Rheta Childe Dorr

“ They have laid railroads, built wharves, dredged a great river. They have done more, our men, than dig themselves in trenches over there. They have shown Europe and the world the true heart and metal of America. What they have built will remain a monument for generations to point to and admire.
In Paris there stands a noble monument to our Washington, and at no great distance there is another to the rugged giant Abraham Lincoln. ”

“ A soldier who goes into battle half nourished, one whose heart is heavy thinking of hungry children at home, is a soldier half beaten. He who goes forward with a well-nourished body and a mind at rest is a soldier three-quarters victorious.
This is how you have helped fight the battle for the peace of the world, women of America. And let me assure you that Europe is fully awake to the fact. Nothing that President Wilson has done, or Congress, or the men at the head of our wonderful army in France, has made a deeper impression on the allies than what the housekeepers of this country have done. ”

“ It is not only the French language that our soldiers are learning, but French history as well. The part of central France occupied by our army is a storied treasure house of history. No part of France is more French. It abounds in castles, châteaux, museums, pointed towers, dungeon cells and torture chambers, ancient churches and crumbling city walls. Even the farms, centuries old, some of them, show the remains of past defenses. ”

“ Much fighting, horrible suffering, enormous sacrifice lie between us and victory, but victory is sure.
We shall lose thousands, hundreds of thousands, it may be. But for every American soldier that falls eight Germans will die, be sure of that. The only army in the world that is absolutely fresh and untired is the American army. Our men will tire, but before they do all the Germans left alive will be exhausted. ”

“ There comes a day when our sons cease to be soldiers in training and become fighting men. It is a day looked forward to with dread by those at home, with eager enthusiasm by the soldiers. I have seldom met a soldier who had not something uncomplimentary to say of the powers for not sending him more promptly to the front. The weeks spent in rest billets, that is, the training camps, seem endless to the men. Every move forward is hailed with joy. ”

“ The statue is gay with flowers now, and with flags of all the allies. Our flag is there, the flag the French call le drapeau étoilé, the bestarred banner. May it stay there until what it has gone to France for has been accomplished, until the utterly crushed and vanquished German army has been pursued beyond the Rhine, until something of what the women of France and of martyred Belgium have endured has been paid for.
Not in the same coin, however. The men who have suffered so bravely are incapable of such crimes. ”

“ The heart of woman is a mother heart, and nothing can ever change it. It was man and not woman who invented the myth of the illegitimate child.
Yet over there in France, even the men have risen above that harsh and cruel tradition. Madame de Ste. Croix, who takes on herself the painful duty of telling men what happened to their women when the Germans came, told me how nobly and bravely French men have stood by and sheltered them. ”

“ And there, I verily believe, is the secret of the vitality and the unconquerable strength of the French nation. At their mother’s knee the men of France learn that the first love and allegiance of their hearts and lives are due their country. They never forget that lesson.
I do not know who ever invented the fiction that French women are not maternal. It is true that they do not, as a rule, have many children, but that is easily understood when one studies the French economic and social conditions. In all families outside the wage earning class the girl children must be provided with dowries. ”

“ Thousands of young women who never in their lives before saw a man except in the presence of their mothers now work in station canteens at all hours of the day and night, cooking, serving, feeding soldiers and refugees, waiting on the sick and weary with tireless devotion.
I have spoken of the dearth of conductors on the French trains. There is one train attendant who never fails, and that is the young woman who collects funds for the Red Cross. Every time a train stops it is boarded by girls and women in white uniforms, who go through all the carriages shaking tin money receptacles. ”

“ It is an appropriate place in which to train future American generals, for this war is being fought, not only with all modern weapons, but with many of the weapons of the past. One can easily fancy the ghosts of the great Charlemagne, Godfrey of Bouillon, Richard Lion Heart, Sir John Chandos, hovering in the shadows of the classrooms, and listening delightedly to familiar things, talk of liquid fire, hand grenades, storming positions with bayonets and long knives. ”

“ There is one thing our soldier sons are learning in France that is more valuable than the French language or history or any mere knowledge acquisition. Our men are learning the true meaning of nationalism, love of country and the flag.
Of late years we have had in the United States such a deluge of talk about “internationalism” that our young men had almost reached the point of being ashamed to feel patriotism. An insidious propaganda of pacifism, beginning in elementary schools all over the country, had undermined the old American pride in the flag. ”

“ I speak only of what I know, and I know that this woman, one of thousands, is just a type, an example, of what has happened, what is happening to-day, but what must never happen again. The only way to prevent it happening again, perhaps to our American women, is to put out of the world the thing Germany stands for and which she is fighting desperately to keep alive and powerful. ”

“ The trains moving northward were laden with soldiers, horses, guns, airplanes, ammunition wagons, food, supplies of every conceivable description. Trainload after trainload of horses, eight to a car with four men, generally asleep on the hay in the middle space of the car. The horses, beautiful, tragic creatures, going to almost certain destruction wrung the heart to see. They gazed out at the flying landscape and the cheering station crowds with big, soft, uncomprehending eyes. ”

“ They had sneered at the idea of the Americans sending a large army to France. How could they send an army? An army can’t swim, nor can it fly, [30] and the Americans had no ships. Even if they found ships and sent men enough, how could they feed, clothe and equip them? How could they keep up their supplies?
The Americans could and did perform all these miracles because they had in them the blood of pioneers, of men and women whom no difficulties could afright, no obstacles turn back. Our soldiers have proved themselves in countless army camps abroad to be worthy sons of the breed. ”

