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 HUTS

IN

HELL

YMCA

By

Danie A. Polin
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EX LIBRIS
 1.
1/18 35
CALIFORNIA
 RO VIMU

I SWEAR TO AVENGE YOUR FATHER! "

This striking picture, which is very popular in Paris, was brought
to America by the author. It shows an American soldier standing
with French orphans by the grave of their father, slain in battle.
HUTS IN HELL

BY

DANIEL A. POLING

UNIV OF

BOSTON

CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR WORLD

 D50
.9

рь

COPYRIGHTED , 1918, BY THE

GOLDEN RULE COMPANY
 ΤΟ
THE MEN AND WOMEN
OF
THE RED TRIANGLE

They also fight who help the fighters fight

389694
 INTRODUCTION

HIS book is a record of my observations

T in France, where I made a deliberate choice
between seeing the American, French, and
British fronts casually, or studying the army of
the United States carefully ; I decided to spend
all of my time with the American soldier. I lived
with him from the port of entry to the front line,
and saw him under every condition of modern
warfare.
Since I left him in the trenches of northern

France every day has added glorious testimony

to the evidence that moved me to write in one of
the chapters of this book: "The American soldier
is the worthy inheritor of the finest traditions of
American arms, a credit to those who bore him,
an honor to the nation he represents, and the last
and best hope that civilization will not fail in
her struggle to establish the might of right."
I have not aspired to write a complete chroni-
cle of the American overseas army, but have tried
to record faithfully what I saw of the men with
the colors, and my impressions of the efficient
agencies contributing to their well-being and com-
fort. May the message of the book be worthy of
V
vi INTRODUCTION

the supreme motives that have brought us as a

people into this struggle for international right-
eousness and permanent peace.
I went to Europe as the official representative
of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, as
chairman of the United Committee on War Tem-
perance Activities in the Army and Navy, as com-
missioner of the Federal Council of the Churches

of Christ in America, and representing the Na-

tional Temperance Council of America.
My observations in France were made unac-
companied by a military officer, and the way was
not prepared before me. I saw things at their
best and at their worst, just as they were . Before
going to France I spent six weeks in England and
Scotland speaking under the auspices of the Pro-
hibition Educational Campaign .
DANIEL A. POLING.
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.
 CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE PIRATE OF THE DEEP 1
II. WAR CAPITALS OF THE ALLIES 12
III. DOWN IN FLAMES 23
IV. PERSHING 33
V. SEICHEPREY 43
VI. A DUGOUT DIARY 49
VII. " HE'S A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS " 65
VIII. " GAS ! GAS! GAS! " 89
IX. " THEY SHALL NOT PASS ". 103
X. THE GREATEST MOTHER IN THE WORLD • 120
XI. THE FIRST CROIX DE GUERRE 133
XII. THE HYMN OF HATE 143
XIII. A MAID OF BRITTANY . 151
XIV. THE FIGHTING PARSON 155
XV. THREE NEW GRAVES 166
XVI. A TALE OF TWO CHRISTIANS IN FRANCE · 169
XVII. LLOYD GEORGE 174
XVIII. WORTHY OF A GREAT PAST 183
XIX. RUM RATION RUINOUS 189
XX. PHYSICALLY COMPETENT AND MORALLY FIT . 199
XXI. VIVE LA FRANCE! • 212

vii
 ILLUSTRATIONS

"I swear to Avenge Your Father ! " • . frontispiece

The German Crew and Submarine which Surrendered

to the U. S. S. " Fanning " • facing page 8
An American Airman Returning to his Post after a
Day's Work in the Skies . 80

8088
Y. M. C. A. Serving Soup and Hot Coffee to Wounded
Men • 62
A Gas Attack . • 100
American Infantry Resting, Approaching the Front in
France · 140
The First American Troops to Reach Europe Marching
through London Amid the Cheers of Thousands of
Our British Allies · · 158
Dr. Poling with Newton Wylie, of the Toronto
" Globe " 190
 UNIV. OF

CALIFORNIA

HUTS IN HELL

CHAPTER I

THE PIRATE OF THE DEEP

HE great liner had reached the danger

THzone. She drove ahead through the night
with ports closed and not a signal showing.
Under the stars, both fore and aft, marines
watched in silence by the guns. Each man wore

or had by him a life-preserver, and there was

silence on the deck.
Quietly I stood by the rail, and watched the
waves break into spray against the mighty vessel's
bow. The phosphorescent glow bathed the sea
in wondrous light all about ; only the stars and
the weird illumination of the waves battled with
the darkness ; there was no moon.
It was hard to realize that out there some-
where silent watchers waited to do us hurt, hard
to grasp the stern significance of those men in
uniform who crowded the staterooms, officers of
the new army of democracy bound for the bleed-
ing fields of France. It was hard to comprehend
these facts of blood and iron.
1
 HUTS IN HELL

"Well, old top, I'm more nervous to-night

than I ever was in the air ; it's a jolly true fact,
I am," said the British flier, who was standing
by my side.

" Up there you can see them coming, but out

here you just stand with your eyes closed, and
wait." He was a captain and an "ace."
" ace." After
convalescing from a wound sufficiently to be about,
he had been sent to America to serve as an in-
structor in one of the new aviation camps . He
was returning now to re-enter the service at the
front.

