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time there in good healthy entertainment, interspersed with interesting lectures and good reading that strengthens spirit and discipline among them. I also learn that the Y. M. C. A. canteens, with their non-alcoholic atmosphere, exert a very good influence with the morals of the army.

Our young army that is only being organized greatly needs the most extensive work of the kind the Y. M. C. A. is doing.”

One day our Vojenský Domov at Užhorod was visited by a distinguished guest, professor in one of the great Czechoslovak institutions of learning. When he saw the soldiers reading newspapers and magazines, playing chess and checkers with great interest and much good humor, he remarked: “Fraternity and equality are not mere words or political doctrines here. I see that in this building they are the real facts of life”.

The headquarters at Prague gets continually new requests for the opening of Y. M. C. A. huts in various parts of the Republic, particularly from garrison towns, where the Germans or Magyars form the majority of the people, for there the soldier’s lot is the loneliest. Thus far it has been impossible to operate huts in garrisons, where there are less than one thousand men on duty. Before I left, I learned of the request of the general commanding the eighth division who offered to send an officer and three non-commissioned officers to the training school at Žilina in order to have them return and establish Y. M. C. A. work in his division.

The ultimate aim of the American leaders is to train Czechs and Slovaks in the service which the Y. M. C. A. offers to soldiers so as to make them competent to take over the entire work as soon as possible. It is impracticable to bring new secretaries from America in sufficient numbers to do more than to supervise and instruct native workers.

As a thinker with universal scientific interests, as a sociologist approaching his subject upon a broadly concrete and empirical basis, as a student of ethics endeavoring to bring about the application of justice and neighborly love to our daily life, and as a practical politician with a world-wide outlook and a personal knowledge of many foreign countries, President Masaryk was naturally soon led to the study of economic and social questions. Moreover, with his unusually well-developed capacity for dealing with every new problem that arises, and in particular with urgent questions affecting society at large, it was inevitable that he should devote himself to the far-reaching questions which are presented by economic and social affairs.

The preliminary investigations involved by his first work, in which he discussed suicide as a recurring feature of modern civilization, induced Masaryk to a careful consideration of the influence exerted by economic and social conditions upon the frequency of suicide in modern times, for he discovered from statistics that about, 20 to 30 per cent of cases of suicide were the result of dissatisfaction through money matters. This fact alone was an eloquent indication that something was profoundly amiss with the economic and social mechanism of modern society. But Masaryk was not content with drawing attention to this fact and analysing it into its component parts; he endeavored to penetrate to the root of the evil itself, which he discloses to us in the following words:―“Our epoch has unquestionably become materialistic and self indulgent; ideal aspirations, unselfishness and moderation have grown rare. Such an epoch as this in which material things play so prominent a part, cannot achieve happiness, and sooner or later must become barren and corrupt. And so as a result of present day economic conditions universal discontent will inevitably be developed, which in many cases will be intensified to a complete distaste for existence. The whole social question resolves itself into the question, whether we wish to be really moral and rational. Neither rich nor poor, neither employers nor workmen are