Our Schools in War Time—and After

by Arthur D. Dean

Still another type already spoken of is tentage, and perhaps the best way to provide such an equipment is to have the state furnish it through the adjutant general's office.

The sanitary aspects of any type of camp are highly important. In Massachusetts the committee of public safety, which established boy camps, required that the sanitary conditions of these camps should be inspected by the board of health, and the committee furnished full directions and a blue print for the building of a sanitary latrine.

Some of the camps burn their garbage in home-made incineration plants.

Ordinary garden hose with a watering-pot sprinkler attachment, or an elevated barrel with a sprayer attached, and filled by the use of a pail and ladder, were shower-bath devices worked out by the boys in various camps.

All the camps devised some method of keeping food cool, ranging from those that had a real city ice chest down to those that cleaned out a spring and set in it a bottomless, covered box.

The job of feeding boys in camp is not a sinecure. Every scheme has been tried, from engaging at a salary of one hundred dollars a month a Pullman dining-car chef down to, or shall it be said up to, a boy cook. The cook problem in a labor camp is as difficult to handle as is the so-called "servant" problem of the city. The average cook knows more about cooking than he does about dietetics. He is very likely to lack adaptability. He is usually untrained for camp cooking and is not particularly open to suggestions. Experience seems to show that the best cook is the one who has done work in a Y.M.C.A. camp or in a Boy Scout camp. Of course, this year there was a great scarcity of the latter class to be found, as they were needed in their own organizations, and therefore many camps were obliged to employ a local woman of the matronly type to cook for the boys; sometimes an experienced camp leader has developed some good cooks among the boys in camp. Perhaps the best results, however, were obtained from boys who before the opening of camps were given from two to four weeks of camp-cooking instruction in the school system from which they came. These boys were ready to use the products of the localities, such as peas, beans, tomatoes, radishes, lettuce, and corn, while the professional cook often seemed more familiar with the use of the can opener.

The quantity and variety of food was practically in the hands of the boys themselves, assuming that the cook was a good one. If the allowance of fruit for breakfast, for example, consisted of four prunes or one banana or half an orange, and the group as a whole desired a larger portion, it was perfectly possible for them to secure it by so voting, for it must be remembered that the food expense of the camps was divided pro rata among the boys. Under these conditions, however, it was found that the boys were very economical and frowned upon the few malcontents who wanted to gorge themselves.

The cafeteria style of serving prevailed generally.

Providing amusements in recreation camps is always a problem, but farm cadets require little in the way of entertainment after eight or ten hours of field service. Camp-fire talks on agriculture, corn roasts, toasting marshmallows, giving musical entertainments and minstrel shows, holding mock trials, playing baseball on Saturday afternoons or Sundays, constitute the chief forms of recreation. In every instance the lads have been well received in the local communities. They were popular features at church entertainments, Red Cross benefits, and country sociables. Often the boys, especially in the berry-picking regions, went swimming about 4 P.M., after the crates had been sent by the afternoon express.

In every instance the village church and the county Y.M.C.A. took an active interest in the farm cadets. Many of the boys played musical instruments, and their confidence in themselves was contributory to many supplementary boy choirs. The country pastors evidently made it a point to do what they could for the pleasure of all the boys, and without exception there seemed to be no religious distinctions. In some camps the Catholic priest expressed his fatherly feeling for the lads. In others the Jewish and Catholic boys attended the union village church. In brief, the boys entered into the spirit of the rural life, and both the country folk and the youth of the city were the better for it.