Lt. Col. Frank S. Evans, D. S. O.

              AMERICAN LECTURE TOUR OF 
Lt. Col. Frank S. Evans, D.S.O.
 LATE OF BRITISH ROYAL ARTILLERY

Figure

26, 27, 28 1



I consider Colonel Evans the greatest lecturer in America today on the subject of the war.  I wish that every man and woman in this country could hear him..
—
Charles Dana Gibson.




Direction of WILLIAM B. FEAKINS, Times Building, New York






LIEUTENANT-COLONEL FRANK S. EVANS, D. S. O. R. A., an Englishman by birth, the son of a family long in the service of Great Britain, was in England at the outbreak of the war, and at the first call for recruits enlisted as a private in the British Cavalry.  Passing successively through the junior grades, he attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in June, 1916.  He spent three years and two months in France, was wounded and gassed, and rendered unfit for active service in September of 1917.  After many months in a hospital, he was in April, 1918, honorably discharged from further war service.  He was mentioned in dispatches from France for valor and meritorious service, and was in June, 1917, awarded the Distinguished Service Order.




When a call came for a speaker at a large mass meeting at Glens Falls, N. Y., we suggested Colonel Evans to the committee, telling them that we had not heard him speak.  The report that we received from Mr. E. W.  West, Vice-President of the Glens Falls Insurance Company, was so flattering that we immediately arranged other lectures for him.  He spoke before the Division of Advertising of the Committee on Public Information at the New York Advertising Club, and as a result of that meeting, although there were not fifty men present, over a dozen requests were received for him within a few days.




The New York Advertising Club Bulletin, announcing an address by Colonel Evans before the whole membership at a luncheon, said:  
Those who heard him at the dinner of the Division of Advertising said it was the most inspiring address on the war they had ever heard.




Charles Dana Gibson, chairman of the Division of Artists of the Committee on Public Information, who heard Colonel Evans, says of him:  
I consider Colonel Evans the greatest lecturer in America to-day on the subject of the war.  I wish that every man and woman in this country could hear him.




There have been many forceful and gripping talks about the war, but the talks delivered by Colonel Evans, while forceful, are more gripping than any other talk we have heard.




He creates an atmosphere of inspirational patriotism that enthuses his hearers with personal desire to Help Win the War.




Colonel Evans has contributed various articles on the war situation to current magazines, and is the author of 
PEACE BY PATCHED AGREEMENT






COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INFORMATION



GEORGE CREEL, CHAIRMAN


THE SECRETARY OF STATE


THE SECRETARY OF WAR


THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY




NATIONAL OFFICES 9 JACKSON PLACE WASHINGTON. D. S.




COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC INFORMATION DIVISION OF ADVERTISING WILLIAM H. JOHNS, 
CHAIRMAN





DIVISION OF ADVERTISING



THOMAS CUSACK


W. C. D'ARCY


O. C. HARN


HERBERT S. HOUSTON


WILLIAM H. JOHNS


L. B. JONES


JESSE H. NEAL




DIRECTORS




EXECUTIVE OFFICES METROPOLITAN TOWER NEW YORK TELEPHONE, GRAMERCY 5766




NEW YORK. 
May 1st
, 1918




Mr. William B. Feakins, Times Building, New York.




Dear Sir:




As you know, Lieut.  Col. Frank S.  Evans was a speaker at the Dinner given by the Division of Advertising of the Committee on Public Information at the Advertising Club recently.  His talk on the war situation was, without exception, the most powerful address that I have heard from any source.  His story is thrilling; his manner impressive and his use of language superb.




I feel it my pleasure, as well as my duty, to write you expressing our opinion of the part he played in our meeting.




Yours very sincerely,
Wm H. Johns.


Chairman Division of Advertising.




WHJ:ELP






LIFE
 17 WEST 31ST ST. NEW YORK.




May 1. 1918




Dear Sir




It was a great pleasure to have Lieutenant Colonel Evans with us in Glen Ridge on Saturday night at our Liberty Loan meeting.  His talk made a profound impression upon our audience, and the fact that at this meeting, about five hundred people present, we raised $207,000 in subscriptions to Liberty Bonds, was, I am quite sure, largely due to his presence.




His eloquence is fundamental.  I wish that all the American people could get his mesaage [sicmessage]as he gave it to us the other evening.




Yours Very Truly
Thomas L Mason


W B Feakins Esq





NATIONAL ASSOCIATION 
Printing Ink Makers
 INCORPORATED 52 VANDERBILT AVENUE NEW YORK 
May 17th 1918



TELEPHONE MURRAY HILL 3125 DAVID E. GOE, SECRETARY




Mr. William B. Feakins,
Times Building,
New York City.


