marching in bands about the streets of London and Paris and Rome
and possibly in due course Berlin, singing: "The Yanks are Coming" and
"America Done It," because the French, Italians and Germans know little
or nothing about music, and any American Y man, especially a blacksmith
from Shoulder Blade, Kentucky, could give them a few lessons. And the
British--why, they could do nothing, or would do nothing, till they got
there. They were drilled for a month or more in squads right and squads
left and taught by music masters to sing: "Here We Are, Hear the Eagle
Scream."

The last time they marched was when they marched off the boat on the
other shore; after that when they walked they hoofed it. And the last
time they sang was just before they heard the Italians sing. The first
performance by comparison with the second sounded as a tom-tom concert
in competition with the celestial choir. Talk about carrying coals to
Newcastle; the most absurd performance of the Y was exporting American
singers to entertain the Italian army.

Have you thought about it? Since Woodrow Wilson has been President,
America has been afflicted with what might be called the Professors'
Age. The professors in the Y certainly had the pull. If a kitchen was
opened in Flanders, a professor of chemistry was the director in charge;
a chef was no better than a kitchen scullion. If a tooth was to be
pulled, a professor of anatomy performed the operation because he knew
the root from the crown, while a dentist handled freight in a warehouse.
A professor of mathematics was put in charge of motor vehicles, while a
machinist arranged the programme for a vocal concert. A professor of
languages would be made chief accountant, while an expert accountant was
put in charge of a moving-picture machine. Professor Brown was given
charge in France; Professor Greene in England, and Professor Black in
Italy; and their regional directors were professor this and that; a
professor of penmanship in Rome, a professor of biology in Genoa, a
professor of languages in Brescia, and a professor of something else in
Naples, Milan, Venice, Trieste and Palermo. There was as much of
school-teacher dictatorship in the foreign Y as Secretary Lansing found
at the head of the State Department. When a doughboy referred to the Y
as "the damn Y," it is possible he recognized the secretary in charge as
his former professor of mathematics or languages.

But slowly as these professors returned