Casper Daily Tribune

NEW YORK, June 25.-The open season for surplus weight is on.

Thirty thousand citizens who have been taking their daily dozen in the front parlor will soon be performing their stretching and bending exercises out of doors.

They will perform them at the behest of Uncle Sam at 27 different military camps provided for the purpose and between times they will learn to "fall in," shoulder arms, eat beans and assimilate various other matters of routine army life.

It's all a part of the scheme which the war department thought out for giving young men between the ages of 17 and 24 a summer outing and a little taste of army discipline at the same time.

If you're an insurance salesman or a shoe clerk or somebody's private secretary and think you'd enjoy a month's sleeping out in the open with a little rifle practice thrown in, just tell the war department about it. They'll look after all expenses, feed you, drill you, play a nice musical bugle for you to get up to in the morning and guarantee to make you a better citizen in the bargain.

The camps, started in 1921, are meeting with steadily increasing popularity according to Nathan H. Lord, civil aide to the secretary of war for the state of New York.

Twelve thousand men, he states, were cared for the first year, 20,000 the second, while 30,000 will be accommodated during the present summer.

Next year he anticipates that 60,000 men will be received into the camps.

"It's not so much the men as their mothers," he explains. "Mothers used to think that military preparedness made for war. Little by little we are demonstrating to them that military preparedness makes for peace.

"It isn't true that because a young man learns to use a rifle he's going to rush out immediately and insist on using it on somebody.

"If a war does come the training in military discipline which these young men have received will be of invaluable aid to the country.

"But if we never had another war the training would still stand them in excellent stead. It teaches them respect for authority, teaches them to make prompt decisions, breaks down caste, promotes true democracy and strengthens physical and moral courage.

The men have a good time, they are well drilled in athletics and sports, they have considerable time to themselves, their recreations are well looked after and they get many valuable lectures on subjects not strictly allied with the army routine."

Men who have taken the summer training, he states, have shown marked increase of efficiency in business while large commercial concerns are now giving their men the month off to take the training as a special reward of merit.