10. I have been closely associated with more than five hundred Y. M. C. A. secretaries who served under all conditions of army life. Among these secretaries have been some of America's most prominent business men, ministers, lawyers, athletes, physicians, nurses, and teachers.
11. I have talked with leaders in the civilian and political life of France.
12. For four days I have studied conditions in our general headquarters in France and in a divisional headquarters at the front.
13. For six days I have messed with private soldiers under fire; I was with them day and night.
14. For six days I served within the front line as a regular Y. M. C. A. secretary; three additional days were spent somewhat farther back, but within the immediate war zone. For three of the six days I was entirely in charge of the dugout which is the most advanced permanent Y. M. C. A. station in any army, being located within less than sixteen hundred yards of our most advanced trench. Directly connected with this dugout are a room of the Signal Corps, a Red Cross first-aid station, and billets for forty-seven men. Three other days were spent assisting in a hut farther back, but situated above ground and in the zone of constant shell-fire. During these days I was brought face to face with men confronted by the most trying conditions of modern warfare. I saw them caked with mud, chilled with snow and ice-cold water, sick and wounded. I witnessed the treatment that they received; I inspected what they ate and drank.
15. I have visited our front-line trenches, meeting the men and officers and conversing with them. I have seen the American soldier under direct fire. I have measured him after the most extensive raid the Germans had until that time directed against him, and the one in which the American army really came into its own. I have been with the American soldier in a barrage, and later when he carried back his dead and wounded and the wounded of his enemy.
16. I have studied the American soldier after he had marched four miles through mud-filled, shell-scattered trenches to his billet, relieved after eight days of trench life during which he had suffered everything from rain and snow to gas, machine-gun fire, bayonet, and shrapnel. I have seen him in repose and in action. I have seen him before, and I have seen him after, a charge.
I believe that I not only know what the American soldier does in France, but that I begin to know what he is.
He is a representative American. And he is living on a moral plane which is above the moral plane of civilian life at home.