to have entailed a corresponding withdrawal of men, as might have been forecast; on the contrary, it is more likely to cause a doubling of the effort involved. Again, the innumerable women's associations and men's orders (some of them national or international in scope)—all phenomena of the new division of leisure -have multiplied by large figures the total of informal jobs. Thus the barrier between the former "leisure" and "labor" groups seems to be vanishing.

Curiously enough, a leveling process appears to be going on in the enjoyment of leisure as well as in its allotment. Without much distinction of class, people seeking diversion read books and magazines, ride about the earth in automobiles, and listen in on electrical waves. The moving pictures attract all social types and all ages. And the night life of cities, which has, as might have been expected, developed tremendously with the extension of the sixteen-hour day, tends more and more perhaps under the influence of jazz and bootlegging-to become stabilized on a broad social basis.

Nowhere, however, has the tendency to democratize the diversions of leisure been more marked than in sports. Formerly sportsmanship was chiefly a matter of caste, and being a good sport was synonymous with being a "gentleman." For sports cost time even more than money, and the old army of steady workers lacked both. As the equalitarian economic process has gone on by which the "gentleman" has come to have less time and money and the "laborer" more, it was natural that the classes previously excluded from

these forms of amusement should have turned to them as a means of writing off part of their accumulating surplus. The major popular sports-swimming and skating, football and baseball, cricket and golf and tennis-have all received new accessions as a result of the extension of leisure.

Yet although there has been a substantial influx from the "lower" and "middle" classes into the group that goes in for sports at first-hand, its total is still small in comparison with the whole population. Whether this is due to lack of facilities, to slowness of adaptation to change, or to a psychological complex-a feeling. on the part of the great realistic majority that sports are in some sense childish affairs, a playing at life in which full-grown men appear rather foolish it is not possible to determine. However this may be, it is clear that the bulk of modern mankind, even with ample time and money at its disposal, prefers to take its sports vicariously and so comparatively economically. Entire cityfuls delight in beguiling an occasional Saturday afternoon or an evening off in witnessing a football match or prize-fight for one citizen who cares to devote months to the training which might fit him to participate. Large numbers are willing to spend odd moments in reading of the exploits of a Lenglen or a Nurmi, but few desire to go further toward emulating them. Thus the net results in time expended are much smaller than might have been looked for. Sports have become a democratic but a limited resource to be reckoned with in the reduction of the sixteen-hour day.

Only one section of society appears to have no leisure problem, and that is the children. As the number of offspring in many classes has decreased, the parents' margin of leisure has widened. Not so the children's. What with the elaboration of education and the organization of amusements, the modern child has scarcely a moment that he can call his own. While a great to-do has been made over the curtailment of the working-day of adults, little notice has been taken of the mounting hours of their juniors. In special cases as, for example, the not very large proportion of children who are employed in factories certain protective laws have been passed. Something should now be done about the schedules of the poor little rich folk and the moderately well off, who go to school all winter and to "camp" all summer, and carry, besides, two or three kinds of dancing and rhythmics, art crafts and home crafts, music, scout work, and half a dozen sports. If these conditions are not soon alleviated, the children may take matters into their own hands and form unions to revolt against their intolerable hours.

In every other section of society, the menace of leisure raises its head. And as organization and mechanical invention show no signs of abatement, it will probably grow more rather than less serious until the sixteen-hour day is left far behind.

22

One of the anomalies of the present situation is, as was said at the outset, that virtually no one except for an occasional philosopher-ad

mits the existence of this problem. The working-man never speaks and apparently never thinks of his sixteen-hour day; his talk is still all in terms of his old wage-earning period. Professional men, and other types of laborers with declining schedules, continue to assure the world that they have less and less "time"whatever they may mean by that.

Now, this is all very interesting psychologically, however reprehensible it may be from the point of view of an accurate statement of facts. It is possible that this general denial of leisure is due primarily to the slowness of human adjustment. After a new idea is announced to the public by scientist or artist, a decent interval is always allowed to elapse before it is hospitably received. Perhaps we have not yet had time to become conscious enough of the new employment situation to express it in the new terms. Or possibly the failure to speak of the current sixteen-hour day is simply a sign of the common unwillingness of mankind to name any uncomfortable reality. Often denial of distasteful fact is a venial sin. But it becomes another matter when it prevents men from taking measures essential for their welfare.

From the brief inventory that has just been given, it is clear that our resources for the advantageous use of our present extra-job hours are anything but adequate not to speak of the still longer hours with which such modern Napoleons as Henry Ford threaten us. If we are to solve our problem of leisure, it is high time that we set about facing it.

gence Section, and Colonel A. L. Conger, during the war a key man in the Intelligence Section at G.H.Q., and now American Military Attaché in Germany.

