Opposite BROOKLYN, N. Y.

DEAR JOE: Well, Joe, I see by your last letter that you have fin'ly got
to France, and what good is that when the war's all over and the toughest
thing you'll go up against is the language? The French language made every-
thing but the Cuteys quit, but maybe they talk like me and you now and only
used that weird chatter like "Bonjour, mon chère, comment allez-vous," and etc.,
whilst the war was bein' had. If they was still usin' the language they did
when I was over there, Joe, you would die of thirst in a restaurant even if you
showed the waiter a photo of Niagara Falls to ex-
plain what you wanted.

Daisy Gertner, which, if it hadn't of been for Germany, I would like as not
of wed in cold blood. Before I went to France she looked the same to me as
$750 a week would look to a shippin' clerk, but after I seen Jeanne-oh, boy!!!
Joe, they is two kinds of females, Jeanne and women-get me? If I was at
the kaiser's trial, I would put in a good word for him on account of him bein'
the cause of me meetin' this knockout which smiles across the breakfast table
at me every mornin' and makes me forget whether I'm eatin' eggs or playin'
pinochle. I would ask them to have the kaiser shot with a rifle instead of a
machine gun, anyways.

ex-

Joe, Pres. Wilson has left us flat for the time
bein' and gone over to help the other pallbearers at
Germany's funeral. Joe, they is a lot of soreheads
over here which prob'ly wanted to make the trip
themselves and which claims a president's place is
in the dome (of the Capitol). Well, Joe, I don't know
f Pres. Wilson should of gone or not, and at that
I'm willin' to keep things quiet for him over here whilst he's away, not that
be asked me, but then when a man's makin' a trip he's always busy with packin'
and etc. I do know, however, that he is president of the U. S., and whatever
be does I'll stand back of just like we done in France. Them knockers make
me laugh, and I bet they think Pres. Wilson is layin' awake nights worryin'
because they was against the trip, hey? Why, Joe, he won't know half them guys
of lettin' me outa the army, even though peace has been declared. You know
lain't got my discharge yet, Joe, so you can see the Alleys is takin' no chances
bow it is, Joe, if
tight rise up on their hind legs and yell murder, claimin' we was gettin' care-
3. So I guess I'll be in uneyform till the kaiser has come from the em-
Joe, who do you think I met on Broadway the other day? No less than

is on earth-not till 1920 anyways!

calmers at least.

Well, Joe, the war certainly made a awful change
in Daisy, and she has growed fat and is far from
a sensational looker. For the sake of olden times
gone by, I says hello to her, and she was as surprised
as the Crown's Prince after the marines landed.
After we have says it's a nice day without gettin'
into no argument over it, they was quite a pause
because I don't wanna dynamite her heart by tellin'
her I was wed. I know how horribly the poor girl must feel when I do not
dash up and wildly kiss her, because maybe I had allowed her to have hopes
when I was king of the baseball diamond. I'm thinkin' whether it is wise to
mention the thing at all, because she might let forth a hysterical screech and
faint dead in my arms and a crowd would rush up prob'ly thinkin' we both had
a bun on, when she says:

"Well, Ed, I certainly am glad to see you again. You look as fine as pulver-
ized sugar! Why didn't you send me a post card? You must come up and
see us some time. You know I been married since September 8, 1917, and my
husband is well to do and rich. We got a swell auto and we'll take you for a
ride some day. You must be lonesome, bein' away so long-hey?"

Joe, can you beat that? They is nothin' more unreliable than a woman
outside of the weather forecast, hey? Here I am wastin' my time and honest-
hearted sympathy on a dame which took up matrimony the day I sailed for

