UC-NRLF 
 
 B M 57^ =13fi 
 
 BOOKS IN CAMP, TRENCH AND HOSPITAL 
 
 BY 
 
 THEODORE WESLEY KOCH 
 
 Revised and Enlarged 
 
 
 CO 
 
 o 
 
 CI 
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 1. The War Library 
 
 2. The Camps Library 
 
 3. The Young Men's Christian Association 
 
 4. The British Prisoners of War Book Scheme 
 
 (Fducational) 
 
 5. The MiUtary Hospital, Endell Street, London 
 
 6. Letters from the Front 
 
 7. Pictures and Poetry 
 
 8. The Bible in the Trenches 
 
 Reprinted from the Library Journal, July, August and October, 1917. 
 
 iii- 
 
BOOKS IN CAMP, TRENCH AND HOSPITAL 
 
 BY 
 
 THEODORE WESLEY KOCH 
 
tii) 
 
 t^ 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 Most of the following articles were 
 written during my long stay in London, 
 and so bear the stamp of their English 
 origin. This explains why more was not 
 said in the section devoted to the Y. M. 
 C. A. about the work of the young men 
 sent out from America. A few anecdotes 
 and facts that have recently come to my 
 attention are added here. 
 
 A German soldier and his son had come 
 all the way from Verdun to the Russian 
 front, where they were wounded and cap- 
 tured. They lay in adjoining beds in a 
 military hospital, and the Y. M. C. A. fur- 
 nished them with a copy of "Oliver Twist'' 
 and a Russian grammar which they were 
 planning to study together. In the same 
 ward was a young Berlin professor who 
 had done research work in the British 
 Museum. He brooded a great deal over 
 his fate, but a gift of the "Christmas 
 Carol" and a Russian grammar changed 
 somewhat the tenor of his thought. 
 
 Count L , a prisoner in a Russian 
 
 camp, asked for a good American story, 
 and the secretary brought him "Black 
 Rock." The Count pronounced it to be one 
 of the best novels he had ever read, and 
 he asked the secretary to send him ten 
 others of the same kind from America 
 "after the war." The Y. M. C. A. man 
 having occasion to go to Petrograd a few 
 days later, purchased these books by Ralph 
 Connor, Gene Stratton Porter, and Jack 
 London, and gave them to the Count. The 
 secretary says that no other volumes ever 
 received such joyful reading. Since then 
 they have been presented to the prison li- 
 brary where they are in great demand. 
 Other books of the same class were latei 
 sent to the prison. 
 
 An American Y. M. C. A. secretary in 
 a Russian prison camp borrowed a Koran 
 and the other books needed by the Mo- 
 hammedans for a service which he ar- 
 ranged for them. 
 
 A soldier wrote from the trenches to the 
 London Headquarters of the Y. M. C. A. : 
 "We sit in our dug-outs and just think ! 
 I wonder if you could send some books 
 and magazines over here." 
 
 A man in Egypt, begging for magazines. 
 
 said that he didn't wonder that the children 
 of Israel grumbled when they went that 
 way! 
 
 A Y. M. C. A. worker in France writes: 
 "We never can secure enough reading mat- 
 ter to while away the hours in the long 
 French train journeys." 
 
 The magazines which the Y. M. C. A. 
 has been able to supply the troops have fre- 
 quently been cut into sections so as to 
 make them go around. Even the printed 
 wrapping paper in which parcels are sent 
 is smoothed out and read as literature. 
 If the Y. M. C. A. workers could get the 
 thousands of magazines and "seven pen- 
 nies" left lying about in clubs, railway 
 carriages, and private houses, it would en- 
 able battalions of men to forget for a few 
 moments the hardships, the risks, and the 
 monotony of active service. A "seven- 
 penny" book was given a soldier by a 
 Y. M. C. A. worker as he went by train 
 to the front line. It was read by every 
 man in the platoon. The man was wound- 
 ed and took the book to the hospital where 
 it was read by every man in the ward. 
 Now that he has regained possession of it, 
 he intends to keep it for the rest of his 
 life. 
 
 English booksellers report a famine of 
 sevenpenny and shilling books because ©f 
 the demand for them from the trenches. 
 Sev«n million copies are said to have been 
 sent to the front. 
 
 The Y. M. C. A. is trying to organize 
 a collection of books and magazines in 
 different districts throughout Great Britain 
 and is instituting Red Triangle Magazine 
 and Book Clubs which will collect and 
 forward a weekly or fortnightly supply to 
 the Library Department in London. 
 
 In five months the Red Triangle Library 
 has sent away 83,640 books and magazines : 
 
 To Home Camps 26,750 
 
 To France 45,190 
 
 To Overseas Bases 11,700 
 
 The Overseas Bases include Mesopotam- 
 ia, Egypt, Salonica, Nairobi, Malta and 
 Calcutta. 
 
 Three thousand books and magazines 
 are sent to France every week, and each 
 district in France receives in regular rota- 
 
 368079 
 
tion as many hako- as there y.re huts in 
 that district. The round has now been 
 made twice since the Library opened on 
 Feb. I2th, 1917. There is also a Library 
 Reserve at Abbeville for the supply of 
 particular or individual requests from hut- 
 leaders. 
 
 Mr. Oliver McCowen writes irom the 
 Y. M. C. A. Headquarters in France. "It 
 is a real pleasure now to go round our huts 
 and find quite respectable libraries in 
 process of formation. All our leaders 
 speak enthusiastically of the service you 
 are rendering." 
 
 A hut leader, also from France, reports 
 that the magazines and books are read in 
 the hut and taken to the men's quarters, 
 and afterwards passed all round the camp. 
 In isolation camps the books are described 
 as a Godsend. 
 
 Another letter of acknowledgment says 
 "the men hailed with delighted gratitude 
 this proof of the Y. M. C. A.'s interest and 
 sympathy — as soon as I undid the string I 
 had a crowd of men round me to see what 
 books I had got. I am most grateful for 
 so much up-to-date material." 
 
 "Since the war, the Association has 
 shown its youth, its manhood, and its 
 Christianity by rising to a great opportu- 
 nity, and there are literally millions of 
 young soldiers who will be eternally grate- 
 ful to it, not negatively for what it is not, 
 but positively for what it is and for what 
 it has done for them," says Geoffrey Gor- 
 don in "Papers from Picardy, by two 
 chaplains." 
 
 T. W. K. 
 
 M'^ashingtor, D. C, 
 September 14, 1917. 
 
BOOKS IN CAMP, TRENCH AND HOSPITAL 
 
 By Theodore Wesley Koch, Chief of the Order Division, Library of Congress 
 
 Lord North cliffe in a message to Amer- 
 icans had some things to say as to what the 
 American soldiers would need in the way 
 of food and equipment if brought to France 
 or Belgium. "But your boy wants more 
 than these things," said he. "Has it ever 
 occurred to you that he must be amused? 
 He must have moving pictures, talking 
 machines, books, magazines, home news- 
 papers, each of them occupying valuable 
 tonnage and ships." 
 
 Books and magazines are being supplied 
 in great numbers to the British troops 
 thru four great agencies : ( i ) The Brit- 
 ish Red Cross and Order of St. John War 
 Library; (2) The Camps Library; (3) The 
 Young Men's Christian Association, and 
 (4) The British Prisoners of War Book 
 Scheme (Educational). In the following 
 paper an attempt is made to give a brief 
 history of each of these branches of a com- 
 mon work for the wholesome entertainment 
 and mental well-being of the troops, to 
 show how the field has been divided among 
 the different organizations, and to give evi- 
 dence of the splendid results accomplished. 
 The writer wishes to acknowledge his in- 
 debtedness to the promoters of the various 
 schemes for their kindness in furnishing 
 him with his source material, in allowing 
 him to draw freely on what they themselves 
 have written, in granting him interviews 
 and in reading over the account as here pre- 
 sented, thus giving it their imprimatur. 
 
 With this paper, I am sending to the 
 Louisville meeting of the American Library 
 Association an exhibit made up of speci- 
 mens of the kind of books and magazines 
 which have proved most useful in entertain- 
 ing and instructing the men. A first glance 
 at this material may cause a shock to some 
 librarians with settled convictions on book 
 selection, but I would remind them that I 
 have not tried to collect specimens of the 
 standard authors sent out in large numbers 
 to the troops. I have contented myself 
 rather with the forwarding of literature of 
 known popularity with Tommy Atkins and 
 Jack Tar, but unknown to most Americans. 
 Let this last remark not be taken to refer to 
 
 the various parts of the Bible, the Prayer 
 Book and Hymnal, of which I have sent 
 numerous editions issued for the forces. 
 
 I hope that some organization will look 
 after the needs of American troops equally 
 well. No time should be lost in interesting 
 those who have the means, the leisure and 
 the executive ability to see that similar 
 work is started at once in the United States. 
 Co-operation or afifiliation with the British 
 organizations should be considered. 
 
 I. THE WAR LIBRARY 
 
 The night after war had been declared, 
 Mrs. H. M. Gaskell lay awake wondering 
 how she could best help in the coming 
 struggle. Recalling how much a certain 
 book she had read during a recent illness 
 had meant to her, she realized the value 
 of providing literature for the sick and 
 wounded. A few days later she dined with 
 some friends and talked over this opportu- 
 nity for service, with the result that Lady 
 Battersea decided to lend her splendid 
 mansion, Surrey House, Marble Arch, for 
 the work. Lord Haldane, who was War 
 Minister at the time, approved the plan 
 officially, and Sir Alfred Sloggett, then 
 head of the R. A. M. C, gave his official 
 sanction. The w^ork was no sooner under 
 way than the Admiralty asked whether the 
 new organization would be willing to sup- 
 ply the Navy, the sound men as well as the 
 sick. Mrs. Gaskell's brother, Mr. Beresford 
 Melville, entered into the work with en- 
 thusiasm and gave it financial support. The 
 call for books was the first appeal of the 
 War, and newspapers were glad to give 
 their space and support free to the letters 
 asking for reading matter for both the sick 
 and wounded. To the surprise of the or- 
 ganizers not only parcels and boxes, but 
 vanloads of books were delivered to Surrey 
 House. Hastily improvised book cases rose 
 quickly to the ceilings of the rooms on the 
 ground floor, then up the wide stairway, 
 filling three immense rooms and crowding 
 the corridors. It was impossible for the 
 overworked volunteers to keep up with this 
 unexpected volume of gifts. Dr. C. T. 
 
Hagberg Wright of the London Library 
 was appealed to and when he came to Sur- 
 rey House and saw the multitude of books, 
 he decided to call upon his assistants. With 
 five of his stafif he set to work. It was 
 necessary to hire empty wagons to stand at 
 the door for the refuse, of which there was 
 a huge quantity, for many people had seized 
 this as an opportunity to clean out their 
 rubbish piles and credit themselves with 
 doing a charitable turn at the same time. 
 Old parish magazines were sent in by tens 
 of thousands, only to be passed on to the 
 waiting wagons. To offset these, however, 
 there were over a million well selected 
 books, including rare editions of standard 
 authors. The latter were put to one side 
 for sale and the money thus received was 
 invested in the kind of books most needed. 
 While one set of helpers was unpacking, 
 another was sending off carefully selected 
 boxes of books to small permanent libraries 
 in the Military and Naval Hospitals from 
 lists furnished by the Admiralty and War 
 Office. The permanent hospitals were sup- 
 plied with a library before the wounded 
 arrived, and as the war area expanded the 
 War Library followed with literature. Ad- 
 vertisements were inserted in American and 
 Canadian newspapers with the result that 
 many publishers sent most acceptable gifts 
 from across the water. Later, large con- 
 signments of literature came from South 
 Africa, Australia, Madeira, the Canary Isl- 
 ands and New Zealand. English publishers 
 were more than generous. One publisher 
 sent 600 beautifully printed copies of six of 
 the best novels in the English language, 
 bound in dark blue and red washable buck- 
 ram. The English and Foreign Bible So- 
 ciety has given eighty thousand copies of 
 little khaki covered Gospels, printed on thin 
 paper with the Red Cross or the Union 
 Jack decorating the cover. 
 
 In November, 1914, the Admiralty asked 
 the War Library organization to supply the 
 sailors in the North Sea Fleet at the rate 
 of a book a man. Not only was this done, 
 but boxes of books were sent to all the 
 guards around the coasts of the British 
 Isles, the Shetland and Orkney Isles, and 
 the West Coast of Ireland. When the 
 Camps Library was organized by Sir Ed- 
 ward Ward and the Hon. Mrs. Anstruther, 
 
 for the strong and healthy soldiers in camps 
 and trenches, the originators of the War 
 Library met with the promoters of the new 
 scheme and discussed a division of labor. 
 The field of work was increasing to such an 
 extent that it was agreed that the War 
 Library should look after the "unfit" in the 
 Army and Navy, while the new organiza- 
 tion would take care of the "fit." This 
 plan has worked very well, but alas ! as 
 Mrs. Gaskell reports, "as the wide-flung 
 battle-field extended, the supply of books 
 dwindled. We were in despair. The 
 papers, filled with other appeals, could only 
 insert ours by payment, and money, too, 
 had become very scarce. Meanwhile, hos- 
 pitals in France doubled. Sick in Lemnos, 
 Malta, Gallipoli, Egypt, grew in numbers 
 to an alarming extent ; books were asked 
 for, cabled for, demanded, implored. Our 
 hearts were indeed heavy laden." Relief 
 came thru the action of Mr. Herbert Sam- 
 uel, then Postmaster General, who, after 
 paying a visit to the camps and seeing life 
 in the trenches, decided that the Post Of- 
 fice should help in the work of forwarding 
 reading material for the men. Then the 
 Red Cross and Order of St. John was 
 asked to affiliate the War Library scheme 
 with its organization. In October, 1915, 
 it not only agreed to do this but became 
 financially responsible for the undertaking, 
 the promoters of the latter promising in re- 
 turn to supply the literature that they and 
 their hospitals require — which means con- 
 siderably over 200,000 books and magazines 
 a year. 
 
 When the beds at Gallipoli were being 
 rapidly filled with the sick and wounded, a 
 cable would come to Surrey House: "Send 
 25,000 books at once, light and good print."' 
 Perhaps the day before Malta had cabled 
 for 10,000 similar books. The demand 
 seemed to grow by leaps and bounds. No 
 hospital at home or abroad asks without 
 receiving the full quota requested. The li- 
 brary is now supplying East Africa, Bom- 
 bay. Mesopotamia, Egypt, Salonika and 
 Malta monthly with thousands of books and 
 magazines. Fortnightly parcels go to the 
 hospitals in France and to the Cross Chan- 
 nel Hospital Service. To-day the organiza- 
 tion is supplying approximately 1810 hos- 
 pitals in Great Britain, 262 in France, 58 
 
naval hospitals and 70 hospital ships. The 
 transport hospital ships are replenished 
 every voyage. 
 