And it was a nerve-racking experience to wait

out the night with its hidden but sure dangers.
I turned in at eleven, fully dressed, and in spite
of the menace that charged the very air was soon
asleep. It seemed like ten minutes, or a flash,—
it really was six hours, when " Boom!" and I
was awake. I sat up in bed, and tried to get my
bearings . In a flash I remembered that I was at
sea. Then I recalled the falling of a great stack
of chairs on the deck just above our stateroom
a few nights before, and was reassured . But
66
" Boom ! Boom ! Boom!" three times in quick
succession our six-inch guns spoke, shaking the
ship from bow to stern . Before the third dis-
charge had sounded I was in the middle of the
floor.
There I met my cabin partner, the premier
aviator of the American navy. We exchanged no
 THE PIRATE OF THE DEEP 3

lengthy felicitations, but jumped into our life-

preservers and hurried on deck. Eight times the
guns were in action in that first attack. What

the results were we never learned ; ships' officers

are reticent, and gun-crews are not allowed to
speak.
On four different occasions, the last time within
thirty miles of the Mersey River, we were attacked
by submarines. Later, in London, I learned that
ours had been one of the most eventful trips of
-
the war that did not end disastrously. I know
now exactly what a " finger periscope" looks like
at a distance of three hundred yards ; one glimpse
is quite enough! And at least one submarine that
interviewed us went down after its interview
deeper than it had ever gone before.
After the first attack, unless we happened to
be on deck when an action began, we were kept
below until the disturbance was over. There was
little chance to observe the manoeuvres of the
enemy, anyhow; he was elusive and kept dis-
creetly under cover. It was not until several
hours after the first attack that our convoy ap-

peared ; until within the danger zone we had sped

on our way alone, trusting to our own engines and
the skill of our captain .
Then the destroyers finally picked us up, three
of them ; we saw the Stars and Stripes flying from
their signal-masts. It was a feast to our anxious
eyes. Like frisky young horses these chargers of
4 HUTS IN HELL

the sea cavorted about us. The sight of them

brought a comforting sense of security.

The last attack came at dusk, and was beaten
off with gun-fire and depth-charges , the latter
dropped in the wake of the conning-tower that
had scarcely got out of sight when the destroyers
dashed over the spot, one from the rear and
another that swept across our bows, clearing us
by inches. Our own gun-crew did not relax its
vigilance until the bar was crossed and all danger
was passed. The officer in charge of the blue-
jackets was an Annapolis man and a friend of
my cabin companion. He had been compelled
to resign his commission because of ill health ;
the doctors assured him that he was incurably
afflicted with tuberculosis. But the war brought
him quickly back. The need was so great that
he was not turned away. When I left him at
Liverpool, he had been without sleep for two days
and two nights ; but he was happy.
"I have my big chance," he said, " and I'm get-
ting well !" Thus does the spirit conquer the body
when a crisis challenges the soul .
A few days after landing in Great Britain I saw
the ruins of a fishing-ship that had been attacked
by a submarine. Without warning the U-boat
had appeared and begun to shell the little vessel .
Though outranged, the one gun of the smack re-
plied right sturdily. But it was an unequal and
hopeless fight. Soon the fishermen were forced to
 THE PIRATE OF THE DEEP 5

take to the open boats. This they did, dragging

along their wounded. They were shelled as they
pulled away; and the mate, already hit, received
a mortal hurt, but did not flinch.
The submarine disappeared as suddenly as it
came, perhaps warned by wireless of the approach
of British cruisers. Back to their little ship came
the dauntless seamen. Let one of those who heard
the story tell it.
"The fire was burning fiercely forward; steam
was pouring from her wrecked engine-room ; and
the ammunition was exploding broadcast about
her decks .
" A doot she's sinkin ',' said Ewing stoutly.
Noble said nothing; he was not given overmuch
to speech; but he made the painter fast, and pro-
ceeded to climb aboard again . Ewing followed, and
between them they fought and overcame the fire.
" Dinna leave me, Jamie ! ' cried the mate pite-
ously. ' Dinna leave me in the little boat!'
" Na, na,' was the reply; ' we'll na leave ye ' ;
and presently they brought their wounded back
on board, and took them below again . The mate
was laid on his bunk, and Ewing fetched his shirts
from his bag, and tore them up into bandages.
'An them's his dress shirts !' murmured Noble.
It was his first and last contribution to the
conversation.
"They took turn and turn about to tend the
wounded, plug the shot-holes, and quench the
6 HUTS IN HELL

smouldering embers of the fire, reverently drag-

ging the wreckage from off their dead, and com-
forting the dying mate in the soft, almost tender
accents of the Celt.

"""Tis nae guid,' said the mate at last . ' Dinna

fash aboot me, lads . A'll gang nae mair on patrol ' ;
and so he died."But they saved their little ship ,
and I saw her there in a corner of the basin, a
mass of twisted metal and charred woodwork,
but a flawless monument to the courage of the
British fisherman in war.

We had one Sunday on the Atlantic . The even-

ing before I sat with Tennyson and read of King
Arthur and his men , the Knights of the Table
Round. But even as I read, all about me was a
braver picture than the words of the great singer
conjured up for me, five hundred men of the new
chivalry, in the uniform of my country, with faces
set toward the places where Democracy battles to
rescue the Holy Grail of Freedom and Justice and
Peace.

