdom they do not quite turn on the light. I discovered a poet, however, who puts the matter as it were in a frame for us to contemplate. The poem is called "The Breaking." It is by Margaret Steele Anderson, and thus it goes: The Lord God speaks to a youth: "Bend thou thy body to the common weight: (But oh, that vine-clad head, those limbs of morn! Those proud young shoulders, I myself made straight! How shall ye wear the yoke that must be worn?) Look thou, my son, what wisdom comes to thee: (But oh, that singing mouth, those radiant eyes! Those dancing feet-that I myself made free! How shall I sadden them to make them wise?) Nay, then thou shalt! Resist not-Have a care! (Yea I must work my plans who sovereign sit; Yet do not tremble so!-I cannot bearThough I am God-to see thee so submit.)" When we saw the troops marching down Fifth Avenue in the early days of our entrance into the war, that was a great sight! The sun shone in April weather. The crowd shouted, our hearts swelled, the flags waved, and we who were called upon to give expression at public gatherings to the general thought, we read poems in praise of heroism, of patriotism, the glory of suffering and of death for a great cause. We had to express ourselves this way. But I noticed that sometimes the men who listened were still. It was the crowd who were not called upon to go which was moved to cheer and applaud. It was not that the men about to fight did not feel the emotions celebrated by the poet; but they now had shaken hands with Fate, the die was cast. Now these invitations to lay down all on the altar of sacrifice were idle. It had been done. So it was when we arrived among the soldiers in France. War poems are not in favor. These men need no such incentive. Perhaps I didn't read mine very well, but one night I was admonishing the warriors in a certain Canadian Y. M. C. A. hut in Paris to be heroic, when a sturdy sergeant in the front row shouted out: "Oh, give us something lively! Make us laugh." My repertoire was limited, but I did my best. I felt the futility of urging heroism upon heroes when, on another occasion, I was taken one dark night up to the third trenches of the American front. Here in the several cellars of a ruined house-the whole region had been wrecked by shell-firehere were gathered in the Y. M. C. A. canteen some two hundred of our men. They were wearing their steel helmets and had their gas-masks on. The place was absolutely dark save for a solitary candle. But there was the Y. M. C. A. secretary, everybody's friend, buoyant and glad, serving chocolate and food and cigarettes -don't forget that, cigarettes! The talk that the Y. M. C. A. does not permit smoking is as foolish as though one should say it does not permit breathing. It had been arranged that I should recite to these soldiers. But I simply couldn't do it. I told them so. It seemed too ridiculous to read the things I was prepared to read. Those exhortations to die nobly, to lay down one's life for one's country, surely they were out of place here. Here was the very altar. So we sat around and told stories, and talked of home and Cincinnati and Kankakee and Broadway, We had been put through a gas-drill before taking this journey, and each of us wore over his shoulders two gas-masks, an English and a French; also we had to put on the steel helmets. We drove for some hours in absolute darkness-no lights to the automobile. We passed many vehicles and many motor-cycles going like the wind. It is marvellous that we avoided a smash-up. Having visited these men in the cellars, we were taken through one of the blackest nights I ever saw into the shattered structure where headquarters had been established. There we were presented to the colonel of this regiment and to his officers. Visitors are rare birds, but our investigation made it necessary for us to explore even this remote post. For here, too, recreation is needed. Indeed, the commanding officer protested that some effort on my part would be grateful and comforting. I was glad to be of service and the scene I shall not forget. We had been led by devious ways through a devastated courtyard, an occasional swift gleam from a small pocket flash-light giving us a glimpse of the earth now and again. On the horizon we could plainly see the flare of the German guns and hear their dull roar. The signal-lights would now and then burst brightly in the sky, hover a space, and die. Suddenly a German shell had struck an ammunitiondump as we had approached in our car. Every few moments now a portion of this dump exploded with a great noise and the flames lighted brilliantly the massive clouds of smoke which rushed toward the sky. Now our own guns, from an American battery near by, began to thunder, crashing out on the black night every few moments, shaking the earth. We were led over heaps of fallen masonry and through a broken arch, up a great stone stair, at the top of which some one would for an instant flash another small lamp, merely to show us our footing. Now we were taken along a passage, pitch dark. And now we are in a fairly large room with a stone floor and a stone groined roof, a stone mantelpiece on which stand two candles-the sole illumination. The windows are all heavily boarded so that no light may serve as a mark for cannon. The colonel and his officers are introduced and then sit on began and I read some scenes from "Hamlet" and some of Alan Seeger's poems. I think he would have liked to have them read just there. It was a strange adventure. I shall not forget it. It was an interesting occasion, too, when at another town somewhere in France I took part in an entertainment on Lincoln's Birthday. An officer had made an oration appropriate to the occasion. I was called on to read the Gettysburg address, and was then prevailed upon to once more attempt selections from my plays. This time the scene was one of the regular Y. M. C. A. huts-a double hut; that is to say, two long buildings placed side by side which can be made to open into one another by dropping portions of the common wall. A small stage is constructed at one end. The place can "Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this," wails the Queen. As I spoke the line with that vehemence required by the scene, a soldier thrust open the door of the hut and shouted: "Air-raid! Lights out!" On the instant, every light was extinguished and a sound I had heard on one or two occasions in theatres