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broken through by throngs of spectators, who surrounded the automobile, waving flags and handkerchiefs.

The French Commissioners had arrived safely at Brest, the raval station in northwestern France, after a pleasant voyage devoid of encounters with mines or submarines. In leaving Washington they had chosen a night special train and had gone to the station singly, so as not to attract attention. In New York, the port of their embarkation, they boarded at midnight an armed ship, already in midstream, which sailed immediately. Marshal Joffre during the voyage home answered two hundred and thirty of some eight hundred unanswered letters, which had been brought on board by his aide. He and M. Viviani had received altogether a few thousand letters from Americans and regretted much that it had been impossible to answer all, particularly those from children. They undertook, however, to acknowledge all communications containing money, the total amount received for various charities in France, being about 2,000,000 francs.

One of M. Viviani's first duties in Paris was to present to President Poincaré a letter addrest to him by President Wilson. This missive, which was an unusually long document of its kind, was understood to embody the President's general acceptance of the French Government's suggestions as to the form American intervention should assume and to express profound sympathy with a friendly, altho informal, partnership between two nations. What the French call "matériel” — artillery, wagon-trains, motor-trucks, and drivers, all the technical corps that go to make up a combatant body-were to be supplied by the French for the present, but eventually, by the next spring at latest, it was expected that an American Expeditionary Force, several hundred thousand strong, as complete in every detail as the British army in 1916, would be in France. As matters turned out, there were in France by July 1, 1918, 1,000,000 American soldiers.

After the receptions in Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal-the latter on May 30-the public heard nothing of Mr. Balfour until June 8 when a cable dispatch from London announced that he had arrived home safely.

Mr.

Balfour's voyage had been so wrapt in secrecy, as far as the public were concerned, that when he arrived home few in England had been aware that he was due. His safety brought much satisfaction to officials in Washington who had surrounded his visit and that of M. Viviani and Marshal Joffre with greater precautions and secrecy than probably ever were undertaken before in this country. He spoke in terms of warmest appreciation of his visit. Said he, "I have been more kindly treated than any man ever was before."7

Abridged from a larger compilation on the same subject, published in a volume of 370 pages, by the Funk & Wagnalls Company, in the summer of 1917, under the title "Balfour, Viviani and Joffre." Compiled by Francis w. Halsey.

V

A GREATER FOOD SUPPLY, THE SELECTIVE DRAFT, RED CROSS AND OTHER WAR WORKERS, THE FIRST LIBERTY

PERSO

LOAN

April 6, 1917-October 27, 1917

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ERSONAL responsibility for the outcome of the war was soon brought home to every man and woman in the United States by President Wilson's appeal stirring every one to enlist somehow in the great civilian army without whose whole-hearted services "mere fighting would be useless." While he asked the merchant and middlemen to "forego unusual profits," the railroad-man to see that the "arteries of the nation's life suffer no obstruction," the miner to remember that "if he slackens or fails, armies and statesmen are useless," the manufacturer to "speed and perfect every process, and called upon all to correct the national fault of "wastefulness and extravagance," he emphasized most the imperative need of a greater food-supply. This part of his appeal evoked an immediate and dramatic response, but Germany, deceiving herself as she was constantly doing, hailed with delight his declaration that "the supreme need of our own nation, and of the nations with which we are cooperating, is an abundance of supplies, and especially of foodstuffs," and his urgent call to "young men and old alike," to "turn in hosts to the farms. Professor Wygodzinski, an agricultural expert of Bonn University, became so convinced from the President's appeal that "Nemesis was knocking at America's door and famine staring her in the face," that he announced confidently that "on the American wheatfield the war will be decided—in our favor." The Kölnische Zeitung, which characterized the President's appeal as "nothing but a cry of distress, argued that the war against Germany could not be won

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unless America was able "amply to provide herself and her Allies with food," and that this was impossible, because America was "facing a crop failure which can not be averted by President Wilson's little remedies."

In America the response to the President's call was one of deeds rather than words. From all sections came reports of organized movements to increase the crop-acreage, to enlist men and boys in "the army of the plow," and to

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MODEL VEGETABLE GARDENS IN UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK CITY These gardens were laid out and vegetables actually grown in them for purposes of giving instructions to dwellers in the city unfamiliar with gardening methods

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supply the farmer with capital for intensive cultivation. In Philadelphia, a "recruiting station for farmers' helpers' welcomed all who wished to enroll in the President's "service-army," and sent them to big grain sections of the Northwest to assist in planting spring wheat and rye. The appeal stated that "25,000,000 acres of spring wheat and rye must be planted in the great grain belt of the Northwest within the next twenty-five days," and explained that "this

represents an increase of more than 7,000,000 acres over last year." A Chicago dispatch told of six thousand boys above the age of sixteen who had been released from the high-schools of that city with full credit for school-work for the remainder of the school-year, on condition that they pledged themselves to work on farms, or enter some employment that would increase the food-supply of the nation. President Bisby, of the Chicago surface street-railway lines,

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DOCTORS AND NURSES MAKING VEGETABLE GARDENS NEAR A BROOKLYN HOSPITAL

announced that schoolboys who were to work in truckgardens on the outskirts of the city could ride to and from their work free. In North Dakota children were released from school to work on the farms, and in Wisconsin, Louisiana, and many other States proclamations were issued calling upon all citizens to plant every available square foot of ground.

Hundreds of thousands of backyards were converted into vegetable-gardens. Owners of big ornamental estates

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