On Sunday morning for an hour the ship be-

came a house of worship. The songs of our Chris-
tian faith and the words of our Christ came to us
with richer meaning. About the long tables in the
main dining-room during the services sat colonels
and majors and captains, lieutenants and privates,
soldiers of the land and also soldiers of the sea.
Never have I seen anywhere a finer company —
strong faces, clear eyes and skins, sturdy bodies.
 THE PIRATE OF THE DEEP 7

It was a group representative of every section

of the United States and of virtually every pro-

fession. Here was a major from Texas who had

left behind him a daily newspaper; another from
Chicago, who is a famous surgeon ; another from
Boston, dean of a great law school. I was seated
by a captain who was to solve the telephone prob-
lem for our fighting front . He is one of America's
leading telephone executives ; and, when I had
last seen him, he was president of the Christian
Endeavor union in Grand Rapids, Mich.
At the piano was a lieutenant whose name was
on every lip at a great Eastern football game a
year ago; and directly in front of him was a choir
singer from the largest Episcopal church in Wash-
ington, D.C. There I found the professor of
French in a State university. He was going back
to his old home, going back with two silver bars
upon each shoulder, going back beneath the Stars
and Stripes .
There were West Pointers in the company, stal-
wart young officers only a few months from the
Orient, and graduates of Annapolis, one, now the
ranking aviator of the navy, a soft-voiced South-
erner, who was the champion light-weight boxer
of the Naval Academy.
Down well in front -- and while I was speaking
his eye never left mine sat the English "flier."
His cane was by his side, and on his sleeve were
the gold bars that tell of wounds.
8 HUTS IN HELL

There was no false sentiment in that company,

but there was a profound emotion . Practical men
they were, and they were dreamers too. In their
dreams that day were the faces of fair women and
of little children, for " the bravest are the tender-
est " ; and in their dreams were the soft caresses
that thrust them forth to the battles' hardness,
for love has the keener goad where honor marks
the path of duty.
We were on the backward track of Columbus,
and those men sailing out of the New World
which the far-visioning mariner first saw four hun-
dred years ago were discoverers too . They have
found themselves ; they and their brothers have
found their country's soul, and they go now on a
spiritual adventure holier than that which brought
Richard the Lion-Hearted to the walls of Jerusalem.

The shipboard meeting was arranged by the

secretaries of the Y. M. C. A., and the English
clergyman who conducted the formal portion of
the service selected as the Scripture lesson the
story of the journey of Mary with the Christ -child
into Egypt and their return to Nazareth when the
danger of King Herod's wrath was passed . At
first the lesson seemed a trifle unusual, a little
out of place for the occasion ; but now I am of
the opinion that it was peculiarly fitting. Out of
the tale of the babe whose weakness was stronger
than hate, and whose helplessness was not de-
spised, came to thoughtful men the memories of
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 THE PIRATE OF THE DEEP 9

the sacred associations of their " yesterdays ," a

satisfying calm, a sober exaltation that was to

their souls what food is to the body.
These modern knights, bound on their Crusade
farther than flew the imperial eagles of Rome,
gathered there beneath the starry banner of their
fathers and under the flag of the church with as
true a consecration and as fine a faith as ever
thrilled the breasts of mail-clad men when ancient

knighthood was in flower. No cause since men

fought to free the sepulchre of Christ, no tourney
of kings, no search for a grail, has been so worthy
as the cause in which these soldiers of Democracy
go forth by land and sea to dare their best and all.
And there were other soldiers on board, soldiers
of the Red Triangle, soldiers as brave and soldiers
as vital to the cause of their country as those who
wear the insignia of the combatant . After the
service that morning one of these slipped his arm
into mine as I steadied myself against a particu-
larly heavy sea, and said, " I've just had a great
time, old man."

I knew by the eager look in his eyes that he

wanted to talk about it , and so I led him over to
a sheltered spot on the deck where we could be
alone. The secretary was a college professor with
a wife and two babies in the " States," and he had
been a very nervous man all the way across the
ocean; but now he was quite himself and very
happy.
10 HUTS IN HELL

“ I've just had a good hour with a lieutenant

from S ," he continued . " He came to me in
trouble. The story is the old one, one God knows
we'll hear many times in the next few months.
The chap is paying the price of his sin, rather the
price of his ignorance, for he is just an overgrown
country boy. He never saw the ocean until this

ship carried him out upon it, and New York was
too big and bad and attractive for him. Well,
things might be worse. I helped him, and started
him in the right direction ; and then I said : ' Say,
lad, you've got a stiff battle before you in France,
stiffer than any the Germans can give you, stiffer
than New York; and I know what you need . Do
you want it? ' and the chap looked me in the eye,
and said, ' I do. ' Well," the secretary continued,
"we were on our knees presently, and God helped
me first, and then helped him, to pray. Now Jesus
Christ has another follower on this transport."
There was silence between us for a moment,
and then the secretary concluded : " Last night I
slept with my clothes on; I suppose we all did.
I listened to the steady pound of the engines, and
waited , tense and anxious, for the crash of the tor-
pedo I knew might come ; and then I got a grip
on myself. I said : "What are you here for ? Who
sent you? Whose are you? ' and I promised God
to stop being a coward. I asked Him to give me
a chance to make amends for the time I had lost
on this voyage looking for a submarine that is
 THE PIRATE OF THE DEEP 11

not likely to come. I asked God to give me a

man out of these hundreds in uniform , to give me
a man for Christ.

