re approximately 58,000 men in specialized vocational schools
where they have full shop facilities of A.E.F.

"Athletic activities: Athletic activities increasing daily in scope and
popularity. Figures for February show 6,500,000 individual participants
in games. In addition to mass athletics, unit championships are being
played in football, basketball, soccer, boxing, tennis, swimming, tug of
war, golf, track and field.

"Entertainment activities: Reports of entertainment officers show
monthly attendance for A.E.F. of between eight and ten million. Moving
pictures, professional talent from United States and particularly
soldier shows being utilized in all parts of army and have done much to
take care of leisure hours of troops. Horse shows have been held in
nearly every division of A.E.F. and have proved very popular. Amount of
all this work now being carried on is little short of stupendous."

The following paragraphs from a personal letter are particularly
significant as coming from an officer of the regular army, who when he
was in command of one of the cantonments in the United States was
genuinely alarmed lest the War Department had not lost its sense of
proportion, and was creating parlor ornaments instead of fighting men:

"I served in the Army of Occupation in the Philippines and in China
after the Boxer campaign, and I want to tell you that the discipline and
_esprit de corps_ of these troops in Germany is incomparably better than
anything I saw there.

"I think nothing has so contributed to this result as the welfare work
and the educational work undertaken. We have every reason to be proud of
the fact that we had people in command of the army who had the vision to
see what result this work would bring.

"I took command of the --th Division in the Army of Occupation in
December, and up until the present time I never worked with a happier or
more contented lot of men. Of course they all want to go home, and we
wouldn't have much use for them if they didn't, but an intensified
military course of training in the morning, schools and athletics in the
afternoon, and study and entertainment in the evening have made their
days so full that they have been perfectly contented to stay until their
boat comes in June.

"This has been the experience of all the divisions up here in Germany,
and their enthusiasm, I fear, when they get home, may be taken for
pro-Germanism."

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