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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



cation in Los Angeles, Miss Ruby Baugh- 

 man, may forget many things among the 

 thousands with which she must charge 

 her mind, yet she will never forget the 

 roomful of sergeants, corporals, and pri- 

 vates, detailed to teach, who sat through 

 her lectures four hours of each day for 

 three days, and every day at the end of 

 the four hours had to be ordered from 

 the room because they would not leave 

 voluntarily ! 



In their turn those sergeants, corporals, 

 and privates will not forget the clear- 

 featured, clear-eyed woman who talked 

 to them through all those hours and laid 

 before them, in all its hopeless intricacies 

 and with all its unending heartaches, the 

 entire foreign problem of the American 

 Army. 



No one knew how she did it ; perhaps 

 she herself did not quite know. She 

 talked of school-rooms and lessons and 

 methods of approach. She taught, some- 

 how, the story of the foreigner. Men 

 who would have left the room had she 

 tried by a word to convert them stayed 

 and were won over to her faith. 



THE MISSION OF THE KHAKI-CLAD 

 TEACHERS 



Normal course — always the words will 

 mean just this to us: a low-ceilinged, 

 stuffy room, with the merciless glare 

 from the hot world beating against the 

 windows, the ceaseless droning of a 

 graphophone in the adjoining hall, the 

 continuous rumble of heavy wagons on 

 the paved road just outside the door, the 

 strangely mournful clatter of cavalry 

 trotting past. And, above it all, a great 

 truth being told, the truth of silent suf- 

 fering or, worse still, the apathy which 

 follows upon suffering on the part of 

 those who have ears and cannot hear, 

 who have tongues and yet are dumb, who 

 understand neither the commands of 

 their officers nor the chatter of their mess 

 companions, who do not know why they 

 are, where they are, and what it is all 

 about. 



Between these men of foreign tongue — 

 the silent, discouraged horde — and en- 

 lightenment stands that roomful of khaki- 

 clad men — sergeants, corporals, and pri- 

 vates detailed to teach. 



Something very fine rose and grew in 



that room in those three days — something 

 which found expression two weeks later 

 in the glowing plans of two of the teach- 

 ers who had been ordered to France. 

 Eager to go, triumphant, they still found 

 time to plan — not any glory for them- 

 selves, not any heroic deeds, but a school 

 "over there" for the non-English-speak- 

 ing soldiers who might be within their 

 reach when they were "settled" overseas. 

 To hope that their plans will find sub- 

 stance is, perhaps, to put an impossible 

 strain upon the nature of soldiers of 19 

 and 20, and yet we are awaiting with 

 impatience our first letters from France. 



PROBLEMS OE QUARTERS AND HOURS 



All too soon the three days had gone ; 

 normal school closed its doors; Miss 

 Baughman left us to our fate, and we, 

 the khaki-clad roomful of "permanents" 

 and a few outsiders who were given the 

 privilege of assisting, scattered through 

 the various units of the huge, sun-baked, 

 dusty camp and took stock of our sur- 

 roundings. 



Quarters? The Y. M. C. A. lecture 

 halls, with the eternal graphophone grind- 

 ing in the next room ; dim, empty mess- 

 halls, and, out at the remount station 

 offices, a saddle shop the door of which 

 somebody was forever forgetting to un- 

 lock on time. 



Hours ? Classes met after supper, the 

 men dull and tired after a day of trench 

 digging and drill and scorching sun; the 

 classes met in the afternoon unless other 

 duties interfered, and other duties, it 

 seemed, were always calling. 



In some of the units, through the tire- 

 less efforts of the chaplains, the learning 

 of English was put on an equal basis with 

 drill, and men marched into the mess- 

 halls, cheerful and alert, ready for this 

 extra branch of soldiering; and we won- 

 dered, as we talked with these chaplains, 

 whether they knew how thoroughly 

 fraught with importance was their work 

 of pioneering. 



Equipment ? Here and there a black- 

 board; here and there a piece of chalk, 

 an eraser, wrapping paper for note- 

 books; for the most part a few long 

 benches, a table, the teacher's two bare 

 hands, and that intangible something 

 which had had its beginning in those first 