 Those whom typhoid and dysentery had 
 weakened were not able to hold books at 
 all, and needed pictures instead. Mr. 
 Rudyard Kipling had foreseen this need 
 and asked those in charge to supply strong 
 brown paper scrapbooks filled but not 
 crowded with pictures. His suggestion 
 was immediately adopted. These scrap- 
 books are made from sheets 43 x 27 inches 
 folded three times forming a book of six- 
 teen pages, about 14 x 11 inches, tied to- 
 gether at the back with a bow of bright rib- 
 bon. On the outside an attractive colored 
 picture is pasted. The inside pages are filled 
 with entertaining pictures, both in black and 
 white and in color, interspersed with little 
 jokes, anecdotes and very short stories 
 from such weeklies as Punch, London 
 Opinion, and Answers. Short poems are 
 found to be acceptable space fillers. 
 Comic postcards are used, but no Christ- 
 mas cards. Pictures are always placed 
 straight before the eye so that the invalid 
 may not have to turn the scrapbook 
 around in order to see them, for many a 
 patient is too weak even to lift his hand, 
 and must await the coming of a nurse in 
 order to know what the next page has in 
 store for him. Volunteer makers of these 
 aids to cheer are urged to remember that 
 they are for grown men, not for children^ 
 They have been furnished in large num- 
 bers by a generous public, and have been 
 found invaluable. Fresh scrapbooks are 
 supplied to the hospital ships each voyage. 
 A young soldier, just recovering from 
 typhoid, came to the War Library on his 
 return from Egypt and was asked to look 
 about and tell what he would have liked 
 best during his convalescence. "I was too 
 tired to read," said he, "but I would have 
 given a lot for one of those picture 
 books." This type of convalescent can 
 use games to advantage and so the War 
 Library has started a Games Department. 
 There is a never ceasing demand for play- 
 ing cards, dominoes, draughts, and good 
 jigsaw puzzles — even with a few pieces 
 missing. Anything that can be packed 
 flat is acceptable. 
 
 As to the kind of books the soldiers ask 
 
 for, let us have Mrs. Gaskell's experi- 
 ence in her own words: "Perhaps your 
 eyes will be opened, as mine were, to new 
 worlds of literature," said she when inter- 
 viewed on the subject. "I confess I was 
 quite ignorant of these books before the 
 war. They are exciting, absorbing, sensa- 
 tional. Detective stories are shouted for; 
 so is the 'Bull-dog breed,' 'The Red Seal' 
 and 'The Adventure' series; and all sorts 
 of penny novelettes. Of course, all seven- 
 penny, sixpenny and shilling editions arc 
 invaluable from their handy size and good 
 print. And now for the favorite authors 
 — they are nearly all in the sixpenny and 
 sevenpenny series, and come in grand pro- 
 cession of favor, Nat Gould, Jack London, 
 Rudyard Kipling, William LeQueux, Ridg- 
 well Cullum, Charles Garvice, Guy Boothby, 
 A. Conan Doyle, W. W. Jacobs, Florence 
 Barclay, Ian Hay, Cutcliflfe Hyne, 'Q,' 
 John Oxenham, H. A. Vachell, Edgar 
 Wallace, Rider Haggard, Dumas, and 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. All these, multi- 
 plied ten thousand times by the printing 
 press, go out to cheer the men-folk in their 
 suffering and convalescence. They are a 
 party of perpetual entertainers who make 
 laughter and romance to spring up from 
 the battle dust. They are balm and glad- 
 ness. 
 
 "All detective stories — good detective 
 stories — are hailed with joy. Sherlock 
 Holmes is a physician — remember that. But 
 lest you feel that this ephemeral class of 
 books is all that is asked for, I must say 
 that poetry is in demand, and, as you will 
 see later, the immortals are wooed down 
 from their Olympian heights to make cheer 
 among mortals. The first and second six- 
 penny series of the 'Hundred Best Poems' 
 go out in generous instalments ; so do the 
 'Hundred Best Love Poems.' Shakespeare, 
 greatest of patriots, visits the hospitals — 
 he is ever young, tho three hundred years 
 old — but we prefer him in single plays; a 
 complete volume is too bulky, perhaps too 
 formidable. A book must not be too 
 formidable or sombre to look at; it's like a 
 cyclist with a long hill in front of him — the 
 sight makes him tired. 
 
 "There's a demand among the men for 
 handbooks on trade-handicraft subjects; 
 and maps, such as the Strand War Map, 
 
8 
 
 are most acceptable. I know a gentleman 
 whose leisure moments are filled by turn- 
 ing over the leaves of Bradshaw. He 
 enjoys it thoroly; it's like counting the 
 beads on a rosary; station after station 
 will remind him of journeyings to and 
 fro in the land and bring back adventures 
 which made them memorable to him. Well, 
 I suppose it is in that manner that the 
 wounded soldiers enjoy maps — and natur- 
 ally they like to follow the war from their 
 resting beds. 
 
 "As for the officers, they ask for new 
 six shilling novels and all kinds of lighter 
 biographies, what Robert Louis Stevenson 
 calls 'heroic gossip.' Here are particular 
 books which I may name: 'Garibaldi and 
 the Thousand' (Trevelyan), 'Beatrice 
 d'Este' (Miss Cartwright), and 'Portraits 
 and Sketches' (Edmund Gosse). Travel 
 books of all sorts are acclaimed ; so, too, 
 are the light-to-hold editions of Thack- 
 eray, Dickens, E. A. Poe, Kipling and 
 Meredith. The reviews are appreciated, 
 especially Blackwood's, The English Re- 
 view and the Cornhill. These are price- 
 less for the sick." 
 
 Mrs. Gaskell says that the workers are 
 encouraged to renewed effort by the count- 
 less letters they receive from all over the 
 war area. "I don't know how we should live 
 without your books," writes one wounded 
 soldier. "I am just waiting until my pal 
 has finished to get hold of his book," writes 
 another. "We have no books," is the appeal 
 of an isolated group of wounded in Egypt. 
 "All we have had to read here was a scrap 
 of the advertisement page of a newspaper 
 picked up on the desert, and on it we saw 
 that you send books to sick and wounded. 
 Please hurry up and send some. The flies 
 are awful." 
 
 An ofificer in charge of a Casualty Clear- 
 ing Hospital writes of the great joy in 
 camp when he distributed the contents of 
 a parcel among the patients. Every man 
 in the hospital had something to read and 
 for many hours the monotony of hospital 
 life was greatly relieved. A popular pa])cr- 
 bound novel by Nat Gould lasts less than 
 a week. The men hide it for fear of its 
 being taken away. They pass it surrepti- 
 tiously to a comrade in the next bed, or 
 carry it in their pockets like a treasure 
 trove. It is literally read to pieces and in 
 
 a week there is sure to be a request for 
 another Nat Gould — a writer probably un- 
 known to American librarians, but of whose 
 books, we are told by the publishers, over 
 ten million copies have been sold. Accord- 
 ing to the Athenaeum, he is the most popu- 
 lar of living writers, and among the great 
 of the past, Dumas alone surpasses him. 
 
 In January, 1917, a New Books Depart- 
 ment was opened in connection with the 
 War Library. To provide the necessary 
 accommodations the servants' quarters and 
 stables of Surrey House were utilized. Each 
 room is filled with a particular class of 
 reading matter — as novels, books of travel, 
 religious books, magazines. A recent re- 
 port shows that in one month 77,000 new 
 books and 14,000 magazines were pur- 
 chased. This important and difficult phase 
 of the work is in charge of an American 
 woman — Miss Knobloch, sister of Edward 
 Knobloch, the playwright. 
 
 "I received the book you have so kindly 
 sent me on practical gas fitting and thank 
 you very much for same," writes one who 
 had put in a special request. "It deals with 
 everything you could wish to know on the 
 subject. I am sure it will be a great help 
 to me when the time comes for my dis- 
 charge from the Army." 
 
 The routine handling of this material is 
 as follows : After unpacking, the books are 
 stamped and sorted into various classes — 
 like sevenpenny novels, sixpenny paper 
 bound novels, poetrj', classics, religious and 
 miscellaneous — and placed on different 
 tables. Those who unpack enter in a book 
 the names and addresses of the donors, with 
 remarks. Acknowledgments are made on 
 a special card and are also entered in the 
 day book. The requests are likewise en- 
 tered in a day book, with date, address and 
 number of items to be sent. A label is 
 written, consignment sheet made out, ad- 
 vice card attached, as well as a notice card 
 to be hung up for reference in the hospital. 
 These are all fastened together with a clip 
 and placed in a box for the selectors. The 
 selectors choose the books and magazines 
 to be scut out, enclose the notice cards, fill 
 in and address the advice card and place 
 the selection, with the label, in a box for 
 the packers. After the parcel is packed and 
 addressed the label is attached, the address 
 entered in the railway book, then advice 
 
card and consignment sheet are placed in a 
 drawer until the Railway Company repre- 
 sentative calls. When the parcels leave the 
 Library the advice cards are dated and 
 posted, the consignment sheets filled, and 
 an index card is written for the hospital if 
 one has not already been made. The num- 
 ber of parcels sent and the date are entered 
 in the day book, and the book containing 
 the original entry is checked. When the 
 secretaries hear of a new hospital, a card 
 is sent asking whether books are desired. 
 At the same time an index card is made on 
 which the date of inquiry is entered. An 
 inquiry card is also sent to a hospital that 
 has not used books for six months. 
 
 The organization must be well thought 
 out or else a Tommy Atkins hospital ni 
 Mesopotamia will get the parcel intended 
 for an officers' hospital on the Riviera. 
 "The selectors must have intellectual sym- 
 pathies," says Mrs. Gaskell, "and human 
 sympathies. They must send a parcel to 
 a general hospital that contains Masefield's 
 'Prose Selections' and a large sprinkling of 
 the 'Bull-dog breed' series. Sometimes as 
 I touch the books and send them speeding 
 on their way, I think of the strange com- 
 pany traveling to a still stranger fate. Bos- 
 well and Pepys, Nick Carter detective 
 stories, the Bible, Nat Gould, Words- 
 worth's Prelude, Famous Boxers, the 
 Koran, Miss Austen, Mark Twain, Marie 
 Corelli, Macaulay, London Opinion, the 
 Round Table, go side by side to be read — 
 by whom ? All we know is that those brave 
 souls find their comfort and consolation in 
 reading, for they tell us so and ask for 
 more. Suffering, weariness, loneliness, de- 
 pression, weakness, fear of death — most of 
 us have known one or the other. But these 
 brave hearts know one and all ; still worse, 
 the fear sometimes of inaction for life. 
 Only books can make them forget for a few 
 minutes, an hour perhaps. I cannot ask for 
 books with thoughts in my heart like these ; 
 they ask, and surely they will not ask in 
 vain." 
 
 2. THE CAMPS LIBRARY 
 
 The Camps Library owes its origin to the 
 desire of the English to prepare in every 
 way for the arrival of their oversea 
 brethren who were coming to join the Im- 
 perial Army. The various contingents 
 
 were to be encamped on Salisbury Plain — 
 a place admirably adapted for military con- 
 centration and training, but without any 
 opportunities for recreation. Colonel Sir 
 Edward Ward was asked by Lord Kitchener 
 to undertake the general care of the con- 
 tingents from the colonies. Sir Edward 
 suggested that, among other things needed 
 for the troops, libraries be established for 
 their use. The War Office approved, and 
 the Hon. Mrs. Anstruther undertoek the 
 organization of the work. An appeal to 
 the public was made thru the press for 
 books and magazines to lighten the monot- 
 ony of the long autumn and winter evenings 
 of the soldiers encamped on Salisbury Plain. 
 The 30,000 books asked for were quickly 
 secured. The Association of Publishers 
 sent a large contribution of suitable liter- 
 ature. The books and magazines as re- 
 ceived were sorted and labeled as the prop- 
 erty of the Overseas Library. 
 
 When it became known that the Aus- 
 tralian and New Zealand contingents would 
 not land in England, but would disembark 
 in Egypt, a division of books was made 
 necessary for the Canadians from those 
 for the Australians and New Zealanders. 
 Special tents fitted with rough shelving and 
 tables were provided in the camps of the 
 Canadian soldiers. On the arrival of the 
 contingent, the chaplains undertook the 
 care and distribution of the books. The 
 desire of those who had given them was 
 that every facility should be afforded the 
 men in obtaining them, and that no strin- 
 gent restrictions should be imposed on the 
 loans. The charging system was a simple 
 one : a manuscript book in which each man 
 wrote the name of the book borrowed, the 
 date on which borrowed and his signature, 
 the entry being erased on its return. "We 
 found that our labors had the reward for 
 which we worked and hoped," wrote Sir 
 Edward. "The oversea soldier is an omni- 
 vorous reader, and we had the gratification 
 of learning that our efforts to lighten the 
 dreary evening hours were very deeply ap- 
 preciated." Mrs. Gaskell also comments 
 on the curiously different appetite for books 
 shown by the overseas contingent, remark- 
 ing that the Canadians have an insatiable 
 desire for books of reference, as evidenced 
 by three requests from Colonial Hospitals 
 
asking for the Encyclopedia Britannica in 
 forty volumes — all of which were duly 
 granted. 
 
 Large quantities of books and magazines 
 were forwarded to the Australians and New 
 Zealanders in Egypt. Then a much larger 
 enterprise was launched: the provision of 
 libraries for the camps of the Territorial 
 and New Armies all over the United King- 
 dom. Troops were quartered in camps and 
 at detached stations far from towns and 
 healthful amusements. These men were as 
 much in need of good reading matter as the 
 soldiers on Salisbury Plain. A large empty 
 warehouse was lent thru the kindness of 
 the representative of the Belgian Army in 
 London. This was equipped with shelves 
 and tables and a further appeal was made 
 to the public thru the press, by letters to 
 Lord-lieutenants and other leaders in the 
 various countries, to Lord Mayors and 
 Mayors and again to the publishers. Cir- 
 culars were sent to all General Ofificers 
 commanding and the Officers' Commanding 
 Units, informing them of the new under- 
 taking, and that preparations had been 
 made to give them books and magazines in 
 the proportion of one to every six men of 
 their strength at a small charge sufficient 
 to pay for the cost of packing and the labor 
 of the working staff which it was found 
 necessary to employ, as warehousemen and 
 the like. 
 
 The supply of books was ample at first, 
 but with success came increased demands 
 from troops in every part of the United 
 Kingdom, and it became necessary to search 
 out fresh fields from which new supplies 
 might be gathered. Then came the realiza- 
 tion that there was a want for books and 
 magazines even more urgent than that of 
 the troops at home, and that was by the 
 men in the trenches and in the convalescent 
 and rest camps at the front. "When it is 
 recognized," says Sir Edward, "that in the 
 trenches only one-fourth of the men are 
 actively on duty watching the enemy, while 
 the remaining three-fourths are concealed 
 at the bottom of the trenches with their 
 field of vision limited to a few yards of 
 earth, it may well at once be realized how 
 important to them are any methods of en- 
 livening the long, weary hours of waiting. ' 
 Consequently a system was organized by 
 which, once a month, boxes were sent to 
 
 every unit in the Expeditionary Force, the 
 number of books being proportioned to the 
 number of men, 200 books to a battalion. 
 Bales were also made up for the use of 
 men on trains and transports. 
 