France and maybe forever. Well, Joe, I throwed all sympathy to the winds at that and told her I had a wife instead of a wealthy husband and a baby instead of a automobile, and if I was lonesome so was a Fifth Avenue traffic cop from 5 to 6 p. m. Whilst doin' this, Joe, I used the dignity of a police-court judge the first time he's called "your honor," and with a cold and sarcastical stare Daisy walked away. I am glad I never give her no ring, hey, Joe? Well, Joe, the day I met Daisy seemed to be my meetin' day, and in another block I have run into no less than Mac, which caused me and baseball to part on account of me hittin' a brief pitchin' slump and failin' to beat only Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Brooklyn. Joe, he was as glad to see me as I was to see the Statue of Liberty on the way back, and nothin' will do but he must drag me into the Knickerbocker, where we get a table far from the crowds and etc. A year ago, Joe, we would of prob'ly bellered for a couple of seidels of Scotch or the like, but now it's different. On account of me havin' my uneyform on, the barbers is even afraid to put bay rum on my hair at the end of a perfect shave, because it's against the law to serve a soldier with a portion of alcohol. So we are forced to put up with a siphon of seltzer and two

see me pitchin' inshoots and the like at the squareheads with grenades, and he says I must of been a wonder at it because I had the greatest bean ball he ever seen, and remember the day I hit three of the Cubs in one innin' and one of 'em was sittin' in the dugout when he got it. Can you beat that guy, Joe? Rememberin' that, when whilst he was at it he could just as well of remembered the day I shut out Boston for a innin' and a half and would of gone further with it only they went crazy and could of hit balls before I pitched 'em even.

Joe, I says if I was good enough to beat the Germans, I oughta be good enough to pitch again, and he says they's somethin' in that, but he's figurin' on sendin' me against the National League, and not the Germans, and he's afraid after facin' the squareheads I'm so used to seein' guys runnin' that I'll let everybody get a hit so's they can dash around the bases. Well, I says never mind what I'm libel to do now, how about before I ever seen any Germans, and he says they was little difference, except that I used to make 'em all walk then.

Well, Joe, so this here won't wind up by bein' a novel, I'll tell you what the finish was. Mac wants me to sign a contract or a summons or a dispossess notice or somethin' which says that I agree to play

Joe, I ain't said a word to Jeanne about the thing, because I wanna surprise her when I walk out on the diamond next April, and the papers is full of my pictures and etc., and thousands of cheerin' fans is screamin' my name, and I let the first three walk and fan the next three with the bags loaded, and the crowd goes wild.

Well, Joe, besides Jeanne they is five other guys which would die of surprise if I done that. They are Mac, the three guys I fan, and Yours truly,

First Lieutenant EDWARD EDISON HARMON.

Somewheres in NEW YORK.

EAR JOE: Well, Joe, since last I got my fingers

DEAR

full of ink I have had some wonderful adventures, blowed money like a guy runnin' for alderman on the reform ticket, and am now keepin' a automobile. Í have got a bus which will go seven miles if you only hold a gasoline sign in front of it, is easier on tires than a miser is on a five-dollar bill, and looks so good to the naked eye that the garages is willin' to pay me if I'll only keep the car there so's they can use it as a decoy for business. Joe, it's a 1919 Elegant Eight, $2,000 f. o. b. Amsterdam Avenue, and when it's standin' by the curb it looks

glasses. Joe, I would rather have a uneyform on than a bun on, so I should be annoyed, hey?

After Mac has praised me up till I am dizzy, Joe, and wonderin' if I am really as great as all that why should I bother talkin' to anybody, let alone Mac, he commences to talk about the baseball situation. Well, Joe, you know I ain't no more interested in that than the kaiser is in the peace conference, so I plucked up my ears like a rabbit, only with more sense, when Mac says they's a great chance of baseball comin' back again next year. He hems and haws back and forth for a minute, Joe, and I can see they's somethin' on his mind besides the check the waiter will slip him, and fin'ly he gets up his nerve and comes right out and asks me would I like to come back to the club again. Well, I ain't no dummy, Joe, and I knowed when he brung me in there what was comin' off, and I was ready for him. The second I got over my surprise I says I would like to come back all right only I have got to get a great deal more sugar than they ever gimme before, and only be pitched once a week, and then only if the crowd is 20,000 to 35,000 of my frenzied admirers.

