CHAPTER XXIXTHE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE
There could not have been a spirit more eager for service, more inspired by patriotic zeal, more willing to do whatever would aid the Government in its prosecution of the war or support the efforts of the fighting forces than was manifest among the great masses of the American people. Whatever they were asked to give to provide the means of war, whether by taxation, by buying of bonds, by outright gift, by sacrifice, by personal effort, they gave with ungrudging heart and overflowing hands. They offered their sacrifices and volunteered their effort without waiting to be asked and they spontaneously aligned themselves in every organized activity for the war and joined their voluntary efforts together for the nation-wide team-work that alone would make it a success. The sense of personal responsibility, the understanding of the importance of individual effort, had a new birth in their hearts and the deep-lying springs of love of country gushed forth anew at the call of her need. There could not have been a more triumphant vindication of the worth to humanity of American institutions and American ideals than was given by the spirit manifested by the American people throughout our participation in the world war. So high, eager and intense, indeed, was the generalwish for rapid progress in war production and war making that its desires frequently outran possibilities and led many to demand results that only a miracle could produce.
Men of trade, industry, engineering, of all manner of business and professional life willingly agreed to the curtailment, even the complete stopping of their own affairs if the Government needed their services, their supply of coal, or their raw materials for its war production, or turned to its uses the ships in which they were accustomed to import or export their goods. In and out of the various committees, boards and administrations that directed the country’s business life for war purposes went a constant stream of these men, anxious only to serve their country and ready to make any sacrifice for America’s sake. “Tell me what you want, let me know what I can do, and I’ll do it,” was their unvarying appeal. Every official and every civilian in the temporary service of the Government who came into contact with the business and professional men of the country will bear witness to the patriotic and self-sacrificing spirit that was shown by them from the moment the nation entered the war. Over and over again these officials, permanent and temporary, have said to the writer of this book, in answer to her inquiry as to the spirit of those of whom they had had to ask sacrifices of this sort: “They’ve been splendid”—“Their spirit couldn’t have been finer and more patriotic”—“My experiences with them have made me prouder than ever to be an American and a fellow citizen of such men.”
Great numbers of these men, scores of them, leaders in all kinds of business, experts in technical andengineering fields, gave up their high-salaried positions or left their offices in charge of subordinates and offered their services to the Government. It was a war in which the scientific expert at home, the man of business, the engineer, was of equal consequence with the fighting man and the sum of the ability, the knowledge and the experience thus put into the hands of the Government could not have been purchased at its market value for millions of dollars.
As the Government is forbidden to accept free service they were paid a nominal sum and were known as “The Government’s dollar-a-year men.” Putting their own affairs aside they worked with zeal, long hours and incessantly, drawing upon their knowledge and their connections, making engagements and holding conferences indifferently for noon or midnight, that the nation might get itself upon a war footing quickly and efficiently and make its war stroke mighty and decisive. The chairman of one of the Government boards who had come in contact with many of these men and was familiar with their private position and importance in the business world estimated that they were sacrificing profits and salaries that would aggregate as much as $30,000,000 per year.
The response was equally zealous in every phase of life. Periodicals of every sort—daily and weekly papers, magazines, trade journals—opened their columns for the publication of articles that made known what the Government needed and thus circulated far and wide, through city, town and country, information concerning the need for food production and food conservation and how these could be accomplished, and how and why fuel should be saved, concerningthe Red Cross, Liberty Loans, War Saving Stamps, pro-German propaganda. They gave the use of their advertising columns for campaigns for the collecting of money for war sufferers and for the big-brothering of our own fighting men. An expert estimate of the value of this donated space put it at $2,000,000. Hundreds of pages for these and similar purposes were paid for also by business firms. Department stores gave the use of show windows for displays that would aid war work and war relief organizations. Artists and illustrators turned their pencils and brushes to the work of making posters and illustrations for the Food and Fuel Administrations, the Labor Department, the Shipping Board, the Liberty Loan and Savings Stamps campaigns, and other work that would aid in prosecution of the war, giving in all about three thousand poster designs, cartoons, paintings and drawings.