For more than a month, at the very time when the Allies were preparing and beginning to deliver the blows that ended the war, the Germans were kept guessing, and they usually guessed wrong, where and when the great new American Army, totaling more than a million strapping young doughboys, was going to strike. Right up to the armistice, they were not sure what was coming next. The deception was so complete that even American officers who were to lead in these "battles" were in the dark-as they had to be to insure success.

In August, 1918, almost everybody in France was talking about the big American attack on the St.-Mihiel salient that was then in preparation. German spies, less a joke in France than here, were busily reporting the talk, and Hindenburg and Ludendorff were getting ready. General Pershing and General Pétain agreed that something must be done to draw a herring across the trail and make the Germans believe that after all they would not be attacked at St.-Mihiel.

Soon afterward, about August 25, Captain de Viel Castel, French liaison officer at American Press Headquarters, returned to Meaux from French Grand Quartier and told a group of American newspaper correspondents, quite confidentially, a military secret. The American First Army, which was then being organized for its initial independent. blow, might attain brilliant results,

he said, by an offensive in Alsace, 125 miles southeast of St.-Mihiel. The Americans might push through and capture Mulhouse, on what was then German soil, only ten miles from the Rhine! Not only would the moral effect be great, but the wrecking of the Rhine bridges by shell-fire would seriously cripple German communications.

"Of course," he cautioned, "I do not say that the Americans will do that, but it is an interesting possibility, and I am sure that Captain Morgan would pass carefully worded despatches.'

And Captain Morgan did pass, for such as wrote them, despatches to American newspapers, expatiating on the great military and political results that would come from a successful American offensive in Alsace. Let us hope the German Intelligence Section read those despatches.

The despatches indicated as the place of attack a natural breach in the mountain wall between France and Germany, a broad pass called the Gap of Belfort. On the French side of the Gap was the historic fortress city of Belfort; on the German side, Mulhouse, then, Teutonically, Mülhausen. From the dome-like summit of the Ballon d'Alsace, a near-by height, one can look through the Gap and see the Rhine, dimly beyond.

The Belfort Gap was the point on the entire Western Front nearest to that river of story and strategy, and it was also the only point from Metz to Switzerland where an Allied army could advance over level ground. Prospect of an attack there would give the Germans a real scare, would

be a most unwelcome war baby for the famous Alsatian storks to lay upon their door-step, but up to August 27, 1918, they had had no reason to expect anything of the kind.

That night, Major-General Omar Bundy, commanding the Sixth American Army Corps, sat at dinner with his staff in Bourbonne-lesBains, in the American training area, about seventy-five miles northwest of the Gap of Belfort. General Bundy was in charge of training several divisions recently arrived in France. It was understood that some of them might participate in the American attack at St.-Mihiel then scheduled for September 10 or thereabouts.

Then came a rap on the door, and in walked Captain Howe, bearing important confidential despatches from G.H.Q., and, with them, mystery and drama.

So important were the despatches that General Bundy and BrigadierGeneral Briant H. Wells, his chief of staff, left the room to read them. They found that General Conner, acting for General Pershing, directed General Bundy to take his staff at once to Belfort where, at the Grand Hôtel et du Tonneau d'Or (the Golden Cask, fit name for a mysterious rendezvous), he would receive from Colonel Conger the special instructions of General Pershing. The orders commanded absolute secrecy, and were so worded that General Bundy and General Wells could think but one thing: they were being sent on a mission of greatest moment. They returned to the dining-room, where the corps staff grew silent as they saw their generals' grave faces. "I wish to see Colonel Baltzell,

Colonel Mackall, and Colonel Barden-at once," said General Bundy. These three officers he directed to be ready to start next morning for an unknown destination where they would stay an indeterminate period of time, and not a word to a soul about it. When they set forth in the morning, the three colonels, General Bundy and General Wells, Captain Verney E. Pritchard, and a French liaison officer, they left Colonel Charles H. Bridges in charge, to continue the training of the several divisions in that area.

"But where are you going?" asked Colonel Bridges.

"We can't tell you," said General Wells, and the cars drove away.

At the Tonneau d'Or in Belfort they found Colonel Conger, imperturbable, almost professorial in manner, but with keen eyes behind the mask. He at once impressed upon General Bundy the need for secrecy, and then told him there had been so much loose talk about the St.Mihiel offensive that the news had leaked into Germany, and General Pershing had decided to call off that attack. The actual attack would be made about the same date, September 10, but through the Gap of Belfort, with the Rhine as objective. General Bundy and his staff were at once to occupy headquarters in the center of town that had been engaged for them by Captain Griffith and to prepare plans for the attack.

It would be a powerful blow, Colonel Conger disclosed, as befitted the first all-American attack of the war. Some two hundred and fifty thousand men, with a strong artillery, would take part. The seven front-line divisions would be the