Well, Joe, he says he wasn't thinkin' so much about the pitchin' end of it, and once a week is all right to him, and it was his idea anyways to keep me outa the box as much as possible. Joe, I smelled a rat and I says what does he mean by that, and he chokes on his soda and says he means he wants to gimme all the rest he can because I must be tired after my labors in France. Well, I says he oughta

with Mac's team next year, provided they is either of 'em come to pass. Well, I says that as long as I have wrote all these letters to you I don't see no harm in wastin' what little ink it would take to put my name down, only I am famous now, not to say married, and on account of that I got to have a salary which will guarantee me livin' in style in case I don't get no tips. Joe, he says how much is that, and I says $7,000, and he says that's fine, only he don't wanna sign me up for the rest of my life, and how much do I want a year? Well, Joe, I says either I get $7,000 a year or nothin', because they is plenty of clubs which is insane to get me and would be willin' to pay that much as a bonus.

Joe, in less than no time, or two hours and a half to be exact, I have signed up for $5,000 a year with $1,000 bonus, and Mac says when do I expect the bonus?

"They's no time like the present!" I says.

"If you get any thousand bucks outa me before you even put on a baseball uneyform," he sneers, "I'll go and spend the rest of my days in a lunatic asylum!"

"Then the best thing for you to do now," I says, "is to call one of 'em up and have 'em reserve a room for you, or else throw away that contract. One or the other's gotta happen."

Well, Joe, I had practically no trouble in convincin' him that I oughta get that bonus in advance, and four hours later he has agreed to gimme five hundred bucks cash and a I. O. U. for five hundred more, and all is settled.

like that was the price of the license plates alone. Joe, I got it for nothin', and so far it has only set me back $100 for upkeep, and I got it nearly a week. It wouldn't of cost me a cent only I ain't used to readin' the speedometer yet, and them motorcycle cops is on the job day and night. The last one told the judge I had turned Riverside Drive into a race track and made acrobats outa the passers-by-the big stiff!

No doubt, Joe, you will be anxious to know how I come to be a automobile fiend when for all you know I ain't ever even seen a picture of Barney Oldfield. Well, Joe, it ain't exactly my fault. I had a chance to catch either that or the Spanish Influence, and I got the wrong one. With the Spanish Influence all you can lose is your own life, but with a auto, Joe, you got a chance to take a few other guys with you-not that I have hit nobody of any account yet.

After I left Mac that day with the five hundred berries in my kick I started back to my flat whistlin' a little tune I picked up in France and feelin' at peace with all the world, as the guy says. Well, Joe, I commence to think what will I get Jeanne for Xmas and also what 'will she get me, not red ties or socks I hope, and then I think that as long as this is the first Xmas we been together I will get her somethin' worth while and also worth about $100. Joe, I don't wanna buy her no shirt waists, silk stockin's, patent washin' machines, or the like, because I can do that any time, and on Xmas the women expect somethin' outa the ordinary, the same as you do. Joe, right here I wanna tell you of a thing which always hands me a laugh, and that is the advertisements which is in the papers around Xmas time. Joe, they is pictures of swell-lookin' dames openin' packages containin' a trick fryin' pan or the like, and they got grins on their faces from here to Denver like they was gettin' a million dollars in nickels, and underneath it says: "Give Her What She Wants. Make Her Xmas Happy with a De Luxe Fryin' PanNo Food Can Touch It!" or something like that. Now, Joe, you know as well as I do that if you was to walk into your wife or the like on Xmas mornin' with any such kitchen gift as that she would prob❜ly no doubt bust it over your head or, if refined, would at least be off you for life. At Xmas a woman looks for diamonds and etc. and not no "Mother's Delight Washin' Machine" or trick fryin' pans, and you know it, and them ads is the nearest rival to Chaplin I seen for some time.

Well, Joe, I happen to be passin' one of them auto places, and that reminds me of Daisy Gertner claimin' her husband had one, (Continued on page 27)

CHARLES TREADWELL TAIT 2D, his elbows

poised upon the marble counter of the soda fountain, stood reading an emotionless Government circular.

Emotionless, did I say? Permit me to correct that statement. There were neither headlines nor pictures in the plainly printed document which he read, yet its pages held something which transfixed the gaze of the boy, which made his head fairly throb, and which sent his thoughts far away from Tait's pharmacy at Centerville, Iowa, to distant lands, many thousand miles away.

