Florence Finch Kelly

“ The war found the capital of the United States, just as it had been for many years, quiet and leisurely, aloof from business and industry, spacious and restful and lovely. And the war transformed it with lightning speed into a busy hive of war making industry, crammed with people, humming with prodigious labors, striving mightily to achieve what seemed the impossible in a hundred different ways at the same time. ”

“ Statistics of financial operations usually make dull and dreary reading for all who are not professional financiers. But every figure in the financing of our share in the great war glows with interest. For it is illumined by the high flame of patriotism and the eager wish to serve the needs and the ideals of the nation that animated the whole people. The story of the financing of the war is the story of the enthusiastic giving by young and old, rich and poor, high and lowly, all over the country, of all that their government asked in such overflowing measure as far exceeded its requests. ”

“ They were representative Americans, the cream of America in ability, training, character, patriotism and devotion to democratic ideals, and to see them at their work, to come into touch with their enthusiasm, their eagerness to render service, their teeming ideas, their resourcefulness, their efficiency, energy and determination and to witness the effective running and vast achievements of the huge organizations they were inspiring and directing was to watch the steady, sure beating of the very heart of the nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In their huts the men could always find warmth and light and good cheer, music and games and good things to eat that were touchingly reminiscent of boyhood and home. Shells screamed overhead, gas floated back from the front and the earth shook with the roar of battle, but the Salvation Army workers stood to their self-imposed duties regardless of their own comfort or danger and had ready for the long lines of soldiers coming and going a smiling, heartfelt welcome and huge quantities of pies and doughnuts and hot drinks. ”

“ The importance of the aid American women gave to the Red Cross was beyond computation and was so varied in kind and enormous in quantity that anything more than the merest outline of it is impossible. Volunteer women workers, nearly all of them doing the work at odd moments in addition to their home or other duties, knitted and sewed so busily that they made nearly 300,000,000 articles, valued at $60,000,000, for the Red Cross, to be used in training camps, by our fighting forces, in hospitals at home and abroad and by the refugees and sufferers in the war ridden countries of Europe. ”

“ A flame of passionate purpose swept the country and caught into its burning ardor almost every home in the land, whether on isolated farms, in remote mountain valleys, in thriving towns, on poor city streets, or on mansion-lined avenues. The nation asked the people to buy, in the four loans, a total of $14,000,000,000 worth of bonds, and they over-subscribed even this vast amount by $4,800,000,000. It was by far the greatest financial achievement ever carried through by any nation in response to appeals to its people. ”

“ The American army has always been a well fed army. In the pre-war days, when it was the smallest army maintained by any large state, experts from other nations, versed in the quantity and quality of army rations, said that the American was the best [Pg 27] fed of all armies. And this was still true during the great war, though its numbers leaped on by magic strides. Whether in training at home, in camp on the other side, or on the battle front, the American soldier had better food and more of it than the soldier of any other nation. ”

“ The developments of scientific warfare, with its new and fearful weapons of death and its new modes of attack, laid new duties upon the medical profession and new demands upon its knowledge and its methods of healing. It restores one’s faith in human nature, after realizing the devilish ingenuity of the death and wound dealing instruments of the world war, to find how incessantly the ministers of healing worked in hospital and laboratory behind the lines to evolve new agents and new methods for the mending of the wreckage from the front. ”

“ Throughout all the many services of the Council of National Defense during the war, its organization of war machinery, its mobilization of material resources, its bringing together of leaders in all phases of national life and showing them how they could aid the country, its vital work in enabling the humblest individual, and all the individuals in the nation, to become efficient in action for the war, the two most conspicuous features are, the voluntary character of all the effort and the universal willingness of the equally universal coöperation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For the sum total of their testimony would so utterly disprove the old, old lie that a democracy can not be efficient and so summarily cast it into outer darkness that men would never again say it or believe it as long as time lasts. If this little volume is privileged to do its share toward proving that “the highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous coöperation of a free people” I shall feel it an honor to have done the work of assembling and presenting its evidence. ”

“ The American people were still longer in understanding the full significance of the purpose with which Germany launched the war. For their knowledge that through many centuries one after another of the European powers had striven through blood and devastation and agony to gain dominance over the others made them for a long time heedless of the meaning of the accumulating evidence and led them, in all honesty and conscientiousness, to absolve themselves of any responsibility or obligation. ”

“ In the world war fuel fought, and food, and steel, as well as men. Fuel quickly became as much of a fighting necessity as were the munitions which could not be made without it and the food for whose transportation it was necessary. It was a war of manufactures, of applied science, and the foundations of both are laid in fuel. And therefore fuel, which means chiefly coal, had to be mobilized for war and its production and distribution so managed that its potency could be applied where needed and when needed without unnecessary detriment to civilian welfare. ”

“ When America entered the war, problems and needs rose up at every hand, like dragons springing from the ground, and all of them, in all their number and complexity and variety, had to be met and conquered at the same time. None of them was more difficult than this problem of the creation of a munitions industry, for it demanded a highly specialized manufacturing equipment of enormous capacity and great variety which we did not have, concerning which we had in the past known but little and for which we had always had slight regard. ”