 Then the post offices thruout the country 
 became collecting depots for the Camps 
 Library. Those wishing to send books or 
 maps to the soldiers and sailors need only 
 hand them unaddressed, unwrapped and 
 unstamped, over the counter of any post 
 office, and they are forwarded free of 
 charge to headquarters for sorting, labeling 
 and shipping to the troops. Some weeklies 
 print prominently on their outside cover 
 a reminder of the fact that the reader, when 
 finished with the number, can send it to the 
 troops by handing it without any fomality 
 or expense over the counter of the nearest 
 post office. On account of the shortage of 
 staff and because this work is not strictly 
 post office business, receipts are not given 
 for books and magazines received in this 
 manner, but the post office stafif are keenly 
 interested in the scheme and make the 
 proper disposal of literature handed in a 
 matter of personal pride and honor. 
 
 The literature sent in is distributed ac- 
 cording to an agreed proportion of bags 
 to the London Chamber of Commerce and 
 the British and Foreign Sailors' Associa- 
 tion for the use of the Navy; to the British 
 Red Cross and Order of St. John War 
 Library for the use of hospitals and hos- 
 pital ships; the bulk goes to the Camps 
 Library, which since the beginning of the 
 war has dealt with over nine million publi- 
 cations. The Camps Library alone requires 
 75,000 pieces weekly to meet the ordinary 
 minimum needs from the various seats of 
 war, and it is ready and eager to deal with 
 as many more as the public will give. Espe- 
 cially in winter the demand for "something 
 to read" in training and rest camps, as well 
 as from those at the front, far exceeds the 
 supply. 
 
 "I understand most fully," wrote Sir 
 Douglas Haig, "the value of readable books 
 to men who are out of the line with time 
 on their hands, and little opportunity of 
 getting anything of the sort for themselves. 
 I need say nothing to support the claim of 
 those who are wounded or convalescent. 
 The Camps Library exists for the purpose 
 
of receiving books and magazines for dis- 
 tribution to our sailors and soldiers. The 
 demand that has now to be met is very great 
 and increases constantly with the growth 
 of our forces overseas. I am, therefore, 
 writing this letter to urge all those at home 
 who have been accustomed to buy books 
 and magazines in the past, to continue to 
 do so freely, if possible in increasing num- 
 bers, and, having read and enjoyed them, 
 to pass them on as freely to the Camps 
 Library for circulation among the troops."' 
 
 The following is the Camps Library 
 system of distribution : Any • commanding 
 officer of any camp at home or abroad, 
 wishing to form a lending library for the 
 use of his men, can call upon the Camps 
 Library for bound books. These are labeled 
 and sent out in lots of one hundred in the 
 proportion of one book to every six men. 
 A supply is sent to regimental recreation 
 rooms on request. Automatically, once a 
 month, no application being necessary, 
 boxes or bales of books and magazines are 
 sent to all units, in proportion to their 
 strength, serving with the British, Mediter- 
 ranean and Indian expeditionary forces. 
 Monthly supplies of magazines are sent to 
 the bases for the use of the men entraining 
 for the front. Chaplains of every denom- 
 ination in every theater of war receive on 
 application a box once a fortnight, or a 
 bale once a month, for distribution. All 
 requests for light literature from the pris- 
 oners of war are dealt with, and large 
 libraries have been formed at most of the 
 prisoners' camps in Germany. 
 
 Great as has been the weekly supply re- 
 sulting from the sympathy and generosity 
 of the public, those in charge feel that if 
 the demands are adequately to be met the 
 present supply must be greatly increased, 
 and those responsible for the distribution of 
 the literature hope that the public who have 
 so generously supported the organization 
 in the past will not only, if possible, add to 
 their own gifts, but induce others to sup- 
 port the scheme, and will make the taking 
 of surplus books and magazines to the local 
 post office a war habit. The public is as- 
 sured that within a very few days after 
 the books are handed across the counter 
 of any post office they are in possession of 
 
 fighting men at home and abroad, on sea 
 and land, in camp and hospital. 
 
 Miss Marie Corelli has given several 
 hundred of her books, and Renee Kelly 
 has presented a special edition of ''Daddy 
 Longlegs," in the dramatic presentation 
 of which she has been so successful. It 
 has been suggested that authors might 
 follow these examples by presenting 
 copies of their novels for the use of the 
 troops. 
 
 Of course, some things come in that 
 cannot be sent out, like stray numbers of 
 Punch of the year 1846, "Hints to mothers," 
 "How to cut a blouse," "Meditations among 
 the tombs," and an old telephone directory ! 
 The authorities found it rather difficult to 
 deal with a herring-barrel full of sermons, 
 and were at a loss to know what to do with 
 passionate love letters included by mistake. 
 Those desirous of helping are asked not 
 to send "Talks about dress-making" or 
 "Guides to English watering-places." 
 
 If anyone has a doubt as to whether 
 these books and magazines are appreciated 
 by the men for whom they are intended a 
 glance thru the hundreds of letters kept at 
 headquarters will dispel it. "Cramped in 
 a crumbling dug-out, time passes slowly, 
 and the monotony is greatly relieved by a 
 few 'mags' from the old folks at home," 
 writes one officer from the front. "The 
 men all ask for pre-war magazines. It is 
 nice to get away from it for a time." A 
 letter from France brought this message : 
 "The last parcel of your books came just 
 as we had been relieved after the gas at- 
 tack, and there is nothing like a book for 
 taking one's mind off what one has seen 
 and gone thru." The wear and tear on 
 printed matter in the trenches is very hard, 
 and magazines at the front last but a short 
 time. 
 
 "A hut will probably be allotted to us 
 as a recreation room, and it will contain 
 bookcases made by our own pioneers from 
 bacon boxes to hold your gifts," reports 
 another officer. Supply wagons known to 
 contain parcels of books are eagerly 
 watched for by the troops in the Land of 
 Somewhere. "The lads were never so 
 pleased in their lives as when I told them 
 I had some books for them," is the way one 
 
12 
 
 lance-corpora! puts it. An extract from 
 another officer's letter tells the same story : 
 "Most of the men were lying or sitting 
 about with nothing to do. When I said I 
 had a box of books to lend, they were 
 around me in a moment like a lot of hounds 
 at a worry, and in less than no time each 
 had a book — at least as far as they would 
 go. Those who hadn't been quick enough 
 were trying to get the lucky ones to read 
 aloud. It would have done you good to 
 see how the men enjoyed getting the books. 
 . . . May we have more, as many more 
 as you can spare?" 
 
 A regimental officer writes from Gallipoli 
 that he considers it most important "to give 
 the men some occupation in this monoto- 
 nous and dull trench warfare." "The long 
 hours of waiting that frequently fall to the 
 lot of a unit in the trenches are not nearly 
 so trying if the men have a good supply of 
 books," is the testimony of another officer. 
 "All the books sent seem very welcome, for 
 soldiers' tastes vary," says one writer from 
 "Somewhere in France." Men in Salonika 
 have requested a copy of a Greek history, 
 their interest in the subject being awakened 
 by the treasures of antiquity which they 
 excavated while digging trenches. "It 
 would give us great joy to get a few books 
 on Syria and Palestine," is the statement 
 of an Army chaplain. "I myself can get 
 but few books, — none about the Crusaders. 
 Only Dr. Stewart's about the Holy Land. 
 And my men are hungry for information. 
 I have sent for books and they have not 
 come. I would gladly pay for any book on 
 either subject mentioned. The difficulties 
 of transport have got in my way. When 1 
 was in Cairo I could not get a guide to 
 Syria or a book on the Crusaders, either in 
 English or French. Yet life out in the 
 desert, or rather, wilderness, is conducive 
 to mental receptivity and thought of higher 
 things." 
 
 Another phase of the work undertaken 
 by the Camps Library was to establish 
 lending libraries for the use of British 
 prisoners of war in Germany, Austria, Hol- 
 land, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Turkey. 
 The packages include much modern fiction 
 as well as novels by some of the old stand- 
 ard authors. Biography, travel, history and 
 
 poetry, magazines, music and playing cards 
 are also provided. Everything is barred 
 that deals with modern international politics 
 or that would be likely to give offense or 
 information to the enemy. Fresh consign- 
 ments are sent from time to time, both to 
 make up for any depreciation and to in- 
 crease the size and scope of the library. 
 Where a large camp has a number of work- 
 ing camps attached to it, arrangements have 
 been made by which the librarian at the 
 central camp receives special consignments 
 for distribution among the latter. When- 
 ever possible individual requests are sup- 
 plied, and parcels are forwarded to any 
 prisoner who applies for specific books. 
 As a rule the German authorities have 
 alwa3'S given every facility for the receipt 
 and distribution of books among the men. 
 At first there was great difficulty in getting 
 in touch with the prisoners in Turkey and 
 Bulgaria, but communication is improving 
 and acknowledgments of packets received 
 are reaching the Camps Library headquar- 
 ters regularly. 
 
 The most pathetic bit of correspondence 
 connected with the whole work is a pen- 
 cilled note on a sheet of paper fastened 
 with red sealing wax to an inside page of 
 a copy of "The story teller" : 
 
 With Best Wishes. 
 1 am onlj- a little boy of lo years. 
 And I Hope who ever gets this Book 
 will like it. My father is missing. Since 
 the 25 and 26 Sept. 1915. The Battle of 
 Loos. I wonder if it will fall in the 
 hands of anyone who was in that Battle 
 and could give us any Information con- 
 cerning Him. 
 
 Underneath is written the name of the 
 lad's father, the number of the battalion, 
 the name of his regiment, and the home 
 address. Inquiries were set on foot, but. 
 alas, they were of no avail. The little boy's 
 father was one of the great army who had 
 died a hero's death for his country's sake. 
 
 3. THE YOUNG MEN's CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION 
 
 "Until the beginning of the w.ir," 
 writes F. A. McKenzie in the London 
 Daily Moil, "the average citizen regarded 
 the Y. M. C. A. as a somewhat milk-and- 
 waterish organization, run by elderly 
 men, to preach to youth. This view was 
 
13 
 
 exceedingly unfair, but it is true that the 
 Y. M. C. A. never had its full chance 
 here until the war came. Then it seized 
 its opportunity. It does not do much 
 preaching nowadays. It is too busy 
 serving."* The organization has emerged 
 from a position of comparative obscurity 
 into one of national prominence. Lord 
 Derby has spoken of the Y. M. C. A. as 
 "invaluable in peace time and indispens- 
 able in war time." Ever since the war 
 broke out it has sent a constant stream 
 of books and magazines to its huts at 
 home and overseas. Hundreds of thou- 
 sands have gone. For nearly two years 
 the Y. M. C. A. made its appeal thru the 
 Camps Library; but the demand for 
 reading matter increased so enormously 
 that no single organization could cope 
 with it. and the Y. M. C. A. agreed to 
 enter upon a book campaign of its own. 
 The ground floor of "Triangle House," 
 the new Y. M. C. A. trading and trans- 
 port headquarters, has been devoted to 
 the purpose. A strong staff of voluntary 
 women workers has been recruited by 
 Mrs. Douglas Gordon, the honorary li- 
 brarian, and the ladies have already shown 
 what they can do in the matter of sort- 
 ing, packing and despatching books. Mr. 
 and Mrs. Ernest Rhys energetically or- 
 ganized local "book-days" in London. 
 Two days in Hampstead alone yielded 
 thousands of volumes. But the great 
 necessity was that a never-ceasing supply 
 of books and magazines from all quarters 
 should be left at, forwarded prepaid or 
 sent by post to Triangle House, Totten- 
 ham Court Road, or at any of the Y. M. 
 C, A. Bureaus in London. 
 
 Book-teas or book-receptions, to which 
 each visitor brings one or more volumes, 
 prove very fruitful. In certain parts of 
 the country, Y. M. C. A. book-days have 
 been held, when by the aid of Boy Scouts, 
 or a collection taken on the tramways, 
 thousands of volumes have been secured 
 for local huts. It was suggested that this 
 
 * What the organization is doing for the soldiers 
 in various ways is told by J. E. Hodder Williams, in 
 his new book, "One young man; the simple and true 
 story of a clerk who enlisted in 19:4, who fought on 
 the Western Front for nearly two years, was severely 
 wounded at the battle of the Sommc, and is now on 
 his way back to his desk." (London: Hodder & 
 Stoughton, 1917.) 
 
 kind of thing might be undertaken in 
 dozens of towns for the larger purpose 
 of sending books overseas, not only to 
 France, but to Egypt, Mesopotamia, Brit- 
 ish East Africa, Salonika and Malta. 
 Books are sent to the huts, of course, but 
 they are valued even more in the dug- 
 outs along the actual trenches, or when 
 given to men just starting on a tedious 
 thirty-hour railway journey from the 
 base to the front. For such purposes 
 pocket editions are highly prized. 
 
 The general libraries are intended to 
 contain the best stories, poetry, travel, 
 biography and essays, both classical and 
 modern. Educational books are needed 
 in every hut where lectures and classes 
 are being carried on. A good devotional 
 library is wanted for every Quiet Room — 
 the writings of men like Augustine, a 
 Kempis, Bunyan, Robertson, or Spurgcon, 
 and the outstanding books of the last ten 
 years on religion. It has been suggested 
 that various church organizations make 
 up libraries of this kind of literature and 
 thus perform a practical service to the 
 men of the Army. 
 
 In the field of educational books, the 
 Y. M. C. A. has taken over the work 
 hitherto carried on by the Fighting Forces 
 Book Council, which was constituted for 
 the special task of providing literature of 
 a more solid and educational value for 
 men of the forces. The authorities feel 
 that they need large numbers, not so much 
 of school books or text books, as of 
 brightly written, reliable modern mono- 
 graphs like those in the "Home Univer- 
 sity Library" and Jack's series of "Peo- 
 ple's Books," so that the men can follow 
 up the lectures that they have heard. 
 Volumes of the "Everyman's Library," or 
 of Nelson's reprints have been found well 
 suited to the needs. The lectures given in 
 the huts have greatly stimulated the book 
 hunger in the men. and their interest in 
 the history of "Old Blighty." 
 
 An officer commanding a military school 
 of instruction in France recently wrote in 
 to Headquarters, begging for a library. 
 He sent a list of the kind of books which 
 he was desirous of putting at the dis- 
 posal of the cadets during the first stage 
 
14 
 
 of their education at his school. "I hope 
 from all this," said he, "you may be able 
 to gather the type of book we should like 
 — authoritative, but not too long or too 
 heavy for minds dulled to study by trench 
 life." 
 
 Money sent by friends can be spent by 
 the authorities to the best advantage, as 
 special arrangements have been made with 
 the publishers and with the great firms 
 that run railway bookstalls and circulat- 
 ing libraries. One of these firms supplies 
 second-hand copies of the standard novels 
 in good editions, at the rate of six shillings 
 per dozen. 
 
