so surely it would not fail him now. From early morning until his train left that night he strove to master script, and not in vain. Before his train left, he wrote the letter, beginning it “Dear Darling,” and his exultant joy must have been equalled by her happiness and surprise when the letter arrived.
In spite of the vigorous campaign waged, some were missed, and it was no uncommon thing during the late summer of 1917 for men to be arrested for their failure to register and brought before Federal officials. It was then disclosed that they were illiterate and did not know of the registration or the draft, and some of them did not even know that the country was at war. This added to the expense of the Government and to the burdens and annoyance of officials, but these were nothing in comparison with the humiliation and the anguish suffered by the innocent victims and their families at home.
The exemption boards found difficulty in testing the eyes of illiterate soldiers. No provision having been made they invented devices of their own. Some boards substituted pictures for the lettered cards customarily used by oculists. Stalwart, finely developed men stood up before draft boards and answered questions like these: “Do you see this little dog or can you see best the larger dog above?” “Do you see the cat in this line best or the one below?”
LETTER FROM MAN OF DRAFT AGE
A second and third session of the moonlight schools for illiterate soldiers followed the first. Nowhere else in America were illiterate registrants being taught. The camps were in process of construction. The time between the registration of soldiers and their encampment—some three months or more—could profitably have been employed by illiterates of draft age in every State in learning to read and write. The records revealed that there were 700,000 men between the ages of 21 and 31 in the United States who registered by mark.
Kentucky men entered Camp Taylor at Louisville with books in their hands and determination to learn burning in their hearts. Many of them had had a taste, at least, of knowledge, and even when they had learned no more at the first aid stations than to write their names, had been provided with school supplies, pledged to continue their lessons, and placed under the instruction of some educated member of their group who promised to continue the teaching when they reached camp. In many cases they were accompanied by their moonlight school teachers, who had, themselves, been drafted out of their schools.
Some, in spite of all precautions, escaped the moonlight schools and entered camp illiterate. Soldiers from Indiana and Illinois were quartered at Camp Taylor, also, many of whom were unable to read and write. The experiences of illiterate soldiers at Camp Taylor were identical, no doubt, with those in all the other training camps. It was a story of humiliation, handicap and discouragement and in many cases black and bitter despair. Their utter bewilderment added to the difficulties of an already complex situation, and so reduced the efficiency of the company or the squad that their presence was resented by some officers, who at every opportunity and upon the slightest pretext shifted the illiterates from their own to another company.
The tables in the Y. M. C. A. hut spread with sheets upon sheets of white paper and envelopes were to the illiterate soldiers as a feast to which they had not been bidden. One soldier approached another timidly at a Y. M. C. A. writing table and said, “Will you back a dozen envelopes for me to my mother, please?”
“Certainly,” replied the other, “but why a dozen? Are you planning to write her every day? You must be a dutiful son.”