Communication on Magazines for Soldiers in the Philippines

To the Harvard Crimson:

Now that College has opened, I enclose you a clipping from the Detroit Evening News, relating to papers, magazines, etc., for our soldiers at Manila. I recommend that this be copied in the CRIMSON, and that you make collections from students and others, and thereby bring the student body in touch with the real living world. The magazines which come in can be forwarded from time to time to such places as the secretary of war may designate. The expenses are small and can be raised by subscription if no other way presents itself. GUY MURCHIE, 95.

The clipping follows:--

"Our soldiers engaged in the Philippines could easily spare some of the enthusiasm of their receptions on their return home if the people of the United States would do a little toward enlivening their existence when they are on the other side of the world. Experience in the civil war demonstrated that homesickness is not a disorder belonging to the nursery age. Hundreds of strong men were so oppressed with it that the slightest indisposition often developed alarming symptoms, and the patient pined and died without any apparent cause. This was on our won soil when the war was but a few hours' ride from the home of the average soldier, and where the surroundings were civilized.

The boys in the Philippines are weeks away from home, even when their discharge is granted. Their surroundings are entirely alien. They are among a people who speak a strange tongue, whose sympathies are not with them and possibly never can be, so great is the difference between the Asiatic and the citizen of the United States. Homesickness, which the medical authorities have dignified as a distinct disease under the title of nostalgia, must affect hundreds of the soldiers in its most acute form. If the people at home will send the boys something to remind them that they are not forgotten, something to impress them with the hearty sympathy of the American people for the men who are fighting their battles, they will do an act of duty as well as charity. In the days of the civil war the arrivals of boxes from home were the most joyful events of the southern camps, and the boys in the Philippines should be remembered all the more because they are so far away."