Huts in Hell

by Daniel A. Poling

We shall be helped greatly in our efforts to appreciate the facts if we remember that every soldier before he is a soldier is a man; that the American soldiers in France are our own brothers and our own sons; that we have taken the best from our colleges, our churches, our offices, our homes, our factories and our farms, to feed the god of war who stalks across the fields of Europe. These men have not laid off their American idealism; they have not abandoned their American training and the moral and spiritual instructions absorbed by American firesides and in American churches and schools. We indict ourselves when we believe wholesale charges of evil living, brought against the finest fruit of our tree of democratic culture.

The psychology of such charges is demoralizing. Men falsely accused are inclined to argue, "Well, I have the name; the mark is on me; I'll take the game!" On the other hand, confidence begets confidence. Men are made strong by the knowledge that other men and that women and children believe in them. Our brothers and sons in France have won the right, not only to our love, but to our esteem and faith as well.

There is no room to-day for the quick-spoken, casually informed, and misinformed destructive critic. The constructive critic in the army and out of it, in France and in civilian life at home, will have increasingly much to do; not one iota of service for the soldier and sailor can we afford to abate. They are always in the danger zone.

I found the American in uniform building up about himself a wall of protection in the very attitude he is assuming toward the moral excesses practised by the few. He is resenting the indulgence that causes his country's civilization to be misjudged; he is disciplining his comrade who by taking improper and forbidden liberties endangers the freedom of others; he shows a distinct pride in the fact that American physical and moral standards are high. I believe that for every man in the army that is morally destroyed at least five men are morally born again. We have spent much time in discussing the vast task of keeping our men fit to return to us when the war is over, and it is time well spent. But there is another matter quite as important: America must be made and kept fit for these men to return to.

This is a report on conditions as they exist in the American army, and does not deal directly with circumstances surrounding vice and liquor in England and in France. As to these conditions in England and France, they differ widely. Vice conditions in such cities as London and Liverpool are particularly menacing; strong drink is everywhere a distressing problem. In both of these vital matters the English problem presents difficulties in excess of those confronting the investigator in France. Through diplomatic representations and with the utmost regard for the customs and feelings of our heroic allies certainly the same regulations should be applied to our soldiers overseas that now apply at home.

The results that have been thus far accomplished have been accomplished without conflict with the drinking-customs of our allies. In proportion as it has been found practical for our military authorities to have absolute police control over territory occupied by American soldiers has it been possible to deal effectively with liquor and vice from the standpoint of administering regulations and laws.

What is the attitude of the American military authorities in France toward drink and vice? I find our leaders in France aggressively and successfully promoting the most comprehensive programme ever attempted by a nation at war to keep her soldiers physically competent and morally fit. An official of the British government, a man of many distinctions and high in political life, told me that the eyes of all the nations of Europe were upon the well-nigh revolutionary policies of General Pershing and his staff.

The programme of the military leaders has been effectively supplemented by the Y. M. C. A., the Red Cross, and the Salvation Army. The Y. M. C. A. is responsible for a ministry that cannot be overvalued. With its huts, which range from the commodious double building in the great cities and in the large training-camps to the foul-smelling, dark dugouts at the front, with its canteens and hotels for officers and privates, with its music and its lectures, its classes in French and its Bible classes, with its athletic leadership and its rest-stations high among the quiet mountains, with its religious services and its personal interviews, it is meeting squarely the moral challenge of this stupendous occasion. It is the most potent hope of the church, and God's most fruitful agency, "for such a time as this." A captain of a company of colored stevedores told me that the Y. M. C. A. had increased the morale of his men one hundred per cent.

As I have written these lines, I have had vividly before me a group of American soldiers. It is three o'clock in the morning, and they have just marched four miles through trenches, shell-obliterated or filled with mud and snow; they have been relieved from the first line. They are men from four companies of a battalion of a division occupying a permanent position on the western front. They have had the distinction of experiencing the first extensive gassing directed against American troops and of repelling the first general raid over an American front. Of one of the companies every commissioned officer has been killed or wounded in the fighting of twenty hours before; its captain, a gallant Southern lad, died on the parapet leading the successful counter-attack. They are covered with mud, dead for sleep, chilled to the bone, but uncomplaining. Some of them have fallen repeatedly on the way out, and their faces are as black as their boots. They lean against the counters and the tables of the Y. M. C. A. hut, and silently drink the red-hot tea and eat the cookies and crackers. These are the men who have given the first clear demonstration of the fighting superiority of American democracy over German autocracy. They have paid a great price; but, counting all the cost, they have found the expenditure justified. They are the very vanguard of the pathfinders of civilization; they are the knights of the twentieth century.

I should be false to these men if, having the evidence of their moral soundness, I did not declare it; and I should be false to those who gave them as a priceless offering upon the altar of freedom.