184 EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL KEPORT OF THE 



" Captain, how do you retreat? We didn't do that in Texas. " Another 

 one said: ''What page is it in our instruction books, I could not 

 find it." 



Do you catch the spirit? 



And when the American Capitain was charging up the hill, being 

 faster than the rest of them who were loaded down, when he reached 

 the top, he turned to the boys and called — " Come boys, come on, what 

 is the matter with you, come on quick, do you want to live forever?" 



The spirit of undaunted courage which forbids an American to 

 take a step backward. If the bee-keepers do not follow the spirit of 

 those boys in France, we are not bee-keepers at all. 



Just to show you in the new era what we ought to be! You know 

 there were 20,000 American soldiers down on the Italian front. When 

 Italy began to run from the Austrians a year ago, after one million 

 and a half were captured and the rest ran — to stop that rout — out from 

 France there rushed trains and trains and trains of soldiers of American 

 boys; they sent 20,000 down to Italy. When they came to Italy they 

 stepped right in the front of the running Italians and told them to 

 stop — -"Now you boys go and fight and if you are killed we will take 

 your places." 



Now this is the spirit of the American boys — never acknowledge 

 defeat, and in times of emergency when things look ever so black and 

 despairing, go to it with courage and energy^tackle your subject just 

 as if nothing had happened — -make up your mind you are going to 

 win or be killed or die; that is the true American spirit. 



Now we who are left behind — are we of dilTerent extraction, of 

 a different nature; are we, the bee-keepers of this country, not related 

 to them? The same blood, the same people we are, and the same heart 

 and spirit ought to be in us. 



There is foul brood, enemies of all kinds, failures of all kinds, pro- 

 blems to meet in bee-keeping, chronic cranks. 



Now our boys never were cross, they took everything good na- 

 turedly and carried victory against all obstacles. The Island of 

 Corfu was infected with submarines — France and Italy and England 

 tried their best for three years, and were sticking their heads together — 

 how to do it, and one day last June, out from Malta, a little island in 

 the Medietrranean, quietly in slipped the American fleet led by a 

 large United States battleship and took up their position to accom- 

 plish the job which Frxmce ^nd England could not accomplish in three 

 years; our boys came to Corfu and si^ed up the situation. I asked them 

 what they were going to do? Oh, we just came down to do a little 

 hunting. " Well can you imagine it — what puzzled the heads of three 

 governments, those boys talk in a flippant manner? I saw those 

 boys three months afterward and they spoke again of these things. 

 I said to them — "How did you spend your summer?" "Oh, it was 

 dandy. The hunting the first couple of weeks (hunting submarines) 

 was fine but it is getting awful rotten now. " There again you have the 

 spirit of the new era. 



The National Bee-keepers' Association and the State Associations 

 aiid the Government have tried for years to do certain things. We 

 have fought among ourselves terribly about this and about that, and 



