T

HE problem of recruiting for the Belgian Army is a very complex and difficult one, inasmuch as the enemy holds more than 95 per cent. of our territory and keeps in close confinement about 80 per cent. of the Belgian population.

When, for instance, a young man, residing in Charleroi, attempts to join the Belgian Army, he meets with almost insuperable difficulties. Every man of military age residing in the occupied part of Belgium must register at the kommandantur every three or four days, and his failure to do so instantly reveals his absence. Once he is gone he can only travel during the night, in a northerly direction, and he is obliged to avoid all cities and towns, as he could not explain his presence there; he must live on what he can obtain en route or on whatever food he has been able to take with him.

After ten days he reaches the vicinity of the Belgo-Dutch frontier; this boundary is barred by a triple net of barbed wire, through which runs at regular intervals a high-tension electric current; moreover, the border is closely guarded by German sentries and frequent patrols.

The ingenious ways and means resorted to by some Belgian youths to attempt to overcome all these obstacles cannot be revealed here; but a great number of young men have unfortunately either been shot by the enemy, electrocuted on the wires, or made prisoners, and, as is known, the fate of a prisoner in Germany is far from happy.

If the young Belgian has succeeded in escaping into Holland he has still to cross the North Sea to England; here new dangers confront him-the German submarines are particularly numerous in these waters and sometimes succeed in stopping and searching ships.

Such are the reasons why the main contingents of recruits cannot be ob

tained from the occupied territory. They are composed of Belgians who were residing abroad before the war or who took refuge in foreign countries at the beginning of the campaign and enlisted in the army as soon as they reached the age of 18.

When they fulfill certain prescribed conditions of age and ability they may choose their service, but the majority are assigned to the infantry. There are about fifteen instruction camps for recruits; the training period covers from four to six months and is, of course, very strenuous. As soon as the new recruit is considered sufficiently trained he is sent to the depot of the army division to which he is assigned and whence he will join his regiment at the front.

The twofold difficulty of recruiting and organizing the instruction camps outside of the country, however, did not prevent the numerical strength of the army from continuing to increase in spite of the enormous loss of one-third of its force in the heavy battles at Liége, Namur, Antwerp, and along the Yser.

At present the fighting forces of the Belgian Army may be estimated at from 200,000 to 220,000 men.

How Officers Are Trained

The immediate need of subordinate officers has necessitated the opening of instruction camps for auxiliary subLieutenants, (Centres d'Instruction de sous-Lieutenants auxiliaires, or C. I. S. L. A.). The different arms have their separate instruction camps, so there are special courses for infantry, artillery, cavalry, and engineering corps. They are spread all over the northwest of France. Young men who possess a complete high school education, who have had six months' active service at the front, and are recommended by their superiors in rank, can be admitted to the course. This training, which is very arduous, covers a period of four months.

The following details, for instance, explain the working of the instruction camps for the cavalry: This school was started in April, 1915, and is located in an agricultural domain, comprising a castle, a farm, and various auxiliary buildings suitable to house some hundred men and a like number of horses. There is also some low-lying ground that is used as a field for exercising. The country, being well wooded, rough, and hilly, offers all the requisites to train future officers to all the daring risks of horsemanship necessary to cavalry reconnoitring. The horses are mostly of American origin, of light build and thoroughbred.

The military students rise at 5 A. M.; a daily drill of about one hour in vaulting makes them so supple that the majority forthwith succeed in jumping four horses standing abreast. Drill is mostly done in the open air. The candidate has to ride horseback from six to eight hours daily, going through riding exercises connected with the school of cavalrymen, and must specialize in the study of reconnoitring as required of a cavalry officer. The students must jump all obstacles in the way of streams, ditches, steep banks, &c.

Four hours a day the candidate devotes himself to theory, and as the cavalryman does nearly as much trench service as the infantryman the students are instructed in the principles of soldier training and are initiated in the technics required for tirailleurs, sentries, and trench diggers.

At the end of the drill the entire company travels 150 miles, in four stages, to reach the special instruction camps for gunners and grenadiers, (grenade throwers.) They also visit a training depot of the French Army specially designed for the study of suffocating gases and the means of fighting such gases.

When they leave the school these young men are appointed Adjutants, then Auxiliary Sub-Lieutenants, and are classified according to their record of service, their abilities, and their merits.

The training camps for infantry are conducted on the same principles. Each drill is first an experiment, leading to

the regulation which the instructor wants to demonstrate, and the subsequent exercises explain these regulations. Each candidate has to keep a notebook and enter therein the kind of work done each day and the instructions received while engaged in such work.

Schools for Specialists

Besides these general instruction camps, there are also schools for all special services which had to be created to comply with the needs of actual warfare. The handling of the machine gun is studied at Criel. This school possesses machine guns of all types used not only with the Belgian Army but also in the enemy countries. This makes it possible for the gunners to use every captured gun against those from whom it was taken.

