cation in Los Angeles, Miss Ruby Baughman, may forget many things among the thousands with which she must charge her mind, yet she will never forget the roomful of sergeants, corporals, and privates, detailed to teach, who sat through her lectures four hours of each day for three days, and every day at the end of the four hours had to be ordered from the room because they would not leave voluntarily!

In their turn those sergeants, corporals, and privates will not forget the clearfeatured, clear-eyed woman who talked to them through all those hours and laid before them, in all its hopeless intricacies and with all its unending heartaches, the entire foreign problem of the American Army.

No one knew how she did it; perhaps she herself did not quite know. She talked of school-rooms and lessons and methods of approach. She taught, somehow, the story of the foreigner. Men who would have left the room had she tried by a word to convert them stayed and were won over to her faith.

THE MISSION OF THE KHAKI-CLAD
TEACHERS

Normal course-always the words will mean just this to us: a low-ceilinged, stuffy room, with the merciless glare from the hot world beating against the windows, the ceaseless droning of a graphophone in the adjoining hall, the continuous rumble of heavy wagons on the paved road just outside the door, the strangely mournful clatter of cavalry trotting past. And, above it all, a great truth being told, the truth of silent suffering or, worse still, the apathy which follows upon suffering on the part of those who have ears and cannot hear, who have tongues and yet are dumb, who understand neither the commands of their officers nor the chatter of their mess companions, who do not know why they are, where they are, and what it is all about.

Between these men of foreign tonguethe silent, discouraged horde-and enlightenment stands that roomful of khakiclad men-sergeants, corporals, and privates detailed to teach.

Something very fine rose and grew in

that room in those three days-something which found expression two weeks later in the glowing plans of two of the teachers who had been ordered to France. Eager to go, triumphant, they still found time to plan-not any glory for themselves, not any heroic deeds, but a school "over there" for the non-English-speaking soldiers who might be within their reach when they were "settled" overseas. To hope that their plans will find substance is, perhaps, to put an impossible strain upon the nature of soldiers of 19 and 20, and yet we are awaiting with impatience our first letters from France.

PROBLEMS OF QUARTERS AND HOURS

All too soon the three days had gone; normal school closed its doors; Miss Baughman left us to our fate, and we, the khaki-clad roomful of "permanents" and a few outsiders who were given the privilege of assisting, scattered through the various units of the huge, sun-baked, dusty camp and took stock of our surroundings.

Quarters? The Y. M. C. A. lecture halls, with the eternal graphophone grinding in the next room; dim, empty messhalls, and, out at the remount station offices, a saddle shop the door of which somebody was forever forgetting to unlock on time.

Hours? Classes met after supper, the men dull and tired after a day of trench digging and drill and scorching sun; the classes met in the afternoon unless other duties interfered, and other duties, it seemed, were always calling.

In some of the units, through the tireless efforts of the chaplains, the learning of English was put on an equal basis with drill, and men marched into the messhalls, cheerful and alert, ready for this extra branch of soldiering; and we wondered, as we talked with these chaplains, whether they knew how thoroughly fraught with importance was their work of pioneering.

Equipment? Here and there a blackboard; here and there a piece of chalk,

an

eraser, wrapping paper for notebooks; for the most part a few long benches, a table, the teacher's two bare hands, and that intangible something which had had its beginning in those first

"THE PALESTINE CHART, MADE FROM THE GEOGRAPHIC, WAS A JOY TO MAKE AND A JOY TO TEACH" Often, though not always, the teacher of the same nationality as the class finds a readier response from the pupils. The young Italian in this photograph welded his Italian class at the base hospital into a friendly unit, of which he was very definitely the center.

AFTER A CLASS OF FOREIGN-LANGUAGE SOLDIERS HAS BECOME THOROUGHLY FAMILIAR WITH THE CHARTS MADE FROM THE PICTURES OF THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICS, IT IS READY TO TRY THE MAGAZINE ITSELF

Among the issues of the GEOGRAPHIC in which these boys in khaki are engrossed, there may be identified one of the Bird numbers, the Aviation number, and the Flag number

craving for a knowledge of aëroplanes with the story of Aladdin's lamp. We wondered where those paper-bound pamphlets of fables and myths would fit in.

We reached joyfully for the histories and found them built about the tales of the Crusades. One world map,-that was a glorious find-one world map upon which to build our empire!

To be sure, as time went on we found use even for Aladdin's lamp and sent for more discarded Fourth Readers. But that was when we ourselves discovered the connection between that lamp and aeroplanes. At the start we set about the manufacturing of our own "books."

Charts were not new to us. Standard

ized Peter Roberts charts and leaflets, dealing with military terms, camp etiquette, the care of the clothing, could be had ready made and were excellent. Lessons based on the vocabulary of the General Orders,-some day perhaps a tragedy will be written on the non-English-speaking soldier and his General Orders these, too, had their place. But they were not enough.

FIRST STEP-CONVERSATION

All beginning lessons of immigrant education must center about conversation. Much as he longs for the book and easily as he learns to read, the foreigner, whether in military camp or factory,

needs, first of all, to understand and to be understood.

There is nothing more difficult than to make a foreign pupil talk, for the courage which is his when his hands grasp a book and his eyes are glued to its page forsakes him when hands and eyes lose their support. And between straight reading and straight speaking comes the picture chart.

The subject matter for beginners' charts centered about such words as

"gun," "shoot," "soldier," "officer." "march," "drill," "tent," "eat," "run," "hear," "see," and we thought that they would be easy to make until we tried to find appropriate pictures for our illustrations. The "intermediate" charts were easier, and they were determined by a few brief questions in class.

We take so easily for granted the soldier's any soldier's-knowledge of the

tools of warfare. We somehow believe that even though he has neither newspapers nor magazines, neither lectures nor casual war conversation, he still, by virtue of his months in a military camp, acquires military information through the pores of the skin, as it were. Which is true perhaps of the care of his gun and the hours for mess.

THEY LACK PRIMARY CONCEPTIONS

What is a tank? What is a submarine? What is a howitzer? Out of what are aeroplanes made? What is a transport? What is a destroyer? What is Red Cross? It is not that many of these foreign soldiers lack the English words to tell us. There is no concept of the things themselves.

We gathered photographs and more photographs from the magazines in the camp library store-room. We procured huge sheets of wrapping paper. With these and with a stamping press, and scissors, and inkpads, and glue we made our charts-the tank and the aëroplane and the ships in the process of construction, at rest, in action, with appropriate words and legends printed under the photographs. All these were, primarily, for the less advanced classes, though we who made them gathered much new knowledge as we worked.

"HOW DO WE GO TO FRANCE?"

The geographic charts came later. It was Corporal Pickett who raised the question. Corporal Pickett-he is Private Pickett now, for he learned that only privates were wanted for the last contingent which went across-taught a class in the 160th which met in the evenings stupid with weariness. Truly, this class needed a bright and stirring lesson. The magic word "France" was in the air, and Corporal Pickett asked a question, thinking of a lesson in transportation:

"How do we go to France?"

The class, to a man, looked him over indifferently and said no word.

"Aw, come on now, fellows; how do we go to France?" A very baffled teacher he was, face sunblistered, hair upstanding, despair in his eyes. "José Cano, don't you know how we go to France?"