women, the youth of both sexes as well as those of more mature years, all who are physically and mentally fit.

This is the real spirit which animates the Plattsburg movement. Plattsburg is simply a term, a generic term, which applies to all camps where the Plattsburg spirit and the Plattsburg method of training prevail. The military training aims to prepare the man to discharge his citizenship duty better in war, and to impress upon him the fact that he is one of the responsible units of the nation.

The Plattsburg camps were established in 1913. The second series of camps were drawing to a close in August, 1914, when the present great war began. The establishment of these training camps was in no way connected with the war, although their growth has been stimulated by it, as the war has enabled many of our people to visualize the possibilities of the future, and has brought home to them a realizing sense of the need of a peace in surance in the form of national preparedness.

But preparedness for military service was only one of the things aimed at at Plattsburg. A governing motive behind it was national service, citizenship responsibility, an appreciation of the basic principle of democracy that hand in hand with equality of privilege and opportunity goes equality of obligation. The Plattsburg training is not intended merely as a preparation for war of the men who at tend camp, but has in view the building up of an adequate appreciation on the part of all who undertake the training of how much there is to learn: that men cannot become trained soldiers by donning a uniform and seizing arms; that the soldier's art, like any other, can be mastered only by earnest effort; that time and devotion are required. The man who serves at these camps becomes an active agency for the dissemination of the truth concerning training, and an earnest advocate of that well-thought-out, done-in-time-of-peace preparedness which will be an insurance against war. He has learned the folly of sending untrained men to meet men

trained and disciplined, and he urges training in order that we may be prepared, knowing that if we are prepared, the chance of attack will be greatly diminished, and, if war is forced upon us, the training will enable us better to meet the stress and strain, and more effectively to discharge our plain obligation, and to do this with a minimum loss in life and treasure.

There has been a feeling that those attending Plattsburg represent a certain class of the population, that all who go there expect to be officers, that the mass of the people are not represented. This assumption is not correct. Every effort has been made to bring into the camps all elements of our population, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile, upper and lower social class, the native born, the son of the alien and the foreign born, representatives of labor and of capital, in fact, men of all classes. The only requirements insisted upon have been a reasonably sound physique and sufficient education to make it possible for the man to follow intelligently and profitably the prescribed

A man wholly without education could not take the Plattsburg course with advantage to himself or without great disadvantage to those associated with him. Where evidence is lacking of graduation from a suitable school or college, other evidence of ability to absorb readily the principles has been accepted, such as the man's standing in his community, his attainments in civil life. If he has reached a point that indicates that he must possess initiative and a certain amount of ability, he is accepted, and little is asked concerning his education except to ascertain if he has the most elementary educational qualifications and is of good character. In other words, he must know how to read and write and he must have learned something of elementary mathematics. The door has been opened just as wide as possible. We want men with the hearts and purposes of men. All we ask in the way of education is enough to enable them to follow the course intelligently.

On arriving in camp every effort is

Major Halstead Dorey, in command of the

made to break up school, college, social, and business groups. The men are assigned to organizations in small detachments, and, on arriving at the organizations, again distributed, so that the squad (eight men) as eventually made up represents very frequently pretty much every element of our social order. The camp-life is an absolutely straight democracy. All men have equal privileges, and are given an equal opportunity, and every one is charged with an equal responsibility for prompt and thorough performance of duty. The man's past disappears, his present social or business status neither advances nor retards him. He rises or falls entirely on his own merits. He is simply Private X of Company D, with the same opportunity as every other man in the company and no more. He is dressed exactly like his neighbor, who may have been his employer in some great bank, or may be the man who drove his machine last year; the professor and the student are shoulder to shoulder. All stand on exactly the same footing. All have before them the same opportunity. They are clothed alike, fed alike, and follow the same plan of training. They soon come to judge one another very soundly. A man's habits, his

Plattsburg camp, addressing the "rookies"

language, his performance of duty, come under critical observation. If a man measures up as honest, hard-working, and competent, he stands upon as high a level as any man in the camp. There is absolutely nothing of class grouping or class distinctions. In other words, we have here a grouping of very many elements of the American population under conditions of absolute equality. As a matter of fact, the well-known man is rather at a disadvantage. There is a fine spirit of loyalty on the part of the men to their officers. Most of these men are for the first time in their lives receiving first-hand. impressions of typical army officers, and the contact is helpful to the army and enlightening to the civilian.

Plattsburg, in a word, represents a condition which would be general if we should ever adopt universal training. In a limited way (limited only because its membership is limited) it illustrates what could be done in the way of making America a real melting-pot, through universal training in citizenship obligation, under conditions where all men are brought together upon terms of absolute equality, and where they stand or fall solely on their own merit or through their

own shortcomings. They live amid surroundings that teach obligation for national service in peace and war, respect for the flag, the uniform, and the constituted authorities. They learn to do things promptly as told and when told. They learn to obey, and consequently to command. The rigid discipline of the camp applied to all alike is especially beneficial to American youth. The instruction and lectures are intended to impress upon the men under training a deep sense of individual obligation for service, to bring home to them (and to most of them for the first time) a true knowledge of their country's history, especially from the military point of view, and an appreciation of the needs of organization to meet the conditions of organized preparedness which exist throughout the world today among all peoples who appreciate citizenship obligation.