 Appeals are being sent out from the 
 National Headquarters at the Central 
 Y. M. C. A. in Tottenham Court Road, 
 London, for books and magazines, thou- 
 sands of which are needed every week for 
 the soldiers in camp and "up-the-line." 
 The public helped well at first, but then 
 the supply dropped down sadly. In con- 
 sequence notices were sent out in Febru- 
 ary, 1917, calling special attention to the 
 need for small pocket editions of novels — 
 the sevenpenny and shilling size; good 
 novels by standard authors; books of 
 history, biography and travel ; manuals of 
 science; religious books; illustrated mag- 
 azines; really good literature of all kinds, 
 but not large or heavy books, and no old 
 out-of-date ones. People were urged to 
 give something that they themselves really 
 cared for. They were notified by circular 
 that the Y. M. C. A. book collector would 
 call shortly. "We trust that you will 
 spare half a dozen or more of your favor- 
 ite authors," said the president of the 
 Ladies' Auxiliary Committee. "You will 
 never regret this small sacrifice for our 
 men serving their country." 
 
 Placards were distributed reading: "Mo- 
 bilize your books. Leave your favorite 
 books, novels, war-books, current maga- 
 zines, at the nearest Y. M. C. A. depot, 
 or send them to the Book Bureau, 144, 
 Tottenham Court Road. They are ur- 
 gently needed for our soldiers abroad, at 
 the base, and in the trenches." 
 
 Mr. A. St. John Adcock, the well- 
 known novelist and journalist, has de- 
 scribed a visit he made to the Y. M. C. A. 
 
 huts in France and in Flanders. "Wher- 
 ever the troops go," said he, "the huts 
 of the Y. M. C. A. spring up in the midst 
 of them; or if you notice no huts it is 
 because you are in the danger zone, and 
 the Y. M. C. A. is carrying on its benefi- 
 cent business as usual in dim cellars under 
 shattered houses or in convenient dug- 
 outs among the trenches. . . . There is 
 always a library in the Y. M. C. A. huts 
 when their arrangements are completed. 
 Sometimes it is in a small separate room; 
 'isually it is on half a dozen or more 
 shelves in a corner, and, perhaps because 
 books happen to be my own principal 
 form of enjoyment, I always think it adds 
 just the last touch of homeliness to the 
 hut. And you may depend that thousands 
 of the soldiers think so, too. For one 
 has to remember that our armies to-day 
 are like no armies that ever went out to 
 battle for us before. Most of our soldiers 
 in the Napoleonic wars, even in the Cri- 
 mean War. did not require books, because 
 they couldn't read; but the British, Ca- 
 nadian, Australasian and South African 
 troops on service the world over are 
 largely made up of men who were part 
 of what we call the reading public at 
 home, and if books were their friends in 
 peace time they are even greater friends 
 to them now, especially when they have 
 to make long waits in Base camps, far be- 
 hind the trenches, and have more than 
 plenty of leisure on their hands." Or, as 
 Mr. Charles T. Bateman put it: "The 
 private of to-day is not an ignorant yokel 
 who has taken the shilling to escape some 
 trouble." 
 
 Mr. Adcock says that before he made 
 this visit to the front, he had, and he 
 knew others who had, letters from sev- 
 eral soldiers asking for books of recita- 
 tions suitable for camp concerts. Some 
 wrote for certain poets and essayists; 
 while two inquired definitely for text 
 books in chemistry and biology. In the 
 camps, Mr. Adcock naturally found that 
 the chief demand was for fiction, but 
 there were many men who had prefer- 
 ences for biography, essays, poetry, and 
 for all manner of histories. One man 
 who was reading Macaulay's History re- 
 
15 
 
 gretted that there was only an odd first 
 volume in the library, and he was anxious 
 to get hold of the second. A sergeant 
 ran off a score of titles of novels and 
 memoirs he had recently read, and he 
 was now tackling Boswell. He was anx- 
 ious to know if Mr. Adcock could send 
 him half a dozen copies of Omar Khay- 
 yam, which he would like to give to some 
 of his men as Christmas presents. There 
 were several Dickens enthusiasts in the 
 camp. One who knew nothing of him 
 before he went out, except the "Tale of 
 Two Cities," had, since he had been in 
 France, borrowed and read "David Cop- 
 perfield" and "Great Expectations," and 
 was now deep in "Our Mutual Friend." 
 "He spoke of these stories," says Mr. Ad- 
 cock, "as delightedly as a man might talk 
 of the wonders of a newly-discovered 
 world, and it made me sorry that those 
 who had given these books for his use 
 could never quite know how much they 
 had given." 
 
 Sometimes the men just take the books 
 to read in the reading room, but often 
 they prefer to take them to their bar- 
 racks, in which case they leave a small 
 deposit until the book is returned. The 
 men feel that if they had twice as many 
 books as at present they should not have 
 enough. They especially want more books 
 of the better kind. They could use any 
 amount of fiction by Kipling, Wells, Ben- 
 nett, Ian Hay, Barrie, Doyle, Hall Caine, 
 Stevenson, Jacobs — there's a public for 
 them all, while Dickens, Scott and the 
 older novelists are wonderfully popular. 
 Properly prepared scrap-books have 
 proved invaluable. There is also a sur- 
 prising number of more serious readers 
 who ask for Carlyle, Emerson, Greene, 
 Lamb, Ruskin, Shakespeare, Tennyson — - 
 books which frequently cannot be sup- 
 plied. 
 
 "I overtook a smart young soldier one 
 afternoon on the fringe of one of the 
 base camps," writes Mr. Adcock. "He 
 limped slightly, and as we walked to- 
 gether I noticed a copy of Browning 
 sticking out of his breast pocket, and re- 
 marked upon it. It seemed he had been 
 for three weeks in the convalescent part 
 
 of the camp with a badly sprained ankle, 
 and had profited by that leisure to read 
 for the first time the whole of Keats and 
 Wordsworth, and was just beginning 
 Browning. He came from Manchester 
 and was, in civil life, a musician. 'But,' 
 he laughed, 'you can't bring a 'cello with 
 you on active service, so I have fallen 
 back more on reading. I was always fond of 
 it, but I've read more in the ten months 
 I have been here than in any ten months 
 at home.' He drew the Browning from 
 his pocket, and I noticed the Y. M. C. A. 
 stamp on it. 'Yes,' he said, 'they've got 
 some fine little libraries in the huts. They 
 are a godsend to the chaps here. But I 
 haven't been able to come across a Shelley 
 or a Francis Thompson yet. I would like 
 to read Thompson.' " 
 
 Of the elderly volunteer workers who 
 had given not only their time but also 
 their automobiles to the Y. M. C. A., Mr. 
 Adcock saw three who had sons up in 
 the trenches, and two who had sons ly- 
 ing in the soldiers' cemeteries behind the 
 lines. "It is not possible for all of us 
 to do as much as that," said he. "Most 
 of us have neither time nor cars to give; 
 but it is possible for all of us to do some- 
 thing to lighten the lives of our fighting 
 men, and since I have seen what pleasure 
 and solace they get from them, I know 
 that even if we give nothing but books 
 we have given infinitely more than our 
 money could buy." 
 
 "The problem of dealing with condi- 
 tions, at such a time, and under existing 
 circumstances, at the rest camps, has al- 
 ways been a most difficult one," wrote 
 General French from Headquarters, "but 
 the erection of huts by the Young Men's 
 Christian Association has made this far 
 easier. The extra comfort thereby af- 
 forded to the men, and the opportunities 
 for reading and writing, have been of 
 incalculable service." The providing of 
 free stationery in all its buildings, at an 
 outlay averaging £1000 per week, has been 
 a beneficent and highly salutary phase of 
 the Y. M. C. A. work. The expense is 
 justified, as the letters he writes mean 
 everything to the soldier and his friends. 
 They not only help to keep him straight. 
 
i6 
 
 but also preserve the happy relationship 
 between the sender and the receiver. Mil- 
 lions of letters have been written on this 
 Y. M. C. A. paper, and the recipients have 
 felt reassured because they realized that 
 there was someone looking after their 
 boys. Roman Catholics and Jews have 
 written grateful letters to Headquarters 
 because their friends had received a wel- 
 come at the writing tables without any 
 question of creed being raised. In view 
 of all that this organization is doing at 
 the front, it is no wonder that the grate- 
 ful soldiers interpret the ever-welcome 
 Y. M. C. A. sign as meaning "You Make 
 Christianity Attractive." 
 
 4. british prisoners of war book scheme 
 (educational) 
 
 Shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, 
 three Englishmen, held captive in the 
 makeshift camp formed out of the build- 
 ings attached to the race-course at Ruhle- 
 ben, in the neighborhood of Berlin, sent 
 identical letters to three friends in Great 
 Britain (of whom one was Mr. Alfred T. 
 Davies, C.B., permanent Secretary of the 
 Welsh Department of the Board of Educa- 
 tion) asking that serious books be sent them 
 for purposes of study. This request led 
 Mr. Davies to organize a system of book 
 supply for British prisoners of war in- 
 terned in Germany. The appeal which he 
 sent out met with a liberal response, but 
 as the station in life of the men interned 
 varied from that of a university professor 
 to that of a jockey, it required some work 
 to find books suited to the different tastes 
 and capacities. The Camp Education De- 
 partment was organized, and an appeal to 
 the public for offers of new or second- 
 hand books was sanctioned by the Presi- 
 dent of the Board of Education. Imme- 
 diately there was a generous response. 
 Within the first year about 9000 educa- 
 tional books were forwarded to Ruhleben. 
 The 200 lecturers and their pupils, gath- 
 ered from the 4000 civilians interned there, 
 now have an excellent library to draw 
 from. The Foreign Office then approved 
 steps taken to extend to prisoners in other 
 camps the advantages which have proved 
 i^o helpful in Ruhleben, and inquiries con- 
 
 ducted thru the British Legations at The 
 Hague, Copenhagen and Berne, and thru 
 the United States Embassies at Berlin, 
 Vienna, Sofia and Constantinople, resulted 
 in applications being received from vari- 
 ous camps in Holland, Germany, Austria, 
 Turkey, Bulgaria and Switzerland. These 
 requests have all been met from supplies 
 gathered at the Board of Education head- 
 quarters. The wants of prisoners can be 
 nearly always supplied if their relatives 
 will communicate with Mr. Davies at the 
 Board of Education Offices, Whitehall. 
 Among the subjects on which books have 
 been specially requested are agriculture, 
 art (including oil and watercolor painting, 
 pastel, drawing and perspective, printing 
 and design, lettering, etc.); architecture; 
 atlases; aviation; biography; Celtic 
 (Gaelic and W^elsh) ; commerce, finance 
 and banking; dictionaries and grammars 
 (English and foreign, especially Italian, 
 Spanish and Russian) ; encyclopaedias; en- 
 gineering in its numerous branches; for- 
 estry; handicrafts; Hindustani; music of 
 various kinds; natural history; naviga- 
 tion; Russian literature; trades; telegraphy 
 and telephony; travel. This book scheme 
 does not overlap the work of any other 
 war organization. "It will be a matter of 
 surprise to many," says Mr. Davies, "to 
 learn that, for over a year and a half, some 
 200 lecturers and teachers and 1500 stu- 
 dents, organized in nine different depart- 
 ments of study (the arts, languages, sci- 
 ences, navigation, engineering, music, etc.) 
 Iiave been busily at work in the Camp, 
 and that there is perhaps as much solid 
 work going on among these civilian vic- 
 tims of the Great War as can be claimed 
 to-day by any University in the British 
 Empire." 
 
 The educational work of the Camp is 
 suited to meet the requirements of three 
 classes of men: i. Those whose intern- 
 ment has interrupted their preparations 
 for such examinations as the London 
 matriculation, the various university de- 
 grees, or the Board of Trade nautical 
 examinations; 2. Those who already had 
 entered upon a commercial or professional 
 career; 3. Those who are pursuing some 
 form of learning for learning's sake. An 
 
17- 
 
 interesting development has been formu- 
 lated by which interned men who attend 
 classes may secure under certain condi- 
 tions a recognition of their work when 
 they return home. The Board of Trade, 
 which has welcomed the idea with en- 
 thusiasm, is prepared, in calculating the 
 period of qualifying service required be- 
 fore a certificate of competency can be 
 obtained, to take into account the evi- 
 dence of study during internment sub- 
 mitted to them on a special form. This 
 record form has been drawn up for use 
 in the camps, after consultation with vari- 
 ous examining and professional bodies, 
 for the purpose of obtaining and preserv- 
 ing authenticated details of the courses of 
 study pursued by any student in a camp. 
 It is hoped that this record may be of 
 material benefit to the men when the time 
 comes for them to resume their inter- 
 rupted careers. Thus a man who wants 
 to become a master, mate, first or second 
 engineer in the mercantile marine, skip- 
 per or second hand of a fishing vessel, 
 and is willing to devote a few hours a 
 day to regular study in a camp where 
 there is systematic instruction in naviga- 
 tion and seamanship, can have this work 
 counted towards his certificate. 
 
 The Ruhleben Camp started a library 
 of its own on Nov. 14, 1914, with 83 books, 
 received from the American Ambassador, 
 Mr. Gerard, and Mr. Trinks.* Books 
 were also received from the Seamen's 
 Mission at Hamburg and from Mudie's 
 Library. By July, 1915, there were 2000 
 English and American magazines, 300 
 German books and 130 French books. On 
 the average 250 books a day were taken 
 out. As they had a printer in camp, they 
 decided to print a catalog. The demands 
 that come in now at the enlarged library 
 are varied and curious, but nearly all can 
 
 • "Books, brochures and maps were procurable 
 through the Camp Bookseller (Mr. F. L. Musset); 
 and on the walls of many a horse-box or in the pas- 
 sage of the stables were pasted large maps of the 
 various theatres of war, upon which the course of 
 operations was followed from day to day. Many 
 men also cut out of their papers the small maps il- 
 lustrating particular campaigns and preserved them 
 for future reference. As these various publications 
 had to be ordered through the Camp Bookseller and 
 passed through the hands of the military authorities, 
 the latter were able to prevent the entry of any 
 printed matter that was considered dangerous." — 
 Israel Cohen, "The Ruhleben prison camp: a record 
 of nineteen months' internment." 1917, p. 212. 
 
 be supplied from the shelves. Books in 
 fourteen languages have been asked for 
 and supplied. Dictionaries and books on 
 electricity and engineering are constantly 
 in demand. One man asks for a book on 
 tropical agriculture; another wants a 
 manual on cotton spinning, while a third 
 man needs Schlumberger's "Siege de Con- 
 stantinople." Another writes for, and re- 
 ceives thru the generosity of the pub- 
 lisher, a beautiful work on the "Sculp- 
 tured tombs of Rome," a subject on 
 which he is planning to make a personal 
 contribution after his release. Some 
 R. N. V. R. men at Doeberitz sent in a 
 comprehensive request for "The Agricul- 
 tural Holding Act, a Motor Manual, Prac- 
 tical Navigation, Bee-keeping and Furni- 
 ture (periods and styles)." 
 