when an alarm of fire had startled the audiencean ominous wave of rushing noise growing slowly to a dull roar-started from the throng. Then a voice rang out sharp and clear like the crack of a pistol: "Attention!" It was the colonel who spoke. He was seated in the first row near the stage. At once there was absolute stillness. Darkness and silence. Again the colonel spoke, quietly this "Turn on one light on the stage," time. said he, and a man switched on an electric globe hanging from a beam. "Mr. Sothern," said the colonel, "would you mind going on with your reading?" "By all means," said I, and illuminated by the one globe over my head, and addressing an audience which I could not see, I took up the thread of my discourse. "Oh, what a rash and bloody deed is this," I repeated, and I could not help adding in parentheses, "an appropriate line it would seem." From the darkness came a roar of assent. Thus I finished the scene. My friend, Mr. Ames, declared that I had never played Hamlet so well, which merely goes to show that the possibility of imminent dissolution may lend eloquence even to dull people, and that aerial torpedoes will put ginger into tragedians. Had not one thousand soldiers and gentlemen been my witnesses, I would hesitate to relate the last item in this story, and I am aware that any reputation I may have for veracity is likely to suffer if I give way to the traveller's weakness for garrulity. Still, fact is fact, and so remarkable a coincidence must be recorded. The signal that an air-raid is over is a trumpet-call sounded repeatedly in the streets. I had finished my reading of the scene from "Hamlet," and was concluding my modest programme with a recital of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." I had reached the line: "He hath sounded forth a trumpet that shall never call retreat," when lo! the trumpet sounded without. This, coupled with the previous coincidence, was too much for the audience, which broke into laughter and applause. "I must thank you for a pleasant evening," said I to the colonel. The colonel was a courtier. "The obligation is mine," said he. "Air-raids are commonplace, but entertainers are scarce. The enemy is inconsiderate; we shall have to teach him good manners." Which reminds one of that ancient legend which prevailed in wild Western dance-halls: "Don't shoot the man at the piano. He's doing his best." ON SARGENT MOUNTAIN (MOUNT DESERT) By Hamilton Fish Armstrong GRAY hills, gaunt rocks, the twisted, tortured pines- Mist on the isles and dim horizon lines--- Do you remember that gay day together, The openings in the woods, the autumn weather? The partridge-berries redden still the mosses, Oceans may flaunt between, and in my hearing With you I stand upon an upland clearing, WINGS OF THE MORNING By Maxwell Struthers Burt Author of "John O'May,” “A Cup of Tea," "Le Panache," etc. ILLUSTRATION BY ELENORE PLAISTED ABBOTT NE suspects an omniscient ironicism or else a very great tenderness. God, apparently, doesn't like us to become too matter-of-fact. At all events, no sooner have we settled down to the comfortable assurance that at last we have really grown up, that at last we have really achieved common sense, when, through the corridored hours of our days, mystery blows a trifle harder, as it were, stirs the hair on our foreheads, sends us back once more into the state of mind from which we thought ourselves escaped-confused, that is, wondering. And I suppose that is why people have visits like the visit, two years ago, of Ann Graham to the ranch of myself and my wife Martha, on the upper waters of the Big Cloud River -Ghost Bald-Head River the Indians call it, because years ago a war party of Cheyennes scalped some Bannocks on its green and beautiful banks. The visit grew out of the unexpected. Coming in late one June afternoon from riding through some cattle, I found Martha, with the recently arrived mail, scanning a newspaper a week old. Suddenly she laid it down with a little gesture of distress and went to the window, from which she stared across the level green nearness of the home pastures to where, beyond rolling sage-brush hills, the great mountains that surrounded our place touched a twilight sky. I lit a cigarette and watched her slim figure, outlined in its dark riding-habit, against the square of fading light from outside. "Alastair Graham's dead," she said finally, without turning. "He was shot down by a German. They've cited him for a war medal." She made with her tongue a clicking sound indicative of distaste. 'Most of the article about him has to do with the fact that he was a millionaire and the son of old Huntingdon Graham. As if even death failed to make Fifth Avenue relatively unimportant! Do you want to see it-the paper?" I expressed no exigent desire. To tell the truth, I wasn't greatly moved by Alastair Graham's death; he wasn't even my first cousin by marriage as he was Martha's; and too many splendid young men had died before him-really splendid young men. I had never found Alastair Graham particularly splendid; the few times I had met him I had found him inexpressibly annoying-a tall, slim, blond youth with the clipped mind and the clipped syllables of his class and city. One felt, as one so often does in the presence of the young very rich, a sense of insult to the human race as a whole. And I didn't even greatly admire his having joined the flying service of France. Had the circumstances been different-but, you must remember, he had been married only a year. There was too much a suspicion of titillation run after; too much the suspicion of a harsh tearing to shreds of life; too much the impression of the lumping together as the means of sensation beautiful young women and aeroplanes. Perhaps I was unjust, but I could imagine nothing of the lucid enthusiasm that must have animated most of his companions; nothing of the grave and splendid courage of the average modern man who goes, against his will, to war. But I admitted regret; one would; especially in the presence of Martha, who regards relationship as a cloak for all incompatibility. I was unaware into what this passion for consanguinity was to lead us. Within the week Martha had asked Ann Graham to visit us; within two weeks Ann Graham had accepted. Within the week Martha had asked, as a solace for Ann's loneliness, Ann's ancient suitor, Sturtevant Shaw, and within two weeks he, too, had expressed enthusiasm. These |