LET US GO AFIELD 



across a five-o'clock wind by means of a pop bottle. 

 No, those clodlike chaps from the farms were doing 

 stunts on the trapeze, the parallel bars, and the 

 vaulting horse ; I looked at them, sometimes an hour 

 at a time, through the cracks in the fence, just as a 

 small boy peeps through the cracks in a baseball 

 park fence. 



Now, without argument for any country or 

 against any country and surely I would rather 

 argue for my own than against it and without ad- 

 vancing any cheap, ready-made conclusions what- 

 ever, let us just take the facts brought back by some 

 of the American correspondents who saw the first 

 line of the German army in its westward march. 

 Those troops had had no special training in march- 

 ing; they were only a few days afield; they were 

 doing thirty miles a day or better under full equip- 

 ment, seventy pounds exclusive of rifle and ammu- 

 nition. They dropped where they stood at night, 

 worn out ; but there were no stragglers. Where did 

 these chaps come from ? The baseball parks, or the 

 turner clubs and barrack drills? They were not to 

 be measured in the terms of an army, but in the 

 terms of a citizenry. 



England's army did not come from the pop bottle 

 and seat cushion brigade. Excellent material was 

 found among men who took sport at first hand, and 



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