CHAPTER VITHE WELFARE OF THE SOLDIERS
Into the forming and shaping of the American Army for the World War went something new in the making of armies, something hitherto unthought of in the history of wars, for its training was based upon a new idea, a bold innovation upon military traditions. The method of army training had always been to minimize the individuality of the fighting man, to lessen it to the disappearing point, and so the more surely and easily and completely merge the individual in the fighting mass. Only so, it was believed, could the necessary discipline, unity and uniformity of an army be secured.
But when the United States entered the war and set about the creation of a great fighting force its Secretary of War inspired the task with a new ideal and the whole making of the American Army was based on the idea of developing and heightening the individuality of the soldier, of discovering, improving and utilizing his personal qualities. The unceasing effort was to make of him a better citizen, a better, finer and more capable man, in the conviction that thus he would be also a better soldier. Believing that the higher the grade of the individuals who compose an army the higher will be the grade of the army, all the training, the environment and the treatment ofthe soldier, from the time he entered the service until he was discharged, were calculated to develop him physically, mentally and morally as an individual, to inspire him as a person and, in general, to make of him a more intelligent, resourceful, upright, self-dependent, capable and moral man than he was before he entered the army. The immediate purpose was to make a better army, an army of thinking, reasoning units, and therefore an army so intelligent and alert that it would at once perceive the fundamental necessity for discipline and instant obedience and would gain more speedily than by the old method the needful unity and uniformity, while its composite individuals would be more capable of efficient action if deprived by the chance of battle of their accustomed leadership.
That was the first and chief purpose. But behind it lay also the determination that these millions of American young men, the flower of the nation, the beloved of their homes, should be, as far as possible, enabled to preserve themselves from those debasements, corruptions and blights of army life which the world, ages ago, had grown accustomed to accept as inevitable. The purpose was that, so far as foresight and effort could command so unprecedented a result, these young men should bring back no scars or wounds other than those dealt by the enemy. The outcome of this bold experiment was a complete vindication of the vision and the faith of the man who insisted it should be tried.
The preceding pages have shown this purpose of individual development and betterment at work in the methods of training the soldier, giving him at least some measure of education when he was deficient inthat respect, instilling in him the principles of good citizenship, inspiring him with patriotism and enthusiasm for American ideals, broadening his outlook, appealing to his intelligence and ambition, discovering and improving his aptitudes and assigning him to work for which he was fitted. Coöperating with the methods and purposes of the system of military training was a large and varied program of recreation designed to fill the soldier’s leisure hours and to work hand in hand with that training to make him at once a better man and a better soldier. A part of this program, that of the Commission on Training Camp Activities, was created by and carried on by the War Department, but many civilian organizations constantly coöperated with it and seconded its efforts.
Within the War Department the Commission on Training Camp Activities—it had its twin in the Navy Department—was appointed by the Secretary of War to provide for the men in training such a comprehensive recreational and educational program as would entertain their leisure hours, stimulate and develop their faculties and better their morale. The Commission, with its representatives in every camp, aimed, as one of its purposes, to make the American army a singing army. Trained musicians and song leaders developed and encouraged vocal and instrumental ability and aided in the forming and training of bands and singing groups. As much music as possible was brought into the daily life and work of all the camps.
An athletic director in each camp organized sports and in consequence baseball, football, cross-country running and other competitive games were of frequent occurrence. Skilled instructors in boxing,wrestling and other such personal sports improved the resourcefulness and the physique of the men. Every large camp had its Liberty Theater seating from one thousand to three thousand men, built on modern lines and equipped for any ordinary performance. Theater managers and dramatic directors and coaches wearing the khaki of Uncle Sam’s service brought to the task of entertaining the soldiers and developing dramatic ability among them the knowledge and the skill gained by years of study and practical experience. Theatrical attractions of every sort, vaudeville, drama, moving pictures, musical artists, entertainers of varied kinds, made the tour of these theaters and plays were given in them by amateur companies formed among the men in the camps.
