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There are in turn subcommittees on car service, military equipment standards, military transportation accounting, military passenger and freight tariffs, each of these committees being composed of transportation officials of high rank. The special committee has adopted the broadest attitude in connection with the public interest. It has, among other things, declared that an emergency exists which requires that coal be given preference in car supply and movement; it has issued necessary instructions to the railways that the movement of ore be preferential, second only to coal; it has caused to be modified the car service rules to facilitate the free movement of freight so as to permit a larger latitude in the handling of box-cars in the interest of national efficiency as distinguished from that of individual railroads; and the special committee has certified to the Council of National Defense that in its judgment certain preferences should be given to the movement of fuel, as follows:

First Fuel for the United States Government.

Second: Fuel for the roads upon which mines are located.

Third Fuel for steam railroads other than those upon which mines are located. Fourth: Fuel for other purposes.

The special defense committee is grinding all the time, and aside from domestic transportation problems has occupied itself with such matters as the enlistment of reserve engineer regiments composed of skilled railway workers to aid in the rehabilitation of the railways of France as well as in the operation of the French railways behind the English lines; and the organization of the Railroad Commission to Russia. The American Electric Railway Association, acting in co-operation with and at the instance of Commissioner Willard, has likewise completed a close-knit organization, under the presidency of General George H. Harries.

Also under Mr. Willard's committee, and through the instrumentality of Theodore N. Vail, president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, there has been perfected a co-ordination for the government's needs of the telephone and telegraph systems of the country so as to insure complete co-operation

not only between the government and the companies but between the companies themselves with regard to communications and censorship of communications. Government toll calls have been given precedence over commercial messages. This act alone necessitated the special drilling of some 12,000 long-line operators in different parts of the United States. In Washington the long-distance wires have been increased from 148 to 294. Swift telephone service has been arranged between Washington and the headquarters of every naval district in the United States; provision has been made for handling telephone calls promptly between the various Army department headquarters and the State capitols and State mobilization camps in each military department; more than 10,000 miles of special systems have already been taken from commercial use and devoted exclusively to the service of the Navy, Agricultural, and other executive departments; in Washington an entirely new central office with an ultimate capacity of 10,000 lines is being installed; plans have been made for providing telephone connections at approximately 100 lighthouses and 200 coastguard stations; and with regard to the Navy even more extensive plans, which it would be against the public interest to describe at this time, have been put into effect with brilliant success.

Under Julius Rosenwald there is working a fluid and effective committee in co-operation with the purchasing departments of the War and Navy Departments and assisting in the procurement of necessary clothing, equipage, and food. The committee is composed of six men chosen by Mr. Rosenwald from different lines of business who are devoting their entire time without compensation. The Committee on Supplies touches many angles of the government's life, but its activities may best be instanced by citing how, through the employment of modern business methods of buying, it was able to save the War and Navy Departments at least $2,000,000 on a recent $17,000,000 purchase of shoes. This was brought about chiefly through the elimination of the old system of advertising for bids with the resulting creation of fictitious prices in the market. Mr. Rosenwald's own

vast business sees very little of him nowadays since war is at our doors.

Bernard M. Baruch, a New York financier with a touch of genius in handling men, has organized the field as to raw materials, minerals, and metals in a great company of industries from alcohol to zinc. Mr. Baruch first announced his presence in the tremendous task of mobilizing American industry by procuring 45,000,000 pounds of copper for the Army and Navy at about half the current market price, saving the government in the neighborhood of $10,000,000. He then persuaded the zinc interests to deliver 25,000,000 pounds of zinc at two-thirds of the market price, and he procured for the Navy several hundred thousand tons of shipping-plates and other materials at remarkable concessions. When ship-plates were sold at $160 a ton, this indefatigable worker of industrial miracles obtained them for the Navy at $58 a ton. He then, by methods known only to himself, purchased for the government its needs of aluminum at 271⁄2 cents per pound when the market price was 60 cents per pound. Samuel Gompers, spokesman in America for organized labor, sits in the Advisory Commission. It has been his dream that American labor should from the start of the war hold up the hands of the government of the United States, and to a remarkable, almost incredible, degree he has made this come true. He knew that one of England's tragedies in the early days of the great war was that organized labor did not come in until a year had gone by, and he wanted with all his heart to have no such thing happen here. There is not space to recite all that Mr. Gompers has accomplished, but perhaps the most outstanding achievement of his committee on labor of the Advisory Commission has been its action looking to the maintenance of existing standards of employment in our industrial plants and transportation systems and recommending that changes therein should be made only after investigation and approval by the Council of National Defense. There can be little question of the sincerity of Mr. Gompers in his endeavors to bring labor, capital, and the government together into one happy and single-minded family for the successful prosecution of the war.

