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Show 40HB Goodwins IVqqJcIis I IfeC'fc. UR conference friends are with us OIMk again and we bid them a most hearty . yjfMm welcome. The season would seem JjOKw strange indeed, without their presence. l 'JjJMfl They come primarily to commune with Sflr each other and to gain inspiration from the authorities who are ordained to direct di-rect their spiritual welfare. This is to their everlasting credit as good churchmen, and as good citizens likewise. The rigid observance of this fine old custom, especially at a time when many of the cults and creeds are shaking to pieces, is a splendid manifestation of sustained faith in the fundamental ideals of public and private morality as promulgated by the founders of a mighty religious movement. We hold no brief for the good brethren who have come from, all points of the compass this week to assemble together in this wonderful won-derful city, save to say that great churches will ever command the wholesome respect of clear-thinking citizens, regardless of creed and class. These semi-annual conferences have come to play an important impor-tant part in the moral and material development of our state in times of peace, and now that the greatest of all wars has cast its cloud over the community, the meetings are sure to serve a double purpose. Of late we have come to believe that not only is democracy at stake, but that tlie fate of civilization and, in a larger sense, of Christianity itself hangs in the balance and is utterly dependent upon the outcome out-come of the awful conflict. It is to early to presage what will be preached to the Conference crowds, but it goes without saying that mingled with the words of wisdom will be patriotic utterances that will make a profound impression im-pression upon the laymen. There will be prayers for peace and a speedy termination of the war, to which all good citizens will say ' amen. On the other hand, the authorities are practical-minded and we look to see them fervently exhort their followers to face the crisis as becomes red-blooded men and women of a free country and to provide for a lasting peace among the nations by reconciling themselves them-selves to the payment of any price that necessity entails. It may seem presumptuous to speculate upon the possibilities that this Conference may bring forth. Nevertheless, we have already seen remarkable manifestations of loyalty and devotion to patriotic duty on the part of these churchmen, from the highest to the lowest ; and now that they are all assembled together, we look to see a solemn declaration of allegiance to America and the institution of an organized organ-ized movement of a half million souls that will stir this state to still greater achievements than have ever been attained in the past. Christianity Chris-tianity and civilization, the Church and the commonwealth, are all on common footing these days and their leaders are marching shoulder shoul-der to shoulder to champion the cause of conscience and' untrammelled untram-melled citizenship. With this in mind, we believe that this Conference Con-ference will take on unusual significance, and it is fortunate for all that tens of thousands of our finest fellow citizens should have the opportunity of coming together under such inspiring auspices. ARMY RATIONS. JHE business of mobilizing an army of a million, men out of JU plain, every-day American citizens presents countless problems to our military authorities, but none so great as the task of providing provid-ing board and keep for a million military boarders. "Many men can train and lead troops," said Welling-ton, the hero of Waterloo. "I can feed them." And was it not the great Napoleon himself who asserted as-serted that armies travel on their stomachs? Inasmuch as America must feed the great armies of her allies from now on to the end of the war, as well as her own, the task H assumes proportions that would almost challenge the ingenuity of a race of supermen. According to the present schedule of rations in M force in the United States army, a million men will daily eat approxi- mately 6,000 barrels "of flour, the product of an average wheat field H four miles square. They will also consume upwards of 150,000 H pounds of bacon, ten carloads of potatoes, ten carloads of beef, fifty tons of beans, one hundred tons of sugar and over a half carload of H coffee. M In addition to these tremendous amounts of foodstuffs for the M sustenance of the soldiers alone, the orders for the material necessary M to properly clothe and shoe the big armies will well nigh stagger M the manufacturers of the country. It has long been an accepted M rule by military authorities that "two or three times as much as an H army needs for its immediate use must be supplied, if it is to be kept H from want." No other commander during the Civil War took such M care of his army in this respect as General Sherman. On his famous M march to the sea he is generally supposed to have cut loose from his M base of supplies and lived on the fat of the land as he marched along. H The quartermasters' reports on file in the war department go to show, H however, that "the daily average number of rations forwarded from H Chattanooga to .Sherman's .army 105,000 men was 412,000, or more H than three rations for every man engaged in that .campaign." H The quartermasters of the Northern armies completely revolu- H tionized the methods in use before the Civil War and the principles H they established are still substantially patterned after by all the na- H tions now at war in Europe. Automobiles have supplanted wagons H and mules for the most part, and beef cattle are no longer driven in H the wake of the army refrigeration of meats makes this unneces- H sary but otherwise, the standards established by these famous quar- H termasters of the Rebellion are still in use. The rations of the present H day offer a greater variety of edibles and are considerably more ap- H petizing, but in bulk they cannot be said to be more nourishing. The H American soldier of today must carry at least one field ration; in H addition to this he carries an emergency ration in a sealed container H that is never opened without orders from an officer. In the Civil War, H marching troops carried two days' rations ordinarily, and from eight H to twelve days' rations when they cut loose from the wagon trains. H It is interesting to contemplate the stupendous undertaking in- H volved in supplying a great army before the days of speedy transpor- H tation. When Grant started the Army of the Potomac on its final march against Richmond in 1864 some 150,000 men in all each H soldier carried three days' rations in his knapsack and a like amount H in his haversack. Beef cattle were driven behind the army and butchered every day when the march was done. Had the wagons H in the train been strung along the road in single file, the first one H would have reached Richmond before the last one left Washington. H At Gettysburg, Meade's army was supported by a train of 4,000 H