Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1916-11-24
ments as rasr as expected.

chief of staff, ''as Washington fought.
He lost New York and 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-
milton centers.
Almost daily a fotilla 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.
= .
1t was the autumn of the year 1919
in Cayuga county, N. Y, a brown and
parched season, eve 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, 1t could not make up the short
age In Europe.
If the nations whose soldiers held
the coast states required the wheat
and the beef and the fodder they
would have to annihilate the American
armies and then capture the supplies
before they could be destroyed.
For two years now the regents ar
mics had held the Atlantic states and
for more than a year they had grad.
ually been extending their lines till
they occupied almost all the Ohio val.
ley east of the Wabash and the Cum.
berland. The orientals neld half the
country west of the Cascades and the
Sierra Nevadas. Yet when either in.
vader advanced and succeeded in driv.
ing back the American army opposite,
the Americans continued to lay waste
everything In their retreat. To the re.
gents repeated demand that the Amer.
leans admit defeat and to his offer tc
withdraw for proper indemnity the
American reply remained the same
and was made by deed as well as by
word, I'VE offer billions for destruc
ton, not one cent for indemnity"
Upon this brown day in autumn
1919, Jim Ashby vas %grubbing the lit
tie, dried up potatoes when an object
meant for him, was cautiously passed
from prisoner to prisoner along the
rows in the potato field. Jim obtained
it at last-it was only a walnut-but
there was a number scratched on the
shell-142, 694.
The shell had been opened, the meat
removed and in its place was a paper
wad which, spread out, showed writ
ing. 1t was diminutive writing, but
the character of a woman's hand re
manned in the careful little words:
"a hole large enough to hold you has
been dug at the south end of this row.
1t has a wooden cover concealed by
soil. Get some one to scatter the soil
over the top again after you are In
and conceal yourself there at the first
chance. AS soon afterward as possible
make your way to the cottonwood near
the stream directly south. You will
be met there. For the sake of the raft
on the Hudson"
Beatrice Logan-only she could have
written that! He had heard absolute
" nothing of her, either directly or in
directly, since the day, almost two
years before, when he had brought her
to the American lines near Cayuga
and he had left her to rejoin the army.
Jim worked his way slowly to the
end of the row. There was no differ
ent appearance to the ground there;
but, scraping some of the soil away,
he uncovered a barrel top which was
over a hole large enough to conceal
him.
Jim spoke to a comrade, and when a
group stood about him for an instant
he dropped into the earth. Some n
scattered the soil again over his barrel
top. leaving open only a hole for air.
CHAPTER XVI.
lin Makes His Escape,