A soldier's mother in France

by Rheta Childe Dorr

The German newspapers, of course, are rigidly censored. Not a word of war news is ever published except that which emanates from headquarters. Nevertheless, the German people, who are not fools, now know full well that the kaiser’s war promises are not being fulfilled. He promised in the beginning that their victorious troops would be home by Christmas of 1914. They know now that Christmas, 1918, will see the world still at war.

The kaiser promised his people Verdun, but he could not deliver Verdun. He promised them the annihilation of the British army before this year’s summer. But the British army still fights on and even the German newspapers dare not claim that the British show signs of weakness or surrender.

The German people were promised, above all, that their commander-in-chief would end the war victoriously before the Americans could raise and transport overseas any army worthy of the name. This supreme promise the government, until Pershing annihilated the St. Michiel salient, tried to make the people believe was being kept. Because they knew that unless the war was won before the Americans come in in great numbers, it never could be won.

Secretary of War Baker, quoting from the semi-official Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung of Berlin, gives a sample of the sedative stuff with which the German authorities kept the people’s nerves quiet. Admitting that a country of one hundred million population might conceivably raise an army of one million five hundred thousand men, the article goes to great pains to prove that such an army will never cross the seas. “The American political situation” is such that the greater part of the army will have to be kept at home. At best only four to five hundred thousand men can be put into the European battle-field.

“There is an American army in France,” concedes the article, with an air of being quite candid on the subject, “but it consists entirely of woodcutters, railroad men and doctors, except two or three divisions whose precious lives are being spared in quiet places far behind the front.”

When I read those words I laughed. Because I have been in a good many of those quiet places behind the front, and I know that what was being done there was not coddling American soldiers, nor yet keeping them safe from battle. What was and is being done there is making them one hundred per cent. efficient fighters. Not mass fighters alone, not men who at the word of command go forward to be mown down by machine-gun fire. But individual fighters, men who can move together in a mass, yes, but men who also know how to fight alone, who have initiative, resourcefulness, responsibility. Men who know every trick in the game.

While we were building ships; while we were drafting and drilling men over here; while the despised woodcutters and railroad men and the vigorous young engineers were laying the basis for a long war if necessary, but a clean victory in the end, our soldiers, waiting in scores of camps to take their places in the lines, were being given an intensive training, which I think would astonish even the war-efficient Germans.

We have also special schools for officers, and they are still in full blast, and will be continued as long as they are needed. Our supply of officers will never run short, for the schools will continue to turn them out. The schools give the superior enlisted men a chance to earn commissions. Officers in every regiment are on a constant watch for men who show signs of leadership and military intelligence. Such men are officer material, and on the recommendation of their superiors they are sent to one or another of the schools which have been established over there.

When our men go to France from the cantonments here their training is by no means complete. They have been licked into soldier shape, they are in good physical and mental condition, they have learned to march, to drill, and to shoot. They can use the bayonet, they know something about artillery, about grenades and bombs. But they still have much to learn. They begin to learn soon after they arrive in France. They learn in camps and schools, but the German government doesn’t tell its people about that.

It was a cold, drizzly day in March that I visited a school where infantry, artillery, sanitary and gas lore was being instilled into the intelligence of nearly two thousand hot-blooded young Americans. Some of them were being trained for non-commissioned officers who would be in direct command of squads of soldiers in battle. There were also large classes for lieutenants and captains of infantry, artillery, engineering and aviation.