This Side the Trenches/Chapter 1
From camp, from battleline, from shipboard the soldiers and sailors of the United States are sending a message to the people on this side the trenches. It is a message that is variously expressed. Sometimes it is to be read between the lines of a letter such as this:
"To the American Red Cross:
"I wish to extend my sincere thanks to you for going to aid my wife and child whom I asked you to help last week. My wife wrote me that you came to see her. I highly appreciate this. I can soldier better now.
Sometimes a sentence or two may carry it. Thus another man in the service writes:
"I have heard how wonderfully the Red Cross has taken care of my family. That alone is enough to spur one on to use the best that's in him."
Again this message from the men in the army and navy is told without words. What letter could convey it more clearly than the act of the sailor who gave to the Red Cross a medal struck off by the Germans in anticipation of their triumphal entry into Paris? He had procured it upon one of his voyages and presented it as the best means of showing how much the friendship and help supplied by the Red Cross to his family had meant to him.
Most vivid of all was the way one of the United States engineers, who subsequently was captured by the Germans in the battle of Cambrai, expressed it:
"Be sure to buy a Red Cross badge for me, yourself, and one for each of the children," he wrote to his wife. "Wear them all the time." The Red Cross had helped his family through legal and financial difficulties and had made it possible for his oldest daughter to extend her education.
Surely this message from the soldiers and sailors of the United States to the people on this side the trenches must be plain to everybody. Certainly he who has followed the history of the great world struggle need not be told it.
This message is that, despite the huge quantities of machinery and munitions, despite the billions of dollars, despite the millions of tons of ships that are being poured into this terrible venture, the real factor in deciding the war will be something that cannot be manufactured, something that cannot be measured, something that cannot even be seen. More vital than aeroplanes, more important than machine guns, tanks, submarine chasers, or high explosives is the quality of the spirit of the men in the trenches and on the ocean. When the French and British were retreating to the Marne in the first weeks of the war, when the French were deluged with the terrific rain of steel that accompanied the German drive toward Verdun, when the British and the Canadians underwent the tortures of the first gas attacks at Ypres, the issue was not how many miles of territory would be yielded or held, but whether the courage and confidence of the troops would endure. The real defeat of the Germans lay in their inability to break the spirit of the defenders of France and Belgium.
Military men call this spirit morale. It has been defined as "the moral pulse of armies," and it is said that since before the days of Julius Cæsar the skill of every great commander has depended chiefly upon his ability to feel and appreciate this intangible thing. It is morale that enables men to endure hardships, hunger, and pain, to face death again and again, and yet to keep on fighting. It springs from the spirit of the individual soldier and sailor. As long as he continues to be cheerful and to feel confident of himself and his officers, so long does the morale of the army and the navy continue to be strong. Let but one man become discouraged, let but one man worry and he will become a drain upon the vitality of all those who are fighting near him. That is why the soldier with a buoyancy of spirit is more valuable to a regiment than a squad of sharpshooters. That, moreover, is why the Red Cross is one of the most important factors in the winning of the war, for it is the knowledge that all is well this side the trenches, in the United States, that will encourage a man to fight with the best that isin him. Failing that knowledge he will know only anxiety, and will lose the spirit of victory. The most vulnerable part of the army or the navy, therefore, is thousands of miles from the submarine zone or the trenches. It is in the homes of our soldiers and sailors.
Only if all is well with the mother, the wife, the children, the sisters, and brothers, can the man in the service go forward with the fullest assurance. "I can soldier better now," said the recruit whose letter is quoted at the beginning of this chapter. With his family under the care of the Red Cross he could devote undivided energy to the task before him.
This also, was the thought of the man who while on his way to camp stopped at the office of the Red Cross in an eastern city. "I want to tell you," he said, "what it means to me to know that if my mother should be lonely, or sick, or if anything should happen to her you will be there to stand by her and set things right." Again, it was the desire to have this same assurance that caused a soldier whose wife was to be operated upon the day after he left for the front to ask the Red Cross to visit her in the hospital and to do for her the many things that he would have liked to do himself.
Relief from anxiety was what was wanted by the private on whose behalf an officer in charge of a camp in the southwest sent a message not long ago to a town in Pennsylvania. The officer asked the Red Cross to reassure the man who, the telegram said, was "worried about the folks at home."
What's happening to the folks at home is indeed the most important thing in the world to the member of the family who is in the army or navy. And things do happen to the folks at home. Things happen to everybody. It is one of the ways by which life is measured—for the families of soldiers and sailors as well as for the family of anybody else.
Here, for example, are some of the things which have happened to these families during the absence of their men at the front, in camp, or on the ocean. A few weeks after a certain soldier enlisted, a moving van drew up before the door of his home in order to take from it the furniture he had been buying upon the installment plan. The mother of a man in the ambulance corps found after he had gone to the front that what she had thought to be indigestion was cancer. The sister of another developed tuberculosis. The national guardsman who had expected to be with his wife when their first baby was born was in camp hundreds of miles away at the time that the new mother needed him most. A widow, who had said good-bye to her son apparently cheerfully enough, worried so much about him that her health was endangered. The wife of a sailor who before the days of his enlistment had been chiefly responsible for the family discipline found it so difficult to manage her three young sons that in despair she considered sending them to an institution, One of two young men who had been managing the farm of their aged parents was drafted; two weeks after his departure the remaining son died, just at harvest time. The relatives in whose charge a soldier had left his wife proved to be unscrupulous; they made her a household drudge and forced her to give them all the money her husband sent her.
Things do indeed happen to the folks at home. The soldier or the sailor recognizes that this is inevitable. His real anxiety is not so much that things may happen as that when they do happen he cannot be there to help and advise. It is the thought of how his absence in these emergencies handicaps his family that undermines his morale.
This, moreover, is something that affects the whole army and navy for there is scarcely a recruit or a veteran in either branch of the service who is without 'folks'. "There is no man who does not have dependents," said an army officer. "It is only a question of how many dependents he has and how dependent they are." Few are the persons we know who are not vitally interested in the welfare and happiness of at least one other individual.
The morale of the forces of the United States will, therefore, be determined largely by the manner in which the folks at home are fortified against the things which may happen to them. If the soldier or the sailor is to do his best he must have the assurance that, come what may, his family will have the counsel and the help that, were he at home, he himself would try to provide. And this assurance the men of the army and navy have. It is an assurance that is the more effective because it is given by the same agency which comes to them with relief and healing when they are sick and wounded, the same agency whose emblem they see at the dressing stations on the battlefield, on the ambulances, and at the base hospitals. It is the assurance that is offered to them by the American Red Cross.
The Red Cross has found a way of doing, for the families of soldiers and sailors when trouble or misfortune comes to them, what the men themselves would like to do were they at home instead of at the front or on the sea.
This activity of the Red Cross is called Home Service. Because of it, thousands of men are able to 'soldier better now'. It has been, and is, one of the great factors in maintaining the morale of the army and navy. No more important piece of war work is to be found this side the trenches.
Review of Chapter I
1. Define morale.
2. Why is it an important factor in deciding the war?
3. Upon what does the morale of the army and navy depend?
What is usually the chief concern of the soldier and the sailor?
5. Give an illustration showing how much assurance of the welfare of the folks at home helps the man at the front or on shipboard to do his duty.
6. What are some of the things which may happen at home to the families of the men in the service?
7. Is there anyone of your own acquaintance who has not at least one other individual in whose welfare he is interested?
8. What does the soldier or the sailor need if he is to do his best?
9. Why is assurance of personal help particularly effective when given by the Red Cross to the men in the army or the navy?
10. What activity of the Red Cross reaches the families of the men in the service?