Chambers of Commerce and other business organizations had their war service committees which were on the alert for ways in which such bodies or their individual members could serve the nation. There was hardly a woman’s club in the whole country but had its committee for war work which brought its members into line for war service of varied sorts. Churches and religious bodies set themselves to raise money and to give personal services that would be not only contributions toward the winning of the war but would also be of deep and abiding influence upon the national life. Their members and committees held meetings to further the cause of America in the great war, distributed war literature, furnished workers for the various campaigns for war purposes and war relief, gave Bibles by the hundredthousand to the fighting forces and in the quickening of Christian spirit which was born out of the tense emotions of the time the various denominations united their hearts and hands as they had never done before in common service for the needs of the country.
Young people and children were anxious to do their share, however small, in work for the war. The Boy Scouts were especially efficient and eager in many kinds of service. They sold millions of dollars’ worth of Thrift and War Savings Stamps; they gave noteworthy aid in every Liberty Loan campaign, securing over a million subscriptions; they were active and helpful in the uncovering of certain forms of enemy activity; they located for the Government quantities of walnut trees and groves whose timber was much needed for airplane and gunstock production. Girl Scouts also were busy and useful in the Liberty Loan campaigns, in the selling of Thrift and War Stamps, the cultivating of war gardens, the making of sandwiches and dainties for hospitals and canteens and in Red Cross service. In the School Garden Army for the summer of 1918 there were enrolled 1,500,000 children under sixteen years of age whose garden work produced an amount of food worth an average of $10 for each child. When the armistice was signed the plans were well under way for the tripling of that number of members for the following year. The Boys’ Working Reserve, which admitted only boys over sixteen, had 250,000 members who spent the summer of 1918 in work on farms and in truck gardens. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and other boys’ and girls’ clubs diligently collected nut shells and fruit pits needed for themaking of gas masks. In schools all over the country children to the number of nearly 10,000,000, from the kindergarten to the high school, were enrolled in the Junior Red Cross and as its members they sewed and knitted and folded bandages, raised money for its service in many ingenious ways, saved food and money and salvaged all manner of household wastes. As “Victory Boys” and “Victory Girls” they enlisted by the thousands to aid in the great campaign which in November, 1918, raised over $200,000,000 as a war-chest for the seven chief welfare organizations working with the American fighting forces, each one of them agreeing to earn a certain amount for this war service.
The great body of industrial workers, with few and unimportant exceptions, united in the single-hearted and patriotic purpose that moved the whole country. There were some frictions and difficulties, due in part to the workings of enemy agents among them, in part to the influence of racial animosities among those recently come from Europe and in part to the rapidly rising costs of living. There was also in the early months among the foreign born lack of understanding of the issues at stake and the reasons for America’s participation in the war. But adequate information, the clearing out of enemy influences and the efforts of the War Labor Administration to make equitable adjustments of all difficulties between employees and manufacturers soon brought the great mass of workers to enthusiastic support of the nation’s war efforts.
The wonderful story of the financing of the war would have no chapter more interesting and thrilling, if only the facts concerning it could be gatheredtogether, than that which would relate the aid given by industrial workers the country over who bought bonds and stamps to the full extent of their ability. The enthusiasm and unanimity they showed in shipyards, munition plants, coal mines and all places engaged in war production work proved their appreciation of the ideals at stake. In one large munitions plant they worked on Labor Day, offering their time without compensation, in order to give to that holiday a new and more solemn significance. In many manufacturing concerns, shipyards and mines they were willing to forego all the usual holidays in order to increase the output. In plant after plant the employees pledged themselves to work steadily without stop or hindrance and to give their utmost endeavors to their share of the upholding of the men who had gone overseas. Members of the War Labor Administration who took part in the adjustment of difficulties were enthusiastic in their commendation of the loyal spirit shown by the great body of employees and their desire to give their full and hearty support to the Government’s program of production for war purposes.
