TEN million men have been given the order of their appearance for a place in the army this this country is to send against democracy's menace. The greatest of all human lotteries is completed.

   As great a task remains in the selection of those most physically fit to fight the country's battles and those whose departure will work the least hardship on those who must perforce stay at home.

  A survey of the work just completed or that on which we are about to enter is staggering, yet weeks ago there was started at Battle Creek one of the sixteen camps in which the biggest problem of all--the training of this great number of men into fighting units--is to be worked out early this fall.

  The magnitude of the job of going to war is seen in part by the visitor at the Wisconsin-Michigan cantonment at the food city. Here 36,000 men whose names appear in the lead of the draft rolls are to be subjected to a mentamorphosis which will leave them, not clerks, rich men's sons, and idlers, but efficient soldiers.

  Building a city nearly a quarter larger in population than the city of Battle Creek! That is the task army men, engineers, and an army of workmen have here.

  The land which a few weeks ago had the stillness of the quietest farm now fairly vibrates to the clatter of hundreds of hammers, the yells of scores of teamsters, the puff of supply trains, and the rattle of electric freighters; sixty buildings are in various stages of completion; gang after gang of surveyors are marking new sites and lining new roads; telephone and electric lifht wires are hung; saws buzz and monster steam shovels change grades a ton at the bite.

  It all goes on with machine-like regularity. Every man knows his place and is filling it. There is a minimum of outside interference, for guards line points of entrance and one must have a good reason for mixing in the din of industry. An idle onlooker feels nervous and out of place.
  Immediately after ascending a long sandy hill on the Harmonia road, the scores of contonment buildings, low and the color of neew lumber, come to view. They represent every phase of construction work to be found in the completed camp with its hundreds of buildings. Rows of buildings at the entrance to the camp are practically completed. One looks on and back and sees hundreds of men erecting the web-like frames of the new structures. So rapidly do the buildings go up it seems as if a magic force were at work.

  Teams by the score are entering the scene with materials. Thirty cars of lumber are daily being converted into barracks, stables, stores, and administration building. "Thirty cars is a starter. Wait until we get this thing thoroughly organized", said one of the federal construction officers. One hardley grasps the magnitude of the thing as it is.

  The whole number of buildings, big and little, from barracks to stables and lavatories, is 944, as planned to date, and may exceed 1,000.

  The transformation at the camp has reached Battle Creek, and an impetus, startling to that city, has taken hold of every line of business. Hundreds of strange faces are seen in the city daily; hotels are crowded to their doors and merchants have taken a new lease on their opportunities and are preparing for the profit the thousands of visitors will bring when the camp has its 36,000 Michigan and Wisconsin men.

  A vigilantes organization, formed of Battle Creek's leading business men and city officials, to clean up and keep clean the moral conditions around the new contonment, has been effected. Every proper precaution is being taken against the operation of disorderly houses. The government is co-operating, too, in this matter of safeguarding its soldiers. A closer watch is to be given public dance halls. For the first time in years, the curfew rings in Battle Creek, and all girls sixteen years of age and under must keep off the streets.

  That a provost guard or military police will be stationed in Battle Creek and vicinity after the arrival of troops has been announced by Captain M.M. Garrett of the administration department. "The guards never have any great amount of trouble with the soldiers", said Captain Garrett. "It will not be the soldiers but the rougher class of civilians that will cause trouble."

  The chamber of commerce here is raising $100,000 to complete its part of the project. under its proposition, farmers owning land on which the cantonment is located are to receive $10 per acre for the use of their land by the government for the first year and $5 for every year thereafter; they will be paid for this year's crops at the average of $4 per acre; they will be paid something like $75 per acre for their land in the event of purchase by the government. Equitable adjustment will be made by the chamber of commerce where circumstances suggest a departure from the general rate of payment or purchase money.

  The terms offered by the chamber of commerce which has no interest in the matter save to protect the farmer and relieve the government of the detail work which it did not wish to assume--were satisfactory to representatives of the judege advocate's department in Chicago and no hitch is expected.

  Battle Creek expects the camp to be made a permanent institution. The opinion has been expressed in governmental circles that an effort would probably be made at the close of the war to institute universal training. If so, the Battle Creek camp may be the training headquarters of the state.

  A federal officer, when asked how the men would be trained, explained that much the same course would be followed as had been adopted in the training camps for officers at Fort Sheridan, Plattsburg, etc.

  One of the first undertakings with the men will be their physical upbuilding. Work will be light at the outset and will probably be evenly divided between physical training and drilling. Muscles will be discovered by the soldier that he never knew he had before. As these muscles harden and the waist lines shorten, the work will be increased. The army physical training is conducted upon a scientific schedule and there need be no fear of overwork nor exhaustion during the training.

  Regular army men, experts in the training of recruits, will be in charge of the work. Men from the training camps with newly-earned shoulder-bars will assist.

  One of the latter, in letters from Fort Sheridan, shows that the recruit has nothing to fear from the army grill. "We have found the army officer an all-around man", he writes. "He knows men, and knowing them has acquired the knack of commanding them. He is sure of himself, we have found. The officers have made a wonderful impression on the candidates here. There are few prospective officers who do not feel after ten weeks of constant observation that our regular army officers are the best fitted men in the world to train an army and foster in men a high spirit of discipline so that when they take their places in the European battlefields they will not fall short of the desired results.

  "The men who have been drafted need have to fear of the rations that will be meted out to them. The candidates in training here have been put through the same training the private soldier undergoes and they have been fed well. What the rations lack in individuality is made up in quality and quantity."--Detroit Saturday Night.