 "We are working in stone-quarries with 
 some Frenchmen," writes a private, "and 
 should like to be able to talk to them more." 
 "I can speak Russian pretty fair, but not in 
 their grammar," writes a Jack Tar. A 
 certified teacher writes: "No one knows 
 better than I myself how I am deteriorat- 
 ing," and he asks for and receives books 
 on Educational Psychology, so as to catch 
 up again with the trend of thought in his 
 profession. The aim of the organization 
 is to provide every prisoner with exactly 
 the book or books he may desire or need, 
 on any subject or in any language. " 'No 
 dumping allowed,' is a rule which is ap- 
 plied alike to donors and recipients," says 
 Mr. Davies. " 'Feed us with books,' is the 
 appeal, but send us first a list of books 
 with their titles and their dates of publi- 
 cation so that we may mark those that are 
 likely to be of use. If we did not protect 
 ourselves in this way we would have peo- 
 ple who wanted to clear out their libra- 
 ries and rid themselves of old novels and 
 old school books by dumping them on us. 
 As it is we get, and we hope to get, until 
 our prisoners are free, a constant supply 
 of useful historical, technical, geograph- 
 ical and other books, all of them in good 
 condition and many quite new. In each 
 of them we put a book-plate saying that 
 the book is supplied by X (giving the 
 donor's name) thru the agency of the 
 Board of Education." 
 
i8 
 
 One prisoner, desperate with his weary 
 months of captivity, wrote: "I shall go 
 mad unless I get something to read," and 
 his case is typical of many others.* In sup- 
 port of Mr. Davies' call for either money 
 or books, a correspondent wrote to the 
 London Times an appeal on behalf of the 
 British prisoners of war. "You have fed, 
 you are feeding their bodies," said he. 
 "To the prisoners in Germany you are 
 sending bread, which they badly need, as 
 well as sardines and hams and jams and 
 toothpowder and monthly magazines and 
 other luxuries of life which they keenly 
 appreciate. But prisoners cannot live by 
 bread alone, and not even a pot of marma- 
 lade or a thrilling story by X or Y can fill 
 the void. They want food for the mind 
 as well as for the stomach and the imag- 
 ination, and, unless their minds are to 
 decay, they must have it. . . . The months 
 or years of internment need not be waste 
 time. The calamity may even be turned 
 to good account (as other calamities inci- 
 dent to warfare are being every day) 
 thanks to the scheme which enables en- 
 forced leisure to be filled with profitable 
 study. ... It is not only a question of 
 providing the excellent cure for boredom 
 known as 'getting your teeth' into a 
 course of study. It is more even than en- 
 abling the younger prisoners to continue 
 their education and keep up in the race 
 with their more fortunate coevals. The 
 iron has entered into the soul of many, or 
 most, of these men. To provide them with 
 the means of hard work for the mind may 
 be to do more than enable them to win 
 some profit out of calamity. It may be to 
 affect their whole attitude toward life, the 
 future tone and temper of their minds and 
 spirits. It may be to bring them back to 
 us full of vitality and gladness, not embit- 
 tered and despairing; to save for cheer- 
 fulness and happy, hopeful work in the 
 world what else might have been irre- 
 mediably lost. Of all the existing schemes 
 for the relief of prisoners, military and 
 
 • "No more books or music, and no more women. 
 I'm simply rotting mentally." W^illiam G. Shepherd, 
 the war correspondent, says that he has had officers 
 make this confession to him in five diflferent lan- 
 guages in seven different armies. "I'm rotting, and 
 I can't help it." Not all the bad things of war 
 happen to human bodies, comments Mr. Shepherd. 
 
 civil, this is surely the most beneficent." 
 The best idea of the intellectual side of 
 life at Ruhleben Camp can be had from 
 reading the volume edited by Douglas 
 Sladen: "In Ruhleben; letters from a 
 prisoner to his mother" (London, Hurst 
 & Blackett, 1917). Bishop Bury, who 
 visited the camp officially, said that there 
 was so much studying going on that he 
 called it the University of Ruhleben. The 
 writer of the letters is an anonymous 
 young university undergraduate of the 
 tj'pe responsible for the class-spirit of 
 Ruhleben. On the second day in camp he 
 was introduced into a little group which 
 read Bergson's "Le rire" under the most 
 extraordinary conditions. He taught an 
 intermediate French class, the pupils rang- 
 ing from a sailor to a graduate of Aber- 
 deen University. He read Schiller's plays 
 with a few comrades, and he himself 
 worked thru the Theaetetus of Plato. He 
 also helped a couple of men with some 
 elementary Latin and was planning to 
 take one of them in Greek. 
 
 The interned men publish a magazine 
 In Ruhleben Camp in which are re- 
 flected the various currents of thought 
 among the prisoners. One Philistine 
 sneered about every one wanting to learn 
 several languages at once. "I do not sup- 
 pose," said he, "there is a single man in 
 the camp who cannot ask you how you 
 feel, how you felt yesterday, in half a 
 dozen different languages, but I doubt if 
 there are more than ten who can say 
 what is wrong with them in three." The 
 Debating Society discussed such subjects 
 as "Resolved, that concentration camps 
 are an essentially retrogressive feature of 
 warfare"; "That bachelors be taxed," 
 (the meeting deciding wholeheartedly 
 that bachelorhood was enough of a tax 
 itself, since they had lived in an enforced 
 state of bachelorhood from the opening 
 of the Camp) ; "That the metric system 
 be introduced into Great Britain," which 
 fell thru because no speaker could be 
 found to oppose it. Whitaker's Almanac 
 gives 125 denominations and multiples of 
 anything from 53^ to 112 which one is 
 supposed to know something about if he 
 wishes to keep in touch with the com- 
 
19 
 
 merce of the world. The only man re- 
 puted to have mastered the English sys- 
 tem lived to a great age and died just 
 as he completed his knowledge. 
 
 The Committee in charge of the British 
 Prisoners of War Book Scheme is con- 
 sidering a plan whereby released prison- 
 ers in poor circumstances, and especially 
 those living in rural districts and remote 
 parts of the British Isles, will be able to 
 obtain the loan, for purposes of study, 
 of books which they cannot afiford to buy, 
 and which they cannot borrow from a 
 nearby public library. It is hoped that 
 as an outcome of the committee's ef- 
 forts a large lending library will be es- 
 tablished for the benefit of the released 
 British prisoners and victims of the war, 
 operated possibly in connection with some 
 already existing library as a center. 
 
 5. THE MILITARY HOSPITAL, ENDELL STREET, 
 LONDON 
 
 The Military Hospital in Endell street, 
 London, is the only one of its kind in Eng- 
 land officered entirely by women. The 
 staff includes fourteen doctors, thirty-six 
 nursing sisters and ninety orderlies. In 
 the spring of 1915 when preparations were 
 being made for the reception of tlie 
 wounded sent back from the front, two 
 well known literary women were invited 
 to act as honorary librarians. These were 
 Miss Elizabeth Robins and Miss Beatrice 
 Harraden. They were asked to collect 
 suitable books and magazines, and by per- 
 sonal intercourse with the soldiers to en- 
 courage them to read. Their task was to 
 help the men thru their long hours of ill- 
 ness by providing reading matter that 
 would interest and amuse them. Miss 
 Harraden says that from the outset it 
 seemed an interesting project, but nothing 
 like so stimulating and gratifying as it has 
 proved to be. It has shown the truth of 
 the maxim that reading is to the mind 
 what medicine is to the body. 
 
 They began by writing to their publisher 
 friends, who generously sent large con- 
 signments of fiction, travel and biography, 
 and hundreds of magazines. Authors also 
 willingly came to their aid. A lady pre- 
 sented a dignified and imposing bookcase. 
 
 which was placed in the recreation room, 
 giving an outward and visible sign of the 
 official existence of a library. Other book- 
 cases were given and were soon filled. 
 The librarians were "still engaged in the 
 heavy task of sorting and rejecting liter- 
 ally shoals of all sorts and conditions of 
 books, when suddenly the hospital was 
 opened and the men arrived from the front. 
 It was remarkable what private people did 
 send — and do still send. It was as if they 
 had said to themselves : Here is a grand 
 opportunity of getting rid of all of our 
 old, dirty, heavy book encumbrances!' " 
 Miss Harraden says that she does not re- 
 call ever having been so dirty or so in- 
 dignant. It was necessary to keep con- 
 stantly on hand a number of sacks in 
 which all surplus matter was despatched 
 to one of the war libraries or to the Sal- 
 vation Army, which disposed of useless 
 books and papers for pulp making. But to 
 offset this there were the people who with 
 generosity and understanding sent new 
 books or money with which to buy needed 
 volumes. 
 
 It was early decided to have no red tape. 
 The book cases were left unlocked at all 
 times so as to enable the men who used 
 the room to go to the shelves and pick out 
 what they liked. The librarians took books 
 into the wards to the men who were con- 
 fined to their beds. After various experi- 
 ments, Miss Harraden and Miss Robins 
 divided the wards between them and made 
 the rounds with note-book in hand, find- 
 ing out whether the soldier cared to read 
 and if so what kind of thing he was likely 
 to want. This mental probing had to be 
 done without worrying the patient, for in 
 some cases the thought of a book was 
 apparently more terrifying than the idea 
 of a bomb. In such cases, a smok« served 
 as a substitute for reading, to which gener- 
 ally speaking it was a natural concomitant. 
 
 There were some patients who had never 
 learned to read. With one exception these 
 men were miners. Men who were not 
 naturally readers acquired the reading 
 habit while in the hospital. Many of the 
 men when they became well enough to be- 
 come out-patients asked permission for 
 continued use of the library. It was a 
 
20 
 
 source of much pleasure to the librarians 
 to see old patients stroll into the recreation 
 room and pick out for themselves a book 
 by an author with whom they had become 
 acquainted in their early days at the 
 hospital. 
 
 A glance thru the order books will show 
 the type of popular reading chosen by the 
 patients. Taking the order books at ran- 
 dom, but the entries consecutively, we get 
 a list like the following which will give 
 some idea of the result of the pilgrimages 
 from one bedside to another, and from one 
 ward to another : 
 
 One of Nat Gould's novels. 
 
 Regiments at the front. 
 
 Burns's poems. 
 
 A book on bird life. 
 
 The last days of Pompeii. 
 
 Strand Magazine. 
 
 Strand Magazine. 
 
 I'Vidc World Magazine. 
 
 The Spectator. 
 
 A scientific book. 
 
 Review of Reviews. 
 
 By the wish of a woman (Marchmont). 
 
 One of Rider Haggard's. 
 
 Marie Corelli. 
 
 Nat Gould. 
 
 Rider Haggard. 
 
 Nat Gould. 
 
 Nat Gould. 
 
 Nat Gould. 
 
 Good detective story. 
 
 Something to make you laugh. 
 
 Strand Magazine. 
 
 Adventure story. 
 
 Tale of two cities. 
 
 Gil Bias. 
 
 Browning's poems. 
 
 Tolstoi's Resurrection. 
 
 Sexton Blake. 
 
 Handy Andy (Lover). 
 
 Kidnapped. 
 
 Treasure Island. 
 
 Book about rose growing. 
 
 Montezuma's daughter (Haggard). 
 
 Prisoner of Zenda. 
 
 Macaulay's Essays. 
 
 The magnetic north (Robins). 
 
 Nat Gould. 
 
 Sexton Blake. 
 
 Modern high explosives. 
 
 Dawn (Haggard). 
 
 Wild animals. 
 
 Book on horse-breaking. 
 
 Radiography. 
 
 Some of the men showed an anxiety to 
 have a book waiting for them after an 
 operation, so that they might begin to read 
 i* and forget some of their pains if pos- 
 
 sible. In some cases the patient would 
 choose the author or the subject before go- 
 ing thru his ordeal. 
 
 The popular periodicals play a great 
 part in this work with the soldiers. Those 
 most in demand are The Strand, The 
 Windsor, The Red, Pearson's, The Wide 
 World, and of course John Bull, which the 
 average soldier looks upon as a sort of 
 gospel. New arrivals from the trenches 
 are cheered up at once by the very sight 
 of the well-known cover, says Miss Har- 
 raden. Even if too ill to read it, they like 
 to have it near them, ready for the mo- 
 ment when returning strength gives them 
 the incentive to take a glance at some of 
 its pages. 
 
 Some of the soldiers have decided pre- 
 dilections for particular magazines and 
 will not look at any but their pet ones. 
 Miss Harraden tells of one man who con- 
 fined himself entirely to Blackwood's and 
 preferred a back number of that to the 
 current number of any other upstart rival. 
 Another was interested only in the Review 
 of Reviews, and a third remained loyal to 
 the Nineteenth Century. "Others have 
 asked only for wretched little rags which 
 one would wish to see perish off the face 
 of the earth. But as time has gone on, 
 these have been less and less asked for 
 and their place has been gradually taken 
 by the Sphere, the Graphic, the Taller, the 
 Illustrated London News, and the Sketch. 
 — another instance of a better class of 
 literature being welcomed and accepted if 
 put within easy reach. In our case this 
 has been made continuously possible by 
 friends who have given subscriptions for 
 both monthly and weekly numbers, and by 
 others who send in their back numbers in 
 batches, and by the publishers, who never 
 fail us." 
 
 The experience in the matter of book 
 selection at the Military Hospital bears 
 out that of the secretaries of the War Li- 
 brary. It was found necessary to invest in 
 a large number of detective stories, and of 
 books by Charles Garvice, Oppenheim 
 and Nat Gould. A certain type of man 
 would be satisfied with nothing but Nat 
 Gould. No matter how badly off he was, 
 the suggestion of a book by Nat Gould 
 
21 
 
 would bring a smile to his face. Miss 
 Harraden says that she has often heard 
 the whispered words : "A Nat Gould — 
 ready for when I'm better." 
 
 But if one man were reading Nat 
 Gould's "Jockey Jack" — a great favorite — 
 the man in the next bed might just as likely 
 as not be reading Shakespeare, or the ''Pil- 
 grim's progress," or Shelley, or Meredith, 
 or Conrad, or a volume of the Everyman's 
 Encyclopsedia which was contributed by 
 Mr. Dent on request. A subscription to 
 Mudie's helped out a great deal. 
 
 Curiosity prompted an inquiry as to why 
 a certain reader who seemed most unprom- 
 ising should ask for "The last days of 
 Pompeii."' It turned out that he had seen 
 the story in a picture theatre. He became 
 literally riveted to the book until he had 
 finished it and then he passed it on to his 
 neighbor as a real find. Another soldier 
 who had been introduced thru filmland to 
 "Much ado about nothing" asked for the 
 book, which was the first of several vol- 
 umes of Shakespeare to go to his bedside. 
 
