The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-06-14

squad, the first real poison squad of history, There never was a poison squad like it. There probably will never be another, All the so-called scientific short-time feeding experi- ments, and all their misleading re- suits were put to shame by the ex- peTtence of the kaiSer's sailors.
 Yet, to this day., the governments of the United States Great Britain and France have consistently ignored the lesson unwittingly taught. us by the Germans
 April Il, 1915, the converted cruiser Kronprinz Wilhelm was discovered lying at anchor in the James river, of Newport News, to which port she had followed her raiding predecessor the Prinz E1tel (Attila) Friedrich.
 After sinking II French and British merchantmen, she had successfully run the gauntlet that brought her to her safe retreat in American waters. No one in the world dreamed that the Kronprinz Wilhelm would some day carry American troops to France
 When she put into Newport News she was stricken with disease which the doctors called beri-beri.
 One hundred and ten of her crew of i've hundred were prostrated. The others were on the verge of prostra- ton Government experts, state ex- pertS, specialists in private practice, and great numbers of eminent health officers and physicians, hastened to the ship to hold consultations over the curious disease with which she was afflicted They all pronounced it k.av-i-4 4aar nA oil CfC4n x1T1c caused by eating polished rice.
 When April Is, 1915, I climbed up the side of the vessel q will tell you how I got there later), I was admitted to the private consultation of a dozen doctors and officers who were discuss ing the queer malady, it's cause and its possible remedy Surely it is ber1-beri," they were saying, but how does beri-bei differ from pellagra, and how does pellagra differ from BcUVy, and how does scurvy differ from neuritis, and how does neuritis differ from pernicious anemia, and why is the disease not scurvy instead of beri-beri, and why is it not pei 1agra instead of either,' and so on and so on?
 There they sat, this group of mys- ttded scieihsts, in the dining-room over the grand salon of the once fla nous North-German Lloyd Trans atlantic liner The luxurious salon it. self had been filled with coal. The ships sumptuous babins de luxe had been filled with coal
 Mystery, tragedy, contradiction and disease brooded in the heart of that once palatial ship.
 I had no 1&usiness on that ship. I Il, 4O off a6 exhausted every conceivable device and pulled every wire of influence. had appealed to Washington in vain. IT tried to act as a messenger for a ship chandler
 Why not outwit the shallow pre- tense and the mock superiority and get aboard in the guise of some em- inent person? Truth belongs to. all There is no monopoly of it. In its presence the strategies of war dwarf in dignity to the vanishing point. Stratsy was the last resort
 It WorsE6d Through it's operation I found the truth and in possession of it am able to contradict the scientific opinions that then swept across the country and that still continue to pose as truth Polished rice had no more to do with the disease then rav- aging the crew of the Kronprinz Will helm than horeshoes have to do with rich uncleS.
 But4wffat did the men eat? The an Swer to that question is one of the LnostS important now confronting America, Great Britain and France.
 After leaving HoIboken, August 3, 1914, the German cruiser rOamed the seas for 255 days, subsisting on sup = plies taken from French and British merchantmen before she bombed and sunk them During this period of 255 days she touched at no port, depend ing entirely for coal and provisions on her rafding ability and her speed in escaping French and British war ships
 They were consuming enormous quantities of the refined foods of high calOr1c value now so extensively re- lied upon throughout the United States and they looked in all direc- lions for the cause of their trouble but the right direction.
 Alarming conditions began to de- Telop. Typical symptoms of paraly- sis, di1ated heart, atrophy of muscles and pain on pressure over nerves with anen1ia. were marked Fifty ot the men could not stand on their feet They were dropping at the rate of two day. It seemed that a curse hai descended upon the cruiser ond it was plain that the whole crew was rapidl! going to pieces.
 Here was a crew of men living 1T the open air, eating the staple arti cles of diet for which the American scientists claim so much. Fresl meat, all the butter and cheese they could eat, boiled potatoes, canned vegetables, condensed milk, tons O fancy cakes and biscuits and all the coffee and tea they could drink con stitAted their diet.
 Americans before the war, as fal as they could afford, ate more or les generously of onions, lettuce aspara gus, cabbage, carrots, parsnips, cauli flower, Brussels sprouts, celery, ap pies, berries, oranges, grapes and oth CT base-forning foods, all of whicl assist Nature to combat or to modif, some of the evil effects of the refnet diet on which the Germans attempted to thrive for long period,
 Thousands of children of the poo in the United States have always beel like the crew of the Kronprsnz Will helm. During the era of high wa prices they have been more than eve like that crew. They do not now ob tain these offsetting foods in adequat quantities and in the case of adult there are thousands who, making i'm proper choices deprive theniselve