The period of instruction extends over four weeks, and is continued in the units. It includes the study of the gun, its mechanism and its use in various fields and under all possible circumstances. How to assign a location, how to reach it under cover, how to conceal the location of guns and gunners from the enemy-all this forms part of the instructions. Nearly all noncommissioned and aspirant officers have gone through the Criel School.

There are also two schools for " grenadiers." Out of every company a noncommissioned officer is chosen and sent to this school; when he returns he becomes instructor in this particular line in his company; he trains special squads for this work, but each man is taught all principles and knows how to operate the gun. Such exercises take place one afternoon each week.

School of Camouflage

There is also a school of masquerading, ("camouflage,") where the ways and means are taught to conceal what actually exists and to stimulate what does not exist. At present it is possible to approach in broad daylight on ordinary ground within sixty feet of an observing enemy. Batteries are concealed, false batteries are placed in position, observation posts are erected within a few yards from the enemy trenches.

Baron Moncheur, head of the Belgian Mission to the United States, gave to a representative of THE NEW YORK TIMES at the beginning of September, 1917, the following sketch of the increasing wretchedness of his people:

BE

ELGIUM only yesterday was one of the principal centres of human activity. Today the silence of death reigns over its mines and its factories. Belgium has become for its inhabitants merely a cage whose bars are formed of German bayonets. The enemy has robbed us of everything-money, provisions, raw material, and machinery. All commerce was destroyed and our factories put out of business. Consequently our workmen were thrown out of employment. I mention the causes of stagnation so that the resulting misery of our poor, famished people might be better comprehended.

Here in America just now one hears a great deal about the hardships the men must undergo on the fighting line-in the trenches. It is all very true that modern warfare is more terrible than any conception of wars formed in the human mind before. But the soldier has a far better time of it in this war than do the wretched householders who remain at home. A man on the firing line has the force of mental excitement as a kind of diversion, and he is removed from the scene of responsibility. He knows that his country is raising money to keep him at least moderately well fed. He doesn't feel the nag of hunger beneath his shirt, and after he becomes accustomed to it he finds it is rather healthful to sleep in the open air. Of course, it is a terrible thought that haunts him day and night, that he doesn't know which moment may be his last. His lot is not easy.

But, come away from the trenches; go into the homes of the common people, and even the homes of the hitherto moderately rich, if you would find the real sorrow of Europe today. And all the sorrow of the war seems to be focused

ith dreadful stress upon poor little

Belgium. Just imagine a nation on half rations of food. If one person gets enough to eat, some other person is bound to starve. You well-fed Americans can with difficulty draw the mental picture of a nation on one-half ration. I mean that a person is only getting to eat onehalf the amount of food theoretically necessary to keep an idle man alive.

Those of our men who can find work to do often give out on account of insufficient nourishment. Physical resistance to sickness has been greatly diminished by reason of this state of semi-starvation, and the mortality rate has become enormously increased. I have seen statistics indicating that the mortality rate for the first three months of 1917 among workmen was three and a half times greater than the average rate for the same period in previous years. Every day the bread line becomes longer and longer. One of the agents of the Commission for Relief reports that in a certain district of Belgium applicants for the daily scup ration increased from 60,000 to 400,000 in two months.

A short time ago a member of the Commission for Relief visited a town of 1,000 population and singled out a number of homes of the working people at random. This investigation showed:

1. That the people were living almost exclusively on the rations of the Commission for Relief, with little or nourishment in the way of native foodstuffs.

no

2. That the ration from the Relief Commission was often eaten in advance by many families, so that the semi-weekly bread ration would not last until the next one came around. In this way thousands would go for more than one day a week without food in the house.

3. That as a general rule two scant meals a day were eaten, and the families went to bed without supper early in the evening to shun the pangs of hunger.

4. That the women and older children (not admitted to the soupe scolaire)

suffered especially because they were obliged to give a part of their daily bread ration to the father, who required this to give him strength for his daily work.

5. That the workingmen were in an emaciated and greatly weakened condition because their work was using up their bodies faster than their scant food supply could replace this spent energy.

This same agent of the Relief Commission reported conditions as being so bad in this particular locality that even the German soldiers were often so moved with pity as to divide their own limited rations with the hungry little children about them.

It was found that workmen were going to their posts of duty with almost empty dinner pails, a part and sometimes the whole of their midday meal consisting of sliced rababaga, the Belgian cattle beet. These workmen had fallen off in weight amazingly during the first three months of the present year, anywhere from ten to forty pounds. A general strike was declared last April, the workmen simply saying to their employers that they had not the physical strength to work any longer. There were no differences between the workmen and their employers, no disputes to be settled, but just a condition of incapacity to do the work required because of being half starved.