Educational work of such varied sort was constantly carried on as part of the program of the Training Camp Committee as to give to much of the leisure time of every camp almost an academic atmosphere. The machinery of the university extension work and of the educational department of the Y. M. C. A. was utilized to provide for those wishing to take them a wide variety of college and commercial school courses. English was taught to those of little education and to those of foreign birth. Every camp had its classes in French. There was instruction in subjects which would prepare men to transfer from one branch of the service to another. And always and everywhere there were schools or classes or courses of study for intensive training in one or another phase of military affairs—training for those who would have to undertake these specific and varied duties, training for those who would instruct others in them, training for officers. Every camp andcantonment buzzed with these activities by which the men of a nation unused to military affairs and hating war zealously trained themselves for battle and schooled themselves in new methods of warfare.
The Commission on Training Camp Activities went vigorously into the work of education in social hygiene and the enforcement of law in order to make and keep the camp environment, the camps and the men themselves morally wholesome, to the end that the army should be of the best fighting material and that the men who composed it should return to their homes as fine and clean as when they left. A determined and unceasing effort was made to keep alcohol and the prostitute away from the cantonments. Wide zones in which the sale or gift of alcohol to soldiers was forbidden surrounded each training area. One section of the Commission dealt directly with the problem of woman and girl camp followers and sought to lessen this evil by work among the women themselves, by securing better enforcement of local police regulations and by educational and reformatory work in camp communities. A great educational program was carried on by the Government by which instruction in sex hygiene was given in the training camps. During the first six months of cantonment training more than a million men were reached in this way, and the work was continued with equal energy throughout the war period.
A system of government insurance, provided by act of Congress and taking the place of the old-time pension system, enabled any member of the fighting forces of the United States to insure himself against death or total permanent disability at a low premium, which was taken from his monthly pay. At the endof hostilities 4,000,000 of these insurance policies had been taken out by officers and men of the Army and Navy, totaling over $37,000,000,000. Most of them were for the maximum amount of $10,000. Arrangements were made that would enable each holder of a policy to continue it, if he so desired, after leaving the service. Allotments of pay which could be made directly to dependents and allowances paid by the United States to the families of men in service, if such allowance was necessary, helped to relieve the mind of the soldier of worry as to the welfare of his loved ones.
Unique in all history and an integral part of the War Department’s purpose to make army service become a means of personal development and betterment for every individual soldier was the extensive educational scheme for the Expeditionary Forces in France. The War Department and the Army Educational Commission of the Y. M. C. A. coöperated in the devising and carrying out of this plan, which enabled the officers and men of the American Army in France to continue their school, academic, technical or professional training while in camp. Worked out and put into operation in the summer of 1918, when the armistice was signed some 200,000 men, chiefly in the Service of Supply, had already begun studies of various kinds, but the scheme did not reach full development until some weeks later.
Interior of a Cantonment Library
Interior of a Cantonment Library
Interior of a Cantonment Library
As finally established in the winter of 1919, this educational plan ran the whole gamut of mental training, from learning to spell to post-graduate work in science, art and the professions. In the Army of Occupation there were compulsory schools for all illiterates, but otherwise the work was optional, andtook the place of part of the hours of daily drill. Post schools were established for units of 500 or more men, and generally there were forty such schools for each division. Enrollment at the post schools ran as high as 2,000 and more. Correspondence courses were arranged for men with smaller isolated units. In each army division a high school gave both regular and vocational courses.
Located at Beaune, in the Cote d’Or region, where the huge base hospital had been built, in the great series of buildings no longer needed for trainloads of wounded men was the “Khaki University,” at which were given academic, agricultural, professional, commercial and technical courses of three months each. Of its many buildings four hundred were used for class room purposes and others were converted into laboratories, dormitories, libraries and recreation halls. Fourteen colleges comprised this Khaki University which, including the agricultural college associated with it but located elsewhere, became for the time of its existence the largest educational institution in the world. Its colleges gave instruction in language, literature, philosophy, science, fine and applied arts, journalism, education, engineering, music, business, medicine, and all other subjects usually provided for at educational institutions of every sort, whether technical, academic, commercial or professional. Especial attention was paid to agriculture. The engineering school offered a full variety of courses in civil, electrical, mining, mechanical and sanitary engineering. The college of arts, with an art training center near Paris, had 1,000 students and gave instruction in architecture, sculpture, painting, interior decoration, town planning, industrial art,landscape gardening, and furnished guidance for the study of art museums and structures of esthetic value. In the libraries of the Khaki University were 500,000 volumes. Its faculty numbered 500 members and 15,000 men, all of them privates and officers of the A. E. F., enrolled when the institution opened. The Y. M. C. A., whose Army Educational Commission had devised and organized the entire huge educational scheme, turned it all over to the War Department in the spring of 1919.