In nothing did the spirit of the people have more enthusiastic and practical expression than in the effort to increase the production of food which enlisted the services of men, women and children in every walk of life, in cities, towns, villages and country regions, from end to end of the land. It has already been told, in “Feeding the Nations,” how marvelously that production of food was increased. Farmers everywhere, under the spur of the great need, added, if they could, to the area of their cultivation, worked longer hours, and endeavored to improvetheir methods, while their wives and children took charge of barn-yard chores. Business men in country towns coöperated by lending financial assistance where it was needed. In agricultural states whole communities, or even whole counties, sometimes organized themselves upon a sort of coöperative basis for increase of food production, people in the towns providing needed labor and money.
Business and professional men frequently took their vacations or spent week-ends upon farms, lending a hand in farm labor. Women took up farm work and, as told in “The Work of Women for the War,” a goodly sized army of them aided in the raising of more crops. The home war garden movement swept the country with enthusiasm and in the summer of 1918 planted over 5,000,000 home plots that produced more than $500,000,000 worth of food. In New York City there were in that year 64,000 of these home war gardens, besides the school gardens, the number exceeding even that of the gardens of London. The patriotic, mounting spirit of the people caused the tillage in 1918 of an increase in food producing acreage of 10,700,000 acres, whose produce excelled the value of that of the previous year, itself a record, by $614,000,000.
There was everywhere the greatest eagerness to do anything for the men of the Army and the Navy that would give them help or pleasure. The story of the organized effort for that purpose is told in “Big Brothering the Fighting Forces.” But, in addition, there were numberless movements of smaller scope that enlisted the aid of many people. Hundreds of thousands bought “smileage tickets,” for seats in camp and cantonment theaters, and donatedthem to welfare organizations for distribution among soldiers and sailors. Many newspapers, clubs and business concerns collected money for the “smokes” of which the Army and the Navy consumed enormous quantities. The support of these tobacco funds enlisted the aid of men, women and children who gave money, organized entertainments, solicited help, did a thousand things to help swell the total. The value of the tobacco, cigars and cigarettes thus contributed for the comfort of our soldiers and sailors amounted to many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The navy needed binoculars, opera glasses and telescopes, and over 50,000 patriotic Americans sent their instruments. Quantities of musical instruments were donated for use in camps and at sea. The work of collecting and distributing phonographs and records was organized into a system that included the whole country, and machines by the hundred and disks by the thousand were given or loaned to it or bought for it and sent out to camps and hospitals, to troop transports, battleships, cruisers, destroyers and in great quantities to the men overseas. The Over-There Theater League, organized and directed by men prominent in theatrical affairs, included among its members and supporters practically all the theatrical managers and the important people of the stage in the United States, all of whom gave their services for the providing of theatrical entertainment for the men overseas. Moving picture actors and managers contributed services to the Liberty Loan campaigns and other phases of war effort.
Old men and women who were too disabled to do anything else joined the ranks of the knitters andmade helmets, sweaters and mufflers, to go with the mountainous stacks of these articles made for the Army and the Navy. Hundreds of ministers, college and university professors and other professional and business men spent in the shipyards, or in munitions factories or on the farms their summer vacations of from two to twelve weeks, while some of them even gave up their positions in order to remain in this most necessary work. Many people owning country homes or estates turned them over to the Government to be used as hospitals or convalescent homes for wounded men. Every community in or near which were camps of any sort opened its homes to the soldiers and sailors and gave them hospitality, friendship, entertainment.
When the Red Cross asked for 5,000 tons of clothing for the destitute in France and Belgium the people gave it 10,000 tons. Successful men of business gave their time, their experience, their best thought and work to the directing of relief organizations. There were many of these, perhaps two score, in addition to the seven most important and every one of them was generously supported. So willing were the people to give that crooks and criminals made rich harvests by collecting money under false pretenses. Many millions of dollars were stolen in this way whose givers believed it was to be used for the benefit of their country’s fighting men. It was estimated by those familiar with the work of the relief organizations that the American people contributed for these several welfare purposes close to $4,000,000,000.
