I trust that when the call for boys' help comes, parents will recognize its urgency and will not hesitate to allow their sons to render this service for their country. In Germany there has been a systematic contribution from schools to agriculture since March, 1915. Authority was given to the respective school officials to grant the necessary leave of absence to older children for farm and garden cultivation. With the increasing need of securing a sufficient supply of food for the nation, excuses of pupils from school increased. An additional service of pupils was required by an order issued on May 15, 1917, relative to combating fruit and vegetable pests. Looking forward to future scarcity, Germany, with the help of the teaching staff and government leaflets, next enlisted school children in the work of collecting field and forest edible products. Children were engaged in the work of gleaning, and in the summer of 1915 the gleanings amounted to approximately $50,000, the greater part of which was turned over to the Red Cross as the children's contribution. In the summer and autumn of 1915 the children aided, too, in gathering fruits. During the following winter the schools gave instruction in the substitution of fruit products for fat and proteid. These were pointed lessons both in frugality and in public spirit. Additional requirement of the children's services was made when the continued scarcity of fats made it imperative to conserve acorns, horse-chestnuts, and seeds containing oil, the gathering of which was impossible without the aid of school children. An order of August 21, 1916, authorized the employment of children to take part in the extraction from trees in the state forests of resin needed chiefly for the paper industry; and in the same season children were called upon to engage in the collection of kernels of cherries, plums, and apricots in enormous quantities for oil extraction. The school administrators and teachers of America knew little, if anything, of the farm-placement ventures of European countries. But they were told most emphatically in the spring of 1917 that the military force was but one factor in national organization, and that the ultimate decision as to victory might well be with the farmer. So in American fashion we started at it; New Jersey with its "junior industrial army," Massachusetts with its bronze-badged boy farmers, and New York with its "farm cadets."