"And how quickly God has answered my

prayer ! Now I know why I'm here, and I have
the first-fruit of my ministry."
A great thing it is to know why you are here!
The man who has a reason for his journey, and
the evidence of his decision in his own heart, has
the peace that passeth understanding, and that
not even U-boats can take away.
 CHAPTER II

WAR CAPITALS OF THE ALLIES

HE war capitals of the Allies, Paris and

THLondon, have much in common . Soldiers
in many-colored uniforms, from the bril-
liant red and black and blue of the French head-
quarters to the faded, mud-caked khaki of the
helmeted " Tommy " just back from the trenches ;
Y. M. C. A. secretaries and nurses ; wounded-
streets filled with battle-marked and cheerful men ;

women in black, who turn neither to the right nor

to the left as they hurry along with eyes that
search for that which they will never see again ;
and shouting boys.
Of course London and Paris have many other
things in common, but these are at once apparent .
I suppose that I mentioned the boys because there
are so many of them, the little fellows, and they
are so shrill of voice. They are doing so many
things that the " elders " used to do and with
which we have never before associated them that
they are quite impressive. But London and Paris
do not have a monopoly of them.
In their spirit, too , they are part of the stern
and stirring time. On the sea one morning I was
awakened by "Billy Buttons " - I was his chris-
12
 WAR CAPITALS OF THE ALLIES 13

tener. His " Hot water, sir, " was shrill and cheery ;
and his smile was the map of Ireland . On this
particular morning I sat up in bed and said
sternly, very sternly, " Billy Buttons, what are
you doing here, anyhow? " and like a shot the
sturdy lad sent back the answer, " Doing my bit,
sir; doing my bit."
His daddy sailed the sea bringing bread to
Britain until his ship went down unwarned ; a
brother died in France ; a brother-in-law was
killed in the battle of Jutland ; another brother
was then recovering from a wound received in a
submarine attack; a sister was a nurse, but Billy
seemed quite as proud, I am ashamed to say, of
another sister who was an " actress "; and Billy
himself, Billy of the sixteen blazing buttons , whose
years entitled him to only fourteen, was " doing
his bit." Blessed Billy Buttons!

London is massive and slow to arouse. During

an air raid I saw women knitting in the basement
of the hotel whither the management had tried
to hurry its guests , and the trams only slightly
quickened their pace. London has learned in the
years of this war that " haste makes waste " and
that " direct hits " from airplanes respect not even
the stoutest buildings anyhow. Of course, shrap-
.nel is a different proposition, and one is very
foolish to walk abroad when the " barrage" is
under way .
14 HUTS IN HELL

One day I saw an aviator " loop the loop " di-
rectly above Piccadilly Circus . He did the trick
repeatedly while not more than four hundred feet
above the hotel roof. Scores of people in the
streets did not turn away from staring into shop
windows. At another time I saw two " silver
queens " ; beautiful beyond words these dirigibles
were when they manoeuvred in the still air above
St. Paul's. For these the crowds did turn from
their mundane pursuits.

My first war visit to London almost convinced

me that it was a city of the " woman of the ciga-
rette," and that she had few sisters, if any, who
were not victims of her habit. In the dining-room
of my hotel I found literally scores of women,
perhaps as many as three hundred , smoking. The
young, the middle-aged, and the old , were all at
it. I saw a young mother calmly blow smoke over
the head of her eight-year old son, who displayed
only a mild interest .
And what I saw in the hotel I witnessed in
every down-town eating-place that I visited .
During my entire journey across England I wit-
nessed a wild nicotine debauch, for in every public
place tobacco was king, and his throne of smoke
filled everywhere. English railway-carriages are
marked " smoking " or left undesignated , but now-
adays (this does not apply to Scotland) every
 WAR CAPITALS OF THE ALLIES 15

compartment is in reality a smoker. A man in

uniform , particularly, wherever he finds himself,
brings forth the inevitable " pill-box " ; and there
is none to say him nay.
Out of Hull one morning I found myself chat-
ting with a delightful company, several gentlemen
and a lady ; and modesty forbids my telling who
was the one person who did not burn up any cig-
arettes ! Later in the day a modest young woman,
carrying every air of gentle breeding, was seated
directly across from me at dinner. She smoked
- languidly, but nevertheless smoked - between
courses . And, by the way, one sees much more
smoking in public among women in London than
he sees in Paris.
For a man who is old-fashioned enough to pre-
fer womanhood à la his wife and mother the
"woman of the cigarette " is very disquieting, to
say the least . But not all the women of England
smoke. Only a superficial observer would take
a London hotel, or London down-town dining-
rooms, or any number of mere incidents, as a war-
rant for charging English womanhood universally
with the cigarette habit. I have found the mother
and wife of the average Englishman quite as
simple and " unmodernized " as our own Ameri-
can mothers and wives. New York hotel life
will perhaps approach the hotel life of London ;
and London, we should remember, has the whole
world to contend with . Her allies and their fami-
16 HUTS IN HELL

lies are doing a good deal of the smoking for which

she gets the credit.

Perhaps I am very old-fashioned, too, when I

prefer a preacher who does not smoke ; but I do.
For the pastor of the church in which I find a
family pew, and where I gather my sons and
daughters , I continue to select a minister who
knows not the weed and on whose breath the
aroma of it is not found.

