The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-02-21
REFUTES STORIES ABOUT
 OUR SOLDIERS
Asserts Statements by Mor- al and Temperance Re
 formers Are False.

Drawing striking contrasts of the dark and bright sides of the great war in one of his most scintillating, most humorous, most interesting talks full of pathos. John Kendrick Bangs, well known author, thrilled his large and attentive audience at the sun parIor of The stratfeld yes terday afternoon when he spoke un- der the auspices of the Bridgeport Art League. At times his pictures of Hun atrocities so vtvidly painted caused many handkerchief to touch the eyes, and almost immediately he would turn to the good humored American lads and tell of ludicrous stunts which caused uncomfortable laughter.
 Fie absolutely denounced any state- ment that may have been issued by the Moral and Temperance Reform. CTS at the beginning of the war, re- erarding our boys induIging in intox- icating liquors. During his stay in France he especially watched the boys ard out of 210.OO0 with whom he mingled, he found but one lad to be drunk, and he could not convict even this one, because the accused soldier had been for days in the
 muddy trenches without relief and after the grave intensity of his duties, he yielded to th.7 temptation to in- toxicate his spir.,, so that he may forget.
 ''The souls of the boys of America are clean,' asserted ETr. Bangs. and I ought to know bc.-ausa T haTe-rnode $50 addresses during my stay there to fully 8, coo soldiers, many of whom knew well. searched, went to places to look for boys that may have yielded to this temptation O. '|en- ness, but in vain. And the statc---7'-t that the boys had yielded to seduc- ton in Paris, I absolutely deny. Nine ty. per cent. of the Ameriran boys were good Eld clean Christian men and will return SO
 He emphaticaIly urge fit pun ishment of the Hun enemy, and said the speakers of che war. who have seen Hun atrocities. owe it to Amer lea to tell them what kind of a1 en- emy they had to deal with. As an example of the Hun horrors he told of a little boy whom he knew person ally. The child, with blue eyes, golden hair, with all the joy and youth of life before. with whom he had played at leisure moments was maimed by an instrument especially designed for manning the future soldier of France may be of little value to the country. An other instance was the bombing of Red Cross hospital where 169 wounded soldiers and 39 nurses were killed by the Hun planes on a Sunday morning.
 '"The Hun understands the laugh of a French soldier, who returns after two years of steady service at the front and finds that all dear and near to him had been taken away from him: he understands the mad laugh ter, when the French soldier turns to his once beloved little cottage, where he expects his wife and chil- dren to greet him, only to find them all dead, his home destroyed, nothing left for him in this world again. But the Hun does not understand the bright, joyous laughter of the Ameri- can soldier, who knows that all that is sweet in life is yet waiting for him vixen he returns to America. That is why the American boy over there can laugh and joke and sing. The laugh of the F'renchman is different, it is the laughter of madness, and we over here, must not forget him in his sor- row. The Hun must be made to pay for it, he must be made to repent
 MT Bangs said that when the American boy returns he will have broader visions of duty and will be a more chivalrous gentleman
 He spoke of the time when the Huns were trying to bomb Paris and why they could not succeed 'The most peculiar thing about their sys- tern of mechanism of machinery was that they never changed their range of aiming. The result was that every man in Paris knew just what part of the aitt hA had hattaE star a.zar from.