PRIVATE LOGAN’S VISION.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7920, 18 August 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

PRIVATE LOGAN’S VISION.

THE PREACHER AND THE RUM RATION. By A CADET. Private Ernest Logan, home on leave from the western front, sat back in the family pew and listened attentively to what the preacher ha,d to say. It was not a very enthral-, ling sermon, but the preacher bad a deal to say on Uie subject of rum. He denounced rumT Rum, he said —and he banged the pulpit ledge as he said it —is strong drink, and strong drink is a curse. It was horrible, he said, to think that this Christian country was actually providing strong drink to the soldiers in the trenches, *nd he called on the Government to withdraw the rum issue. The Y.M.C.A., he said, had offered to provide hot coffee and take it up to the men in the trenches. It was at this point of the sermon that Private Ernest Logan smiled, and as he smiled he had avision of the last rum.issue he had received in France, and this is what he saw. IN THE ICE.

His wedge of mud formed a salient. On one side of it the Somme ran muddily by. Beyond the Somme were the Germans. On the other side of it there was a canal, and beyond tho canal were more Germans. There was a wrecked church that gave some sort of cover to the British troops, but mostly there was mud—deep, cold mud into which men sank up to their waists and sometimes to their necks. But it was net of mud that Private Ernest Logan was thinking as he lay back in that pew and looked on the valley of the Somme, that easilychurned marsh that has tried the spirit of soldiers in many wars. He was thinking then of ice. He saw himself lying on ice—not just frost, but ice—at a twenty-four hours’ stretch, with a watchful enemy so close at hand that he dared not strike a match in the dark; and even in that warm church he could still feel the cold striking into his spine, into his blood, into his heart, until at last he seemed petrified and incapable of feeling anything but abject, abysmal misery. It was not possible to get coffee—hot coffee —but it was possible to get rum; and while the preacher filled tho rafters of his church with the echoes of his anger with the Government that permitted the issue of strong drink to the troops, Private Ernest Logan could see himself stretched cn the ice in the valley of the Somme, and could feel the warm glow in his blood as the rum went into his body. “NOBBY’S” FATE. Then the scene of his vision changed. He was still in France, but he was no longer on that wedge of frozen mud. He was ,back in a barn, resting. “Chestnuts” was lying asleep on one side of him, and “Nobby,” his little Cockney pal, was lying on the other side. Whilst they slept an orderly corporal cafiie into the barn and woke Private Ernest Logan, and told him that he was for Blighty. Logan in his joy, turned to “Chestnuts” and slapped him until he awoke. “I’m for Blighty, old man!” he shouted; “I’m for Blighty!” And when “Chestnuts” was awake Private Ernest Logan turned to his little Cockney pal and raised his hand to slap him, too. But he did not slap him. There was a queer, set, stiff look on “Nobby’s” face —-a marble look . ; i “Exposure!” they said. Even the rum issue could not save “Nobby.”

Then the vision faded away, and Private Ernest Logan, leaning back in his pew, saw the preacher lift his hand and bang it down on the ledge of the pulpit. “It is the duty of every Christian man and woman,” he said,J‘ to demand that the Government* shall cease to issue this accursed stuff to our brave soldiers.” When Private Ernest Logan heard that he smiled.

FOOD CONTROL IN AMERICA

Tho organisation for food control in the United States has, as its first object, the release of the greatest possible quantity of foodstuffs, principally cereals, for Britain, France, Italy, Belgium and Portugal, and ceitain neutrals, for whom it is hoped to provide between 500 .million .and 800 million bushels of grain this year. Legislation has been expedited to give the Administration power to increase the production, to regulate the domestic consumption and to control exportation. These measures are designed to ensure an adequate food supply in the United States at State-controlled prices, and by the elimination of waste and the efforts of agriculturists, to increase the available surplus for America’s allies. Early in June preliminary legislation was enacted, authorising expenditure on seeds for distribution at cost, on an educative campaign, on eradication of disease among live stock and plant life, and on a survey of the nation’s resources. Congress also gave the President drastic powers to prevent speculation in food cereals by suspending and even closing exchanges which allowed gambling on “futures.” At the head o this great war department is Mr. Herbert G. Hoover, who accepted the position of food administrator cn condition that neither her nor his assistants should receive any pay for their services. An American mining engineer, Mr. Hoover became wealthy by the development of mining enterprises in Australia, Burmah, Mexico, China, California and Russia. When Germany '.•ofused to feed the Belgians he gave up all his interests and devoted himself to the control of the Relief Commission, and for two years he “held dying Belgium in his arms.” As soon as war was declared the American people asked for him to regulate the food re-

sources, but it was not until the President personally appealed to him that Mr_ Hoover accepted this “ thankless, hopeless post,” as he had previously described it. IJ is interesting to note that lie is only 43 years of age.