Vol. XXXIII, No. 6 WASHINGTON 



June, 1918 



THE 



ATQONAL 



AGAZE 



COOTIES AND COURAGE 



By Herbert Corey 



Author of "The Monastir Road/' "Shopping Abroad for Our Army in France/' 

 "A Unique Republic/' etc. 



The "cootie" is not a pleasant topic to write, talk, or think about; but the 

 seriousness of this menace to the health and comfort of our soldiers — a menace 

 which scientists are exerting every effort to minimize — zvarrants the publication 

 of Mr. Corey's unexaggerated account of the chief pest of all fighting men. 



LAST night I heard laughter as I 

 stumbled along a dark street in a 

 .J dark village in northern France. 

 I say "dark," but the word does not 

 properly set forth the conditions. There 

 was no moon and there were no stars. 

 It had been raining and in a few minutes 

 it would be raining again. The street 

 had once been paved— about the time of 

 the Roman occupation, perhaps — and a 

 few rounded cobbles were still imbedded 

 in a soggy mud that sucked at one's boot- 

 soles as one walked. 



No light came from the windows. One 

 knew that inside the houses American 

 soldiers were gathered about the candles, 

 reading or "shooting craps," or wonder- 

 ing why the Y. M. C. A. was not per- 

 forming total impossibilities in getting its 

 chocolate-and-cigarette-laden trucks over 

 roads that were gummed and cluttered 

 with the camions of an army in move- 

 ment. 



The windows were curtained, so that 

 not the slightest gleam escaped. In 'this 

 part of France the peasants favor solid 

 wooden shutters outside the windows, 

 and inside the soldiers had tacked up 

 blankets. Hostile airplanes are always 

 on the hunt for villages in which soldiers 



may be bombed. This particular hamlet 

 was within range of the Germans' big 

 guns and no chances' might be taken. 



WHEN AN AMERICAN "OUTEIT" ENTERS 

 A TOWN i 



Only those who have been lost in the 

 midst of a forest on a rainy night can 

 properly appreciate the utter blackness of 

 that street. I ran head-on into a soldier. 



"Visibility low," he remarked, in grimly 

 humorous quotation from the report 

 often made by the aerial observers. 



The laughter came from the one room 

 in which the officers of the headquarters 

 company were bedded. I knew that 

 room. In it the beds were laid so thickly 

 on the rough brick floor that they over- 

 lapped like shingles on a roof. Only the 

 man who slept next the door could get 

 to his bed without walking over the beds 

 of the other men. All others walked 

 over his bed in going and coming. They 

 were distinguished from each other by 

 the names of the owners chalked on the 

 dingy wall. 



When an American "outfit" enters a 

 town in which it has been newly billeted, 

 it finds that the billeting officers have 

 preceded it. Upon the doors of houses 



