Junk, 1917 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



477 



latiopp. He has bei'ii ])t'rniille<l to visit 

 the prisoners on both sides of every line of 

 battle; and I was alnn;st dnnifouiided when 

 he announced in his talk that sunielhing like 

 seven millions of men are held as prisoners 

 of war. These seven million men must be 

 fed; and I think they are fed, thank God, 

 after a fashion. Mr. Mott did not tell us 

 very much about the " feed," but he did 

 tell us of the arrangements for fuel and 

 shelter; and he did tell us, further, that 

 this great army has comparatively little 

 to do, and they are herded like swine in 

 great pens. Now, do not take it for granted 

 that I am pitching into any particular na- 

 tion. If I am correct, the condition of the 

 prisoners in all the fighting nations is not 

 perhaps very much different. With not 

 only hundreds of thousands but millions it 

 is an exceedingly hard matter to give them 

 all comfortable quarters. There were in 

 many cases no hospitals for the sick. He 

 found sick men crawling around on the 

 ground because they were not able to stand 

 on their feet. He found them exposed to 

 cold and rain because the shelter was in- 

 adequate; and he came back to America pe- 

 titioning for five millions of money to erect 

 hospitals and sheltering-places for these 

 millions of jDrisoners — prisoners belonging 

 to all nations, mind yon. The Y. M. C. A. 

 does not recognize any state or nation above 

 another. Their mission is to lend a help- 

 ing hand to every suffering child of hu- 

 manity. The millions of dollars were to be 

 divided up. He told us how much Ohio was 

 called on to give ; and, if I remember cor- 

 rectly, they wanted Cleveland to give one 

 hundred thousand dollars. To start out 

 with, a man who sat near the speaker offer- 

 ed ten thousand dollars. Pei'haps I should 

 explain to you that this audience of per- 

 haps two or three hundred were representa- 

 tive men, or patrons of the Y. M. C. A. of 

 Ohio. They came from every part of the 

 state. After the first ten thousand dollars 

 was offered, another large gift followed. 

 Then two men each gave five thousand; and 

 in just a feiv minutes forty thousand dollars 

 was subscribed to make life easier to the 

 prisoners of war. As an example of the 

 way in which the Y. M. C. A. is favored in 

 all lands, in one nation where Moham- 

 medanism is the prevailing religion he "\vas 

 informed that the Y. M. C. A. men under 

 him could go into the prisons and every- 

 where else, but that they must not talk about 

 Jesus. They might do whatever they liked 

 to help the people and teach them, and 

 minister to their wants and needs, but they 

 were not at liberty even to mention the 

 name of our Lord and Savior .Jesus Christ. 



Mr. Mott said that he consented to the 

 handicap, but rei)lied something like this: 



'"If our men cannot talk the gospel of our 

 Lord Jesus Christ, you certainly would not 

 object to their living it. We want to show 

 your people what the Lord Jesus does for a 

 man, even if he does not mention his name, 

 and we do this and consent to the terms." 



Now, friends, that thing strikes home to 

 me. For some months I have been striving 

 day by day to let my life, my words and 

 actions, and all my dealings with my fellow- 

 men show forth that I am an humble follow- 

 er of the lowly Nazarine who " was despised 

 and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and 

 acquainted with grief." 



There was still another point brought out, 

 in illustrating how the war is going to 

 elevate humanity. In times past, almost 

 any man who volunteered was accepted; 

 but not so, at the present day. Great num- 

 bers who come forward are i-ejected. Each 

 man is carefully examined by an efficient 

 surgeon. It does not pay to go to the ex- 

 pense of sending a man to war and then 

 have to go to the further expense of treat- 

 ing him as an invalid. If I am correct, 

 no man is accepted who has any tendency 

 toward tuberculosis. Well, tuberculosis, or 

 "the great white plague," is a bad thing; 

 but there is a worse one still that afflicts 

 men and boys. The sjieaker said that, altho 

 Canada had lost a great lot of men by send- 

 ing them to war, they have lost a still larg- 

 er number of men by a contagious disease 

 that he did not mention ; but he made it 

 pretty plain that it was syphilis and kindred 

 things along that line. In adopting pro- 

 hibition a great blow will be struck at vari- 

 ous diseases peculiar to the " tenderloin " 

 district ; and it is just beginning to creep 

 out that the greater part of the men and 

 boys afflicted with these terrible maladies 

 contracted the foul disease ivhen they were 

 drunk. In fact, I know of at least one man 

 who caught the infection while he was so 

 drunk he hardly knew what he was doing. 

 Right here in Ohio I have been told by a 

 good friend who is an officer in the Y. M. C. 

 A. ranks that prostitutes follow the soldiers 

 by the carload, just exactly as the saloon- 

 keepers do in the vicinity of where the 

 Ohio regiments are quartered. The saloon- 

 keepers, however, received a cool greeting, 

 and pei'haps were a little astonished to be 

 told that soldiers in the year 1917 do not 

 drink beer ; and I hope, too, that these poor 

 lost women were informed that the soldiers 

 of the present day take no chances, especial- 

 ly those soldiers who have wives and chil- 

 dren away back in the " home land." May 

 God speed the flood of righteousness and 