But in London I discovered myself often in the

company of clergymen who blew rings with a
deftness not acquired in a fortnight. I did not
allow my own discomfort to inconvenience my
brethren, however. A very distinguished divine
blew tobacco smoke into my nose and eyes for an
hour after dinner one evening. I suffered nearly
as severely as I did later from German gas in
France, but I bore the infliction meekly.
Three months before I should have denied that
any man could have done for ten seconds what

that man did for sixty minutes , and live to tell the
story without a lisp ! But we have learned to
do and tolerate a great many things since April,
1917, and many of us who refuse to learn to do
some things appreciate fully the fact that all who
have the greater good at heart , who labor for the
things of first and vast importance, must work
together.
 WAR CAPITALS OF THE ALLIES 17

In London my feet never tired of pressing the

streets that led me to the golden shrines of history.
I lost myself in Westminster Abbey and in the
Tower. I stood upon London Bridge, and hours
afterwards found myself humming the old, old
chorus, " London Bridge is falling down, falling
down, falling down. " But London Bridge is not
falling down. Hear the Tommies marching in the
street !

The low buildings of the mighty city are a sur-

prise for the American, even though he has known
of them. Not until he has walked for miles and
miles by them can he realize that London is a vast
community. Always he has associated cities with
"sky-scrapers."
That conditions in a war capital are different
from those in ordinary cities I quickly discovered
when I tried to have my watch repaired . The
dealer assured me that he would do his best to
have it for me in four weeks ! I purchased an
Ingersoll ; but not in London, for London was sold
out! The war has drained the European nations
of skilled artisans. They are making other things
than watches now.

Paris is swifter on its feet than London , and

one does not wait so long for his laundry. There
is much politeness visible, too . A Frenchman will
spend ten minutes in trying to understand what
you mean to impart, simply for the chance of ren-
18 HUTS IN HELL

dering you a service. My first battle on French

soil was with a button that I desired to have a
tailor sew on my coat while I lunched . Between
my finger in my mouth, with which I hoped to
reveal to him my gastronomic purposes, and the
button in my other hand, with which I pointed
to my coat, I was able to convince him at last
that I had swallowed a similar button and was
looking for a doctor. He did the best that he
could for me - directed me to a druggist !
Paris is exquisite in the little things. She knows
and values the amenities of social intercourse as

no other city I have ever visited. Even the " cab-

bies" curse you with infinite politeness .

A striking difference between Paris and any

Canadian or American city lies in the fact that
even in wartime the former employs so many
people that a few modern labor-saving devices
would release. While the telephone and the type-
writer are used, they are not common. To this

day it is impossible to telephone to the Paris Gas

Society, an enormous organization with several
hundred branches. The company does not wish
to be bothered . London is not unlike Paris in
this respect. In the metropolis of the British Em-
pire thousands of ministers and professional men
and business houses do not have telephones. In
Paris when your gas is in trouble you take a day
 WAR CAPITALS OF THE ALLIES 19

off and " explain." You may finally receive the

assurance that the matter will be adjusted some-
time within the week. If you grumble, a clerk
will smile and say, " C'est la guerre." And of
course the war is much to blame for delays, but
more telephones would help greatly; typewriters
and carbon-paper would be more efficient than
cumbersome copying-press machines, and a check-
book would release many a lad and many an

elderly gentleman who now walk about paying

bills with currency .

But Paris is inspiring in her quiet courage and

her unshaken determination . Long-range guns
and air raids have left her unbroken . Indeed,
they seem to have cured her of the " nerves " she
was supposed to have. On the morning after a
distressing night of suspense following the loss of
more than a hundred lives as the result of bombs,
I rode from Paris to Bordeaux. At dinner I sat
opposite a very distinguished -looking gentleman.
He was quite friendly, and introduced himself ;
he had been Master of Horse to King George of
Greece, was a brigadier-general in the old Grecian
army, and was of one of the most ancient families

of Montenegro - le Comte de Cernowitz. After

the pro-German designs of King Constantine of
Greece had become established le Comte de Cerno-
witz took up his residence in Paris. As he left me,
he casually remarked that on the previous night
20 HUTS IN HELL

his house had been struck by a bomb, that the

roof had been torn off, but that no one had been
killed. He was going to Bordeaux to " await the
repairs " !

And Paris now is always a city of surprises .

Early one Monday morning I found myself draw-
ing into a great station. The night had been a
very uncomfortable one. I was in a compartment
with a friend — an American captain- and two
French officers. The Frenchmen were very polite,
but they preferred to have the window closed .
The air was very close. I would cautiously open
the window, and after an interval our allies would
cautiously close it ! The compartment was dark,
and finally I shoved a corner of my pillow under
the sash, and waited . Presently down came the
window on the pillow ! We had a little breeze for
the rest of the night , anyhow.
I had boarded the train at Rennes, and had
been surprised at the close inspection the local
officers had given my papers . But on alighting
at Paris I was even more surprised . French and
American soldiers were drawn up on both sides of
the platform , and at the gate stood General Per-
shing and his staff. Six o'clock in the morning is
early for a commanding officer to be meeting
trains ! I waited , and was rewarded by seeing the
Secretary of War, Mr. Newton Baker, whose
secret journey to Europe and the western front
 WAR CAPITALS OF THE ALLIES 21

was one of the unusual military features of 1918,

leave his car.

