ART STUDENTS IN A. E. F. TRAINING CENTER, PARIS
Photo by Signal Corps
A. E. F. STUDENTS IN UNIVERSITY OF LYON
Three men—Private Hudson Hawley, Field Clerk James A. Britt, and Corporal John T. Winterich—were the founders of the Stars and Stripes. All three had had training in the making of newspapers—Winterich had been one of the editors of the Springfield Republican. At Neufchâteau one winter night early in 1918 these three foregathered to descant upon the growing American Expeditionary Forces and—like the fraternity of reporters the world over—to talk shop; and these men agreed that the chief need of the expedition was an agency which might put the various American military elements in France in touch with each other, tell every man what the expanding force was like and what it was trying to do, and build homogeneity and singleness of purpose within the expedition such as no other agency could evoke—in short, the A. E. F. needed a newspaper. The idea was communicated to General Pershing, who promptly approved it. Thus was the Stars and Stripes officially born.
The first number was published in Paris on February 8, 1918, and regularly every Friday thereafter the paper appeared until June 13, 1919, when it was discontinued, and the editorial staff joined the homeward migration. At its summit of popularity the Stars and Stripes attained to a circulation of 526,000, which was close to the permitted limit of one copy for every three soldiers in the expedition, a stricture made necessary by the shortage of paper in Europe. This was all paid circulation, obtained without direct solicitation other than the advertising appearing in the paper itself. The Stars and Stripes was printed in the Paris plant of the London Daily Mail. The total net profit earned by the newspaper was about $700,000, a sum which went to the credit of the Quartermaster Department. After the armistice the collectors in America awoke to the historical value of this publication and offered large sums for the few complete files which had been saved.
At about the third issue of the Stars and Stripes Private Harold W. Ross, who had had an extensive experience as an executive in newspaper offices of the Pacific coast, became the editor-in-chief. The three originators of the newspaper were on its staff until the end. Sergeant Alexander Woollcott, who before and after his army experience was the dramatic critic of the New York Times, became the battle correspondent of the paper. His accounts of the engagements in which the American troops appeared were not excelled by those of any correspondent with the Army. After the armistice Sergeant John W. Rixey Smith joined the staff. These names all became well known to the men of the A. E. F. Nor should the two artists, C. LeRoy Baldridge and A. B. Wallgren, both private soldiers, be forgotten. Their work on the Stars and Stripes resulted in fame and fortune for both of them. The latter, as “Wally,” made himself, with his whimsical nonsense, about the most popular figure in the American Expeditionary Forces. Baldridge was the possessor of a delicate and subtle talent. Practically unknown in his own country before the war, he returned after it to take his place among the foremost American illustrators.
These and other men connected with the publication were formally organized as a unit of the A. E. F., bearing the name 1st Censor and Press Company. The officers in charge were Major Mark Watson and Captain Stephen T. Early, both of them experienced in newspaper work.
The military authorities granted an extraordinary editorial freedom to the Stars and Stripes. At one time the paper was making a satirical onslaught against the army practice of fencing off the rank and file from the more desirable cafés and other gathering places with the placard “Officers Only.” A high general of the expedition took umbrage at this campaign and sent to the publication office a peremptory order for the attack to cease. The editorial staff at once appealed to General Pershing, who replied with a written order that there was to be no interference with the editorial direction of the Stars and Stripes. With such a charter the Stars and Stripes threw itself whole-heartedly into various projects for the good of the A. E. F. and its personnel. Its chief military contribution was its “Berlin or Bust” campaign, undertaken in the summer and autumn of 1918. In this it directed its energies chiefly to the improvement of the unloading efficiency at the American ports in France. By citing publicly the labor units which made good records in the unloading of vessels, the newspaper created, among the stevedore troops, a spirit of competition which had a marked effect upon the efficiency of the ports. The newspaper induced American troop units in France to “adopt” for one year more than 3,000 orphans of deceased French soldiers, and many of the units continued their guardianship after they returned to America. In this campaign the Stars and Stripes raised over 500,000 francs for the care of French war orphans, and most of this money was contributed by men in the trenches. The newspaper also conducted a service department in which it answered more than 500,000 enquiries coming from American soldiers. After the armistice it coöperated in the expedition’s educational enterprise.
In this volume, however, we are not so much interested in welfare activities within the Army as we are with those which bore directly upon the difficult business of demobilizing the troops without shock to the economic organization of the country. The activities in soldier welfare directly connected with demobilization were of two classes—those benefiting the sick and wounded and those helpful to the able-bodied.