The camp-life as well as the instruction and training tend to implant habits of promptness and thoroughness in the discharge of duty, respect for authority, and scrupulous regard for the rights of others. The training tends to improve the physical condition of those who attend, and almost without exception they leave camp feeling that they have had the most valuable and useful experience of their livesan experience which impresses upon them what a great good could be accomplished if the system were of general application. The new-comers, the sons of the foreign born, often for the first time in their lives, come in close contact with the native born. They are for the first time in their lives shoulder to shoulder, engaged in the discharge of a common obligation. The association is beneficial and helpful to both, for each learns to appreciate the good qualities of the other, and they find many. They find that they have more in common than they had ever realized, that many distinctions are largely artificial, and the real measure of a man is the way he does the day's work. The new-comer has brought home to him the fact that he has an obligation in this country just as binding, just as far-reaching, as were the obli

gations of citizenship in the nation from which he came. He has impressed upon him also the necessity of receiving such training as will enable him to discharge his obligation effectively and efficiently.

In the Plattsburg idea you will have much of the fuel for the fire which will make America a real melting-pot, and such a melting-pot she must be if she is ever to go through the strain of any great national upheaval, involving a struggle with one of the great and highly organized powers of to-day. The Plattsburg idea and the Plattsburg spirit encourage arbitration, cultivate a desire for peace with honor, a belief that it is desirable to keep the peace if it can be kept without breaking the faith. The Plattsburg training tends to sweep away much of the fog of conceit and misinformation which has obscured our view, and to shatter many of the beliefs which a shallow teaching of history has built up in American youth. The spirit is conservative; it is strong in faith that the nation can be prepared and yet tolerant, armed and yet free from the spirit of aggression. It teaches that the real sinews of war are not gold and numbers, but the bodies and souls of men trained and disciplined and backed by a sense of individual obligation and a spirit of sacrifice, and that without the latter a people are but sheep ready for the slaughter, a mass without a soul.

It welcomes the poor and the representatives of the working-class with even more cordiality than it does the well-to-do, for it recognizes that the heavy burden of citizenship obligation falls upon the great mass of the people in peace and war, and that this mass is made up of those who work that they may live.

As I see it, it is a movement full of promise, and means much for the future of the nation. It is the forerunner of universal obligatory training and service under conditions where all who are physically and mentally fit must play their part, share and share alike. In a word, it breathes the purest spirit of democracy. Its effect will be preparedness without militarism, strength without aggression.

things have an office in this world, and tried to locate this preposterous, lofty creature while she beamed upon him.

"I'm San. Are you the new cook?" he asked.

"I am the same," she admitted.

"Are you a good cook?" he continued. "Aggie was n't. She drank."

"God be above us all! And whatever did herself do with a cook that drank in this place?"

"I don't know. Aggie got married. Cooks do," said Sanford, much entertained by this person. Her deep voice was soft, emerging from the largest, reddest mouth. he had ever seen. The size of her feet made him dubious as to her humanity. "Anyhow," he went on, "tell mother I'm not clean yet. What 's your name?"

"Onnie," said the new cook. "An' would this be the garden?"

"Silly, what did you think?"

"I'm a stranger in this place, Master San, an' I know not which is why nor forever after."

Sanford's brain refused this statement entirely, and he blinked.

"I guess you 're Irish," he meditated. "I am. Do you be gettin' out of your tub now, an' Onnie 'll dry you," she offered.

"I can't," he said firmly; "you 're a lady."

"A lady? Blessed Mary save us from sin! A lady? Myself? I'm no such thing in this world at all; I 'm just Onnie Killelia."

She appeared quite horrified, and Sanford was astonished. She seemed to be a woman, for all her height and the extent of her hands.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"As I am a Christian woman," said Onnie. "I never was a lady, nor could I ever be such a thing."

"Well," said Sanford, "I don't know, but I suppose you can dry me.”

He climbed out of his tub, and this novel being paid kind attention to his directions. He began to like her, especially as her hair was of a singular, silky blackness, suggesting dark mulberries, delightful

to the touch. He allowed her to kiss him and to carry him, clothed, back to the house on her shoulders, which were as hard as a cedar trunk, but covered with green cloth sprinkled with purple dots. "And herself's in the libr'y drinkin' tea," said his vehicle, depositing him on the veranda. "An' what might that be you'd be holdin'?"

"Just a rattle off a snake."

She examined the six-tiered, smoky rattle with a positive light in her dull, black eyes and crossed herself.

"A queer country, where they do be bellin' the snakes! I heard the like in the gover'ment school before I did come over the west water, but I misbelieved the same. God's ways is strange, as the priests will be sayin'."

"You can have it," said Sanford, and ran off to inquire of his mother the difference between women and ladies.

Rawling, riding slowly, came up the driveway from the single lane of his village, and found the gigantic girl sitting on the steps so absorbed in this sinister toy that she jumped with a little yelp when he dismounted.

"What have you there?" he asked, using his most engaging smile.

""T is a snake's bell, your Honor, which Master San did be givin' me. 'T is welcome indeed, as I lost off my holy medal, bein' sick, forever on the steamship crossin' the west water."

"But-can you use a rattle for a holy medal?" said Rawling.

"The gifts of children are the blessin's of Mary's self," Onnie maintained. She squatted on the gravel and hunted for one of the big hair-pins her jump had loosened, then used it to pierce the topmost shell. Rawling leaned against his saddle, watching the huge hands, and Pat Sheehan, the old coachman, chuckled, coming up for the tired horse.

"You'll be from the West," he said, "where they string sea-shells."

"I am, an' you'll be from Dublin, by the sound of your speakin'. So was my father, who is now drowned forever, and with his wooden leg," she added mourn