"T-T-T-TI-TIGER! In the n-n-next room! BIGGER'N A MULE!' bu'sts out Lafe. I laid still and done some real thinkin'. Ed laid his head down in his hands and closed his eyes. Then he jumped up and grabbed a little chair and begun whalin' at the snake. Pretty soon the snake got tired of dodgin' and hooked his head between the rungs of the chair and folded the thing up real slow and made good kindlin' wood out of it. Ed dropped onto the floor and laid there. Lafe liked to shoved me out into range of the snake, tryin' to back away from the little openin' leadin' into the room where the tiger was waitin'. I got out my fountain pen and wrote my will on a old envelope. I give the pen to Lafe, and he wrote his will. 'You want to write your will, Ed, old boy?' says I. 'No,' he says. 'I been workin' for the guv'ment too long to need one. Eight feet! Here, eat my leg if you want to, damn you, EAT my leg! I dast you.' The snake was gettin' about ready to call Ed's bluff when the lion let go another crash at the door, an' Ed joined us again, under the bed. Seemed like the lion shook the whole boat when he hit the door. He jarred us so heavy that it seemed like the head-lines lettin' go, and then I figgered that that wouldn't shake us any.

"The lion fetched another grand wallop at the door, and a panel busted in, but the lock and hinges was holdin' fine. I heard the head of the anaconda scrapin' along on the floor. The tiger in the next stateroom was lookin' through at Lafe and lickin' his chops. Lafe wasn't doin'

any prayin' nor cussin' nor nothin'-just a layin' there and meditatin', quiet. "The lion made another run at the door-and come crashin' into the room. Somethin' told me we had played our last hand-and lost; but holdin' on tight to the old beast's mane, talkin' low, cuffs, diamond, and mustash, was Deelayno.

"We esteemed that little dago, high. The bump I'd felt, instead of bein' the lion or the head-lines, was the landin' alongside of his little tow-boat. He had some of his trainers with him, and when Ed and Lafe and me got outside, slow and careful, they was roundin' up the last of the local section of the menagerie. A little sawed-off runt was leadin' the lion onto the boat, leadin' him by the mane, and callin' him pet names. Deelayno was scratchin' the anaconda on the back of the head and singin' to him.

"I walked back into my stateroom. Ed was there, lookin' at the bloody skin of the defunct camel. Old Dad Pepper had throwed it into my room that mornin', thinkin' I'd like a camel rug after it was tanned. 'Reckon the smell of the blood attracted 'em, Ed,' says I."

Captain Dave squinted into the darkness. "See them shadders there-that's the head of Sycamore Bend."

In the darkness of the pilot-house he reached for the signal-hooks. His guest looked deep into the shadows that banked the shore-line. Out of these shadows gleamed the eyes of a lion and a tiger and a snake.

HE activities of the Council of National Defense and its Advisory Commission, in a very definite, almost dramatic, measure, mark the entrance into American governmental affairs of the nonpartisan business man, engineer, and scientist. The present work of both bodies is based on the irresistible and hard-won knowledge that modern war is an enterprise to which military men alone have ceased to be called-that it enlists the specialists of every industry and every science from the fighting line clear back to the last line of defense. As Howard Coffin-who, more than any other man, started the movement for industrial preparedness in this country-has said: "Twentieth-century warfare demands that the blood of the soldier must be mingled with from three to five parts of the sweat of the man in the factories, mills, mines, and fields of the nation in

arms.

With a full realization then that battles are won not alone by fighting men but by fighting co-ordinated industries, the Council of National Defense and its Advisory Commission settled down to real business on March 1, 1917. Since that date the record has been one of steady, ground-breaking accomplishments brought about by only the hardest kind of hard work. What has been done reaches nearly to an epic. After the President delivered his war message before the Congress, the speed was redoubled. To-day (this paper is being written in the middle of June) the statement is justified that probably no similar governmental body has ever put behind it as much solid result in the first seventy days of a great war. At the outbreak of the war the vital thing in Washington was a thoroughgoing

understanding of needs as a basis of preparation for acts. For example, to put a million men in the field without proper equipage was merely to turn loose a mob. The needs of such a force, down to the last button, and how best to supply these needs, had to be ascertained. This stocktaking was largely in the hands of the Advisory Commission of the Council, and similar stock-taking, conducted along the most efficient lines of business, in almost every channel necessary to be utilized for the successful prosecution of a war, has been carried forward in the same hands or through subordinate bodies of the Council itself. This vital inventory of the nation's war-time needs should be borne strongly in mind by those who expect a government not possessing a great military establishment to turn immediately from peace-time pursuits to the battlefield. An impregnable foundation for the national defense must first be built, and it is precisely this imperative and cardinal duty with which the Council of National Defense has been engaged.

Primarily created by Congress for peace-time effort in mobilizing the resources of the nation, the Council of National Defense and its Advisory Commission were caught in the travail of war and almost overnight the machinery of both bodies was adjusted to the uses of modern conflict. The transition was not particularly difficult for the reason, in the words of President Wilson, that "the Council of National Defense was created because the Congress has realized that the country is best prepared for war when thoroughly prepared for peace. From an economical point of view there is now very little difference between the machinery required for commercial efficiency and that required for military purposes. In both cases the whole industrial mecha

nism must be organized in the most effective way."

The present function, then, of the Council of National Defense and its Advisory Commission is to co-ordinate and swing in behind the government of the United States every industrial resource of the country, the original act of Congress reading that the Council is charged with the "creation of relations which will render possible in time of need the immediate concentration and utilization of the resources of the nation"-a reasonably large order.

The Council is further charged with the following duties:

1. To supervise and direct investigations and make recommendations to the President and the heads of Executive Departments as to:

(a) The location of railroads with reference to the frontier of the United States, so as to render possible expeditious concentration of troops and supplies to points of defense.

(b) The co-ordination of military, industrial, and commercial purposes in the location of extensive highways and branch lines of railroads. (c) The utilization of waterways.

(d) The mobilization of military and naval resources for defense.

(e) The increase of domestic production of

articles and materials essential to the support of armies and of the people during the interruption of foreign commerce.

(f) The development of sea-going transportation.

(g) Data as to amounts, location, method, and means of production, and availability of military supplies.

(h) The giving of information to producers and manufacturers as to the class of supplies needed by the military and other services of the government, the requirements relating thereto, and the creation of relations which will render possible in time of need the immediate concentration and utilization of the resources of the nation.

2. To report to the President or to the heads

of Executive Departments upon special inquiries

or subjects appropriate thereto.

3. To submit an annual report to Congress, through the President, giving as full a statement of the activities of the Council and the

agencies subordinate to it as is consistent with the public interest, including an itemized account of the expenditures made by the Council, or authorized by it, in as full detail as the public interest will permit, providing, however, that when deemed proper the President may authorize, in amounts stipulated by him, unvouchered expenditures, and report the gross so authorized not itemized.

So much for all that. Let us now examine into how the machine works and what it has done.