The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-11-18

of the decorative delights of stalls or smiling sellers are the chief means ot
 raising the wind that helps to blow healing and help to the men, English, colonial American, French, Italian, who are fighting for us.
 I went to a lecture at Carnegie hall the other night given by brave soldier who told very simply and With a real "Tommys humor," some or his eXperl- ences I liked the man and his talk. It was honest and sincere, but l hated the words with which two or three people introduce him to the audience. They called him "our hero" and spoke of him as if being a brave soldier is an unus- ual thing. I wonder if any of those sey- 1 eral thousand people who cheered and ! applauded that man realized that what | he had done was being done every hour
 of the day by millions of other men
 who had not the luck to be wounded and
 put out of active service on any of the
 battle fronts? A brave man certain ly, that vivid humorous speaker. but
 could name 100 men in my own knoWl-
 edge, who are not less brave. l
 WHAT STATE OF WAR" MEANS These are just the ramblings and rav- ings of a rather bewildered brain, so
 don't take me too seriously, l beg. Re-
 member I come from a city where the
 shrilling of whistle through the night-ridden streets means the signal for an air raid and the prelude to a
 deafening barrage from our protecting
 guns which vomit shrapnel into the air an thus keep at a respectful distance the foe whose whirring air machines makes the heavens abnominally nois-
 some.
 And then, here in this land of plenty,
 you eat white bread and have white
 sugar, both loaf and powdered! Also
 superb motors crowd your streets, and
 with no ostensible reason for existence
 except to carry beautifully dressed
 women or keen looking men about from
 one place to another.
 In and about London, mind you,
 taxicabs are so few as to be almost i a luxury, while private automobiles
 do not exist unless they are being used for definite war work. This, my
 friends, is just a little shadow o1what
 is meant by being Gin a state of war; You don't know what 1t means yet You women with your silken knitting bags and your luxurious motors and
 your bazars and your sewing parties
 have not the first glimmer of an idea what stern, hard war. conditions mean Pray God it may not come to you Shortage of food, shortage of coal, in different light-all these things tha,
 mean creature comforts, and always | the gnaWlnS anxiety oI HoI hHoW- , ing whether that man who is all that makes life good to you is dead or alive
 tout there where hell has it's lid off and the devils are let loose
 ' And here in hotel dining room t sat and listened to a party of foul l people talking German! Nobody seemed 7 to mind Nobody paid any attention t It was very difficult for me to keeY quite quiet and I wondered all the l time if something would not be done to stop the abomination. But they wen 5 on gayly gutteral, horribly healthy [ suppose it sounds absurd, thin ' skinned, foolish, but I could not eat
 My tongue got dry, my eyes burned and I thought of the stories that al : of us throughout the civilized world u know and must believe. Ah well ' These people may be all right. but II < England, even where we are la, Y enough, it would not have been per q mitted and in France they would no