“ Hardly less universal and profound than the political conviction that this nation should stay out of European entanglements and let Europe settle her own quarrels in her own way was the moral and intellectual conviction that war is a wasteful and wicked means of bringing about any desired result. For more than a generation this belief had been growing and striking deep root in the minds and hearts of the American people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But it was an achievement, within a year and a half, of plants enlarged and constructed for the building of ships, of labor trained for that building, of ships built and put into service, and of men trained to officer and man the ships that was a potent factor in the winning of the war. It was an immense and rapid industrial development made possible only by the ardent coöperation of all the factors of the entire national life necessary, under the emergency, to bring it to success. ”

“ When Americans endeavor to estimate the value of their work on the lines of battle they are bound to see and should be glad in justice to admit that our actual fighting effort was small indeed compared with the vast and bloody and appalling struggles in which our war associates had almost exhausted themselves. They are bound to see that its importance in the final decision was incommensurate with the amount of what they actually did on the fighting lines, although not, perhaps, with the extent of the nation’s preparation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not only was there a decrease of many thousands in the number of men employed in the production of coal, but also in many mines efficiency was lessened by the hatreds and suspicions of the different racial representatives—Magyar, Pole, Italian, Slovak, Jugo-Slav, with their animosities bred in the bone, brought with them from Europe and fanned into fresh activity by the war. Each furbished up anew his old grudge and carried it on his shoulder, where it quickly received the knocking it challenged, and old racial battles were fought over again while the mining of coal was laid aside. ”

“ Between ninety and one hundred per cent of the seamen of the enlarged navy were American born. The most of them were of that fine type of young men, educated and intelligent, who become, a little later, of consequence in their communities. In their training the fact that they had had no “sea legs” in their ancestry, or in their own minds and hearts, did not seem to matter in the least. They took to the training and to the life on the sea-washed, rolling decks of destroyers, chasers and other craft as ducks take to water. ”

“ Thus these two administrative war agencies, the War Trade Board and the War Industries Board, together had practically complete control of all the vast affairs of the whole nation’s industry and commerce. As a sculptor works a piece of clay into any desired form, these two boards took the country’s business life into their hands and moulded and shaped it into a war-making machine. ”

“ The necessity was urgent and it was evident that they would have to be provided in constantly increasing number by dozens and scores and hundreds, for a great army would have to be ferried across the Atlantic, with munitions in enormous amount and mountains of supplies, equipments and food. Unless a bridge of boats could be thrust across the ocean, and it could be renewed as fast as destroyed by submarine warfare, nothing that this nation could do in the prosecution of the war would be of the least value, for all her effort would be paralyzed. ”

“ But when a barbarous foe makes savage use of science those who are fighting him must, in sheer self-defense, meet him with similar weapons. Therefore, when America became a belligerent, averse as all her people were to the use of such weapons, regard for the safety of her troops at the front made it necessary to prepare for this peculiarly hideous and detestable form of war. As with other munitions, the industry to produce the implements of chemical warfare had first to be created. ”

“ A people accustomed throughout their history as a nation to a minimum of governmental control of or interference in their business affairs and believing in and practicing the principle of individualism in business suddenly found themselves called upon to surrender that principle and submit to pervasive governmental regulation. It was a sharp and searching test of patriotism and of loyalty to national ideals and it put to thorough trial the mental elasticity, alertness and resourcefulness of the business life of the country. ”

“ And each successive generation had detested more deeply the whole foul crew of those motives and had been more determined that America should have no concern in the struggles they inspired. No one who does not understand how deeply rooted was this conviction in the political beliefs and ideals, the traditions, the very life of the American people can appreciate what it meant to them to plunge into the war. ”

“ Just as food, fuel, trade, industry, labor were each and all mobilized for war effort and all brought into harmonious and effective teamwork, so the transportation agencies were all bent, first of all, to the same purpose. Roads, motive power, freight and passenger equipment were devoted first to the necessities of carrying men from homes to cantonments and camps and thence to ports of embarkation and of moving food, munitions, supplies and raw materials to camps, to shipment points and to places of manufacture for war purposes. ”

“ In April, 1917, the long and bitter struggle had so drained the food supply of the Western Allies that they were dependent upon North America for the food that would enable their armies to continue the battle for civilization, prevent the starvation of their civilians and the wholesale death of their children. To this country the neutrals of Europe had also to look for sufficient food to save their people from suffering. There was much grain in Argentina and Australia, but ships could not be spared for the long and dangerous journeys to and from those countries. ”

“ While the making of the army, the building of cantonments, the development of flying fields, the creation of an industry for the supplying of munitions, the building of shipyards and ships, the expansion of the navy, and all the multitude of wartime tasks to which the nation at once turned its energies were being pushed breathlessly forward, a vast development of facilities had to be begun and carried on in France before our army and its supplies could even be landed upon French shores and transported to the front. ”

“ Behind these fighting forces that, except the navy, were insignificant in comparison with the vast numbers of men swaying back and forth across the battlefields of Europe was a nation that ever since its birth had held the profound conviction, a fundamental of its political creed, that this country should never allow itself to be drawn into the quarrels of Europe. ”