Personally I hate the cigarette. I have seen its fine fiendishness. But to-day society has time for only absolutely "first things." Some seem to think that because the world is on fire the time is ripe for an anti-smoking crusade. I do not. Just as the next generation must carry largely the financial burden of the war, so it must solve the many physical and moral problems that this generation let fall from its hands when it gripped the sword. Personally, I have put the cigarette, for the man in the service who uses it, in the same class with the strychnine the doctor prescribes. There are hundreds of thousands of men in the trenches who would go mad, or at least become so nervously inefficient as to be useless, if tobacco were denied them. Without it they would surely turn to worse things. Many a sorely wounded lad has died with a cigarette in his mouth, whose dying was less bitter because of the "poison pill." The argument that tobacco may shorten the life five or ten years, and that it dulls the brain in the meantime, seems a little out of place in a trench where men stand in frozen blood and water and wait for death. This statement is not a defence of the cigarette; it is an honest effort to make clear the position of the Y. M. C. A., facing an immediate crisis in a diseased world, and required to function or fail. I found splendid opportunities to help the non-smoker without appearing to "preach." When he didn't "use them," I said, "Shake, neither do I. How do we live?" When a man in trying to make even change suggested "another pack," I said, "Better try something else; you've driven enough coffin-nails to-day." In many huts Dr. George Fisher's book on tobacco is placed on the counter by the side of the cigarettes. The men have here available the positive instruction that at least does them no harm. In the educational campaign which will follow the war those who were able to adjust themselves to the peculiar needs of this abnormal time will have the greater ministry. At nine o'clock I took down the stovepipe that ran up through the little window in the far corner of the selling-section of the canteen, and dropped the heavy gas-curtain; a little later the double gas-curtains at the door were also dropped. A good hour was spent in "cleaning up." Boxes were re-arranged with the assistance of the man who lingered; I laid the fire for the morning, and studied the stock so as to be quicker on my feet the next day. I left a few candle stubs on the table for the "gas-post," the man standing on guard to protect the soldiers in the billets, signal-corps room, and first-aid dressing-station from being surprised by a possible gas attack. All of these men were in this same dugout or series of dugouts. For another hour I wrote a few brief letters and filled out my order-blank for the next day. Our stock was very low.