The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, July 15, 1918, Page 10

i i H | i { e s R el o e S SRR T = — 4 3 2 e PO PASEOT N it YL ot st Foip £ e . Hancock, Ga.. many parts of the Northwest 1s artificially stirred up by the agents of big business and other corrupt- ers of community life with the help -of the lying press that has prevented the people in many of the towns from knowing anything at all of the aims of the Nonpartisan league. It can not last, because the people of the towns are rapidly learn- ing the tricks that have been played on them to line them up for the special interests and against the farmers. THE FARMERS WILL NOT RE- TREAT IN THEIR FINISH FIGHT AGAINST Soldiers Have Their Own Store There Is No Profiteering in Uncle Sam’s Training Camps, and Prices Are Kept Low by Co-Operatlon in Canteens BY E. B. FUSSELL HERE is an old saying to the effect that you can’t eat your ice cream, or cake, or whatever it is, and have it too.. In the army it is different. Of course, a lot of things are different in the army. You get up to a bugle instead of to an alarm clock or a rooster crowing. You stand in line for everything, from brushing your teeth in the morning until going to.bed at night— for sick call, for signing the payroll, for getting_ your pay a week or so later, for passes entitling you to leave the reservation and go to town, and I shouldn’t be surprised, if you stayed in the army long enough, you would be required, at a stated time, to stand in line and give yourself up to the undertaker. Other things are different, too. You eat “mess” instead of meals, sleep in a bunk or a cot instead of a bed, do everything from halting to snoring in two, four or six counts, as the case may be. You stand in line and fight for a chance to spend your money, instead of having half a dozen clerks surround you and try to take your money away from you—and this brings me to what I was starting to say. - AND AN "ARMY MARCHES ON ITS STOMACH In the army the saying about not being able to eat your ice cream and have it too doesn’t apply. The facts in the case, if put into words, would be something like this: “Eat your ice cream on week days and you’ll have an extra helping, free and for nothing, on Sundays.” Eating is an important subject in the army. In civil life, when I loafed over an office desk three - or four hours in the course of a morning, doing no harder physical exercise than pounding the keys of a typewriter and' occasionally walking the length of the room to chat with the boss or one of the other men, it didn’t make much difference to me whether I ate lunch at 12 or 12:30 or 1 o’clock. I ate as a matter of course, but I took so little real- interest in it that it has even occurred that I would eforget to order pie when some one else was pay- ing the bill. But in the army, again, it’s dlfierent I am ready to advise any city man, who doesn’t care much for his meals, to try our schedule, getting up at 6 o’clock, cleaning up his-tent and company street, doing an hour’s “fatigue” work (nghtly named), then two or three hours of drill in the The line-up for ice cream at Canteen No. 3, Ordnanee Ttainlng Camp, Camp :Any profit made by sales to the soldiers goes to their mess’ . fund, and means that they have a better variety of food alul more of it, eat! " if they want. This ie how Uncle Sam meete tlle middleman. A T O M L R SN G B S TS T IR R Ay S e OUR BAD MARKETING, HIGH REST RATES, COSTLY HAIL INSURANCE, UNEQUAL TAXATION, ETC., BUT THE REAL BUSINESS MEN OF THE TOWNS WHO MUST LIVE BY SERVING FARMERS AND WHO DO NOT AT ALL PARTICIPATE IN THE DIVIDENDS OF BIG BUSINESS, WILL SEE THE LIGHT. With the last hold which the old guard has, the small town, gone, the victory of the people will be complete. The people of town and of country will dust under a blazmg sun. He will come back too tired to talk, too tired to walk, too tired, probably, to even wash the dust off—but not, by any chance, too tired to eat. It is surprising how important a subject eating is, what we eat and when we eat. Our company of 250 men is divided into four pla- toons. I happen to be in the first one. The company lines up for mess, as for everything else, each man with his mess kit. This consists of a meat can, an oval aluminum dish, a little more than an’ inch deep with a long han- : dle and rounded cover that can be used for bread, butter, pudding, and so forth. The meat can is made so that a knife, fork and spoon will fit inside of it, the handle folding over and holding the cover on. There is also a cup that holds nearly a quart, with a handle that can be bent back to fit around it. It takes perhaps 15 minutes to serve the whole company, in two lines. . After each man has eaten he washes his mess kit, standing in line again, folds it up and puts it away. WAITING IN THE pense. nance