Under the supervision of Commissioner

Coffin are concentrated the highly geared activities of a body known as the Committee on Automotive Transport, which deals with truck specifications for the War Department (in fact, it has practically written those specifications), the training of truck-masters and chauffeurs, steel equipment for military truck tires, motorization of field-artillery, and volunteer motor-truck companies-to cite only a few things. This committee is composed of leading representatives of the chief national motor-car, aircraft, and farm-tractor organizations of the country. Through the representation of the Society of Automotive Engineers alone, more than one thousand engineers of the finest training are ready to be swung to practically all of the mechanical transport needs of the government, from the laying out of designs to the officering and maintenance of motor transport units.

Doctor Hollis Godfrey directs the Committee on Engineering and Education. He is considering the development of a comprehensive method for the solution of problems of engineering and education in the United States brought sharply to the fore under war-time conditions. His consulting section touches general engineering as relating to manufacture and construction; his operating section is concerned with the consummation of policies outlined by the consulting section; the general engineering section deals with the development of engineering as related to war; the production engineering section. handles specific problems of production engineering as they relate to certain groups of fundamental industries; and the educational section is active in the coordination of the educational resources of the country and their connection with the national government.

Even in what is only an outline of the labors of the Council and the Advisory Commission there should not be forgotten the part which two members of the Council, Secretaries Lane and Wilson, and two members of the Advisory Commission, Messrs. Willard and Gompers, took in the settlement of the recent threatened railroad strike. These four men were the government's mediators, and the outcome of the negotiation is too well known to demand a detailed statement.

The work of the Council of National

Defense and the Advisory Commission is largely carried on through the assistance of civilians who serve without compensation. The really vast machinery raised up in four months' time performs its functions with a paid staff of less than one hundred persons, nine-tenths of whom are stenographers, clerks, and messengers. The advisory commissioners receive no salaries, and there are.constantly at work in the Munsey Building in Washington more than one hundred men of the same

type giving all of their time in the same way. In addition, there are several hundred more men of similar caliber and training who are rendering kindred service during more than half of the working day and who are continually coming and going to and from Washington. It is likely that there never has been such a superbly equipped volunteer, non-partisan company of specialists working so unselfishly to a common end in the history of any government.

OUT OF THE EAST
By Harriet Prescott Spofford
How often in a summer dawning,

When life too lovely seems to leave,
And under many a sylvan awning

Grass and the sun their wonders weave,
When everywhere the rose is blowing,
The thin cloud on the azure flowing,
And ragrance floats from bloom and briar,
I think of the old Flemish friar
Who, after fierce and wasting years,-
He like a firebrand quenched in tears,
Brought back from the wild Tartar chiefs
Fantastic hint of strange beliefs.

There is a certain province lying-
Rubriquis, this Franciscan said,-
Beyond Cathay a bird's quick flying,
By airy forces tenanted.

And who, through any chance whatever,

May win those parallels he never

In that serene shall find him older,

Or feel the fires of life fall colder;

Though white moons wax and wane, and stars

Through æons drive their golden cars

To other centres, he shall stay
Fortunate, poised on that rare day.

If any of us should discover,-
Sailing forever-easting seas,-
That happy land of loved and lover,
'Twould be on mornings such as these.
Yet well we ween the storied sailing
Comes only with the daylight failing,
Where a more ancient province lying
Beyond our living and our dying,
Beyond all boundless atmospheres,
All gleaming tops and misty meres,
Sets the high soul forever free

N

ADELAIDE

[DR. BROOKE'S LOVE-AFFAIRS]

By Norval Richardson

ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER BIGGS

one has ever offered a satisfactory explanation of what it is in certain men that makes all women fall in love with them. The ladies in question could: oh, yes, if they would; but the fact remains that they won't. Balanced reasoning and every-day common sense would assert that the man must be good-looking, fairly intelligent, and of course interesting. It is quite ridiculous to imagine a woman loving a bore, until one sees it happening every day; as we do, you know we do. Again, intelligent women, pretty women, charming women, can knock the foundations from any well-thought-out conclusion by marrying a man you would have sworn they wouldn't deign to notice; furthermore, they appear immensely happy, and, say what you will, a woman rarely bluffs-if the word may be used in such a connection-about loving her husband. If she does, you know it; if she doesn't, you also know it. Of course, I make exception of the cases where it is to her interest to make you think she does. . . The whole matter is vastly puzzling. I have long ago given up trying to understand, to my own satisfaction, why Mrs. X married Mr. Z. She is the only one who could explain and, as I have said, she won't; knowing all the time, sly Mrs. X, that you wouldn't understand if she told you. All of which, believe it or not, is à propos of Dr. Brooke.

