German sailor to put a foot on a British ship for seven years, and the perpetrators of these murders must be handed over to the British mercantile marine. [Applause.] And I can tell you this, that when the British mercantile marine man signs his name to a document it stands good for all time [applause].

We may be a long time getting the Kaiser and the other two or three Junkers that were associated with him. But we will get them all right [applause], because we know where they are [laughter] and if they won't come and say, "Well, here I am," well, we will just have to go for them [laughter]; and it will be all the worse for themselves if we have to go for them [laughter].

You will notice that I never say "England" when I am talking. [Laughter.] That is only used when we are talking about a picture; or we are going fishing, we say, "We are going to England." It is a very funny thing, but in the elementary history of the United States of America you very seldom read the word "British." It is all "England," and what the English did. You want to get it all cut out and get in British "; because we are quite different from what we used to be. It is British now, not English.

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And there is another thing that you have got to cut out now. I have a copy in my pocket, I believe, taken from a school book, eulogizing the Kaiser to the school children of America, what a great fellow he was when he was the young prince, and what he did, holding him up as an example. A fine example now, isn't he? I don't know who made him, but they made a damn bad job of him. [Laughter and applause.] Well, it does you good now and again to use the adjective [laughter].

Men, let me quote this to you, that Germany could never hope to win the fight, because the world was against her. Her kultur was false, and fell, and must crumble to the dust, and when the wind blows to-day and to-morrow, I want to tell you this: Don't let any of the German dust take root in the United States of America [applause]. Every man here can exercise his authority a great deal more than he has ever done before, and I will tell you where to start. Stop the German language from being taught in all the schools in the United States of America. [Applause.] Then, when you have stopped all German language from being taught in the schools in America you will have no need of German newspapers in America [applause].

Now, you have heard me talking about the western front and the Belgian front. This afternoon I am going to see an old lady who lives about ten miles out of town here; I am going to see her because I met her son in France on the western front there. He was with a great bunch of the boys from Boston. I believe his name was LieutenantColonel Hale. In fact, he is a member of this club. So, I guess his old mother will be anxious to know how he was. In fact, he was very kind to me; he was graciously kind to me. He put a car at my disposal and gave me an officer to go along with me to visit my son's grave last September.

Before I went to the American forces at the front I dined with Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig [applause], and one night while sitting at the

table I said, “I am going over to see the American boys to-morrow, sir. What about them? How are they getting along?" I said, "You know, I am very popular in America." [Applause.] I said, "I came over with a great bunch of them, and I would just like to know how the Amer ican boys are getting along." He turned to me and put down his spoon, and his eyes flashed, and he said, "The American men, I was up with them two days ago; they are fighting like tigers, and the officers are real gentlemen." [Applause.] It was not very much, but it was a lot, wasn't it?

In our gratitude we must not forget the great Canadian army that was there [applause]. We must not forget the Australians and the New Zealanders [applause], and the Newfoundlanders, and the Africans, and the Indians [applause]. The British forces were everywhere. They were in Belgium, and they were in France, and they were in Italy, and they were in Serbia, Palestine, Mesopotamia, Salonica, Persia, Kiauchau, New Guinea, Samoa, Egypt, Togoland, East Africa, West Africa, and I cannot tell you any more just now, but they were there [laughter and applause]. We have just gone on fighting, and, as I am telling you, we are willing to go on fighting yet until this peace business is properly cemented together. All our men are yonder; they have not taken off their khaki yet; they are just having a rest [applause]. Yes, we are just having a rest, and if they start anything again it will be worse the next time than it was the last time [laughter and applause], because if we have got to go back to it again, then we will be angry [laughter and applause.]

How we all rejoice that the great republic of America was there! You know, I have my own fears that when the Kaiser and his Junkerheads realized that the might and the weight of America was standing ready at any moment just to crush the whole show in, I believe he was ill for a long while [laughter]; I believe he was sick unto death very often.