About twenty of the wives of these workmen appeared before the representatives of the Relief Commission to plead the cause of the families of all the laborers of the province. They were led by a woman whose face indicated that she was intelligent and accustomed to better times in the past. This woman broke down in trying to voice the sufferings of 300,000 persons in the province, and it was found that she was on the verge of starvation. To all such persons and such delegations the agents of the Relief Commission could only say that they were doing their best and would try to do better in the future. The daily ration allowed consisted of bread, 300 grams; rice, peas, or beans, 16 grams; bacon and lard, 13 grams; herrings, coffee, and so on, very small quantities; soupe populaire, 1 liter;

sugar, (native,) 20 grams; butter, (native,) 3 grams. This ration furnishes a total of 1,130 calories a day in point of food value, which is scarcely half enough to keep an idle man alive.

In

It is needless to talk of the prices of foodstuffs in Belgium. To know that they are prohibitive is sufficient. I was informed just before I was leaving that practically no meat was available. London, Paris, and Rome they have what they call meatless days. In Belgium every day is a meatless day. I was told that the cheapest grade of half-spoiled veal, which was about all the meat that ever found its way into Belgium, was selling for 7 francs per kilo, which means about 70 cents a pound. Cold-storage eggs were selling at 50 centimes each, or about $1.20 a dozen. Milk was hard to get at 70 centimes per liter. In fact, in the rural districts the cows had nearly all been killed for food. Many a baby has died in Belgian cities for lack of milk, which used to come from the country near by. Butter was beyond the reach of all except the wealthy, going at about $1.75 a pound. Potatoes were selling at around 15 cents a pound. Carrots were 13 cents a pound. But what is the use of talking about the prices of food commodities where the consumer has no money with which to purchase food?

It has been carefully figured out by the Commission for Relief that as long as the imported ration is as small as it has been the last few months the demand for native food will be such that it cannot, at the outside, satisfy more than 5,000,000, and these authorities, who have the situation so well in hand, plainly show that the remaining 2,000,000 people must depend solely upon the ration of the Relief Commission-or just one-half enough to support life.

In spite of all efforts on the part of the Germans to turn these suffering Belgians against England and her allies, and to cause them to lose faith in American charity, I rejoice to say that my people have not been fooled. They know where their friends are, and they feel the deepest gratitude to the people of the United States for their unfailing friendship and kindness.

W

HO is not familiar with the name of Alexander Federovich Kerensky, first citizen of free Russia, first national tribune Socialist, first national Minister of Justice, Minister of Truth and Honesty? From day to day now they are writing about A. F. Kerensky in the newspapers and journals of all the world; congratulatory telegrams are flying to him from all parts of Russia and Europe; delegations from Russia and foreign parts greet in his person the revolutionary Russian Nation, which was created by the mild, honest, kindly revolution. Thousands of people attribute to him the joy of their present free organization and their escape from the dark past of oppression.

In a word, there is now no more popular man, no name more famous than that of Alexander Federovich Kerensky. It has become with us and abroad, so to say, a title of honor, a symbol of the great, beneficent Russian revolution.

Why are all hearts drawn to Kerensky? Why is all attention centred upon his words and actions? Why has the passionate heart of the great Russian revolution made precisely him its first, unforgettable love? It is about this that I wish now to tell.

Kerensky's Early Youth

Not long ago I heard on a street car such a conversation as this:

"How do you explain Russia's warm love for A. F. Kerensky?"

"It is by mutuality: Russia loves the one who already for a long time has passionately loved Russia, loved her honorably, as sons do, with real love."

And that is the truth. He has loved Russia passionately, with a son's love, first of all on account of her sufferings, which for long centuries were inflicted by her hereditary tormentors, the auto

cratic Czars and their doglike guardsmen. He loved warmly with a brother's love the whole working nation because of that groan which for centuries was rising not only " over the great Russian river," but over all the great Russian land.

That " song like a groan," Alexander Federovich first heard in his cradle by the great Russian river. He was born on the Volga, in Simbirsk, in the memorable year 1881. His father, Fedor Michaelovich, was director of the Simbirsk Gymnasium. The first breath of A. F. Kerensky (he was born on April 22) nearly coincides with the last breath of the great fighters for Russia's freedom-the national martyrs, Sophia Perovsky, Timothy Michaelov, Andrei Zhelyaboff, Kibalchich, and Riskoff-who were hanged by order of Alexander III. in Semenovsky Square.

The first childish recollections of Kerensky, then a boy of 6, according to his own words, were a perplexed remembrance of the silent terror which seized Simbirsk when the city learned of the punishment of the son of a local director of the public school, a student, Alexander Illitch Ulyanoff, for participating in the attempt of the last national martyrs to kill Czar Alexander III., (March 1, 1887,) then already entirely crushed under the elephant's burden of his autocracy over unhappy Russia.

The first school recollection of Kerensky is about his comrades, mates in childish plays, children of the working people, left by the Czar Alexander outside the gymnasium's threshold. "Peasants! and they are creeping into the gymnasium to learn!" exclaimed the Czar in 1887, when told that one of the political prisoners was an assistant of a peasant's son who was teaching in the gymnasium. And the Czar's serf, at