Everyone in Centerville was wondering what Charlie Tait was going to do. And no one more than Charles himself.

On the 17th day of July, 1918, Charles Treadwell Tait 2d would celebrate his twentieth birthday. And that was barely three months off. And upon the 17th day of July, 1919, Charles Treadwell Tait 2d would attain his majority and under the provisions of the draft law as it then stood would be liable for service in the military forces of his country.

The war! That was it. Charlie Tait fed more and more on headlines and less and less on more substantial diet-to the real alarm of his mother. He bought an atlas-the first time in his life that he ever was known to purchase an informative bookand on it he marked with a stubby pencil the terrible onrush of the great German offensive. He took that Hun thrust seriously. It sickened him. Amiens became as real to him as Centerville-it must have a Main Street too, perhaps as trim and as green and as well-shaded as Centerville's. There were women and girls in Amiens too, just as there were in Centerville-women and girls; and Charlie Tait found himself thinking of his mother and his sister-and a certain wondrous head of copper-colored hair held upon an impeccable ivory neck, which bobbed responsively to the name of Marjorie as well as to the best sundaes that the high chief of Tait's pharmacy might ever produce.

There were Marjories in Amiens-and mothers and sisters too. And day by day and hour by. hour the unspeakable, lust-hungry German savages were advancing upon them; while the pharmacist's son of Centerville tossed sleeplessly upon his narrow iron bed.

A Permanent Profession

AND AND then came the first hour of determination. "I want to get into it," he told the older Charles Treadwell Tait as they walked home from the store on a May evening. They had been silent for a long time-a silence broken only by the creaking of their footfalls and the patter of raindrops upon the pave

ment. They walked on. It was some time before the older man spoke.

"I thought you would," he said quietly, and asked: "What branch of the service do you prefer?"

The boy did not hesitate. "The merchant marine," was his prompt reply. "I've been reading their circulars and their application blanks."

The pharmacist of Centerville wondered for a minute or two at his son's choice. He would have selected the navy himself; there was great-uncle Charles Treadwell, who made so brilliant a record at Annapolis and who afterward commanded one of the very first of our modern battleships. And then there were the huge embrace, the vast opportunities of the army. But the merchant marine? What could have put the idea into the boy's head, anyway? Was it his incessant taste for reading? The older Tait remem

This is the first of several articles by Mr. Hungerford dealing with the very important question of our merchant marine. In this one he tells of the training of the men required. His next will follow in an early issue.-THE EDITOR.

bered the younger's affection for Dana's "Two Years Before the Mast," how he had read and reread the single dog-eared copy that their town library possessed. For young Charlie Tait the sea must indeed have called and called strongly. Its appeal seemingly was all but irresistible.

The druggist remembered another thing. It was only a few months before that the Recruiting Service of the United States Shipping Board had sent to his store circulars and enrollment and application blanks and had asked it to become one of 6,000 or more recruiting agencies for securing sailors and officers for that wonderful fleet of new cargo ships which Schwab and Hurley and the rest of them were building out upon the ocean rims of the land. Yet all of that, like the war, seemed very far away indeed and rather unreal to boot. Why, you would have to go more than 1,500 miles in any direction from Centerville to find salt water; it was doubtful, Charles Tait the elder thought, if more than one person in a hundred in the little town had ever seen the ocean. Yet here was his own son evincing a desire to embark for a career upon the sea, not merely as a war-time measure, but as a permanent profession.

Charlie Tait had given full heed to the possibilities of the navy, for Marjorie had urged that branch of the service most insistently upon his attention. For a very short while he had wavered. But thenhe had remembered young Richard Henry Dana's ex

periences and had stuck to his desire for the merchant marine. It offered a permanent after-the-war career such as the navy could not even begin to offer, and in the war many, many opportunities for courage and for sacrifice. For Amiens never went out of his soul, practical and businesslike as it really was..

The arguments that he had poured in the small ears of Marjorie he repeated to his father's which were opened to him. For he was making good his plea, driving home his arguments with a force that was well-nigh irresistible. But they were arguments that stood unopposed. For the druggist had not the slightest desire to oppose the will of his son; he merely wished to see him make a thorough success of the thing that he had decided to undertake.

