MANUAL OF ARMS OF THE UNITED STATES.
Showing the different positions in the drill.
GROUP OF RUSSIAN SAILORS.
They are the first to come to New York since the United States entered the war.
SERBIAN CORPS ORGANIZED IN THE UNITED STATES.
Hundreds of Serbians organized an army and went to France and joined the offensive. The photo shows the men leaving San Francisco, where they were mobilized. The United States paid for the transportation of the men.
SUCCESS BUILT ON RUINS OF FAILURE.
No great victories, either in war or in the ordinary relations of life, are attained without initial blunders. Many a splendid success is built upon the ruins of failure, and this is a fact that the women of Europe learned after the first hysteria occasioned by the marching soldiers, the beat of drums and all the excitement incident to real warfare. American women, when they joined hands with the Allies against Prussianism and all that it meant, builded splendid records of their usefulness upon the mistakes that these women made.
In the summer of 1914 every girl and woman clamored to be a nurse. Women with a great deal of money and no experience opened "hospitals" that were about as fit for the reception and treatment of wounded men as a henroost is capable of housing an eagle. They all wanted to be in the "Red Cross" or "V.A.D." (Voluntary Aid Department) and wear caps and bandage wounds.
Then there were the amateur nurses who didn't know much about nursing, "but would love to try." The daughter of a duke tried to go through a probationary course at St. Bartholomew's Hospital because she thought the uniform "perfectly sweet." But of course this element of "fluffiness" exists on the outside of any great movement. It has to be blown away so that the hard surface of genuine and practical endeavor can be seen and felt. And that is what happened to England. The "fluff" disappeared and women knew where they were, and men realized that women possess a force, a firm and splendid resolve, that gives them the right to step beside men in the march toward victory.
Another craze that amounted to a vice was the furious and ill-considered efforts of totally unskilled women to make shirts and hospital garments for soldiers. If some of the results had not been pathetic one could almost be overcome with the comicality of the whole business. Soldiers' shirts were turned out by a circle of busily sewing ladies that would not fit a dwarf, while probably the next batch of garments dispatched with patriotic fervor to a regimental depot might have been designed for a race of giants.