Adventure, February 1917 — page 212: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

210 HE tale that follows seemed to me so amazing that I wrote asking the man who sent it to me whether he weren’t amus- ing himself by “kidding” me. I think I even explained te-him that that kind of practical joke was very crude humor and something on the order of hitting a defense- less person who’d never done you any harm. But here is the letter I got in reply—and my apologies for a natural questioning of the tale as it first reached me: _ [received your letter yesterday containing identi- fication-card for which I thank you very much. But I was somewhat surprised at the note I found en- closed. I am not given to telling things that haven’t at least a vestige of truth. I was not making sport of you in the least when I told you about finding that charm. I could give _ days, dates and names and absolute proof through a man who was special envoy to President Taft from Mexico in tgt1. Andif necessary I could show you a paper offering 700 pesos apiece reward for the three Americans who stirred up the Iitla tribe of the Yaquis. __ My reason for not having my name signed to this, if it is printed, is obvious. s I hope you will accept this as being true. Now for his first letter with what looks like a record in the matter of odd places where copies of Adventure have been found: I thought I would open up once and tell you of one of the places I found Adventure. I have found them in many queer places but this is about the strangest. Three other fellows and myself were on a little exploring expedition in old Mexico and heard for some time of a great medicine-man or witch-doctor of a tribe of Yaquis in the hills about seventy-five miles southwest of us who had a wonderful charm in his medicine-bag that would cure all ills that the Indians were subject to and would do a lot of other wonderful things. Well, I am ashamed to tell it, but we decided to steal that charm, and we did. Traveled 280 miles without rest and very little to eat, with fifty or sixty mad Indians after us and after we finally got clear ee Or een old copy of Adventure wrapped in a red shirt and a piece of mountain-lion skin. If you print this in your magazine for the lord’s sake don’t put my name to it. HAVE word from several of our comrades at the ffent in Europe. Some of you have written asking for more of these soldier letters; a few have complained because we seem to approve Americans -who serve other countries than their own. In the first place, a large part of these men are not Americans at all, but Canadians, Australians, English, etc. Second, we do not approve the general idea of Americans serving any other country or severing, even Adventure temporarily, their allegiance to the United States. Also, it is always possible they may be needed to fight for their own country. Bu there is one big advantage to this country in their going. They get training and experience invaluable to the United States, which has had no experience in that new thing, modern warfare, and is notoriously in need of all the practical mili- tary training it can get. At least one of our American correspondents in the trenches, Mr. Genée, enlisted solely through the de- liberate purpose of bringing home this training and experience, not only in him- self as a trained unit but for propaganda in a planned campaign for teaching us his countrymen the practical lessons of modern warfare and our country’s needs in preserv- ing her own safety. Yo who have complained, how does it happen no one of you ever complained over American adventurers who temporarily served some Latin American republic or revolutionist body? The case is practically the same, and there are plenty of instances, Perhaps you have even done it yourself. As to an American’s risking his life on foreign soil in any cause but his country’s, why, tens of thousands are doing it all the time all over the world. The cause they serve is their own—excitement, profit, pleasure; it is certainly not their country’s cause, and when they die of it they are just as much loss to their country as if they’d died in a European trench. And have you ever complained about it? Or even dreamed there was ground for complaint? T LEAST I’m glad no one has been stupid enough to complain because the men whose letters we’ve published hap- pen to be nearly all on one side in Europe’s war. I explained all that at a previous Camp-Fire and can cover the case briefly and finally by saying that we have never received a letter from the trenches on the other side without publishing it. "THERE have been only a very few com- plainers, but I don’t mind saying they make me somewhat sore. Chiefly because of something that I have no doubt has never entered their heads. This is it: They object righteously and patriotically to printing letters from Americans who COppiclocrolks (CO)