KELLY '06 DESCRIBES "Y" WORK IN POLAND

The American Y.M.C.A. is still busy in Poland, encouraging the Polish Army under adverse and trying conditions and working for a better morale among the people at large of that nation, according to a letter received recently by President Hopkins from Eric P. Kelly, Dartmouth '06. The following

paragraphs are extracts from the letter:

"All the papers seem full of things about Dartmouth nowadays, 150th anniversary, overwhelming number in freshman class, football, and such-like, so I'm dropping you a line.

"We're feeding and encouraging soldiers plodding about in 25 below zero weather. Yet these loyal and sturdy Polish boys think nothing of it. I wonder if you people by the side of your warm fires in America realize that while everyone is rejoicing in peace a million young Poles, of college age and less, are forming a great line in cold, almost unbearable weather, holding off an army of Bolsheviki from invading Europe and perhaps the world. You have no idea of the enormity of their task. Through the whole eastern front, in woods, swamps, timber and horrible places, they are manning their guns and dividing their tobacco, or some sub stitute, for tobacco is now 32 marks a can.

"You must make the boys see the importance of this Polish problem. You would love these people if you knew them as I do. I admired them in action on the West front in the great war, but here, uncomplaining, they stand in snow and ice at 25, 35, 45 below—mere boys—fighting for all Europe and for you their battle of law and order against lawlessness, idleness, land the worst kind of autocracy (for that is what Bolshevism is.)

"I teach them to play games at times when I would much rather shed tears of pity if I followed my weak inclination. But it's not their nobility in suffering that staggers one; it's their childlike honesty and simplicity. But the Poles don't want help first. They want it thirdly, or fourthly, but they do want the world to know that wedged in between Germany and Russia they're fighting a grim and cruel battle to keep Bolshevism out of the civilized world.

"I'm going down to Silesia during the plebiscite. I have some athletic classes to form there. Then I expect to get up to the "other front", for Poland is all "front" these days."

Letters addressed "Care of the International Y.M.C.A., Polish work department, 46 Rue Provence, Paris" will reach Kelly.