The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-10-21

the watch of soldiers. The military prisoners were forced to work in the same way, but they at least were hon. cred with a stronger guard.
 It was not strange, therefore, that stories began to circulate about Amer ican girls who, of their own choi. c, went to the conquerors. No one un- derstood it better than the American men themselves-those herded like slaves within the stockadc. They had failed completely to protect their wo- men. They had failed so miserably that many of the girls at least must see them only as towards and in- feriors in comparison with the con- querors Their instinct of admiration toward the conquerors, their contempt and distrust of the conquered, was not only as old as the Sabine women; 1t was as old as sex itself.
 One of these stories, circulated among the prisoners iH Jim's stockade, concerned girl from the west who from her description, most certainly was Agnes. The report was that she had become or was to become the wife of one of the enemy's captains.
 Jim did not try to convince himself that the girl, of whom the prisoners were talking that day, could not be Agnes If they had said that Beatrice Logan had gone over to the conquerors he would have had no basis of behev- ing; he would have refused the thought; it could not be so.
 There were no "lines' now which were held by American forces; there were only lines beyond which the re- gent was not yet ready to extend the regions of occupation. The new Amer ican army was massing-so the mili- tary prisoners in the stockade heard in Ohio now and was preparing posi- tions south from Sandusky or Toledo to the Ohio river, but the prince was not yet pushing his conquest that far.
 The American armies invariably had practiced in retreat the burning or de- stroying of all stores and supplies of every sort which could not be remov- ed and which possibly might aid the invader. These tactics were delaying the conqueror, who had planned to live off the country by making him use his ships to transport food and supplies and arms and ammunition for the reg iments already in America and pre- venting him from bril- ging re-enforce- ments as fast as expected.
 "We are fighting" said Stone, the chief of staff, "as Washington fought. He lost New York ard Philadelphia and Charleston, but he kept an army in the field, and so at last he won. This we will do if every city in the nation must be desolated Every day we are growing stronger and better prepared; every day the enemy ex- tends his lines to seize more ravaged regions; he is growing weaker"
 The regents generals realized that winter, firmly established, added to the difficulties of their campaign. Chi cago, Gary, St. Louis, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Kansas City, Omaha, Des Moines and Denver had become monstrous mu- nition centers.
 Almost daily fiotilla of the regents planes or a squadron of his dirigibles flew over one or another of the cities in the Mississippi valley. Thus Elgin again and again was attacked.
 
 It was the autumn of the year 1919 in Cayuga county, NY, brown and parched season, even more rainless than the summer and fall of 1918 had been. The crops had failed, and in Europe there was scarcely any crop at all The wheat had failed, owing to drought, and in Asia the rice crop was cut in two this year by floods of rain as it had suffered the year before by lack of water. Only in the great valleys of the Mississippi, the Asst neboine, and the Saskatchewan in North America and in the valleys of the Parana and the Salado in the southern continent had rain and sun alternated so as to grow grain, but the wheat of Argentina was only in the process of thrashing. and, if it was ex- ported, it could not make up the short age in Europe,
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