MAMMOTH LIGHTING SYSTEM SIXTY thousand lights illuminate the great million-dollar pier at Atlantic City, but it is not a dock for steamships. The first section is a great palm garden with restaurant and dancing platform in the open air; the second is the auditorium, with vaudeville and moving pictures, and also a great hall for lectures and public gatherings. The latter seats about ten thousand people, and is in much demand for conventions. Thousands of delegates to various meetings throng the city, because of the seaside resort amusements, and the pavilion was built chiefly for the delight of these visitors from other parts of the country. PLAYGROUND FOR NEWSBOYS THE newsboys of Los Angeles have recently been presented with a great playground situated within two blocks of the business center of the city. It is in charge of the newsboys' club of the Temple Baptist Church, which now has nearly two hundred members since its organization a year or two ago. The lot was donated by the City Water Board, and the church. itself expended fourteen hundred dollars in equipping it for basket ball and other playground sports. Although it has been in operation but a short time, the influence of the playground can already be felt. The PRESS AGENT in the NAVY By Charles W. Person U MARINES IN BATTLE ON THE FIRING LINE NCLE SAM is now taking the great forgetting American public into his confidence for the first time and telling it about the oldest and the least known department of the navy service-the Marine Corps. The selection and drilling of marines, their work and play on land and water and, finally, their latest success in Mexico has been described by word and photograph in every paper of the country for the past six months. Life in the navy has been described so voluminously that everybody is sup posed to know the details of the work and play of our bluejackets. But how about the marines? Does the city or farmer boy know that the navy's first battle was fought and entirely won by the marines; that they served under John Paul Jones, and raised the American flag in Tripoli? Does he know that the City of Mexico was first captured by the Marine Corps and that they entered Chapultepec and fortified that place? Has he been told of their fights in Korea, Formosa, Egypt, China, Japan, and at Guantanamo? Uncle Sam says he has not. GIVING FIRST AID TO THEIR WOUNDED COMRADES IN THE FIELD One of the boys plays injured that others may practice. of the publicity bureau, with its photographers, writers, clerks, stenographers, and printers. Six months of the bureau has convinced the Government that it is doing a work at a much less expense than paid advertising ever could do. The authorized strength of the marines is approximately three hundred and forty officers and ten thousand men. At present, due to the excellent work of the publicity bureau, there isn't a vacancy. Under the old system the postmaster in each town occasionally sent in names of likely recruits and these were maneuvers of the war ships. The result is that the city or country boy is convinced that the Government is really taking a personal interest in him and really wants him. Under the new press-agent system of dispensing knowledge the would-be marine is advised that, in the preliminary instructions which members of the corps get on shore before being "turned over for duty", they are drilled in the duties of infantry soldiers, field artilleryman, and as members of machine gun companies. He is told that in preparation for their duties as landing parties from ships, expeditionary land and submarine telegraph lines, handling torpedoes, building and destroying bridges, knotting and splicing, mounting ships' guns, and the like. All this information, with photographs, goes direct to the home of the person interested, whereas, in the past, such information, and it was poor information at that, was given out at recruiting stations. Uncle Sam's press agents can now reach the prospective marine in his home and set him right as to what the marines are and what they do. Then they can lead him. to the nearest recruiting station and have no fear he will change his mind Great interest is centered in the submarine at the present time, because naval experts declare that these craft may really decide the issue on the seas between England and Germany. But whether in times of peace or of war the submarine is essentially dangerous to those on board. No one can tell when it may refuse to rise. In this very timely article, Mr. Robert G. Skerrett discusses this ever present peril.-The Editors. AN the submarine be made safe? C This question is asked whenever anything happens to one of these vessels, and, unfortunately, the query has been justified a good many times since this modern order of fighting craft came into being. For ordinary navigation the submarine is designed to travel upon the surface of the water very much as any other craft, and in this condition it would take a good many tons of water to sink her. When prepared for under-water navigation she actually has in her ballast tanks almost enough water to carry her to the bottom. We say "almost" "almost" because because the added the added amount necessary is her remaining margin of safety-a measure of floatability which the technical man calls "reserve of buoyancy". This reserve of buoyancy is the inherent impulse to rise to the surface should the motors stop, and it is against this lifting force that the propellers exert themselves in driving and in keeping the boat beneath the sea. A submarine which displaces on the surface three hundred and ninety tons would be a boat about one hundred and fifty feet long. When the ballast tanks of this vessel are filled and she is ready for submerged service, her dead-weight or displacement becomes a matter of five hundred and twenty tons, and holding this craft to the surface is a reserve buoyancy representing a space that would take just about eight hundred pounds of sea water to fill. In other words, she is suspended by a buoyant thread that is to the total weight of the submarine what seven ten-thousandths is to one! It would take less than one hundred gallons of water, entering by some chance leak, to start the vessel bottomward like a shot. Thus was the A-7 of the British Navy lost a few months ago; and in |