The Rev. Sylvester Malone thus sums up the message of the war to us in his letter to the committee to welcome Brooklyn’s soldiers: 

“This short war has done so much for America at home and abroad that we must take every soldier to our warmest affection and send him back to peaceful pursuits on the conviction that there is nothing higher in our American life than to have the privilege to cheer and gladden the marine and the soldier that have left to America her brightest and best page of a great history.  This past war must kindle in our souls a love of all the brethren, black as well as white, Catholic as well as Protestant, having but one language, one nationality, and it is to be hoped, yet one religion.”

These are true words, as full of patriotism as they are of fraternity, and these are the two special lessons taught at Montauk—­a broad, earnest, practical fraternity, and a love of country before which the petty prejudices of race and section were compelled to yield ground.

THE YOUNG MEN’S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION IN CAMP WIKOFF.

The Young Men’s Christian Association has done an excellent work in Camp Wikoff.  Their tents have afforded facilities for profitable amusements, in the way of quiet games, thus bringing out the use of these games distinct from their abuse—­gambling.

Their reading tables have also been well supplied with papers and magazines, religious and secular, generally very acceptable to the soldiers, as attested by the numbers that read them.  But perhaps best of all, has been the provision made for the soldiers to write.  Tables, pens, ink, paper and envelopes have been supplied in abundance.  These were of great advantage to soldiers living in tents, and the work of the Association in this respect cannot be too highly commended.

The specially religious work of the Association as I have seen it, consists of three divisions:  First, the meetings in their tents, held nightly and on Sundays.  These have been vigorously carried on and well attended, the chaplains of the camp often rendering assistance.  Secondly, I have noticed the Y.M.C.A. men visiting the sick in the hospitals and camps, giving the word of exhortation and help to the sick.  Perhaps, however, in their work of private conversation with the well men, they have done as much real service for God as in either of the other two fields.  They have made the acquaintance of many men and have won the respect of the camp.  This I have numbered as the third division of their work—­personal contact with the soldiers of the camp, at the same time keeping themselves “unspotted from the world.”

B.