The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-03-04

health of many workman and that the produce of such gardens would be a won derfully helpful addition to their every day diet, which, unless they themselves produced it. they would have to go with out So, before the war Nj. Ducrocq was the president of the Lille Association for the Organization of Workmens Gardens. For him to adapt the work of the vast numbers of soldiers stationed in the great zones which have been abandoned by the civil population, and which, therefore, naturally would be expected to be nonpro- ductive, was a logical thing.
 LARGE AREAS
 Large areas thus have been culti- vated,' said M. Ducrocq, in many in- stances extending right up to the firing line. Of course it Is true that this agri- cultural effort has been secondary to the military effort, and that the cultivators frequently have been obliged to stop their cultvating so that they might proceed with the more essents-. work of fighting Germans, but the produce of the areas cultivated from the time of planting to the time of cropping has been sufficiently extensive materially to help toward the feeding of the troops Many acres are in cultivation in areas which are directly under fire. Not only has this produce saved rations which otherwise must have DColi COnSuIueu, Dul IL Has dllOTuGQ d uSc- ful variety to the mems food and thus has improved the army's general health. Perhaps this war presents no spectacle less in keeping with such a desperate con- fl1ct than these peaceful kitchen garden areas laid among fresh shell craters. In some sections of the line the men have not been satisfied with the production of vegetables in them but have covered the entertainments of their trenches with Inxya1 ha 1aat spring, miles of the trenches will be gay with bloom.
 But the work done at the actual front Is less important, although more pictures que than that done at the various depots in the interior, where men in military training are employed during their spare time in pleasant agricultural work and where, more especially, convalescent sick and wounded are hastened toward recov- cry by the exercise of garden work care- fully graduated under expert medical su pervision, to their strength. Such work has the double advantage of hastenng the mems recovery and producing food for themselves and their brethren who have not been obliged to leave the trenches
 This not only gives them beneficial exercise in the open air keeping them happier than they could be if left to loaf In idleness during the period of convales-
 
 fully selected experts, tends as a school of instruction in agriculture, which gives them instruction likely to be of vast value to them after the war is over.
 Tt is as beneficial to the large civilian and military nonelgible population, male and female, which has been evicted by the war from the territory which it hap oily occupied before Germanys mad at tack, teaching large masses of the civ ilian population the theory and practice of intensive agriculture.
 GOOD EFFECT ON MEN
 ''The effect of such work upon meD who, while they have been but slight ly injured as industrial units, have been ruined as military units, has been extraordinary. It is the entirely nat ural first tendency of such men to wish to settle down idly, living meagerly on the small pensions which the gov ernment can pay. This would mean de- terioration How much better for them to become interested in highly pro- ductive agriculture, able to earn their livelihood, after the war ends, and to increase the nations food supply and decrease the nations pension burden We have been astonished by the pos abilities of even seriously maimed men.
 "The financial importance of the work is amazing. We can't estimate the value of the products raised along