The bomb, descending from on high, must have grazed the face of the monument. A great hole in the pavement shows where it exploded. One flying fragment sheared away the fingers and thumbs of the dying soldier's hand so that the bronze musket was tom out of his grasp and flung upon the earth. Some one picked up the musket and laid it at the base of the marble but the hand sticks out into space empty and mutilated.
I dare say a German might interpret this as meaning France would be left crippled, disarmed and mangled. But to me I read it as a sign to show that France, the conqueror, and not the conquered, will be one of the nations that are to take the lead in bringing about universal peace and universal disarmament, once Germany has been cused of what ails her.
I saw them when they first landed at Camp Upton—furtive, frightened, slew-footed, slackshouldered, underfed, apprehensive—a huddle of unhappy aliens speaking in alien tongues; knowing little of the cause for which they must fight and possibly caring less.
I saw them again three months later when the snow of the dreadful winter of 1917-18 was piling high about their wooden barracks down there on wind-swept Long Island. The stoop was beginning to come out of their spines, the shamble out of their gait. They had learned to hold their heads up, had learned to look every man in the eye and tell him to go elsewhere with a capital H. They knew now that discipline was not punishment and that the salute was not a mark of servility but an evidence of mutual self-respect as between officer and man. They wore their uniforms with pride. The flag meant something to them and the war meant something to them. Three short hard months of training had transformed them from a rabble into soldier-stuff; from a street-mob into the makings of an army; from strangers into Americans.
After nine months I have seen them once more in France. For swagger, for snap, for smartness in the drill and for cockiness in the billet; for good humour on the march and for dash and spunk and deviltry in the fighting into which just now they have been sent, our army can show no better soldiers and no more gallant spirits than the lads who mainly make up the rank and file of this particular division.
They are the foreign-born Jews and Italians and Slavs of New York's East Side, that were called up for service in the first draft.
No wonder the mother who didn't raise her boy to be a soldier has become an extinct species back home.