Current Illustrated Well Received

The report of an eye witness is always interesting, and when the event is the European war, and the witness a trained journalist like Dallas D. L. McGrew '03, of the Boston Journal, the interest is multiplied tenfold. In the current number of the Illustrated, Mr. McGrew tells what the American Ambulance is doing and can do in its service on the French battle-front. His comment on the attitude of the Frenchmen to the United States is straight to the point. "France feels . . . . that she is fighting for the preservation of the principles of liberty and the rights of the individual, the principles which underlie the existence of the American nation. In other words, the men composing that most democratic of institutions, the French Army, feel that they are giving their lives cheerfully and gladly for our ideals."

Mr. McGrew's article is supplemented by the diary of a member of the Senior class, M. F. Talbot '16, who drove an ambulance in France last summer. The intimacy and personal nature of Mr. Talbot's experience give zest to a description of horrors only too common.

Morris Hadley, Yale 1916, and son of President Hadley of Yale, describes the organization of the Yale Battery. At the suggestion of Major-General Wood, it was determined to make this company a battalion of field artillery, artillery being the department in which the United States Army is most in need of recruits. The article on "Military Instruction at California," by H. H. Weber '11, might have been considerably reduced without affecting its interest to members of the University.

E. V. Salisbury '08 deplores the fact that the Ambulance service only attracts two kinds of men, the youth of established means who takes all the photographs he can, and returns at the end of three months, and the professional adventurer. As an antidote, he suggests extending the required term of service from three to six months. Granted that many ambulance-drivers are not without their imperfections, it is difficult to see how the proposed plan would provide an adequate remedy.

The photographs, always a refreshing feature of the Illustrated, cover a multitude of activities, from ambulance scenes across the water, to snapshots of the Senior Class officers and current events at other universities.

Of the editorials, one might make the charge so often made against college publications, that they lack maturity. The Illustrated makes the delightful discovery that brains are required in journalism, remedies some defects in the English department, attacks "Widener Debaters," proposes to allow men graduating at mid-years to enter the Business School at once, and follows the footsteps of the CRIMSON and Advocate in helping men to choose a vocation for after life.

On the whole, however, the Illustrated has produced a good number, the best feature of which is the article on American Ambulances by D. D. L. McGrew.