Bisbee daily review., 1918-08-09
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 Purely native American characteristics never shone with brighter lustre than 1t did among American prisoners taken short time ago when the German intel lieence department tried to gain valuable information from them as to the state and condition of the allied armies The story of just how true these Americans were to the finest traditions of modern America comes from Geneva, Switzerland.
 A fat pussy, important Prussian major was grilling a rangy, keen faced, smiling, typical American youth, who might have been from Broadway, New York, or Olive street, St. Louis, or Kansas avenue. Topeka. He wanted to know how many Americans were then in the front lines of the allied armies.
 Ask Pershing, was the reply.
 Another American prisoner, stocky and grim, with a sense of humor shining in his eyes that relieved his face of sullenness was being pressed to tell something of American preparations at home when he left
 Gable WilsonI' he snapped back at the pompous major.
 The slang and quirks and debonaire gai- ety of the sons of our young republic, we sometimes deplore We fear they are not serious enough, not sedate enough, not dig nified, and therefore lacking the capacity and the soundness of those altogether prop CT people But here was the acid test for these gay, game, reckless American sports and they were as true to their traditions and as staunch to their frolicsome faith as any stern puritan of the old days ever was to his sombre creed of yea and nay.
 The German officers were furious over the flippancy, the irreverence and the reck- less defiance of the Americans. The subtle sarcasm and the utter contempt conveyed by the expressive American slang galled them worse than the resolute silence of the British prisoners or the frey denunciation of the poilu.
 And yet 1t was not flippancy in the reg ular sense of the term. These American boys were doubtless far from a flippant mood when taken to the terrible German prison camps and subjected to the cruelty and brutality of Prussian guards. But they were gamei Game to their hearts core! Asked for information that might injure their cause they answered in the Amer ican tongue as it Is spoken on college campus, street corner and in shop and of flee by men learned and unlearned the country over American slang means many things. He who speaks 1t speaks various language. It conveys sympathy and sor- row and inflexible resolution and high ideals of patriotism as well as irreverence, flippancy and recklessness. The American boy in that prison camp who told that tiger Prussian officer to Gable Wilson" tested with death and he knew it. But the words carried to his captor the token of daunt- less spirit.
 And they show the American as he really is, distinctive type, natural, game, brave, knowing and counting the cost and willing to pay.
 Again, when American aircraft lowered over a German town wherein were several American prisoners, they waved and cheered and rooted for the airrnan to strike home with his bombs and spare not. American pride and spirit des corps did not want to see their. countryman fail of his mission of carrying terror and destruction to this proud German town. These pris- oners would suffer annihilation with an en- couraging cheer for the advancement of the allied cause. Sporting boys! Sport in its real and highest sense. The sporting spirit of the football and baseball fields The game, clean strain, clear-eyed, smiling honest-hearted sport.
 Gable Wilson, the American boy said