wagons. We have already spoken of the heavy demands that Sher- H man made upon his quartermaster's department when he marched H from Tennessee to the coast. To support these mighty armies, supply H depots were maintained at convenient points. A cattle corral was established 'at Louisville, Kentucky,' that had a feeding capacity of H 35,000 a day. Another was located on the Monument grounds just south of the White House. Lincoln could see the herds there from H his window. Six horse depots were maintained for the Northern I armies, the largest one in the District of Columbia, where as high as H 30,000 animals were tended at one time. It is said that Sheridan, during his strenuous campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, was sup- plied with over a thousand fresh horses each week. The greatest H JN military depot of the war was established at City Point, as a base B V for Grant's army in the final operations before Richmond. Over two V ' hundred vessels were engaged in carrying new supplies to this base. A modern railway trainload of hay and grain was received daily for H j the horses. Government ovens were run night and day baking loaves I f bread for the soldiers, mountain high. That this was good soldier-H soldier-H i ing, no one will dispute, for at the finish the victorious army was H,' well fed and the vanquished was hunger-stricken. We won the war H. because we succeeded in starving the South. The Northern army H showed more stamjina in the show-down. H I A similar problem presents itself in the present conflict. Armies Hj still travel on their stomachs and starvation will be the deciding H factor. Quartermasters are destined to play as important a part in H the great world war as they did in the Rebellion. The cd-vent of the H automobile truck and the mighty manufacturing industries of the H country are bound to simplify their tasks in one direction. The sup- H plies may be more readily obtained and transported on land than H was the case a half century ago, but what about the long haul across H thevAtlantic? This situation will present its own peculiar problems. I One wonders how it will all be accomplished. Americans are at 1 work, however, and Americans will in some way or other manage to H surmount this extraordinary obstacle. Our ingenuous quartermasters Hi will find a way and our soldiers in France will receive their regular H rations. i ' II m I THE ROMANCE OF THE BEAN. CHE story goes that a Southern historian with a saving sense of humor once declared thatejthe defeat of the Confederacy was H due to the fact that the North had a never-failing supply of "beans. H bacon and bullets." It was a fairly sensible explanation, at that, and H despite the radical development in the machinery and maneuvers of H i modern warfare, the old "army bean" still seems to have lost none H of its flavor or fighting properties. We are told that, notwithstanding H all the mighty armament that science has wrought since the Civil H War, the fate of battles is still decided by the preponderance of l' i man power, and so it is that the belligerent nations hope to sustain H the stamina of their man power by the liberal use of this ancient H article of food. H We use the word "ancient" advisedly, for while we did not be- H I come a bean-eating nation until the early "sixties" of the last cen- H tury, the bean itself is much older than this country, older even than H medieval times; in fact, it has been immortalized in the traditions H of the ancient peoples and might almost be said to antedate civiliza- H tion itself. We have it from no less an authority than history itself H that the earliest races ate beans and flourished until they ruled the H world in their time. This being true, may we not apply the converse H of the rule and say that when these mighty peoples stopped eating H beans and cultivated their appetites to the point where they craved H only fancy foods, then their power began to wane and finally they H vanished altogether? H A famous student of biblical times tells us that the locusts which j John the Baptist ate in the wilderness were in fact the carob beans H and thus were they called "St. John's bread." Also, we know that H ' in the ancient governments beans took the place of ballots. In this H usage in the early times a white bean stood for absolution and a H black one for condemnation. The process of blackballing now so H common in many of our modern clubs and secret orders undoubtedly H originated from this ancient custom. And in this respect, we aic H ' reminded that Pythagoras, the ancient Greek philosopher, admon- H ished his fellow citizens to "shun the bean." This was another way H of saying "leave politics alone' which leads one to believe that the H? J bean in those days was as uncertain for the practical politician as H the ballot is today. H But to come back to our own country. For more than two cen- H i turies the people of Boston were partial to baked beans and the prac- ,- tice become so firmly established as to develop into one of our most H ? humorous traditions. Americans everywhere throughout the country J poked no end of fun at the residents of the old Bay State, on the I i1 assumption that bean-eating tended to develop snobbishness and a superficial intellectual aristocracy. The rush of Massachusetts troops to the defense of Washington at the outset of the Rebellion the first soldiery to reach the national capital went a long way toward disproving the theory that beans as a steady article of diet had a damaging effect upon the red corpuscles of the average American citizen. On the contrary, it was not long before the government considered them just as essential to the successful campaigning of its armies as bullets. Beans and pork became the principal rations for the Northern armies and when the war closed the soldiers carried car-ried their acquired appetite for beans home with them. Since that time we have become a bean-eating nation. The old veterans of the Rebellion have celebrated many a reunion, sitting by their improvised "campfires" eating bean-soup boiled in great cast-iron kettles. In some parts of the country these affairs are still known by the common name, "The Annual Bean Soup." Thus has the custom grown upon us. Then, too, beans have formed a prominent prom-inent part of the regular army rations for years. Our soldiers ate great quantities of them during the war with Spain and on the Mexican Mex-ican border, and the British and French soldiers are now eating them along the Western front American beans, at that. It goes without saying that our own soldiers will likewise be abundantly supplied with the foodstuff that "sticks to the ribs and that so long as the beans and bullets hold out the forces that follow Old Glory will never sound retreat. Colonel Roosevelt fails to see how our failure to prepare could possibly give anyone "delight," and asserts that while it is useless to cry over spilt milk, "it is much worse than useless, it is mischievous, mis-chievous, and may be ruinous, to pretend that the milk was not spilt." |