Page:The web (1919).djvu/151

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good. He doesn't do anything for me and our baby.'

"'The army will see,' I said to her. So I went and found her husband—in a saloon, drunk, shabby, dead to all pride and all ambition, about as poor-looking material for a soldier as you ever saw. 'That's Joe,' said his wife, when I brought them together in my office.

"Well, I sent Joe to jail to think things over. When he was in his cell, his wife took him in a tray full of good things to eat, some hot coffee, and all that sort of thing. I went with her. 'You see,' I said to him, 'how much your wife is doing now for your support—more than you have done for her in a year. What do you think about it now?'

"Well, he was inside the draft age, and we sent him into the Army. We saw to it that his wife got her share of his pay—the first support he had given her in many months.

"I forgot about this case, so many others came in. The days went by until not so long ago. After the armistice was signed and just before I came down here, some one knocked at my door. There came in a smiling young woman, neatly dressed, a neatly dressed baby in her arms. And with her was a tall, grinning, brown-faced, hard-bitten, well-set-up young man, in the uniform of the United States Army. He had a sergeant's chevrons on his sleeve. I did not know any of these people.

"'That's Joe,' said the young woman. Then I remembered it all. It made me feel rather funny—I couldn't really quite believe it.

"'He does not drink,' said the wife. 'I am so glad he went into the Army.'

"Well, maybe you think I'm not glad of my share in remaking a man like that. It paid me for all my work and worry in the League. I believe that our Division would have made good if it had not done anything more than just what it did for Joe."

One does not know of any better summary of the slacker raids than that conveyed by this simple little story from one chief out of very many hundreds.