“They cash the boys’ checks without question, and during the month of April in a certain division the Salvation Army sent home $20,000 for the soldiers. The Rockefeller Foundation hasn’t as yet given the Salvation Army a million-dollar donation to carry on its work. Fact is, I don’t know just how the Salvation Army chaplains and lassies do get along. But get along they do.
“Perhaps some of the boys and officers give them a lift now and then when the sledding is rough. They don’t aim to make a slight profit as do some other organizations.
“Ever since Cornelius Hickey put up ‘Hickey’s Hut,’ the first Salvation Army hut in France, they have been working at a loss. I saw an American officer give a Salvation Army chaplain 500 francs out of his pay at a certain small town in France recently.
“The work done in ‘Hickey’s Hut’ did much to endear the Salvation folks to the doughboys. When a letter arrived in France some months ago addressed only to ‘Hickey’s Hut, France,’ it reached its destination toute de suite, forty-eight hours after it arrived.
“The French climate has hit our boys hard. It is wet and penetratingly cold. Goes right to the marrow, and three suits of underwear are no protection against it. When the lads returned from training camp or the trenches, wet, cold, hungry and despondent, they found a welcome in ‘Hickey’s Hut.’
“Not a patronizing, holier-than-thou, we-know-we-are-doing-a-good-work-and-hope-you-doughboys-appreciate-it sort of a welcome, but a good old Salvation Army, Bowery Mission welcome, such as Tim Sullivan knew how to hand out in the old days.
“Around a warm fire with men who spoke their own language and who did not pretend to be above them in the social scale the doughboys forgot that they were four thousand miles from home and that they couldn’t ’sling the lingo.’
“I saw a group of lads on the Montdidier front who had not been paid in three months, standing cursing their luck. They had no money, therefore, they could not buy anything.
“The Salvation Army had been apprised by telegraph that the doughboys were playing in hard luck. Presto! Out from Paris came a truck loaded with everything to eat. The truck was unloaded and the boys paid for whatever they wanted with slips of paper signed with their John Hancocks. The Salvation Army lassies asked no questions, but accepted the slips of paper as if they were Uncle Sam’s gold.
“And one of the most useful institutions in Europe where war rages is one that has no publicity bureau and has no horns to toot. This is the Salvation Army. In the estimation of many, the Salvation Army goes way ahead of the work of many of the other war organizations working here. I see brave women and young women of the Salvation Army every day in places that are really hazardous.”