Now I want to draw for your mind a wee picture; I want to take you from Boston right out into the battlefield of Bullecourt. I want you to imagine that you are right at the bottom of a little hill, but it is so spread out that you would not notice it was a little hill until you got on the top of it; then when you got on the top of it you could look for miles and miles on either side of you; it was just like standing on a moor, no trees, no hedges, no bushes, no nothing, nothing but the rusty German barbed wire, just like a little plantation of Douglas firs that had been planted about three or four feet high, and the first blast of winter had come along and made them red,

a rusty red.

There was nothing there but shell holes, deep shell holes and shallow shell holes, and the deep shell holes were occupied by the men. That was all the shelter they had. They had run so fast after the Germans that they had forgotten their green coats; some of them didn't have their tunics on; some of them only had on one puttee. But the sun was sinking down in the west, and it left a mauve hue, as far as the eye could see. And out of the last light of the sun that evening on the battlefield I could see the little pufls of smoke coming out of the shell holes; I could see the men seated on the edge of the shell holes, silhou

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etted out on the mauve background of the setting sun. I went over amongst them and I said, "What are you doing now, boys?" They said, "We are boiling our tea; we are boiling our coffee, because all lights must be. out before the sun goes down.'

Can you see that great battlefield with all these men seated there on the brow of the shell holes and the wee puffs of smoke coming out of the heart of the shell holes? Just going to have a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, and the fire had to be put out, because there was not even a lighted cigarette to be shown at night.

Now, fancy that battlefield, that bare battlefield, on a stormy night; no vestige of a shelter, and the wind howling and the rain battering down on you, and we at home lying soundly and comfortably in our beds. What a great sacrifice!

If there ever was a time when we were close together it is to-day. The great sacrifice has been made. We have all gone through the crucible. The cementation has taken place. Your boys are lying yonder with our boys, side by side, and what God has joined together let no man put asunder! [Applause.]

One day on the western front I came in contact with a young lad, a soldier in the Scottish Rifles. He was a bonnie looking lad. I said, "How old are you, my lad?" He saluted me and said, “ I am seventeen and one half, sir." I said, "How long have you been here?" He said, "I came out a couple of weeks after the show started." Fancy, he had been out there for two years. He was only fifteen and a half when he went out there. I talked to him about home and one thing and another. I said, "Well, where does your father and mother come from?" He said, "Oh, I was brought up by my granny." When he mentioned his granny his face beamed. I said, "You were brought up by your granny! I used to live with my granny when I was a wee boy. I'll never forget living with my granny; my granny was the kindest one to me in all the world. When I went to live with my granny I was always sure of getting two lumps of sugar in my tea, and I was always sure of getting two eggs for my breakfast." So we talked there about home and his granny. And I remember one day on my last American tour, I was snowed in away up in the northwest, and it was on a Sunday, and we could not get out of the train. Being penned up all day I got my book and my pencil, and I started to scribble, and amongst my scribblings that day I scribbled these lines:

'Aye," he said; "I was up in Aix-la-Chapelle,
Where the big guns barked like the hounds of hell.
I've heard men say that the feeling of the blues
Was nothing compared with the battle of Loos.
I've been up to my knees, aye, and my chin, in mud,
When my pulse stood still, and my eyes oozed blood.

I've seen you in Scotland," and his eyes beamed bright,
And his face lit up with a beautiful light,

And he smiled, and he said, “ If I don't get hame
Tell my granny you saw me, and that I died game.
Tell her, because I want my granny to ken

I played my part here with the best of men."

JOHN KENDRICK BANGS

"Light and Shade in the Land of Valor "

Gentlemen of the Boston City Club, I am going to speak to you to-night on "Light and Shade in the Land of Valor "; and when I speak of the "land of valor " I can mean nothing save that beautiful land of France [applause], where, whether we were conscious of it or not, the armies of the Allies have been standing between a brute power which would conquer the world and your liberties and mine.

