large enough or good enough for the men. Daily we have need for better
equipment. This hut as it stands will serve from two thousand to three
thousand men in a day, but nothing is too good for these boys who are
coming here to suffer and die in this faraway land. You will send your
sons over from America to spend this cold winter on the bleak plains of
France in open bell tents. They will be fed on canned goods and corned
beef, and they will be housed in the most unattractive towns of France,
where there is absolutely no interest or diversion apart from drink and
women. You can hardly realize what it means to sit down in a homelike
place, to get a hot cup of tea served on a white tablecloth. This is
the only home these boys will see in France, and they will either come
here or go to the red light resorts. I wish I could tell the men of
America what their boys will face here, what they will suffer, what
temptations will assail them. The best equipment you can give them is
not good enough, for the people at home little realize to what a life
their boys are coming, and what hardships will face them here in
France."

CHAPTER VI

THE CAMP OF THE PRODIGALS

We are in a natural amphitheater of the forest, near a big base
hospital, about seventy miles behind the lines in France. Always in
the stillness of the woods, even at this distance, one can hear the
intermittent boom of the big guns at the front, and the air is vibrant
on this summer evening. Beyond the wood lies the old drill ground of
Napoleon, which is used today as a field for final training for the
reenforcements for the front line.

In this wide open space in the woods at sundown the patients of the
hospital in their blue uniforms are gathering for the meeting. It is a
picturesque sight to see about eight hundred of them seated on the
grass, while an orchestra composed of their own men is playing before
the opening of the meeting. Who are these men before us? They are not
the wounded who have fallen on the field of honor, but the sick, and,
quite frankly, they all have venereal disease. The war has dragged
this moral menace so into the light of day that the times of prudish
silence and of fatal ignorance should have passed for all who are truly
concerned for the welfare of the soldier and who want to know his
actual conditions. We shall, therefore, in this chapter call a spade a
spade.

The eight hundred men gathered here are a small par