“ No man can exist half crook, half honest.
“They see nothing but their propaganda.” That is a perfect description of Monsieur Albert Thomas and all the other misguided idealists who walk with blinders obscuring their eyes. They think and talk as though unaware that the world around them was in flames.
On a battle-front of seventy-five miles our allied soldiers are enduring such hardships, are performing such miracles of labor, are suffering such wounds, such horrible mutilations, that no imagination can compass the facts. ”

“ Every day some of these heroic men give their blood, their beautiful young lives for the freedom of the world.
They die for our liberty without a murmur. And while they are suffering and dying, a whole section of the community in every allied country continues to ignore them for one or another fatuous dream. ”

“ Can you imagine the wild joy, the renewed hope, the quickened spirit that fills the hearts of the men who have been fighting for nearly four years? Against terrible odds, against one ally which German cunning poisoned to death, almost against hope our allies have fought. ”

“ American men are accustomed from their childhood to see women treated with respect and children with tenderness. They see with horror-stricken eyes the women and children refugees from the war invaded districts flying before a foe that knows no pity, that treats combatant and non-combatant with equal cruelty and wrath.
I have told of a Sunday I spent in a railroad station in the first days of the great spring offensive, and of the southward bound trains bearing the wounded and the homeless. With me on that platform were several American soldiers, two or three members of the military police. ”

“ Our soldiers are learning at first-hand in France what they would never have learned so well at home, the great, big thing we are fighting for in this war, what in all ages the flower of manhood have fought and died for—better life, and more freedom for the generations next to come. ”

“ I spent three months in France, traveling over most of the considerable territory occupied by the American forces. I visited something like twenty-five camps, small ones, large ones and immense ones, where the men are training, where they are being made into experts in special lines of fighting; where they are at work building miles of wharves, warehouses, cold storage plants, barracks and hospitals; where they are laying railroads and dredging rivers; where they are performing marvels of constructive work necessary to the life of an army far removed from its base. ”

“ I like also to think that the France of to-morrow, and the Belgium which will be reborn, will be healthier, happier, stronger of mind and soul for the work of our Red Cross, for all the relief and succor we have been able to send there. They will never forget, those martyred Belgians, those hard pressed French. Our troops never pass through a village, our flag never appears that the children in the street fail to salute. ”

“ Officers and men alike were children in their happiness. They sang and shouted while the letters and parcels were being distributed, and afterward a deep silence fell on the camp while the letters were being read.
Alas for those who received no letters that day. My heart ached for them, and I want to urge, as part of the patriotic duty of every citizen, that as far as possible no soldier is neglected in this respect. Every man and woman with a relative or friend in the army, and this will soon mean practically every citizen of the United States, ought to write frequently to their soldiers. ”

“ Not only the work of fighting, but of building and preparation. Fighting furnishes the most spectacular and tragic aspect of war. But that is not all there is to the great game. War is a stupendous business enterprise. [17] It is a feat of engineering beside which the building of the Panama Canal looks like a mere pastime. When I started out to see America, as it had established itself in France, I did not dream of the greatness I was to encounter, a greatness which has fairly staggered and inspired those of our allies who have seen it. ”

“ I knew already that American women generally were aiding food conservation, saving meat, wheat and sugar for the allies, for what the United States has voluntarily sacrificed to feed Europe has done more to earn the friendship and gratitude of our allies than anything else we could have done. It is placed on a par with our war loans of money. It has redeemed us from the reputation of being dollar worshipers.
There is no question of our zeal and our generosity. There may be a question of our efficiency as war workers. It is not enough to conserve food. We must conserve effort as well. ”

“ Germany did not believe that we could land an army there, but we did.
And long before that we landed enough food in France, and in other hungry lands overseas, to enable the allies to carry on until our men came. That was one of the big feats of the war, and in it the women played their part, and more than their part.
No one has had to call for a congressional investigation into the women’s share in the war. Because the men who are in the training camps, on the seas and in the fighting zone are not soldiers to us. They are our sons. ”

“ Early on the morning of April eighteenth I started on a journey from the Orleans station, and there, filling the place with laughter and excited conversation, I saw about a hundred of the class of 1918 leave for their cantonment.
Their mothers and fathers and sweethearts were there seeing them off, just as we have been seeing our boys off to training camps this year. But these French fathers and mothers have suffered bitter losses. Hardly a family in France that has not known bereavement. Most of the women I saw that April morning wore deep mourning. ”

“ Because I have been in a good many of those quiet places behind the front, and I know that what was being done there was not coddling American soldiers, nor yet keeping them safe from battle. What was and is being done there is making them one hundred per cent. efficient [43] fighters. Not mass fighters alone, not men who at the word of command go forward to be mown down by machine-gun fire. But individual fighters, men who can move together in a mass, yes, but men who also know how to fight alone, who have initiative, resourcefulness, responsibility. Men who know every trick in the game. ”

“ They were as unconcerned as though they were waiting for a subway train instead of army trucks headed for the trenches. Months of training, outdoor living, regular habits, obedience to orders, devotion to an idea, have worked this physical and spiritual miracle with our draft army. The men are as strong as the Rooseveltian bull moose. They are hardened to mud and cold and wildest weather, and their nerves are as steady as an old clock. ”

“ This is a time when the women of America must take stock of themselves, when they must consider whether or not they have grown up to the stature of the women overseas; whether they can keep step with the men who have gone over to fight beside the French, English, Belgian and Italian soldiers. For those women of the world war are very great in mind and spirit. Those young Americans are growing fast. ”

“ I think I can not convey a better idea of the French character, its unquestionable gaiety and indomitable courage, than by telling how through all risks and dangers and calamities, their worship of pure beauty persists. Beauty is a cult with the French. They can not endure anything ugly. Every national emotion is expressed in terms of beauty and grace.
Paris, as we know, has been under bombardment from the German long-distance guns since March twenty-third. Almost every day the gun has sounded. ”