“To catch the Kaiser”; “because the girls like a soldier”; “because my girl turned her back on me, that’s all”; “I thought I was striking something soft, but ...”; “the dear ones at home”; “I was crazy”; “two reasons: because girls like soldiers and I saw a sign ‘500,000 men wanted to police up France’”; “for my health and anything else that is in it” (a consumptive soldier); “to show that my blood was made of the American’s blood”; “to learn self-control”; “it was a mistake; I didn’t know any better”; “for my adopted country”; “I got drunk on Saturday, the Fourth of July, 1913, and I left home on the freight-train and joined the Army, and woke up the next morning getting two sheets in the wind, and I haven’t got drunk since that; made a man out of me”; “to keep from working, but I got balled”; “I have not seen anything yet but rain”; “because I didn’t know what I was doing”; “to kill a couple of Germans for the wrong done Poland”; “to keep from wearing my knuckles out on the neighbors’ back doors”; “adventure and experience; also, to do my little bit for my country, the good old U. S. A., and the Stars and Stripes, the flag of freedom”; “to fight for my country and the flag, for the U. S. is a free land, and we will get the Kaiser, damn him. Oh, the U. S. A.!” (Picture of a flag.) One man makes out a complete category of his reasons: (_a_) “To see excitement”; (_b_) “to help win this war and end the Kaiser’s idea of world ruler”; (_c_) “help free the German people from Kaiserism.” And, finally, there is one that needs no comment, and with this we will end: “Because mother was dead and I had no home.” THE NATIONAL GAME Teacher—“What lessons do we learn from the attack on the Dardanelles?” Prize Scholar—“That a strait beats three kings, dad says.” TOMMY ATKINS, RAIN-SOAKED AND WAR-WORN STILL GRINS FREDERIC WILLIAM WILE, one of the Vigilantes, differs with Sherman in declaring that war is mud. He had just returned from what he describes as one of the periodical joy-rides which the British Foreign Office and the General Staff organize from time to time to give civilians an opportunity to visit the front. Mr. Wile’s visits occurred when the war-god was evidently taking a much-needed rest, for he says that on two occasions when he intruded upon Armageddon he saw more rain than blood spilled. But he found Tommy Atkins—mud-caked and rain-soaked—still wearing the grin that won’t come off. Mr. Wile thus writes of his last visit: