ing
excuses for them, and so my words fell like lame birds to the ground,
and the tragedy of it was that both of us knew there was no good
excuse. It was the most pitiable case I saw in France. God pity the
careless mother or sister or father or friend who isn't willing to take
the time and make the sacrifice that is needed to at least supply a
letter three times a week to the lad who is willing to sacrifice his
all, if need be, that those at home may live in peace, free from the
horror of the Hun.

"Less Sweaters
And More Letters"

might very well be the motto of the folks here at home, for the boys
would profit more in the long run, both in their bodies and in their
souls. A censor friend of mine said to me one day: "If you ever get a
chance when you go home to urge the people of America to write, and
write, and write to their boys, do it with all your heart. You could
do no better service to the boys than that."

"What makes you feel so keenly about it?" I asked him, for he talked so
earnestly that it surprised me. Ordinarily you think of the censor as
utterly devoid of humanitarian impulses, just a sort of a machine to
slice out the really interesting things in your letters, a great human
blue pencil, or a great human pair of scissors. But here was a censor
that felt deeply what he was saying.

"I'll tell you," he replied, "it is because some of the letters that I
read which are going back home from lonely boys, begging somebody to
write to them; literally begging somebody, anybody, to write! It gets
my goat! I can't stand it. I often feel like adding a sentence to
some letters myself going home, telling them they ought to be ashamed
the way they treat their boys about letter-writing; but the rules are
so stringent that I must neither add to nor take from a letter save in
the line of my duties. I'd like to tell a few of the people back home
what I think of them, and I'd like for them to read some of the
heartaches that I read in the letters of the boys. Then they'd
understand how I feel about it."

I shall never forget my friend the wrestler when I asked how it was
that he kept so clean, and he replied: "The letters help a lot."

I have seen boys suffering from wounds of every description. I have
seen them lying in hospitals with broken backs. I have seen them with
blinded eyes. I have seen them with legs gone, and arms. I have seen
them when the doctors were dressing their wounds. I reme