 Altho the librarians never attempted to 
 force good books on the soldiers, they took 
 pains to have them within reach. They 
 found that when the men once began on a 
 better class of literature they did not 
 ordinarily return to the old stuff, which 
 had formerly constituted their whole range 
 of reading. Miss Harraden believes that 
 the average soldier reads rubbish because 
 he has had no one to tell him what to read. 
 Robert Louis Stevenson has lifted many 
 of the patients in this hospital to a higher 
 plane of reading, from which he has 
 looked down with something like scorn on 
 his former favorites. In more ways than 
 one, "Treasure Island" has been a dis- 
 covery for the soldiers, and an unspeak- 
 able boon to tlie librarians. 
 
 One day the librarians were asked for 
 a particular book on high explosives. They 
 hesitated about spending eighteen shill- 
 ings to meet a single request, but on re- 
 ferring the matter to the doctor in charge 
 tliey were told to go ahead and buy not 
 only that but any other special books that 
 seemed to be wanted. This suggested the 
 idea of finding out just what special sub- 
 jects the men were interested in. what their 
 
 occupations had been before the war, what 
 their plans for the future were. Thence- 
 forth the work of the librarians became 
 tenfold more interesting. To a certain 
 extent it became constructive inasmuch 
 as it was helping to equip the men for their 
 return to active life when they should be 
 taking up some particular art or craft as 
 a means of livelihood. 
 
 In came requests for books on aero- 
 planes; architecture; cabinet making and 
 old furniture; chemistry, organic and in- 
 organic; coal mining; drawing and paint- 
 ing; electricity; engineering in its various 
 branches; fish curing; gardening and 
 forestry; languages; meteorology; music; 
 paper making; printing; submarines; 
 veterinary medicine; violin making, and 
 so on. The soldier who asked for the book 
 on fish curing was from Nova Scotia, and 
 fish curing was his father's business. The 
 son wanted to learn the English method 
 and gain all the information he could 
 about the subject while in England, before 
 he was sent back home. A book on Shef- 
 field plate was lent to the hospital library 
 by an antiquary and proved to be a veri- 
 table godsend to a crippled soldier who had 
 been a second-hand dealer before the war 
 and who considered it a rare chance that 
 had thrown that book in his way. He made 
 copious notes from it which he said would 
 he invaluable to him afterwards. 
 
 The New Zealanders and Australians 
 are always keen on books about England. 
 They ask also for their own poets and for 
 Bushranger stories. 
 
 The men who will read nothing l)ut good 
 literature are by no means a negligible 
 quantity. Shakespeare has his ardent de- 
 votees in this hospital. Current books 
 which have aroused public interest were 
 generously provided by the publishers. An 
 endeavor was made to supply not only 
 standard works, but books of the moment 
 bearing on the war. Books on aeroplanes, 
 submarines and wireless telegraphy were 
 much in demand even before special at- 
 tention was paid to technical subjects. 
 Books dealing with wild animals and their 
 habits are always great favorites. 
 
 "Our experiences," concludes Miss Har- 
 raden. "have tended to show that a librarv 
 
22 
 
 department organized and run by people 
 who have some knowledge of books might 
 prove to be a useful asset in any hospital, 
 both military and civil, and be the means 
 of affording not only amusement and dis- 
 traction, but even definite education, in- 
 duced of course, not insisted on. To ob- 
 tain satisfactory results it would seem, 
 however, that even a good and carefully 
 chosen collection of books of all kinds does 
 not suffice. In addition, an official libra- 
 rian is needed who will supply the initia- 
 tive, which in the circumstances is of 
 necessity lacking, and whose duty it is to 
 visit the wards, study the temperaments, 
 inclinations, and possibilities of the pa- 
 tients and thus find out by direct personal 
 intercourse what will arouse, help, stimu- 
 late, lift — and heal." 
 
 6. PICTURES AND POETRY 
 
 After a Y. M. C. A. service on a Sunday 
 morning at the front not long ago, an 
 officer who evidently had been thinking 
 along some special lines as he sat with his 
 men, remarked: "Do you know, this hour 
 has been a very wonderful one for me ! It 
 isn't that the service itself has moved me 
 in any particular way, but as I took my 
 place my eye fell on that picture. It took 
 me back to the nursery at home, and all 
 the while I have been in this hut the mem- 
 ories of childhood and the sanctities of 
 home have been calling in my heart." The 
 picture that made such a deep impression 
 was an ordinary print of Millais' 
 "Bubbles." 
 
 The idea of supplying pictures for the 
 soldiers is probably a new one even to the 
 people who are thinking about the welfare 
 and comfort of the men at the front. But 
 the Y. M. C. A. authorities are anxious to 
 have every hut, barn, cellar and dug-out 
 that they have, suggest tlioughts of home 
 to the men who are using them. They 
 want to have good pictures in their "Quiet 
 Rooms," knowing the silent ministry of 
 such furnishings upon all who spend a few 
 minutes there in reading or meditation. 
 They would also like to have pictures to 
 give the men to put up in their own billets, 
 messes and dug-outs. 
 
 In their printed appea.l for support of 
 
 this special work, the Y. M. C. A. says 
 that: "The display of crude or objection- 
 able pictures has increased of late, chiefly 
 because in many places there is little or 
 nothing else to be had. If you could spend 
 a single day amidst the desolation and 
 monotony of a modern battlefield, or out 
 in the wastes of sand where our armies 
 are to be found in Egypt or Mesopotamia, 
 you would understand why any bit of 
 color, anything with human life in it, is 
 so eagerly seized upon by a soldier. It 
 keeps his imagination alive. He finds it a 
 refuge from sheer mental and spiritual 
 shipwreck. That is another reason why 
 we should send him the best, and plenty 
 of it. We are making a great effort to 
 send out at least twenty or thirty cartoons, 
 color prints, black-and-white drawings, 
 and half-tone reproductions for the deco- 
 ration of each center where we are at 
 work. We hope also for a large reserve 
 from which to supply every man who 
 would like a picture or two for himself. 
 The Challenge newspaper has for some 
 time been attempting to meet this demand 
 thru the Chaplain's department and will 
 continue to do so. We are working in 
 close touch, especially as regards the pur- 
 chasing of prints." 
 
 Artists, curators of art galleries, heads 
 of picture-publishing firms, editors and 
 proprietors of popular illustrated week- 
 lies, chiefs of the poster departments of 
 railways and shipping lines, and many 
 friends in various walks of life are co- 
 operating with the Y. M. C. A. authorities. 
 But the .leaders are asking those interested 
 to organize a collection among their per- 
 sonal friends or get together an influential 
 group of people for a thoro canvass of their 
 locality. They have been offered greatly 
 reduced rates by firms in the trade, and 
 are therefore able to spend money to much 
 greater advantage than the private pur- 
 chaser. It is estimated that it will cost 
 about £4 to furnish a hut with suitable 
 pictures. Unframed pictures are best, and 
 colored ones are preferred to black and 
 white, tho both are needed. Before send- 
 ing in prints, it is requested that a list of 
 those proposed for sending be submitted 
 so that the authorities can see whether 
 they are suitable or not. 
 
23 
 
 The regular sets of pictures that are 
 being sent out include drawings of ani- 
 mals, coaching and hunting scenes, garden, 
 woodland, countryside, seascape and land- 
 scape drawings, figure studies, heads, 
 studies of children, series of famous gal- 
 lery pictures, humorous prints, Peter Pan, 
 Pickwick scenes, Harrison Fisher prints, 
 The Hundred Best Pictures, and other 
 portfolios. Good pictures from the art 
 monthlies, and supplements to Christmas 
 numbers of well-known periodicals are 
 acceptable. Small pictures are useful for 
 dug-outs and billets while larger ones 
 serve for huts and "Quiet Rooms." 
 Classical or modern pictures on religious 
 subjects are much in demand. "In fact," 
 ends the appeal, "we need everything that 
 is really good of its kind and that will re- 
 mind men of the home and the homeland 
 (whether Britain or the Dominions), of 
 the ideals and traditions inseparable from 
 our nation and its history, of chivalry and 
 religiousi devotion, and certainly every- 
 thing that will bring a smile to their faces 
 and wholesome laughter to their lips." 
 
 Mr. C. Lewis Hind, the art' critic, in his 
 book "The soldier boy'' gives an incident 
 which demonstrates the eloquence and in- 
 spiration of a good picture. A young mu- 
 sician, now a flight sub-lieutenant in the 
 Royal Navy, is described as at home on 
 leave, sitting in his London study, gazing 
 at a large photograph of Rembrandt's "Pol- 
 ish rider" — "that unforgettable picture, a 
 warrior riding forth thru a romantic land- 
 scape, but the mission of this rider is born 
 of the spirit, not of the flesh : he rides forth 
 for right, not for might." "That picture 
 sustains me," said the musician-soldier. 
 "I return here for another look at it. Its 
 message cannot fade. This war has taught 
 me that a picture can have the essence of 
 immortality and can help us to see light 
 beyond the blackness of the moment." 
 
 Mr. Hind writes of another soldier who 
 would willingly have been a preacher- 
 painter, but who had no talent. He had 
 made a laborious copy of Sic transit gloria 
 mundi by Watts, and when chided for 
 cherishing so sad a theme he said "That 
 picture is a reminder to me of the Undy- 
 ing Things." He, himself died later a 
 
 gallant death for his country. When Hind 
 went to pay a visit of condolence to the 
 lad's mother he visited the studio alone. 
 Looking at the shrouded figure of the dead 
 warrior in Watt's picture he thought of his 
 friend beneath French soil. Death 
 seemed hateful; life but a horrid game of 
 chance. In the gathering twilight the gray 
 picture grew grayer. "Why did he like 
 it?" he murmured. From the presence at 
 his side, felt rather than seen, came the 
 answer : "Read the painted words above 
 the warrior" : 
 
 What I spent I had 
 What I saved I lost 
 What I gave I have. 
 
 To those who have not looked into the 
 matter, poetry would seem to have as little 
 place at the front as pictures. But in the 
 New Republic for November 25, 1916, 
 James Norman Hall writes of "Poetry 
 Under the Fire Test" and in this connection 
 recounts certain experiences of an old 
 classmate of his, Mason by name, who had 
 joined the British Army and had gone to 
 the front. 
 
 Mason tells of his return to the first line 
 about two o'clock in the morning of a 
 rainy autumn day. His way led him thru 
 an old communication trench nearly a foot 
 deep in water. He fell into a short sap 
 leading off from the trench. It looked like 
 the entrance to a dug-out. Between the 
 shell explosions he heard voices. Pausing 
 or a moment to listen he discovered that 
 some one was reading aloud. These were 
 the words : 
 
 Before the starry threshold of Jove's court 
 My mansion is, where those immortal shapes 
 Of bright aerial spirits live insphered 
 In regions mild, of calm and serene air; 
 Above tlie smoke and stir of this dim spot 
 Which men call earth, and with low-thoughted 
 
 care. 
 Confined and pestered in this pinfold here, 
 Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being 
 Unmindful of the crown which virtue gives 
 After this mortal change, to her true servants 
 Among the enthroned gods on sainted seats. 
 
 Poetry ! "Comus" ! At such an hour 
 and under such conditions ! Mason con- 
 fessed that the circumstance so affected 
 him that he began to cry like a baby. But 
 in his own words: "I cried for pure joy. 
 
24 
 
 You say that you would want to forget 
 that there was such a thing as beauty in 
 the world. Well, I had forgotten. My 
 old life before the war was like a cast-ofif 
 garment which I had forgotten that I had 
 ever owned. The life of soldiering, of 
 killing and being killed, of digging 
 trenches and graves, seemed to have been 
 going on forever. Then, in a moment — 
 how is one to tell of such an awakening? — 
 I felt as the ancient mariner must have 
 felt when the body of the albatross slipped 
 from his neck and fell — how does it go? — 
 'like lead into the sea.' What I am trying 
 to make clear to you is this: without 
 realizing it, I had lost my belief in all 
 beauty. During all those months I was 
 vaguely aware of the lack of something, 
 but I didn't know what it was. It is im- 
 possible to think of that time without a 
 shudder. 
 
 "This adventure marked the beginning 
 of what I think I may call a new epoch in 
 my trench experiences. The seasons of 
 fearful depression which I used to have 
 were past and gone, altho the life was just 
 as wretched as before. At night, as I 
 stood on sentry, I would recall the frag- 
 ments of poems I knew in old days. I 
 wrote immediately to friends in London, 
 who prepared for me a little trench an- 
 thology of the poems I liked best. You 
 have no idea what a comfort they have 
 been. I've put them thru the fire test, and 
 tbey have withstood it splendidly." 
 
 Hall expressed an interest as to the 
 selection, and his friend handed him a 
 booklet in soiled paper covers. Loose 
 leaves from books of various sizes had 
 been sewn together into a little volume 
 which went easily into the pocket of the 
 soldier's tunic. Among others there were 
 "Kubla Khan," "Comus," "The Ode on 
 the Intimations of Immortality," all of 
 Keats's odes and "The eve of St. Agnes," 
 Shelley's "Alastor," Henley's "London vol- 
 untaries," and some selections from the 
 nineteenth century sonnets edited by 
 William Sharp. Hall expressed surprise 
 at seeing several poems by Francis Thomp- 
 son, whom he had never thought of as a 
 soldier's poet, and he asked his friend why 
 he was included. By way of answer Mason 
 
 took the volume and read the first stanza 
 of "The Poppy." 
 
 Heaven set lip to earth's bosom bare 
 And left the flushed print in a poppy, there. 
 Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came 
 And the hot wind fanned it to flapping flame. 
 
 "We have no need of war verse in the 
 trenches," said Mason. "What we do need 
 is something which will take our minds off 
 the horrors of modern warfare, after the 
 strain is relaxed." 
 
 "Do you mean to say that all of you 
 fellows out there are finding solace in 
 poetry?" 
 
 "Certainly not. I merely give you my 
 own experience. But you would be sur- 
 prised if you knew how many other men 
 do find it essential. Since that night in 
 the communication trench I've been 
 making inquiries, very cautiously of 
 course, for it would never do to let some 
 of the men know that one has such 
 aesthetic tastes. Recently, I met a ser- 
 geant major whose experience, slight as 
 it was, bears out splendidly this one of 
 mine. Once, he said, when he believed 
 that he was on the point of a nervous 
 break-down, he remembered suddenly two 
 lines from Shakespeare : 
 
 Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund Day 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty Tnountain tops. 
 
 "I may have quoted incorrectly, altho I 
 think I have it straight. The effect upon 
 him, he said, was really miraculous. His 
 battalion had been in tbe first line con- 
 tinuously, for two weeks, and had suffered 
 heavy casualties. At night every sandbag 
 in the parapet had appeared to be a dis- 
 torted human countenance. The men who 
 are killed in the trench are placed on the 
 parapets, you know, until there is an op- 
 portunity to bury them. He was in a 
 bad way, but those two lines saved him. 
 They called to his mind a picture of some 
 place which he was sure that he had never 
 seen, but one of such great beauty that he 
 forgot the horrors of the trenches. They 
 became a talisman to him, offering just 
 the relief he needed in times of great 
 mental strain. Another fellow, a man of 
 my own company, found this relief by re- 
 peating Hood's sonnet on Silence. You 
 remember it? 
 