corps, the Leader. " BREAD LINE Eating, and especially the time of eating, is such an important subject that a different order is adopted for each meal for sending the platoons in. If the first platoon is first in the morning it is fourth at noon, third at night, second the next . morning and first the next noon again, and so on. Now I suppose most of the other men in the com- pany, in civil life, were a good deal like myself, not caring much when they ate. But in the army it’s different. There is probably 15 minutes dif- ference between the time that the first platoon and the fourth are served. That difference is 'so 1mportant that it is talked about hours, sometimes days in advance. As I write this on a Sunday morning, I can tell, without a mmutes hesitation, that our platoon is due to go in third at dinner today, second at supper tonight and first at break- fast Monday morning, which will give us plen- ty of time to get through, wash up your kits and clean our tent for the regular morning inspection, before we go out on fatigue de- tail. Once or twice the top sergeant has made .. a - mistake - and sent some other platoon in out of order. And the men in the platoon which should have gone in first have been sore about it for days after- . ward. . If a difference of two or three minutes in the time that we eat is so weighty a subJect to be figured out days in ad- vance, think how much more important is the question of what .we At ‘the beginning of cially by the efforts of -over the-livelihood What could better illustrate this soldier letter than a picture of the author? The photograph on the right shows Private E. B. Fussell in uniform. Looks happy, doesn’t he? Pretty well fed, too. This letter to the read- ers of the Nonpartisan Leader tells how it is that the soldiers are so well cared for, at such little ex- Cutting out the middleman is one of the secrets used by Uncle Sam. Before enlisting in the ord- Mr. Fussell was a staff writer of - canteen is like. then be free to co-operate effectively for mutual’ :: prosperity instead of slaving for the special interests, divided artifi- these interests to keep their power of the people. PRIVATE FUSSELL the establishment of C company there was a good deal of kicking about the food. There was never any trouble about there being enough. The gov- ernment ration, which has now been advanced:to 44 and a fraction cents a day, to meet the-advanc- ing cost of living, is ample to supply plenty of nourishing grub. But there wasn’t much variety, ~ at the start; and not much fancy stuff. Breakfast usually cons1sted of cornmeal mush and condensed milk, fried potatoes, unbuttered bread and coffee. Dmner was something like hash, turmps, unbut- tered bread, cornstarch pudding and ice water. For supper,_ there would be a couple of kinds of vege- tables, unbuttered bread again, some plain dessert and iced tea. There was some complaint because there wasn’t enough sugar. A SUDDEN IMPROVEMENT IN FOOD But a few weeks ago a sudden change came. We began to have ice cream every Sunday, great. big helpings of it, and then we began to have it a couple of times during the week besides.. Along with the ice cream went a rich yellow cake, with plenty of strawberry jam on top of it. Then eggs began to show up for breakfast every other day or so, with bacon in between times. ~Grapefruit “-and oranges hegan to show up on the table, so did oleomargarine to help the bread along. Just for an idea of actual sample menus I will tell what today’s food is. This morning we had an orange apiece to start with, a big helping of patent breakfast food with plenty of sugar and milk, bacon, fried potatoes, French toast and cocoa: At dinner today we are to have chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, celery and sliced tomatoes, fruit _.-salad, bread and butter, ice cream and cake and . . lemonade. I don’t know the full menu for Snnday : supper, but I understand that iced grape Jmce ls : going to be a part of it. What is the cause of the change in- our menus? 5 Remember what I said at the start about eatmg' ice cream and having it too? At Camp Hancock and every “other military eamp in the United: States, there is operated a post ex- change system. The post exchanges operate can- teens, barber shops, laundry and dry cleaning agencies and in some cases restaurants, bowlmg : _alleys and tailor shops. At Camp_Hancock there are five big eanteens, - one big post barber shop and a number of smaller company shops, besides the laundry and cleaning All of these are operated, not for pri-- agencies. vate profit, but for the benefit of the soldiers who are customers. No private agency .13 ‘allowed to. have an office on the reservation. - 33 I doubt whether many people realxze what,..a 3 In the old days they were palqons 7o operated by the govemment. The prohibitionists §