Many of the faculty members of important universities and colleges in the United States aided in the working out of this comprehensive educational plan and, under the direction of the Army Educational Commission of the Y. M. C. A. and army officers, coöperated with them in the immediate supervision of the schools. Nearly 50,000 officers and men whose record cards showed them to have been school teachers or university or college professors before they were soldiers were detailed from the army for the work of teaching this huge body of pupils in the post schools and at Beaune.
French and British universities and colleges threw open their doors for those who were prepared to undertake collegiate and post-graduate work. With the Sorbonne leading the list, thirty French institutions offered lectures and courses of study, while at Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Liverpool, Manchester, St. Andrews, and elsewhere in the British Isles a welcome awaited the American army man. Furloughs were granted to officers and enlisted men for this work and during the latter part of the winter and the spring of 1919 2,000 worked at British universities, filling to the last one the possibility for their accommodation, althoughfour times as many had applied for the privilege. As many more attended the Sorbonne and other institutions in Paris, while the provincial universities and colleges of France had also their quota.
Solicitous for the welfare of the Expeditionary Force and determined that its members should not fall below the high standard it had established of individual worth and soldierly quality, the War Department met the problem of leaves of absence in a strange land by establishing “leave areas” in especially interesting sections of France wherein was offered a varied program of rest, change, recreation and entertainment. More than a dozen famous resorts in the Alps, the Pyrenees, along the Riviera and elsewhere were leased in whole or in part and put in charge of the Y. M. C. A., which saw to it that the men on leave had a thoroughly good time. Once in four months each soldier in service was entitled to a week’s outing at whichever one of these leave areas he preferred to visit. Beginning in the winter of 1918, during the first year of the operation of this system 220,000 soldiers were thus given an opportunity for recreation and sent back to their duties wholesomely refreshed.
Several civil organizations coöperated with the War Department in work for the welfare of the soldier in training and overseas and very greatly aided the Government in its effort to enable the men who composed the army to return to their homes better and more capable men than they were when they left upon their country’s service. These and their activities are described in more detail in the chapter on “Big Brothering the Army.” But here the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, the WarCamp Community Service, the Jewish Welfare Board, the Knights of Columbus, the Salvation Army and the American Library Association must be referred to briefly because of the very great importance of what they did for the welfare of the American soldiers and because of their influence upon the character of the American Army.
More than five hundred service buildings were operated by these organizations in the various camps and cantonments in this country alone, and many hundreds more overseas. They furnished to the men wholesome club life, in comfortable houses, with music, games, lectures, reading and writing facilities and athletic equipment. The Young Women’s Christian Association built, furnished and officered at least one hostess house in every camp, wherein the women relatives and friends of the soldiers could meet them in homelike surroundings. The American Library Association installed in the camps specially designed buildings, manned them with trained workers and provided many thousands of volumes which were kept in constant circulation.
The War Camp Community Service worked in the localities surrounding the camp, where it aided the citizens in efficient expression of their universal spirit of hospitality and friendliness toward the troops, maintained clubs for soldiers on leave, provided information bureaus, recreation and entertainment, and, in general, helped to create and preserve between the men in training and the community in which they were located a normal and helpful social relationship.
So, in a year and a half, America expanded her army of 212,000 into an army of 2,000,000 men overseas, a million and a half in training, and two millionmore preparing, as these latter were sent across the ocean, to take their places in the cantonments. She turned this democratically chosen material from raw civilians of peace-loving traditions into gallant fighters and fused a heterogeneous mass of nationalities into a solid body inspired by and fighting for American ideals. It was an army so eager to get into the struggle for liberty and justice against militarism and autocracy and its spirit was so high and unanimous that every regiment leaving a cantonment for overseas service celebrated the coming of its orders with enthusiasm and was envied by all those not yet chosen. It was an army that, above everything else, was the expression of the mind, the heart and the soul of the American people. Almost every home in the nation had some part in it and it went upon its war adventure with the prayers, the blessings, the love and the ardent wish to serve its needs of the whole people. Never was an army sent to war so fathered and mothered, so big-sistered and big-brothered, so loved and cheered by an entire nation and provided for by its Government with such care and far-seeing vision as this that sailed from the ports of America for the battlefields of France.