a great and successful object
lesson, as well as a great summer school in nationalism. Here black,
white and Indian soldiers fraternized; here Northerners and
Southerners served under the same orders. Ten thousand soldiers and as
many civilians daily attended the best school of its kind ever held in
this country, striving to take home to their hearts the lessons that
God is teaching the nations.

The Rev. Sylvester Malone thus sums up the message of the war to us in
his letter to the committee to welcome Brooklyn's soldiers:

"This short war has done so much for America at home and
abroad that we must take every soldier to our warmest
affection and send him back to peaceful pursuits on the
conviction that there is nothing higher in our American life
than to have the privilege to cheer and gladden the marine
and the soldier that have left to America her brightest and
best page of a great history. This past war must kindle in
our souls a love of all the brethren, black as well as
white, Catholic as well as Protestant, having but one
language, one nationality, and it is to be hoped, yet one
religion."

These are true words, as full of patriotism as they are of fraternity,
and these are the two special lessons taught at Montauk--a broad,
earnest, practical fraternity, and a love of country before which the
petty prejudices of race and section were compelled to yield ground.

THE YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION IN CAMP WIKOFF.

The Young Men's Christian Association has done an excellent work in
Camp Wikoff. Their tents have afforded facilities for profitable
amusements, in the way of quiet games, thus bringing out the use of
these games distinct from their abuse--gambling.

Their reading tables have also been well supplied with papers and
magazines, religious and secular, generally very acceptable to the
soldiers, as attested by the numbers that read them. But perhaps best
of all, has been the provision made for the soldiers to write. Tables,
pens, ink, paper and envelopes have been supplied in abundance. These
were of great advantage to soldiers living in tents, and the work of
the Association in this respect cannot be too highly commended.

The specially religious work of the Association as I have seen it,
consists of three divisions: First, the meetings in their tents, held
nightly and on Sundays. These have been vigorously carried on and well
attended,