When I returned recently from a trip through France, my first greeting was a notice from the "infernal" revenue collector at Portsmouth, N. H., notifying me of the amount assessed against me for income taxes. I went to my bank in New York and borrowed the amount and mailed it to him, with a note telling him that what I had seen in France of America's effort had made me pleased and proud to pay my assessment. I told him that my only regret was that I had not been ten times as prosperous during the year, so that I could borrow ten times as much and be ten times as happy in paying my taxes. I can say truthfully that, in a lifetime of spoiling white paper with unknown quantities of ink, I had never penned lines which contained more truth, or came from a deeper source within my heart. No man calling himself an American could witness what America was doing in France at the time I was there, nor witness the hope it raised in the heart of heroic France, without feeling a thrill of joyous pride that he could call himself a son of Uncle Sam. [Applause.]

After landing at a port in France, where the magnificence of the American achievement first burst upon my sight, mile upon mile, as far as the eye could reach, of splendid docks and storehouses and comfortable barracks, all planned and built by American engineers, — I started for Paris with some trepidation of spirit. I had read in a yellow press, or heard in that forum of American thought, the Pullman-car smoking compartment, that Paris was the same frivolous, wicked old beldame, leading the same old dissolute life of which we had been told so much in the days before the Hun let loose his terrible engines of frightfulness. But my fears evaporated with my arrival there. I found the beautiful metropolis resigned to its sorrow and magnificent in its suffering. I found women with lined faces, but with the carriage of

queens, and with a look in their eyes which was at once proud, satisfied and somewhat wistful, as if their sorrow deep as it was, was overborne by their pride in the glory which is France. I saw three French youths come down a street, singing and laughing with unaffected gaiety, though there were but two natural feet left to all three, and on the breast of their faded tunics was pinned every decoration which grateful France can bestow for valor in the face of the enemy.

I had heard that the morale and courage of the Parisians had been undermined by the devastations of the long-distance cannon and many air raids. The enemy propagandists were busy circulating stories that the panic-stricken population of Paris was on the point of demanding that the government conclude any sort of peace which the Germans would grant.

Now, it happened that the long-distance cannon began its devilish work on my fifty-sixth birthday, which I was spending in Paris. It seems that Von Hindenburg heard that Bangs was in Paris and said to himself: "I'll send some more bangs to Paris. If they like Bangs in Paris I'll send 'em some bangs." And he did, albeit his bangs were somewhat hair-raising, while II-you see - [Laughter, while the speaker rubbed his bald head in mock embarrassment.]

But they were not so hair-raising after all. Paris very quickly became accustomed to them and then contemptuous of them. One day during a bombardment I crawled out from under the bed and went out on the street. A shell from the big gun which the French with their keen, Gallic wit named "Busy Bertha," fell in the Tuileries garden near me. A boy of about eight who was close to me fell over and played dead for a minute, then rose and said gravely; "The Graf is amusing himself this morning."

Eager curiosity is distinctly an American trait. Americans acquired astigmatism trying to see all that was going on at a three-ringed circus. Consequently, when there was an air raid on Paris the American soldier would rush out into the street and gape at the sky, hoping that a bomb would fall near enough for him to see how it worked.

The poilu lacked this frank curiosity, to be sure, and dived head first into the nearest cellar when the alerte was sounded, but it was only that he might save his life and take it up to the first-line trenches, where he could lose it more effectively by taking a score of Boches along with him. across the dark river - at least as far as the place where he took the elevator and the Boches took the subway. [Laughter.]

But there was no loss of morale or courage on the part of the inhabitants of Paris. There was no talk of yielding. Her faith in the poilu was unshakable.

Before I went over, a group of professional reformers at Washington had spread calumnious reports about the conduct of American soldiers in Paris. I raised my voice to refute these tales before I saw our boys over there, and I am glad to be able to-night to tell American fathers that my instinctive first belief in the fineness of young American manhood was borne out by my observations in Paris and at the front. If I had a son whose moral strength I had reason to doubt which I have