Both London and Paris have a regal distinc-

tion, a distinction in common. They are the
meeting-points for the going and coming armies
of democracy . No double-track system is this .
As they go, so they return. Here by the Seine and
yonder by the Thames these knights of a new era
salute each other as they pass . From Canada and
Australia, from Scotland and Ireland , and from
a dozen other places, some of them as far away
as South Africa, the English-speaking soldiers are
gathered into the welcoming arms of London and
then thrust forth to be scattered along the lines
of Flanders and France. And to London they
come back those who do not remain where they
fell to be welcomed tenderly and then dropped
into the distant places that have never faded from
their eyes in all the days of their bloody pilgrimage.
And to Paris the world sends her best, the black
and white and yellow children of the Old World
and the New; and Paris smiles upon them through
her resplendent tears, and passes them on. Later,
by way of her vast treasures of the storied past,
they march again to find the track to the open
sea and their " own countries."

Once I saw two armies in the selfsame street,

one dirty and bedraggled and with thinned ranks,
the other fresh and with the light of eager quest
22 HUTS IN HELL

in its eyes. One was marching south while the

other was marching north. One was from York-
shire in old England and the other was from
America. Ah, it was a sight to turn stone into
tears when the tall, sinewy lads from the western
hemisphere halted just where the avenue faces
the Madeleine, and cheered those weary heroes
marching back from hell.
Paris is far behind me as I write, but the sol-
diers who shouted their admiration for the wounds
of a thousand convalescent "Tommies " bound for
"Blighty " are with me. God only knows how
many of those far-called heroes will be marching
down that glorious way of Paris when the battal-
ion musters out for home. They are now where
civilization has reared her altars, where democracy
has found her Gethsemane . But this we all know:
they will " carry on. "
 CHAPTER III

DOWN IN FLAMES

HE Boche is coming back," a man yelled

"THinto the entrance of the cellar. A second
later I was above ground and with my head
at the sky-scraper angle. There he was ! Like a
great homing pigeon he was streaking it for his
own lines after an observation-flight far behind
ours. He was high, but not high enough to hide
the telltale crosses on the under side of his wings,
and the churn of his engine was unmistakable.
When my eyes brought him into focus, he was
at least a mile away, but in half a minute he was
directly overhead . The guns were roaring all
about ; shrapnel bursts surrounded the pirate bird.
Ah ! that one broke near! For just an instant he
faltered, but on he came.

I stepped into the doorway of an old shattered

stone house to find cover from the falling shrapnel
and stray pieces of shell . The Boche was flying
as the eagle flies when his objective has anchored
his eye; he turned neither to the right nor to the
left. He quickly and constantly changed his ele-
vation, however; but the batteries were doing
splendidly, and that he escaped destruction is a
23
24 HUTS IN HELL

miracle. Two minutes more, and he was out of

hearing and virtually safe .
There was a chorus of disgust ; strong words in
lurid splashes filled the air. Particularly fluent
were the men when they passed comment upon
the French fliers .
"Where are they? " they inquired in derision.
“ Taking in the side-shows on the Milky Way!"
one husky volunteers .
Another added : " Always the same story, ' No
speed, no pep.' 'Dutchmen come and Dutchmen
go, but we stay down forever.' They'll come along
presently like blind pigs looking for an acorn."
I knew the symptoms, and spared any com-
ment. It had been noticeable, however, that the
German airmen, on our sector at least , com-
manded swifter scout-planes than we did. In
straightaway bursts they left our French brothers
at the post . At the time of this particular inci-
dent only a few Americans were flying, and these
were associated with French aviators, and were
using French machines.
Sure enough, two minutes more brought the
"silver queens ," as the boys called them, although
the name " silver queen " really belongs to the
great British aluminum dirigibles . There were
three of them, and the sunlight flashing upon their
white pinions was a gallant sight . These " queens "
are hard to follow because of their color , and we
kept them located by the angry buzzing of their
 DOWN IN FLAMES 25

motors an altogether different sound from that

-
given out by the visitor from Germany and by
the light flashing from their wings . They were
like angry hornets that had been disturbed early
in the morning and were now furiously looking
for their tormentor. The men continued to
66
'grouse," but their tones indicated expectancy.
In the meantime all was quiet across the way,
and our guns had been silent ever since the elu-
sive foe roared out of range. The Frenchmen were
circling high above us. Suddenly and with some-
thing of a shock I noticed that the circle was
widening, that each new circumference was nearer
the enemy's lines. Our airmen were inviting
battle. They were prepared to go clear across to
get it, and were challenging the foe to come out,
or rather up. He was not eager . Indeed, I never
saw him when he was. Perhaps his orders do not
allow of the initiative that the Allies possess ; but
German airmen , as a class, rather than German
aeroplanes, are inferior to those who so often hurl
to them, without acceptance, the gage of battle.
Our little fleet was well " over " and drawing
anti-aircraft fire before its invitation was ac-

knowledged. Then up they came, five in all ;

and the deadly tourney was on. In spite of the
odds, not an inch did the “ silver queens " recede.
The conflict was so far away that its fine details
were lost to us ; we could not distinguish the

sound of the machine guns in the air from those

26 HUTS IN HELL

in the front-line trenches below us, and only the

sunlight flashing on the silver wings told that
66
our flag was still there. "
It was a swirling vortex of currents that held
to no fixed course. The war-birds swooped and
climbed ; puffs of smoke and streaks of fire marked
their way . A dozen times machines seemed to