25 
 
 There is a silence where hath been no sound, 
 There is a silence where no sound may be; 
 In the cold grave, under the deep, deep sea, 
 Or in wide desert where no life is found. 
 
 "It's one of the finest sonnets in the 
 language, to my way of thinking; but im- 
 agine a soldier repeating those lines to 
 himself, under shell fire! Odd, isn't it?" 
 
 "Odd? That' is hardly the word. If 
 anyone but you had told me of it, I should 
 have said it was extremely improbable." 
 
 "My dear fellow, that is simply because 
 you have never had occasion to put poetry 
 to the test of fire. Come out and join us ! 
 It is worth all the hazards to discover for 
 one's self that Beauty is Truth, Truth 
 Beauty. Yes," he added, "by Jove ! it is 
 worth it!" 
 
 As further evidence that poetry has stood 
 the fire test let me quote a few passages 
 from Lieutenant Gillespie's "Letters from 
 Flanders," referred to more fully in another 
 section of this paper. In one of his letters 
 home he speaks of "a famous epitaph of 
 Plato on a friend who died young, which 
 plays on the contrast between the morning 
 and the evening star. Shelley has trans- 
 lated it, so far as I can remember : 
 
 Thou wast the morning star among the 
 living 
 
 Ere thy pure light had fled, 
 Now thou art gone, thou art as Hesperus 
 giving 
 
 New Splendour to the dead. — 
 but the Greek is simpler and better." 
 
 On the eve of the attack in which Gil- 
 lespie was killed he wrote his father a long 
 letter ending thus: "It will be a great fight, 
 and even when I think of you, I would not 
 wish to be out of this. You remember 
 Wordsworth's 'Happy Warrior' : 
 
 Who if he be called upon to face 
 
 Some awful moment to which heaven has 
 
 joined 
 Great issues, good or bad, for human kind, 
 Is happy as a lover, and is attired. 
 With sudden brightness like a man inspired. 
 "I never could be all that a happy warrior 
 should be, but it will please you to know 
 that I am very happy, and whatever hap- 
 pens, you will remember that." 
 
 7. LETTERS FROM THE FRONT 
 
 Wagstaffe in Ian Hay's "First Hundred 
 Thousand" looks over the list of Bobby's 
 outfit and says "If you find you still have 
 
 a pound or so in hand, add a few books — 
 something to fall back on, in case supplies 
 fail. Personally, I'm taking 'Vanity Fair' 
 and 'Pickwick.' But then, I'm old- 
 fashioned." 
 
 The varying literary tastes of the men 
 at the front are brought out by H. G. 
 Wells in "Mr. Britling." Hugh writes to 
 his father about life in the trenches : 
 
 "We read, of course. But there never 
 could be a library here big enough to keep us 
 going. We can do with all sorts of books, 
 but I don't think the ordinary sensational 
 novel is quite the catch it was for a lot of 
 them in peace time. Some break towards 
 serious reading in the oddest fashion. Old 
 Park, for example, says he wants books you 
 can chew; he is reading a cheap edition of 
 'The origin of species.' He used to regard 
 Florence Warden and William Le Queux as 
 the supreme delights of print. I wish you 
 could send him Metchnikotf's 'Nature of Man' 
 or Pearson's 'Ethics of Free Thought' I feel 
 I am building up his tender mind. Not for 
 me tho. Daddy. Nothing of that sort for me. 
 These things take people differently. What I 
 want here is literary opium. I want some- 
 thing about fauns and nymphs in broad low 
 glades. I would like to read Spenser's 
 "Faerie Queene.' I don't think I have read it, 
 and yet I have a very distinct impression of 
 knights and dragons and sorcerers and wicked 
 magic ladies moving thru a sort of Pre- 
 Raphaelite tapestry scenery — only with a light 
 on them. I could do with some Hewlett of 
 the 'Forest Lovers' kind. Or with Joseph Con- 
 rad in his Kew Palm-house mood. And there 
 is a book. I once looked into it at a man's 
 room in London ; I don't know the title, but 
 it was by Richard Garnett, and it was all 
 about gods who were in reduced circumstances 
 but amidst sunny picturesque scenery — scenery 
 without steel, or poles, or wire — a thing af- 
 ter the manner of Heine's 'Florentine Nights.' 
 Any book about Greek gods would be wel- 
 come, anything about temples of ivory-colored 
 stone and purple seas, red caps, chests of 
 jewels, and lizards in the sun. I wish there 
 was another 'Thais.' The men here are get- 
 ting a kind of newspaper sheet of literature 
 scraps called The Times Broadsheets. Snip- 
 pets, but mostly from good stuff. They're 
 small enough to stir the appetite, but not to 
 satisfy it. Rather an irritant — and one wants 
 no irritant. I used to imagine reading was 
 meant to be a stimulant. Out here it has to 
 be an anodyne." 
 
 The general tenor of this fictitious letter 
 is supported by the real letters of an 
 American member of the Foreign Legion : 
 Henry Weston Farnsworth, who died from 
 wounds received in battle, September, 
 
26 
 
 igiS- He wrote to his father that he had 
 not yet finished Cramb, but could see how 
 well written it was. "I don't see why it 
 makes the Germans any more understand- 
 able to you. It, as far as I have gone, 
 draws them as maddened and blinded by 
 jealousy. I wish Cramb could have lived 
 to read how the English and French are 
 fighting." 
 
 To his brother he confided: "Warm 
 things are nice to have and books are 
 interesting to read, that is granted. But 
 if you come in from four hours' sentinel 
 duty in a freezing rain, with mud up to 
 your ankles, you do not want to change 
 your socks (you go out again in an hour) 
 and read a book on German thought. You 
 want a smoke and a drink of hot rum. 
 I say this because several times I have 
 been notified that there were packages for 
 me at the paymaster's office. To go there 
 hoping for such things, and receive a dry 
 book and a clean pair of socks has been 
 known to raise the most dreadful pro- 
 fanity. Don't dwell on this. It's only 
 amusmg at bottom." He says that "the 
 only kick he has about mail" is that Life 
 which he had much enjoyed, had stopped 
 coming. He read Charles Lamb, "Pick- 
 wick," Plutarch, a deal of cheap French 
 novels, and "War and Peace" over again, 
 which he hopes his mother will re-read. In 
 his opinion, Tolstoi, even more than Stend- 
 hal arrives at complete expression of mil- 
 itary life. He asks his people to send him 
 from time to time any novel, either in 
 French or English, that they may find 
 interesting. "Books are too heavy to 
 carry when on the move. The state of the 
 German mind, Plato, or Kant, are not nec- 
 essary for the moment, and I have read 
 Milton, Shakespeare, and Dante." In one 
 letter, written as they were momentarily 
 expecting to be called into action, he notes 
 that his friend is very calm, and is reading 
 the Weekly Times, including the adver- 
 tisements. 
 
 Another Legionnaire and contemporary 
 of Farnsworth at Harvard, Victor Chap- 
 man, tho not essentially a bookish man, has 
 left in his letters* evidence of the effect 
 
 • Victor Chapman's letters from France.; with 
 memoir by John Jay Chapman. New York: Mac- 
 millan, 1917. 
 
 that reading had on him while serving in 
 the American Aviation Corps. Under date 
 of May 14, 1915, he writes: "After twen- 
 ty minutes the shooting lessened and we 
 turned to other things — I to reading Lamb, 
 whom I found tedious till I hit the Dis- 
 sertation on Roast Pig." A few days later 
 he "attacked the 'Autocrat'," but felt he 
 had to read such a lot to get a little nutri- 
 tion that he thought it hardly worth while. 
 
 A fellow Legionnaire says that Chapman 
 "received almost all the Paris newspapers 
 and magazines, not to speak of novels and 
 volumes of poetry. One day he also re- 
 ceived a book from America. Chapman 
 undid the parcel, and buried himself in 
 his cabin; when he came out some hours 
 later he was joyful, exuberant; he had 
 read at a sitting the anti-German book 
 that his father had published in New York 
 to enlighten those fellows over there." 
 The book was the one entitled "Deutsch- 
 land iiber Allies" ; or "Germany Speaks" ; a 
 collection of the utterances of representa- 
 tive Germans in defense of the war policies 
 of the Fatherland" (New York, Putnam's, 
 1914). 
 
 He tells his father that he thinks the 
 book capital, that he "had seen one or two 
 of those fool remarks, but not by any means 
 the greater part. I hope it sells, for it 
 shows up their craziness so wonderfully 
 well. I have been reading my Galsworthy 
 again; a collection of English verse by a 
 Frenchman, bad as a selection of verse, but 
 still interesting; a short story by Alfred de 
 Vigny, and your Homeric Scenes. Strange 
 and violent ends some of the books of Frise 
 have come to. Outside our cabin door I 
 found, for cleaning the gamelles, the pages 
 of the Swiss Family Robinson in French; 
 while yesterday, before another cabin, I 
 found pages of Quentin Durward, also in 
 French. British authors are not the only 
 sufferers, however. The third volume, yet 
 intact, except the back cover, of the Medita- 
 tions of St. Ignatius is placed over the 
 stove for lighting the pipes." 
 
 In other letters he reports a total relaxa- 
 tion from war and the like by reviewing the 
 Harvard Dental School requirements for 
 admission and talking over examinations 
 with a comrade who thought of taking up 
 dentistry when he was thru with aviation. 
 
27 
 
 He says that he reHshes the New York 
 Tribunes which were being sent him fre- 
 quently, adding that they kept him a bit in 
 touch with America, even tho they were 
 three weeks old when they arrived. 
 
 Personal narratives of the great war are 
 rapidly increasing in number. Among those 
 most interesting in connection with our 
 present theme are "Letters from Flanders, 
 written by 2nd Lieut. A. D. Gillespie, 
 Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, to his 
 home people" (London, Smith, Elder & 
 Co. 1916). Gillespie was a Winchester 
 College and Oxford University man who 
 was studying law at the Inns of Court when 
 he enlisted in August, 1914. 
 
 He writes that between eating, sleeping 
 and writing he can't find much time to read, 
 but he manages in the first months of his 
 service to get thru Dante's Inferno, and 
 asks that his copy of Paradise Lost be sent 
 him from home, together with Scott's 
 "Bride of LammeTmoor" or any other 
 Scott in a cheap edition — "in fact anything 
 solid, for I don't think sixpenny novels 
 would go down so well at present. 
 A Sphere or an Illustrated [London News] 
 would be interesting to me, and to the men 
 afterwards. ... I have got H. S. 
 Merriman's 'Velvet glove' to read, but so 
 far I seem to have been busy digging, eating 
 or sleeping. . . . [Merriman] doesn't 
 perhaps go very deep, but he can tell a rat- 
 tling good story, which many of those mod- 
 ern psychological novelists, with their elab- 
 orate analysis of character and of sensa- 
 tion, quite fail to do. . . . Merriman 
 talks of the 'siren sound of the bullet, a 
 sound which the men, when they have once 
 heard it, cannot live without ;' but I don't 
 think I shall want you to fire volleys under 
 my window to put me to sleep when I get 
 home. 
 
 "I wanted to get some French newspapers, 
 but I could only find an old Matin, with noth- 
 ing in it except translations from the London 
 papers . . . 
 
 "I got hold of a German paper yesterday; 
 it had a short account of a football match in 
 Berlin, so did a French paper of one in Paris 
 the other day. But what interested me was to 
 notice that they gave very fairly and accurate- 
 ly the British Admiralty's report of one day^s 
 operations in the Dardanelles, except that they 
 multiplied the number of our dead by four. I 
 know this because I happened to have no- 
 ticed the figures ; and so had another subal- 
 
 tern. That is just typical of their system in all 
 their reports. They tell as much truth as they 
 think necessary to hide their lies — or, rather, 
 tell as many lies as they think their public can 
 reasonably swallow. . . . 
 
 "I have got hold of a book of Tolstoi's 
 stories. There's something very charming 
 about them, they are so direct and simple ; and 
 in the same book one has sketches of Sevas- 
 topol during the siege, — curious reading just 
 now, when we are doing our best to give the 
 Russians what we fought to prevent them get- 
 ting sixty years ago. I once read them before 
 in French, and I think I'm right in saying 
 that he doesn't mention the British once — it's 
 always the French, and yet we all have the 
 habit of thinking that we did all the fighting 
 in the Crimea." 
 
 At another time he writes : 
 
 "I wish you would give me as a birthday 
 present. Gibbon in Everyman's. Send out a 
 couple of volumes at a time ; then I can get 
 rid of them as I read them. For even though 
 it takes time and men and ships to force the 
 Dardanelles, I think the story of Constanti- 
 nople will be taken up again where it was left 
 in 1455- 
 
 "The Sphere never comes now. I don't 
 mind for myself, because I always see it in 
 the mess, but if you are ordering it, it ought 
 to come, and the men might like to see it. 
 Send me on two copies of Forbes-Mitchell's 
 'Reminiscences of the Indian Mutiny,' (Mac- 
 millan's one shilling series). He was a ser- 
 geant in the 93rd, and I remember that at Sun- 
 derland two copies which I gave my platoon 
 were very popular. . . . And if you will 
 give it to me for a birthday present, I should 
 like to read a book which has just come out, 
 'Ordeal by battle,' by F. S. Oliver ; he used to 
 write a good deal for the Round Table, 
 which, by the way, I have not seen lately. 
 Send me the current number and others as 
 they come out ... I used to take it regu- 
 larly, but I'm afraid I have missed several 
 quarters since last August." 
 
 The anonymous "Letters of a soldier, 
 1914-1915." written by a French artist 
 to his mother, and translated by "V. M." 
 (London, Constable, 1917) are full of 
 references to the influence of books and 
 reading on his cultivated mind. The fol- 
 lowing extracts show how he at least car- 
 ried out the injunction of an eminent 
 French military authority, Colonel Emile 
 Manceau, who at the very height of hostil- 
 ities said : "Let us read, let us give much 
 time to reading." 
 
 Aug. 6, 1914. What we miss is news; there 
 are no longer any papers to be had in this 
 town. 
 
 Aug 26. I was made happy by Maurice 
 Barres's fine article, "I'Aigle et le Rossignol." 
 
which corresponds in every detail with what 
 I feel. 
 
 Oct. 23. I have re-read Barres's article, 
 "I'Aiglc et Ic Rossignol." It is still as beau- 
 tiful, but it no longer seems in complete har- 
 mony. 
 
 Oct. 28. I am glad that you have read 
 Tolstoi: he also took part in war. He judged 
 it; he accepted its teaching. If you can 
 glance at the admirable "War and Peace," 
 you will find pictures that our situation re- 
 calls. It will make you understand the liberty 
 for meditation that is possible to a soldier 
 who desires it. 
 
 Sept. 2T. To sleep in a ditch full of water 
 has no equivalent in Dante, but what must 
 be said of the awakening, when one must 
 watch for the moment to kill or be killed! 
 