Throughout the war the American people gave whatever was needed for its prosecution, whetherthemselves, their loved ones, their energy, their labor, their time, their thought or their money, with an ever increasing ardor of patriotism and intensity of purpose. A spendthrift and wasteful nation disciplined itself to the practice of care and economy, and a nation of individualists, jealous of personal rights, acceded willingly to Government interference in private business and Government control of business relations for the sake of the country’s need. Hating war with a profound unanimity of feeling and conviction, the whole people joined hands with an equal depth of conviction and feeling that this war must be pushed through to a victorious conclusion in the quickest possible time.
The spirit of the American soldiers at Belleau Wood and in the Argonne Forest was the same spirit that animated the people at home and it brought the whole nation into a closer union and a more understanding comradeship than it had ever previously known. In the army at the front were three hundred thousand negroes, among the most valiant of its fighters; representatives of fourteen tribes of Indians, as contemptuous of death as any of their forefathers and as devoted to their country as any of their comrades; men of almost every racial strain under the sun, and all of them loyal soldiers of America. And, just as all these troops in uniform were joined together in the democracy of their crusading spirit, so all the people of the nation behind them were joined together in feeling and effort and purpose—the purpose that America should win the war for democracy’s sake, the utmost effort needed to realize that aim, a passionate patriotism that blazed at white heat in every heart.
The occasional rumbles of dissatisfaction that were heard in some of the centers of alien population during the first months of our participation in the war, due chiefly to enemy propaganda of one or another form, soon ceased as better information was spread among them and the country’s cause had no more whole-hearted and self-sacrificing support than was given by those same crowded centers of foreign born people. Thoroughly representative of this rapidly changing spirit and of our foreign-born citizens throughout the land was the East Side of New York City, where German propaganda and disloyal socialism together did their best to create trouble. But the American Army contained no better and more valiant soldiers and none more inspired by the crusading spirit than the thousands of lads from that region, whose unyielding courage, soldierly qualities and loyalty to their comrades in battle won the praise of all who shared with them the dangers of shell fire, gas and machine gun bullets.
And just as fine and staunch in its different way was the patriotism of their families at home, for whom the absence of their men meant much self-sacrifice and even sometimes serious financial troubles. But they proudly hung their service flags in their windows and supported the Government’s war program in every way in their power. Their purchases of thrift and war stamps constantly increased and in the second Liberty Loan campaign they more than doubled their subscription to the first, in the third they multiplied their subscription to the second by sixty and in the fourth they more than trebled their subscription to the third, buying in it $50,000,000 worth of bonds.
It was on the East Side of New York City that the “block party” had its birth—unique fruit of the war and symbolic of the war’s influence upon the people of the nation. For such a party all the people living in a block, or several adjoining blocks, decorated their houses and the street with flags, colored lanterns, ropes of greens, bright fabrics; and on the appointed night everybody swarmed into the street and to the accompaniment of music and cheers speeches were made, a huge service flag, with a star for every man of the block in service, was strung across the street and then all the nations and races represented among them told one another the news they had heard from their soldier and sailor lads, sang patriotic songs and danced on the pavement and sidewalk all the rest of the evening. Soon the block party spread to all parts of the city and established itself even in the exclusive residence districts where men, women and children, janitors and those whom they served, house maids and mistresses, met on the pavements, talked and sang and cheered and danced together as the service flag of their block was swung to its place and floated above them, their bond of union in common devotion to their country.
The block party, although it did not make its appearance in just that form in all sections, yet was significant of what was taking place in the hearts of the people all over the land. For out of their universal spirit and its white heat of devotion was being born a fresh realization of democracy and of its meaning to humanity and a new dedication to its ideals.