collide ; a dozen times we saw planes plunge as

if to destruction, only to right themselves and
return to the fray. Out of a nose-dive one French-
man came when so near the ground that I had
closed my eyes to avoid seeing the crash. A score
of times men looped the loop and " tumbled . "
But not an inch did those Frenchmen give! And
listen to these "grousers " now ! -
"Come back! Come back! They'll not come
back unless five more get up, until something hap-
pens! They're hungry, man ! Those Frenchies
eat ' em up . They haven't had a chance like this
for five days." It was five days before that eight-
een planes were in battle behind our lines only
two miles back. In this affair two Germans were
shot down without the loss of an Allied wing.
"And, when they kiss the Hun good-by this morn-
ing, he'll have blisters on his mouth."
But such struggles simply cannot long endure.
This one ended far more quickly than it began.
With the speed of express-trains two machines
drew away from the whirlpool. Their course par-
99
alleled the lines . We saw the " silver queen on
 DOWN IN FLAMES 27

the tail of the Taube . Bitterly the German fought

to outposition his rival, but his pursuer antici-
pated his every manœuvre. For once at least the
German had no advantage in speed . They looped
the loop together and almost as a double plane.
In a second it was all over. As the warriors slid
to the bottom of the great circle, the Frenchman
poured a veritable stream of steel into his hapless
enemy. A trail of smoke came away; then a ball
of fire hung in the air ; and then like a dead sun
the crumpled skyship fell to the earth . The victor
paused for a second above his triumph, and then
flew to re-enforce his hard-pressed comrades.
We had forgotten the other six . When we

looked at them again, the six were eight or ten ;

at the distance from which we observed them we
could not be exact. But the odds were too great
even for Frenchmen, and anyway they had
66
"dined ." They were not pursued beyond our
advanced trenches. The Germans did not bring
themselves into the range of our batteries , al-
though they outnumbered our fliers at least two
to one. As for France, three went over and three
came back!

I cannot describe my feelings as I saw that

German die in his burning chariot, but a flying
man has described them for me. He was speak-
ing at a patriotic meeting in western New York.
Very handsome he was in the uniform of the La-
fayette Escadrille, and he was very young, the
28 HUTS IN HELL

youngest man ever allowed to wear that uniform.

Already he had been cited for bringing down three
enemy planes. He was recovering from a severe
wound, and while convalescing in America was
giving some of his time to platform work.
Again and again the men at his table (it was a
dinner affair) urged him to tell of one of his bat-
tles . He was reluctant to do so. His consent

was finally secured , but only after pressure that

was hardly allowable had been brought to bear.
The tale was told without the slightest attempt
at oratorical effect. He described his success in
outmanoeuvring his opponent, or rather his two
opponents , for two men were in the enemy plane ;
the buckling of the German machine ; the shoot-
ing of the observer from his seat, and how he
hurtled through the air ; the explosion and the
fire. Then he said, " I stopped there in the sky,
and all that I could think was, ' Do they feel it ? ” ”
The lad's eyes - for his face and his years were
those of a lad, though he had done already a
man's stern work were wistful as he spoke.
These men are not killers.
But it was not at the front that I found the
horror of aërial warfare. One afternoon I stepped
from the American Y. M. C. A. headquarters in
London, at 47 Russell Square, walked a little way,
and found stones red with the blood of children .
When I left Europe, not a single military objec-
tive had been found by an aërial bomb in all the
 DOWN IN FLAMES 29

raids over the capital of the United Kingdom.

In the very nature of things it is not likely that a
bomb will reach such an objective . The night-
raider must have a large target . Twenty minutes
sees him across the Channel and at the estuary of
the Thames. He follows the silver trail into the
heart of the city, and drops his " eggs." But of
course a military programme is not intended . Im-
perial Germany built her aërial plans about the
theory that terrorizing a people will destroy a
nation's morale.

But Imperial Germany blundered again. Early

one morning, following the sounding of the " all-
clear " signals, a great company crowded against
the ropes that the omnipresent " Bobby" had
thrown about a lodging-house . Many murdered
and maimed had been left behind by the Blue-
beard of Berlin . A gray-haired man was lifted
by the carriers . Surely he was dead; the top of
his head was like a red, red poppy. But no. He
raised his thin, white hand, and waved it feebly
to the crowd below. Such a roar went up from
that multitude as man seldom hears, - ·the roar

of the female lion standing over her cubs .

One night I reached Paris simultaneously with
an air-raid warning. Later I stood - very fool-
ishly, but I was ignorant of the danger then
on the roof of the Gibraltar Hotel, and watched
first the star shells and the barrage at the city's
edge, the flashing of the signals from the defend-
30 HUTS IN HELL

ing planes, and the long arms of the mighty search-

lights as they policed the sky. So effective were
the French that night that the enemy got no far-
ther than the suburbs.