Information, or gossip, if you will have it that way, gathered while I knew him, and from those who knew him before I did, all pointed to the astounding fact that no woman had known him never so slightly of course those are excepted who had good reason to turn a deaf ear to romance without having loved him; calmly, sweetly, passionately, according to the temperament of the lady in ques

tion. And yet, at first glance, even at second or third for that matter, he was the last man under the sun you would have taken for one of many love-affairs. He wasn't handsome, no one in the wildest delirium of love could have called him that; his charm was at first quite negative; and still more, I doubt very much if he had any imagination to speak of. His eyes were rather good; big, brown, gentle; in fact, now that I think of him, that seems to express him best: gentle. Gentle eyes, gentle voice, gentle manners. I could tell you a thousand instances of his gentleness, his modesty, his kindness, and I will, only now I am trying to present him to you as he appeared in the flesh. It is tremendously difficult. If you don't happen to see him right you won't understand at all, and, bless me, if I know how to set you right. In figure he was long. Long expresses some people; tall, others. Dr. Brooke was long, perhaps six feet and a little more; neither thin nor fat, with always a swinging sort of motion in his walk that suggested outdoor life. His clothes were negligible. To save me, I can't remember what he ever had on, except that he wore a low turndown collar and a made-up black silk tie. You are placing him as a typical politician from the West or South, and have gone entirely in the wrong direction. He didn't suggest that in the least. Why, I can't exactly explain. It is frightful to say it, and if you don't want to hear you had better put a finger in each ear: the most characteristic things that I can remember about his apparel were his white socks and low black shoes. But of course there was a reason for my remembering them. Now I have said the worst. As far as age went, he was somewhere between thirty and fifty-a matter depending on the weather and how he was going on; always a mannish age, suggesting

neither boyishness nor senility. All this is in tone with my first impression of him; naturally, as our friendship developed and I became an onlooker, sometimes an assistant, in his numerous affairs, my impressions changed; I saw other sides, unsuspected charms; I even grew to think I understood why all those foolish women "carried on" so about him.

The first day in the village brought me to his office, announced to me by a weath-er-beaten sign nailed to a weather-beaten fence before a weather-beaten house set back in a tangled garden and watched over by a huge oak, not in the least weather-beaten, though worlds older than the house. Let in by a negro woman, quite as old as the tree and equally spreading and comfortable, I was conducted to the room which served for his office. Dear me, that office! I won't begin to describe it to you. Just fancy heaps and heaps of bottles in quaint old cabinets and bookcases, a long table littered with pamphlets and papers, a desk also littered, old steel engravings on the walls, faded wall-paper showing the path of the sun, chairs covered with horsehair in varying degrees of shabbiness, and, in the midst of all this, Dr. Brooke, poring over a volume bound in rusty calf, one hand lost in the shock of his reddishbrown hair, the other holding a lighted brier pipe. Good tobacco smoke filled the room, coming in a long column from out of his stubby, reddish-brown mustache. He met me quietly, graciously, and indicated a chair. I remember the grip of his hand as being warm and genial. Somehow I felt at home at once, and sat down with an unexpected sensation of pleasure which kept me from stating the object of my call as promptly as I might have, though he appeared in no hurry to hear it. The pipe in his mouth testified to that. In the end I explained that I had come to his village in search of health and, due to my condition, or from force of recent habit, I had thought it advisable to call on him so that, in a case of emergency, he would know me and I know him. He said very little, but what he did say was in such a gentle tone and manner, expressed more through his wonderfully sympathetic glance than in words, that I left him with the feeling

that if things did come to the worst he would be a comfort to me, much more so than those tremendous swells I had left. behind, who rode in motors, made tests of my blood, charged me a year's income, and called themselves specialists.

I saw him once or twice during the month that followed, drawn to his office for no special reason than that I was lonely, beastly lonely, and thought I might pull off a sort of friendship with him. This idea, though of spontaneous growth, did not develop so rapidly. He did not give himself to you at once, you had to eke friendship out of him, bit by bit, which in the end may have been one of his charms. Every one treats lightly those who give themselves too intimately at first encounter.

II

AFTER several months I was installed in a little house half-way up a mountain. I had built it myself, not literally, but almost so; even if I didn't drive the nails, I saw them driven. I wanted to build it at the top of the mountain, and should have, only disagreeable necessity put a finger in the pie and said I must build where there was water, and water was to be found no farther up than half-way. At least, though, I have a view, a splendid, encouraging view, which has done quite as much for me, with its soul tonic, as the bracing air.

Things went on well enough while I was interested in getting the house finished and furnished, but after that was over and I had spent a month there alone, with only an old mountain woman as cook and nurse and everything else that was necessary, it began to be frightfully lonely. I had not yet trained myself to get along without people, nor had I developed the courage of loneliness. In the end I wrote to Adelaide to take pity on me, and come for a few weeks. Adelaide, you must know, is a cousin, a widow, and, above everything else, immensely smart. At least she calls herself so, and one sees her name grouped with those our journals are in the habit of dubbing "representative." She telegraphed: "Of course I'll come; but I must bring my maid." "You mustn't," I answered. "There's no

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