"Very well, son," said the elder Tait, "if that is the way you want to help your country, I will see that you get the chance."

Follow Charlie's Training

So it was that upon a July morning, scarcely two

months later, Charles Treadwell Tait 2d stepped off a long train into the murky, smoke-filled train shed of the South Station, Boston. In the past thirty days things had moved pretty rapidly for him. The application which he had finally made for enrollment as a sailor in the nation's new merchant fleet had been acted upon with surprising promptitude.

Within a week it had been accepted; and a fortnight later he had been ordered to report to the Shipping Board's chief training station at East Boston. His traveling directions were specific; he was told that he would be reimbursed for the expenditure for railroad fare upon his arrival at the training station, while his apprentice pay of $30 a month would begin the moment he entered the training service.

That moment was not far off. It was an easy thrust, with only a single change of trolley cars, to the training station-a group of piers and warehouses on the water front which, repainted and refurbished, were performing an important part in the winning of the war. There were ships at the docks, and these, as we shall see presently, the most integral and important part of the training work.

There were other training stations and other training ships too, although young Charlie Tait did not know of them at that minute. At New York, at Norfolk, at New Orleans, at San Francisco, at Seattle, and at Cleveland they have been receiving thousands of other Charlie Taits who feel the strong call of the sea in their very hearts and souls. And this list of training stations takes no

account whatsoever of forty-three schools of navigation at various seaports along both our ocean coasts and those of the Great Lakes as well-a remarkable series of schools which began as far back as June, 1917, with a single initial effort at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge. Since then some of these forty-three navigation schools have exhausted the local supply of material available for the making of deck officers and so have closed their doors, but at the time this is being written preparations are being made for the opening of many others in available localities as yet unreached.

While these navigation schools for deck officers have been in session, still others, having for their object the making of competent officers for the engine rooms of our new ships, have been hard at work at twelve of the great technical institutions of the land. The oldest of these, which still is in operation, is also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; of the other eleven, those at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N. Y.; at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore; at Tulane, New Orleans; and at the Universities of California and Washington, out upon the West Coast, are fairly typical. All told, these engineering schools up to the 7th of September last had enrolled 4,319 qualified young officers for the engine rooms, while the navigation schools had 5,678 officers listed for the deck service. And many other young men are now in process of preparation for the stiff examinations of the United States Steamboat Inspection Service-examinations which, by the way, have not been relaxed one iota for the benefit of the Recruiting Service students; for not even in the time of a national crisis does the Government propose to grow careless at a point where rigid competence is absolutely necessary.

I

Henry Howard's Plan

T was a Boston man-Henry Howard-who, more than a year and a half ago, foresaw the absolute and immediate necessity of providing a complete recruiting service for the new United States merchant marine, which then was in the very first stages of its inception. It would be useless, Howard saw, to try and build a great armada of cargo ships and transports without making definite provision for securing and for the proper training of men who could be qualified to operate them from the very moment that they were accepted from the hands of the shipbuilders.

In the half-century decline of the American merchant marine there had been even more than a proportionate decline in American sailormen. Of course there would be a sizable quantity of men to be secured from the land who at some earlier time in their lives had had a sufficient sea experience to make them at once fit officers or sailors or with a minimum of training. The extensive cargo fleets of the Great Lakes-idle for fully five months of the year-might also be drawn upon. But these two sources, taken together, could hardly be counted upon to furnish more than from a fifth to a quarter of the necessary seamen for such a fleet as the United States Shipping Board had in mind almost from the very beginning in January, 1917.

So it was that the trained executive mind of Henry Howard of Boston set about to devise a definite plan for meeting this particular great need of man power. His study of the problem was rendered much easier by the fact that with him the love of the sea is inborn. It is his recreation and his hobby.

At the end of May, 1917, Mr. Hurley, who then had come to be chairman of the United States Shipping Board, quickly accepted Mr. Howard's plan to enroll and train sailors and officers for the new merchant marine, appointed him director of the Recruiting Service and gave him headquarters in the tall new tower of the Custom House in Boston. Within twenty-four hours after his appointment Howard was hard at work on the job, drafting his organization personnel and preparing to open the first of the engineering and navigation schools. And because of the fact that he had spent so much study on his plan even before taking it down to Washington he was enabled to work with great rapidity.

