The Makers of Science, IX

"The Stars and Stripes" By Frank R. Arnold

The freshest, most spontaneous, most joyous of newspapers is the Stars and Stripes, published in Paris every Friday by the American Expeditionary Forces in France. It is their official organ. "Sammee" in his journalistic moments is a carefree bird, and never was there less of the squeezed-orange element in newspaper than there is in this latest product of American journalism, born on foreign but allied soil. Every word is capital reading as entertaining as life or as instructive as the Improvement Era, though you must not apply the acid test of accuracy to every article in the paper dealing with facts "over there." Much is hidden or camouflaged. In all other respects it is an admirably edited piece of work. For news, it is far superior to the Paris edition of the New York Herald which American tourists used to find so unsatisfactory before the war. American news comes to it by cable. American newspaper men in France visit the trenches for a week or so and then repay the army hospitality with a story for the army paper. There is a whole page of athletic news with the appropriate heading, "Make every day a beatless day." The editorials are full of local flavor. One states that it costs the United States $50 a week to maintain a soldier in France and asks each of the readers of the Stars and Stripes if he is worth it. Another takes as its text the fact that "in the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of base ball." There is even entertaining comment on the weather. French winters were new to the men and so comment was justifiable. And, of course, there are stimulating editorials of the patriotic brand, but there is nothing maudlin or hackneyed about them, and it takes a newspaper genius or veteran from the trenches to talk about the deeper sides of patriotism and treat it with simple sincerity. The dramatic column features Sothern in Hamlet, and Elsie Janis in a repertoire of American songs, either one of which would be good copy for a metropolitan paper in America. The "candle light" circuit has stars more brilliant than their setting. Miss Janis, starting in the Paris Y. M. C. A., (somehow one has never before associated Elsie Janis with the Y.M.C.A. movement) got such vociferous applause that the French neighbors thought that Sammy was starting a riot. Miss Janis has also brought

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the newest steps as well as the newest songs from Broadway and concludes them with a handspring. As some of the stages on which she performs are only four by five she has been establishing some new records for comediennes. Mr. Sothern has to give Hamlet under difficulties. His famous soliloquy is constantly interrupted by salvos of "seventy-fives" off stage, and one night when he had just killed Polonius, and the queen was exclaiming "0 what a rash and bloody deed is this," there came — the cry "Lights out air raid," and the lights went out but Ham* let kept on. Detail like this makes the dramatic columns of the Stars and Stripes the best of reading. But it is neither news nor editorial comment that gives a newspaper its individuality. Personality plus, and style, all the while are secured for the paper by contributed stories about local conditions. One number, the fifth, contains three of these. One describes the "growing of 'taters' and such like" in the rear of the trenches, and is all to the glory of the man with the hoe. We had always supposed that Sammy had left his hoe in America and was devoting himself to the pickaxe and the spade. The paper announces the establishment of the "Garden Service" as a branch of the Quatermaster Corps. U. A. C. graduates will be in more demand than ever for the army. "This Garden service," says Stars and Stripes, "is going at it in real earnest. Every division will be required to cultivate a certain portion of the area in which it lives and moves and — has its bein', with the aim of providing itself if it stays there — that long with beets, beans, (yes, beans), oats, barley, mint (reserved for Southern colonels), verbena, hops, rye, buckwheat, bananas, egg-plant, and such spinach as is not grown facially." Aix-les-Bains is the town in Savoy where the American soldiers go to spend their leave of absence, and so any article on the province of Savoy in which the city is situated will prove valuable sooner or later to the readers of Stars and Stripes. One such describes the "land of permission" as one of Hannibal's stopping places on his highway to Rome, and, although the article is historical and descriptive, it is thoroughly human and full of interest for any American, whether in the trenches or in Utah. The Stars and Stripes writers are best fitted to give advice to fresh soldierswho are contemplating the trip over and the following quotations are taken from an article entitled "Doughboy Hints for Brothers to Come." The advice is addressed to "fellow scrappers" and signed "those who know."

First of all, don't buy any seasick remedies. They are no good. The only seasick remedy known in the army is a rejection by a recruiting