Dear Mr. Feakins:—



We certainly did not know what a tremendous treat we had in store when Colonel Evans accepted the invitation to speak at our Annual Dinner at Delmonicos.  A more vivid, thrilling, and never-to-be-forgotten Firing Line picture has never been thrown before our astonished eyes and mind.



Colonel Evans' fiery enthusiasm — brilliant oratory — and the solemn, earnest and impressive manner with which he tells his story leaves nothing to the imagination, but does leave a lifelong and indelible impress of the mighty conflict now going on, and of the intimate, personal, and immediate claim this has on every individual, man, woman and child in the United States and in the whole world.



We left the table with our souls a-flame and with one single dominant, over-mastering determination to lay all else aside and to concentrate every energy, of material, of mind, of purpose, on the altar to free the world forever and forever from the stench and the stain that Germany has attempted to smirch and smear upon all Humanity.




Personally, I hope and pray that Colonel Evans may continue to talk to tens and hundreds of thousands as he talked to us last night.



Sincerely yours,
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION PRINTING INK MAKERS.


David E  Secretary.





Room 1418 Blackstone


The Editor & Publisher for April 27, 1918

COL. EVANS THRILLS WITH WAR STORY


Sweeps Emotions of Guests at Division of Advertising Dinner—Committees Report on Work Done as Aids to Government Drives.




Nearly every organization affiliated with the Division of Advertising of the Committee on Public Information was represented at the get-together dinner of the Division at the Advertising Club Tuesday evening.  Only fifty guests had been invited, and more than forty were present.




It was intended that the committee in charge of the work of each of the organizations should report upon their activities, and that plans for closer coordination should develop under the stimulus of a 
round table
 discussion afterwards.




This purpose was almost defeated by the effect of the address of Col. F. S. Evans, of the British Royal Artillery, concerning the war situation at this moment in the portentous and desperate drive of the Germans to divide the British and the French armies and beat their way to the Channel coast.  Col. Evans has been decorated twice by the British and once by the French—with the Cross de Guerre.  He was for three years and two months with his command in France and Flanders, was twice wounded and one time gassed.  In consequence of the disability caused by the latter he is on leave and in this country to do what he can to tell the American people of the imminence of the German peril and to urge them to speed up their war preparations.  Col. Evans is still a young man, clear of countenance and keen of eye, with a deep voice that, speaking in a conversational manner, he filled with pathos or determination as he told of the horrors of the war, the cold, calculated atrocities of the Germans, or the bull-dog tenacity of the British and the brilliant actions of the French in their battles against the destroying Hun.




NOT A DRY EYE.




When Col. Evans finished his address, during which men stopped smoking and almost stopped breathing, so intense was their interest, there was hardly a dry eye in the room, singular as this may be to say of a body of men; and none was ashamed.  From the face of every man, as the whole body rose almost involuntarily to applaud the modest English fighter with cheers, the usual smile was absent, and in its place grim lines of determination showed how deeply his graphic words in balancing the chances of victory or defeat of the Allies had affected them all.




Pontius Pilate had the power to crucify Christ,
 said Col. Evans in his last words, 
but Christ had the power to be crucified
.  So it is with you in America.  Not for conquest, not even for reprisal, you entered this war, strong enough to make the sacrifices you are making and will continue to make for the advancement of all that civilization means.  You have the power to suffer and you will suffer, we hope for a glorious end.  But whatever happens on that western front, beware of a patched-up peace.  If one is made it simply means that your children and my children will have to suffer what we are suffering, for there will be another war in their time.




Your boys and my boys are becoming Christ-like, willing to suffer and die for the right.  Many of them are dying, but many are doing a still harder thing than that—they are staying there, prepared to give up their lives for the good of their fellow men.  They are becoming spiritual, giving their all.  We have just heard of women in England who work for twelve hours a day for $8 a week.  Our boys work twenty-four hours a day for 27 cents.  That is literally true.  There are days on end when there is no sleep, and the men work and fight without it.  I myself have been nine days continuously without a wink of sleep, something that seems incredible and impossible.




ENEMY IS POWERFUL.




Col. Evans reviewed the cause of the war, which he said came because might had received so much recognition that it came to believe it was itself the right.  He warned his hearers against minimizing the strength of the German enemy and failing to be utterly prepared to meet him in his power.  England made that mistake, he said, or the war would have been over long ago.




H. W. Johns, the chairman, speaking after Col. Evans had finished, said he felt as Charles Dana Gibson, who sat on his right, felt—that the meeting should end there.  The assemblage, almost stunned by the address of Col. Evans, which cannot be given here in full, did not respond to his apparent willingness to entertain a motion for adjournment and the meeting continued.