 Jan. 13, 1915. I did not tell you enough 
 what pleasure the Revues hcbdotiiadaircs 
 gave me. I found some extracts from that 
 speech on Lamartine which I am passionately 
 fond of. Circumstances led this poet to give 
 to his art only the lowest place. Life in gen- 
 eral closed him round, imposing on his great 
 heart a more serious and immediate task than 
 that which awaited his genius. 
 
 Jan. 17. What surpasses our understand- 
 ing (and yet what is only natural) is that 
 civilians are able to continue their normal 
 life while we are in torment. I saw in the 
 Cri de Paris, which drifted as far as here, 
 a list of concert programmes. What a con- 
 trast! However, mother dear, the essential 
 thing is to have known beauty in moments 
 of grace. 
 
 Jan. ig. I have received two parcels ; the 
 "Chanson dc Roland" gives me infinite 
 pleasure — particularly the Introduction, treat- 
 ing of the national epic and of the Mahab- 
 harata which, it seems, tells of the fight be- 
 tween the spirits of good and evil. 
 
 Feb. 2. I am delighted by the Reviews. 
 In an admirable article on Louis Veuillot I 
 noticed this phrase : "O my God, take away 
 my despair and leave my grief !" Yes, we 
 must not misunderstand the fruitful lesson 
 taught by grief, and if I return from this war 
 it will most certainly be with a soul formed 
 and enriched. 
 
 I also read with pleasure the lectures on 
 MoHere, and in him, as elsewhere, I have 
 viewed again the solitude in which the high- 
 est souls wander. But I owe it to my old 
 sentimental wounds never to suffer again thru 
 the acts of others. 
 
 Feb. 4. Dear, I was reflecting on Tolstoi's 
 title "War and Peace." I used to think that 
 he wanted to express the antithesis of these 
 two states, but now I ask myself if he did not 
 connect these two contraries in one and the 
 same folly — if the fortunes of humanity, 
 whether at war or at peace, were not equally 
 a burden to his mind. 
 
 Feb. 6. Mother dear, I am living over 
 ;igain the lovely legend of Sarpedon ; and that 
 
 exquisite flower of Greek poetry really gives 
 me comfort. If you will read this passage 
 of the Iliad in my beautiful translation by 
 Lecomte de I'lsle, you will see that Zeus ut- 
 ters in regard to destiny certain words in 
 which the divine and the eternal shine out as 
 nobly as in the Christian Passion. He suf- 
 fers, and his fatherly heart undergoes a long 
 battle, but finally he permits his son to die 
 and Hypnos and Thanatos are sent to gather 
 up the beloved remains. 
 
 Hypnos — that is Sleep. To think that I 
 should come to that, I for whom every wak- 
 ing hour was a waking joy, I for whom every 
 moment was a thrill of pride. I catch myself 
 longing for the escape of Sleep from the 
 tumult that besets me. But the splendid 
 Greek optimism shines out as in those vases 
 at the Louvre. By the two, Hypnos and 
 Thanatos, Sarpedon is lifted to a life beyond 
 his human death ; and assuredly Sleep and 
 Death do wonderfully magnify and continue 
 our mortal fate. 
 
 Thanatos — that is a mystery, and it is a 
 terror only because the urgency of our tran- 
 sitory desires makes us misconceive the 
 mystery. But read over again the great peace- 
 ful words of Maeterlinck in his book on 
 death, words ringing with compassion for 
 our fears in the tremendous passage of 
 mortality. 
 
 March 3. I have been stupefied by the noise 
 of the shells. Think — from the French side 
 alone forty thousand have passed over our 
 heads, and from the German side about as 
 many, with this difference, that the enemy 
 shells burst right upon us. For my own part, 
 I was buried by three 305 shells at once, to 
 say nothing of the innumerable shrapnel going 
 off close by. You may gather that m}' brain 
 was a good deal shaken. And now I am 
 reading. I have just read in a magazine an 
 article on three new novels, and that reading 
 relieved many of the cares of battle. 
 
 March 11. I have nothing to say about my 
 life, which is filled up with manual labor. At 
 moments perhaps some image appears, some 
 memory rises. I have just read a fine article by 
 Renan on the origins of the Bible. I found 
 it in a Revue dcs deux mondes of 1886. If 
 later I can remember something of it, I may 
 be able to put my very scattered notions on 
 that matter into better order. 
 
 March 17. The other day, reading an old 
 Revue des deux mondes of 1880, I came upon 
 an excellent article as one might come upon a 
 noble palace with vaulted roof and decorated 
 walls. It was on Egypt, and was signed 
 Georges Perrot. 
 
 8. THE BIBLE IN THE TRENCHES 
 
 Living his uneventful life before the war, 
 the average Englishman, says Donald 
 Hankey, could hardly be said to possess 
 a philosophy at all, but rather a code of 
 honor and morals, based partly on tradition 
 
29 
 
 and partly on his own observation of the 
 law of cause and effect in the lives of his 
 associates. When war came and he found 
 himself in the ranks, he discovered that his 
 easy-going philosophy did not quite fit in 
 with the new demands made on him. So 
 he had to try and think things out. But 
 this was by no means easy. He had read 
 very little that was of any help to him now. 
 He could remember nothing but a few 
 phrases from the Bible, some verses from 
 Omar Khayyam, and a sentence or two 
 from the Latin Syntax. But when he found 
 himself in a support trench, heavily shelled 
 by the enemy, Omar, who had lived before 
 the day of high explosives, was of little 
 comfort, and "it didn't seem quite playing 
 the game" to turn to the Bible now after 
 having neglected it so long. Though he 
 could not have defined his attitude of mind, 
 he wavered between fatalism and the gos- 
 pel of the "will to prevail" and was near to 
 becoming a disciple of Nietzsche. 
 
 The American Bible Society, which has 
 had experience in war-time distribution of 
 the Bible, in the Mexican War, the Civil 
 War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Spanish- 
 .\merican War. and in the recent disturb- 
 ances on the Mexican border, is now hard 
 at work supplying the troops of to-day. 
 From May to Sept. 15, 1917, the Society 
 issued 650,000 copies for the use of Ameri- 
 can soldiers and sailors. Most of these 
 have been Testaments and single books, or 
 "portions" as they call them, meaning 
 nothing less than one whole book of the 
 Bible. The society has orders for 150,000 
 more Bibles, Testaments and portions, 
 which are being issued as rapidly as pos- 
 sible. The two chief problems before the 
 society are to secure the necessary funds 
 and to meet the growing demand. There 
 is a rush of orders from many widely dif- 
 ferent sources. The society's presses have 
 been running for weeks up to two o'clock 
 at night. 
 
 The copies already issued have gone put 
 to the troops, first of all thru the nine home 
 agencies of the society, most of which have 
 made special efforts to distribute them. 
 Next they have used auxiliary societies, 
 such as the Massachusetts and the Mary- 
 land Bible Societies. Then the Y. M. C. A., 
 with whom the society has an understand- 
 ing, drew very largely upon its resources. 
 
 The society has recently agreed to furnish 
 the National War Council of the Y. M. C. 
 A. one million Testaments and has signed 
 contracts with responsible firms for the 
 manufacture of these books. They are to 
 be delivered to the Y. M. C. A. free of all 
 cost on condition that they will be circulat- 
 ed judiciously among the soldiers and sail- 
 ors. As the reserve funds of the society 
 are exhausted, it must now raise more 
 money by a special campaign, in order to 
 cover the cost of the books already issued, 
 and make further provision for future is- 
 sues if the war continues for a long period. 
 The society appeals for at least $400,000 
 for these purposes. 
 
 The directors of the society feel that 
 every enlisted man in the Army or Navy 
 ought to have a Testament, or a Gospel, or 
 a whole Bible for his own use. Some of 
 the men are glad to get them and willing 
 to pay for them, but to others they must be 
 given free. It is felt that the best way to 
 give a soldier a Bible or a Testament is to 
 have it come from the people in his own 
 home, his own town, or his own church. 
 They should see that he gets one before he 
 leaves. The society has worked thru these 
 channels, and so has supplied a large num- 
 ber of individuals, churches, Sunday schools 
 and local organizations. The Northeastern 
 Department of the Society's Atlantic Agen- 
 cy in Pennsylvania secured $400 from the 
 churches of Scranton with which to buy 
 Bibles for the soldiers going from that city 
 and region. For the special use of the 
 Maryland troops, the Maryland Bible So- 
 ciety ordered 10,000 copies of the Scrip- 
 tures with a letter inserted from President 
 Wilson, written at the request of Dr. 
 Goucher, president of the Maryland Bible 
 Society. The Massachusetts Society has 
 had a letter from the governor of the slate 
 inserted in its books and the New York 
 Bible Society, operating in New York City, 
 has distributed 25,000 Testaments and por- 
 tions, with a similar letter from Colonel 
 Roosevelt inserted. The New York Society 
 also issues a leaflet containing messages 
 from a score of eminent men, including 
 Governor Whitman, General Leonard 
 Wood, Rear-Admiral Usher, commending 
 the distribution. 
 
 This is President Wilson's admonition to 
 the men of the Arm.y and Navy: 
 
30 
 
 "The Bible is the Word of Life. I beg 
 that you will read it and find this out for 
 yourselves — read, not little snatches here 
 and there, but long passages that will really 
 be the road to the heart of it. 
 
 "You will not only find it full of real men 
 and women, but also of things you have 
 wondered about and been troubled about all 
 your life, as men have been always, and 
 the more you read the more it will become 
 plain to you what things are worth while 
 and what are not ; what things make men 
 happy — loyalty, right dealings, speaking the 
 truth, readiness to give everything for what 
 they think their duty, and, most of all, the 
 wish that they may have the real approval 
 of the Christ, who gave everything for 
 them; and the things that are guaranteed 
 to make men unhappy — selfishness, coward- 
 ice, greed, and everything that is low and 
 mean. 
 
 "When you have read the Bible you will 
 know that it is the Word of God, because 
 you will have found it the key to your own 
 heart, your own happiness, and your own 
 duty." 
 
 A representative of the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church Mission in France reports 
 that one day he went to see a poor, un- 
 fortunate soldier in jail and left with him 
 a New Testament. The following week he 
 went again to see him. He was asked for 
 copies for the other prisoners, and a Bible 
 for the guard. "It was really impressive," 
 the pastor writes, "to see that poor fellow 
 behind the iron gate smiling to me and 
 sending me greetings of thanks and grati- 
 tude." 
 
 Among the negroes employed there, says 
 the same pastor, was one who already knew 
 a little of the New Testament. On Easter 
 Monday he was seen crying like a child. 
 He had in his hand the book which had 
 been given him and a letter. 
 
 "What have you got, my lad?" asked the 
 pastor. 
 
 "I heard wife dead in Madagascar, and 
 me read the New Testament." 
 
 Another negro from New Caledonia, 
 wrote : 
 
 I ask you for some more many copies of 
 the Gospel for comrades, and one Saint 
 Mathieu for me. Me doing well, — and you, 
 my pastor, and your son, and your daughter. 
 
 I am your son who loves you. 
 
 Danis. 
 
 A pastor who always carries with him a 
 few Testaments for distribution, gave one 
 to a young soldier. Months later the pastor 
 was visiting a hospital and was accosted by 
 this same soldier, who, coming up, grasped 
 him by the hand most cordially and said: 
 
 "You do not know me, do you? But I 
 remember you. In fact I shall never forget 
 you. I owe you a debt I can never repay. 
 You remember that some months ago you 
 were distributing New Testaments at the 
 
 station of X , and you gave me one. 
 
 I put it in my bag, and when I got out to 
 the front, in the midst of the awful scenes 
 of destruction, facing danger and death, 
 when one did not know what the moment 
 would bring, I found time to read the little 
 book you gave me. I am a changed man. 
 And it is your little book that has done it. 
 I do not know how I can ever thank you 
 enough !" 
 
 A soldier of the Second Pennsylvania 
 Infantry said to his chaplain : "This is not 
 the kind of Bible I wanted." When asked 
 what kind he did want, he replied : "I want 
 an Old Testament with the Lord's Prayer 
 in it." The chaplain told him that it had 
 not yet been published. The soldier said 
 he thought that was what he wanted. "At 
 least, I want the part of the Bible that I 
 can read every day." When the chaplain 
 told him that he could read any part of it 
 daily, the soldier was not satisfied. He said, 
 "My mother used to read me one part of 
 the Bible every day and that is what I 
 want." The chaplain then began quoting 
 the 23d Psalm. "That's it. That's what I 
 want," he cried. 
 
 Certainly in the wars of old the thunder 
 of the Psalms was an antidote for the 
 thunder of battle. In the Crusades, there 
 were but few battles against the Saracens 
 in which there was not sung the Venite 
 of the 95th Psalm, the battle cry of the 
 Templars. 
 
 In 1380, when the Tartar hordes were 
 advancing on Moscow, Demetrius, Grand 
 Prince of Russia, advanced to meet the in- 
 vaders on the banks of the Don. After 
 reading the 46th Psalm, "God is our refuge 
 and strength," he plunged into the fight 
 which ended in the defeat of the Tartars. 
 
 The Psalms were the war-shout of John 
 Sobieski. From them the Great Armada 
 took its motto. They were the watchwords 
 
31 
 
 of Gustavus Adolphus and Cromwell, the 
 battle hymn of the Huguenots and the 
 Cevennois. 
 
 At the battle of Courtrai in 1587 the 
 Huguenots chanted the 24th and 25th verses 
 of the ii8th Psalm. "The cowards are 
 afraid," cried a young courtier to the Due 
 de Joyeuse, who commanded the Roman 
 Catholics; "they are confessing them- 
 selves." "Sire," said a scarred veteran, 
 "when the Huguenots behave thus, they 
 are ready to fight to the death." 
 
 In Great Britain's Civil War the begin- 
 ning of a battle was frequently heralded by 
 the singing of Psalms. This was true of 
 the Battle of Marston Moor. As his troop- 
 ers bore the body of John Hampden to his 
 grave, they chanted the 90th Psalm, which 
 since 1662 has had its place in the burial 
 service of the Prayer Book. 
 
 The Psalms were the battle cry of the 
 Huguenots in 1704 when Cavalier won a 
 
 brilliant victory. It was with the singing 
 of the 48th Psalm that Roland, one of the 
 Camisard leaders, routed the Royalists at 
 the Bridge of Salindres in 1709. 
 
 Reading and believing as did these war- 
 riors of old, produced men of the type of 
 Sir Richard Grenville, who, with his hun- 
 dred men and his little forty-ton frigate, 
 fought against fifty-three Spanish ships of 
 war manned with ten thousand men. Sir 
 Richard's last words have been lovingly pre- 
 served for us by Sir Walter Raleigh : 
 
 "Here die I, Richard Grenville, with a 
 joyful and quiet mind, for that I have 
 ended my life as a true soldier ought to 
 do, that hath fought for his country, queen, 
 religion, and honor. Whereby my soul 
 most joyfully departeth out of this body, 
 and shall always leave behind it an ever- 
 lasting fame of a valiant and true soldier 
 that hath done his duty as he was bound 
 to do." 
 
:^08f,79 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY