In the plain bare room, which is the commander’s private headquarters, and in which the great campaigns which our men will fight are being planned, General Pershing appears even more dynamic and forceful than in his luxurious Parisian home. I have seen generals who wore their uniforms as if they were business clothes, but not so General Pershing. If he wore business clothes he would contrive to make them look like a uniform. His uniform is the most immaculate, the most correct, the most military thing in the way of garments that I have ever beheld. His boots look as though he never wore the same pair a second time. Yet there is nothing stiff or rigid in his appearance. He puts his clothes on a perfect masculine figure, that is all. He holds himself like an absolutely fit and athletic man.
General Pershing exalts health. He takes daily cold baths, one of his young aides told me, and often in the dead of winter runs and exercises in the open air clad only in a thin bathrobe. To bring every man in the army up to his physical standard is the commander’s expressed ambition. To make them supremely healthy, efficient fighting men, and to return them to their mothers morally as well as physically sound, is General Pershing’s conception of his responsibility as head of the American army.
It is always interesting to know how we appear in the eyes of strangers, and an article published in a well-known French magazine shows the strong appeal that General Pershing has made to the imagination of our allies. According to the French writer, there are two men in the American commander-in-chief, one of them Anglo-Saxon, the other a Frenchman. In 1749 the ancestors of General Pershing emigrated from Alsace to America, and Alsace in the eyes of all Frenchmen is and always will be France.
If by rare favor you are received by General Pershing in his Paris home you meet the Anglo-Saxon, says the reporter. There his coldness is positively British. “Tall, slender as a sublieutenant, well set up in his khaki brown uniform, four stars on the shoulders and on the collar the golden eagle of his supreme rank. General Pershing receives you in a manner courteous but glacial. He is entirely the official, conscious of his great responsibilities, and determined to keep silence concerning official matters. His blue eyes are clear and cold, even hard. Above his strong jaw, indicative of implacable energy, his lips, saber-straight, wear no smile.
“Do not attempt to get from him any details of his mission in France, or try to induce him to give you any personal souvenirs or anecdotes of his tour of the French front. His aide-de-camp and interpreter has an invariable reply to all such questions: ‘The general has nothing to say.’ Above all, never venture to ask a question concerning his private life, his joys or sorrows. Immediately the look in his cold eyes becomes hostile. Before the question is fairly out the answer comes: ‘The general does not think that would interest the public.’
“But if by happy circumstance you are privileged to enter the small circle of General Pershing’s friends, what a delightful metamorphosis! The man reveals himself simple, charming, pliant, spontaneous. He is the Frenchman, cordial and communicative, ready to lend himself to that juvenile gaiety which so much amuses the Anglo-Saxon. The blue eyes that we have seen flash so coldly are now at once mischievous and tender. His features are animated, his smile ready.
“Everything interests him, science, art, literature. Music he loves almost as well as paintings, and he tells you with what new pleasure every time he visited the Paris of pre-war days he went each day to the Louvre galleries. Above all, he tells you how profoundly happy he is to be in the war on our side. Certainly that joy is rooted in the satisfaction of a soldier fulfilling his duty, but General Pershing is more than a soldier. He is an idealist called to accomplish a high mission, to serve an unselfish cause, to help humanity to a secure and happy future.”
General Pershing never appeared a bigger man than when he offered to brigade the American forces in with the English and the French, and himself take the subordinate position of a commander without a real command. The offer was made and accepted in the dark and panic-ridden early days of the March German offensive, when it looked as though the allied lines might be broken, and all the man power available had to be mobilized.
That danger is happily past. The Germans have struck and the blow has proved utterly futile. The Americans are to be allowed to fight under their own flag and their own officers. They will get full credit for what they do. But the French and English will never forget that General Pershing was unselfishly willing, when necessary, to forego both for himself and the American army every particle of credit, letting the honors go to the allies. From a man of that character great fighting, splendid victories may be expected. Under such a commander our sons are well secured.