AN American army is in France. Old Glory is proudly floating above an armed host which has come to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Allies, and do battle to prove that Right makes Might. We read in the papers of the ovations the troops receive, of the reviews, the presentations, the compliments, and the training, and our hearts beat proudly because we too are Americans. We are non-combatants, to be sure, and are members not of the American army but of the French; yet, we are serving in the same cause, and, we hope, doing our bit towards the final victory.
We know that sooner or later the entire American Field Service is to be absorbed by the American army, but as to when this is to come, and in what manner, we are ignorant. We debate often now about these things, and wonder what effect the change is to have on us and on the section. Pessimist has picked up a rumor somewhere that we are to be turned out in a body, and that drivers who have been training at Allentown are to take our places. Cheerful Liar informs us that we are all to be made first lieutenants, and that the section is to serve with the American troops. “Napoleon” thinks that we are to be discharged, and that French drivers who “know their business” are to take our places. Some one else says that we are all to be put in the trenches. No one knows anything definite, and the chef and sous-chefs are besieged for information which they have not. The Assistant Inspector comes out to us and we know little more. American officers encountered in Bar-le-Duc can give us no information, and rumors, most of them originating in the section, contradict each other.
One evening a large Pierce Arrow pulls up beside our cars, parked in a walnut grove. Three American medical officers step out with clanking spurs, and we are all attention. The chef is called and we assemble. The officer in command makes a short speech. The section is to be taken over, he says, and those who remain must enlist as privates in the American army for the duration of the war. These men, having signed up, are then at the disposal of the Army, but will probably be kept in the Ambulance Service. The new officers are to be an American lieutenant, who will be our present chef, two sergeants, and a corporal. The section is to continue to serve with the French army, but may be transferred to the new American front.
We form small circles and discuss the situation. All the freedom and romance are gone, but many are going to stay. The rest have chosen aviation or artillery, and one or two may return home. The old volunteer Ambulance Service is dead, but the days we have lived with it are golden, and nothing can ever take them away from us, or bring them back again.
There is a little lump in each man’s throat as he turns in tonight, but from now on we serve America, and any sacrifice is worth that. And for the rest—“C’est la guerre.”
THE participation of the United States in this war marks the time of this country’s coming of age, and the real beginning of its work as one of the great world powers. Up to the War of the Revolution the thirteen colonies had more than enough on their hands in managing their own affairs. In the throes of that war the country was born, and slowly grew, feeling its increasing power which was never quite secure until the Civil War was at an end. Then, year by year, reaching out over the two continents of America, guiding and helping our weaker brothers in their affairs, gave us a foundation of courage and experience in the adolescent period before we were ready to stand forth staunch in our beliefs and secure in our power to uphold them. That that time has come, and that the Old World, throwing down the gauntlet to the New, has found it unexpectedly ready, is shown by the presence of the Stars and Stripes on the battlefields of France. The mask of our isolation by the ocean, that time-worn excuse, has been rudely torn aside by modern inventions, and the affairs of Europe have become by their intimacy our own. In mingling with them as we were forced to do, one side was bound to transgress sooner or later—Germany did. And when Germany transgressed, America stepped across the bridge from youth to manhood, and picking up the iron gauntlet proceeded to settle the question by force of arms,—the one indisputable argument.
This war is to make Democracy secure only in that it is the continual struggle between the new and the old, a struggle whose issue is certain before the start—civilization moves to the west.
America is the vanguard of the European civilization moving westward. It has taken the sum of the civilizations of the earth to bridge the chasm of the Atlantic. America is the last section of the circle of the world, which completed, civilization moves back to its starting place. Power increases with civilization and, with each step civilization has taken, the conquests have been proportionate. Each has tried world conquest and failed, but each has come nearer and each time the world has been nearer ready to receive it. The present war is the attempt of a representative of the civilization of Europe to control the earth, and proving per se its unfitness to do so.
Consequently, the relation of America to the War is that she is coming of age, and is at last ready to take her place among the great nations of the world as a power that can never again be disregarded, a mighty guardian of the Right.