Before the summer of 1917 was anywhere near over he was graduating from his schools and training stations students who already were being given a short apprentice training on coastal and South American routes before being given full jobs and full responsibilities upon our growing roster of merchant ships.

All this while and we have nearly forgotten Charles Treadwell Tait 2d of Centerville, Iowa; come far away from his home and shuffling in a long

ZB.C

Marjorie had urged that branch of the service most insistently upon his attention

sea, and the sea has taken him as of her very own. For, from the first night that he enters the service of the merchant marine, he sleeps on shipboard. The long line of accepted apprentices-in the fall they were accepting almost 200 a day at the East Boston station-goes direct from the outfitting room to a ship moored at the far side of the yard. This ship herself is one of the dramas-one of the lesser tragedies, if you please of the sea. She is the Meade, a former army transport remembered by many veterans of Philippine service. Long before the days of the Spanish War she was the fleet City of Berlin, a crack transatlantic liner and in the days before the Philadelphia Centennial holder of the record across the North Atlantic. Her engines now are rusty; never again will they turn her stout propeller so rapidly as to thrust her across the At

Types of Mariners

HEY are fine boys, these; culled, through voluntary applications, from the whole broad countryside. Among them is a minister, the Rev. Paul Plunkett Boggs, who in other days was a clergyman down at Greenwood, S. C., but who felt that in his country's emergency he might well get in line to become a regular pilot after being a "sky pilot." Boggs is a fair type of the quality of the men who have come and who still are coming into the service of the new merchant marine, in even the humblest rôles. Educated to the refinements of a profession, he is not afraid to work, not even to work at such supposedly menial tasks as mopping decks or scrubbing brass work.

"I thought I knew human nature when I was preaching sermons down at Greenwood," he will tell you, "but I have just awakened to what real living is. I have watched hundreds of boys coming into this service and settling down to the new order of things almost without batting an eyelash; this uncomplaining spirit is genuine sacrifice, and it shows that it is real men who are enrolling here to crush the Kaiser." Parson Boggs is not the only minister who has entered the deck service of the new merchant marine; for instance, there is young Nathaniel H. Melbert, who to-day is washing decks, splicing ropes, and polishing the handle of the captain's door on a big cargo ship, but who only a few months ago was the shepherd of a Methodist flock at Houston, Tex. Professional men have not hesitated to come to their country's aid in this emergency and in this practical way. For another instance, here is Tom H. Peters. Peters used to teach school down on Cape Cod. The call for men awoke in him the dormant sea love of his New England ancestors, and he is now at work in the deck department of a North Atlantic transport; and so is William G. Huff, an erstwhile editor and publisher from Clarksdale, Miss. And many others of their sort. These men are all typical of the sort that are coming to the merchant marine. There was a time when the American sailor might well hold up his head on land and at sea. In the great cycle of tremendous events that time has come around again.

FOR

"You Start Offshore"

NOR a little more than a month Charlie Tait remained on the Meade. There he learned the rudiments of the life which men live when they follow the profession of the sea. In the handsome old liner he was well quartered, well fed, well taught. He first learned such simple fundamentals as swabbing decks and polishing brasses, to be followed quickly by preliminary studies in boxing the compass and in splicing and knotting ropes. And at the same time that he was getting these neat tricks of the sailorman other squads of boys were below decks in the Meade studying the fundamentals of the engine department; learning to feed and rake a coal fire properly, to fill oil and grease cups, and to keep each part of a huge and complicated engine clean. And still others were studying with the stewards in the galley; for if the commissary of a merchant ship is not her most picturesque feature it is one of her most important.

All this while the Meade is still at her pier, while Boston Harbor teems with activity; battleships and cruisers and submarines coming and going from the navy yard; now and then a transport outbound or in, merchant ships and coasters in great variety. And all this while the soul and spirit of Charlie Tait hankering to walk the decks or help to man the yards of each of them, his letters back to Centerville telling again and again of the vast desire within his heart. And

(Continued on page 42)