The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1917-04-25
Consumption Is
Only Way Says
British Visitor
Captain Ian Hay Beth Points
Out Failure of Volunteer
System Early in War
EXPERIMENT is COSTLY
Other English Errors Told for
Benefit of United States by
This Veteran

A veteran of both the Amerl-
can sleeping car and the trench
es of Western Europe, Captain
Ian Hay Beth of the Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders, came
to St. Paul to deliver before a
mass meeting at the Peoples
church at 8 P. M. Monday his
lecture on "The First Hundred
Thousand" England's initial ex-
peditionary force sent to the
continent in the cause of democ-
racy. It will be under the au-
spices of the Patriotic league.
Captain Beth came through
one year of trench fighting un-
scratched, even picking up ten
pounds in weight, yet seven
months of travelling in Amerl-
ca. including as he terms, an
intimate acquaintance with
sleeping cars" has caused the
visitor to lose twenty pounds.
Now he weights $50 pounds.
Survived Loos He'll
Captain Beth went through
q three-day hell at the battle
of Loos, about all one man, II
he survives, is allowed to stand.
eve went in with twenty
EIGHT officers and 800 men, and
came out with five officers and
100 men," he said. "Of course,
this does not mean that all the
700 we're killed, but troops get
so hopelessly mixed up in a hight
like that that 100 was all the
roundup showed when we with
drew
After a year in the trenches.
and particularly because he hao
had experience with machine
Guns and was of great value IN
the instruction of recruits, Cap
tain Beth spent three month:
at a training camp. Then last
October, because he also is
writer and lecturer, he was sem
bv the foreign office to Amerl
ca and since January l has made
seventy-five speeches here.
England's Lesson Bitter
England tried to keep out O
the war by being unready for it,
declared the visitor. "The re
cruiting facilities were swampet
bv the rush of men who qul
their jobs and flocked dion
don and other cities, standing
sometimes for days in front O.
the Offices. We weren't ready
because we didn't want to give
provocation in Germany.
an those early months of thu
war, under the behind-the-ag'
volunteer system which pre-
vailed, skilled munition work
ers, educated young men VIII
could have been made into off
GERS, regiments Of men wht
could have rendered greater ser
vice to their country somewhere
else than on the firing line wer'
sent into the trenches.
ENGLAND has learned to d'
things differently now. Americs
will profit by her lesson. The
party of leaders now in this
country from Great Britain can
not fail, in their conferences
with American statesmen, tx
give countless valuable pointers
Drafting Only Way.
eve had two years of war be-
fore the military service act, the
CONSUMPTION act, was passed. Il
is the only way to get men fol
the army, and it results in put.
ting every man in the place
where he can do the greatest
work. When CONSUMPTION came
there were only 100000 mer
rounded up. Most of those the
act would have affected had gone
into the service before compul.
sion was necessary.
'The appearance of the Amer.
lean flag in the trenches will
have a tremendous moral effect
Personally I do not see why they
don't liberate the 10000 Ameri-
cans now with various fighting
units, put them together under
the American flag, and let such
a body of troops be the nucleus
for the first big American unit
GA cortain number If those