de
them to send more of their money home. Court martial and strict
punishment have been imposed for drunkenness, in the effort to grapple
with this evil.

Will the friends of our American boys away in France try to realize
just the situation that confronts them? Imagine a thousand healthy,
happy, reckless, irrepressible American youths put down in a French
village, without a single place of amusement but a drinking hall, and
no social life save such as they can find with the French girls
standing in the doorways and on the street corners. Think of all these
men shut up, month after month, through the long winter, with nothing
to do to occupy their evenings. Then you will begin to realize the
seriousness of the situation which the Young Men's Christian
Association is trying to meet.

Here on the village green stands a big tent, with the sign "The
American Y M C A," and the red triangle, which is already placed upon
more than seven hundred British, French, and American Association
centers in France. Inside the tent, as the evening falls, scores of
boys are sitting at the tables, writing their letters home on note
paper provided for them. Here are men playing checkers, dominoes, and
other games. Other groups are standing around the folding billiard
tables. A hundred men have taken out books from the circulating
library, while others are scanning the home papers and the latest news
from the front.

Our secretaries have been on the ground for a week, working daily from
five o'clock in the morning until midnight. They have unpacked their
goods and are doing a driving trade over the counter, to the value of
some $200 a day. In certain cases goods are sold at a loss, as it is
very hard indeed to get supplies under present war conditions. The
steamer "Kansan" was torpedoed, and sank with the whole first shipment
of supplies and equipment for the Y M C A huts in France.

Outside a baseball game is exciting rivalry between two companies;
while near the door of the tent a ring is formed and the men are
cheering pair after pair as they put on the boxing gloves and with good
humor are learning to take some rather heavy slugging. Poor boys, they
will have to stand much worse punishment than this before the winter is
over. Just beside the present tent there is being rushed into position
a big Y M C A hut which will accommodate temporarily a thousand men,
before it is taken to pieces and shipped to some new center. Th