Has this country-wide campaign to stimulate recruiting succeeded? The answer to the question has been confused by the impending draft. There are many who are ready and are willing to answer the call for service but who have adopted the policy of wait and see; they will not volunteer if there is a chance of others being slackers. On the other hand, many may volunteer because they want to avoid a draft. Yet the figures are heartening; in some cases they are surprising. The States which have been quickest to send their quotas have been those where a few months ago the pacifist spirit was believed to be strongest. Within a month the navy and the marine corps were filled to their authorized war strength. The navy obtained its needed 37,000 men in April; the marine corps its 4,000; but as a bill was pending to

enough. Then we came to war, and yet war seemed far away. Everywhere over the country flags were flying, but no enemy seemed to be at hand. For the army, to bring it to war strength, approximately 183,000 men were needed; for the National Guard another 100,000; for the navy 37,000; for the marine corps 4,000. To persuade 300,ooo men to leave their vocations and enter the national service is no easy task. Moreover, they must be picked young men, men of good character, without. physical blemish. And then, of those who volunteer hardly half can be taken, so high are the standards set for the soldier or the sailor. In the army, about one-quarter of the men who apply are passed as fit; in the navy, one-half; in the marine corps, one-third. Of these a small percentage are lost by their failure to report for actual service.

A female patriot on Fifth Avenue.

increase the navy strength to 150,000 and the marine corps to about 30,000, the recruiting continued. The army has been the slowest to fill, but then the army's demands are the greatest. Its authorized war strength is 287,000 men, and when war came 183,898 were needed. In one month 42,875 were enlisted, and at this writing the enlistments are about 2,000 each day. At such a rate it will take nearly three months to fill the ranks. The answer is obvious. Universal service is a necessity. The War Department estimates that without compulsory service a year would be necessary to raise 500,000, and this with a continued campaign of advertising and speech-making such as has been going on everywhere these past weeks.

If a million men did not spring to arms between sunset and sunrise, it would seem that a million women went out next day to find them, and they have been at it unrelentingly ever since. Over the entire

country an organized effort was begun to bring home to the men of fighting age a realization of the country's danger and a sense of their personal obligation. The fact that such a campaign was needed, even though the country's mind was confused by the pending army legislation, is in itself evidence of the vitalness of universal service. We have disregarded Washington's warning to prepare for war in time of peace, and now we are paying for it.

In every city park the recruiting-tents

have sprung up; through every city street roll the motors bearing huge posters telling you the country needs you; through the day everywhere are seen little crowds listening to the calls to patriotism. In such a campaign there seem

Willing workers for the navy.

to be two great factors of appeal. One is the little brown tent, with before it the up-standing, clear-eyed, clear-skinned soldier or sailor in his natty uniform. They are real men, these of our army and navy, and they have a fine contempt or pity for the pasty-faced young civilians who question them; they treat them as missionaries would who would lead them from the Gehenna of the shop to the Promised Land, where all men have bold chests and on their sleeves the stripes of honorable service.

The second factor is woman. Such a campaign is no place for a man unless he is in uniform or long past the fighting age. When you are wandering along a street and stop in a little crowd gathered by a recruiting-motor, if you are conscious that your chest measures up to requirements, that your weight and height are in right proportion, that you are sound in wind and limb, that you really would make a proper soldier or sailor, then you do not like to be told by an anæmic young man in spectacles that your country needs you. You resent it. But when a woman, a motherly looking woman of fifty, suddenly reaches out a shepherd's crook and takes possession of you that is different. So it happens that on the women has fallen a great part of the work. The men will listen to the women to the women calling for protection. So we have seen them in thousands riding the remotest streets in placarded motors; seen them at the street corners explaining the country's urgent needs; heard them from the plat

forms of great halls, women of all classes, arousing the dormant spirit of patriotism.

The noon-hour is when the recruiting army labors hardest. Then the workers of the shops and factories are on the streets, and they are quick to gather at any impromptu meeting. In City Hall Park I saw as many as two hundred before the brown tent being harangued by a small woman. She lashed them unmercifully. She had a fine flow of irony.

She told them that they looked like men who wanted to be safe and offered to enlist them on ships that would stay in the harbor, if only they would enlist and free real men for war. They heard her good-naturedly, and when she had finished a handful did go into the tent to enrollbut to enroll to fight.

On Chambers Street, New York, there is a great hall where meetings are held daily at noon. Around the walls recruiting-stations have been established, and at the door a bugler calls to the passing throngs. The meetings there are large, reaching daily well into the thousand.

A pleasant detail.

The