Many excruciatingly funny things happen dur-

ing a raid, as for instance the raising of an
umbrella by a gentleman who suddenly found
shrapnel falling about him. He kept it up, too,
while he galloped straight down the middle of the
street instead of finding cover.
A very prominent gentleman, who is a friend
of the writer, had been looking forward with some
misgivings to his wartime trip abroad. He found
his first night in Paris enlivened by a visit from
Germany. He had made diligent inquiry and
learned the exact location of the abri, had several
times traversed the route between his room and

the cellar , and had been particular to make him-

self familiar with the signals of alarm. He was
restless when he first retired ; but the long and
wearisome journey was a sure sleep-producer,
and it was out of profound slumber that the
whistle and cries awoke him .
You may be sure that he lost no time in getting
under headway; he even forgot his dressing-gown
and the slippers by the side of his bed. He sacri-
ficed all impedimenta for speed . I do not know
whether he used the banisters or not, but I have
reason to believe that nothing was left undone to
cover the maximum of distance in the minimum
 UNIV. Or

CALIFORNIA

AN AMERICAN AIRMAN RETURNING TO HIS POST AFTER A DAY'S WORK

IN THE SKIES
Copyright by Committee on Public Information.
 10 VIHU

AIMBOTLICO
 DOWN IN FLAMES 31

of time. Afterwards he remembered the amazed

countenances of the people in the halls as he
flashed by. However, their indifference (indeed ,
they were not even bound in the direction of the
cellar) did not deter him. What he regarded
as carelessness due to long exposure and many
similar experiences did not blind him to the ob-
ligations he owed to his own family and profes-
sion.
The cellar was cold, but he was no quitter! He
was the only one in it, but company was not his
chief concern ! However, even a man of iron needs
more than pajamas and bare feet to hold him
steadfast through an unwarmed February night in
a Paris abri . Before two hours had passed the
cautious American was fully decided to risk all
for warmth. He was a human iceberg when he
crept up the quiet stairs and into his bed. The
next morning he discovered that the signals he
obeyed were the "All clear," that he had failed to
hear the warning, and that he had slept through
the raid.
But a few weeks later the German came clear

in. Again I happened to be in the Gibraltar

Hotel, in the hotel this time. I sat in the parlor
with Dr. Robert Freeman of Pasadena, a master
of the intricacies of Christian service in this war.
The windows were iron-shuttered , and we listened

in comparative safety. The guns of the defensive

batteries roared about us, and above the sound
32 HUTS IN HELL

of them crashed again and again the bombs of

the city's despoilers. Explosions came quite near
that night. A bloody night it was for women
and babies.

Again I say it : there is and has been no excuse

of even barbarous military science for the murder
trips to London and Paris. In one abri that
night, a shelter in a great station, nearly a hun-
dred died.

Among those killed in a hospital was Miss

Winona Martin of Long Island. She had been in
France only a few days, having come across to
serve as a Y. M. C. A. canteen worker . She was
the first American Y. M. C. A. representative to
die in action. "The devil loves a shining mark,"
but even frightfulness overshot its mark that
night . Dr. Freeman conducted the funeral of the
quiet woman who had travelled far to be a mes-
senger of cheer and comfort . There was no ser-
mon. On Miss Martin's record-card, in her own
handwriting, are the words, " For the duration of
the war and longer if necessary." Another has
said :

"Her sacrifice spoke more eloquently than

words. Longer than the duration of the war will
linger the memory of the girl , the first American
woman in Paris to lay down her life in this struggle
against wrong, the first martyr among those wear-
ers of the triangle who may be found living in
every camp and trench of France."
 CHAPTER IV

PERSHING

ERSONS about to be received by the great

are invariably amusing; I know, for I have
PERS
had the "funny feeling " of the man who
waits without. A reception-room is a " first-aid
station " in practical psychology. The noncha-
lance, perfectly transparent and that deceives no
one, not even the man who feigns it ; the effort to
convince the other fellow of your own importance

or the importance of your mission ; the anxiety

and nervousness that you hide behind venerable
magazines - these are a few of the symptoms of
the " about-to-be-ushered-into-the-presence-of. "
I had stepped over to the general headquarters
from the Y. M. C. A. hut, to ascertain when " The
General " would see me, and had been surprised
when Colonel Boyd, his secretary, said :
"Can you wait ? He will meet you this after-
noon."

And so in the plain but ample room separated

from General Pershing's private office by a smaller
room occupied by his secretary I entertained my-
self for two hours while the man upon whom the
nation has placed so great a responsibility wrestled
33
34 HUTS IN HELL

with his problems. And while I waited , I studied

psychology. I began with a more or less complete
analysis of my own mental state- but why dis-
cuss personal matters when there are other people
to talk about?

I was particularly interested in a little group of

Frenchmen. One of them was a general, I should
judge, although uniforms and gold braid in France
often mislead a civilian, and I had been saluting
letter-carriers for a week before my attention was
called to the mistake . He had with him two aids,
one of whom was an interpreter. The French
officers sat with their backs toward the entrance
of the small room already referred to . Just within
the entrance was a table on which were four hand-
grenades , unloaded , but with their detonating-
caps in place. However, the exact status of the
grenades , which I have just revealed, was un-
known to me until after it happened .
On one of the periodical excursions of my eyes
about the bare walls of the room a room over-

looking a great barrack court, flanked on two

sides and closed at one end by long, low gray
stone buildings - they stopped with a shock at
the grenades on the table. The table was directly
in front of me and directly behind the French
officers, who sat within ten feet of it . When my
eyes were arrested in their aimless wandering, one
of those hand-grenades was in the act of falling
off that table. I knew nothing about the nature
 PERSHING 35

of grenades at the time, only that they were, po-

tentially at least, small but effective engines of
destruction. At any rate, there was nothing that
I could do but brace myself against what might
happen when that grenade met the floor.
What happened was this : the detonating -cap
exploded. It was a relatively small noise as this
war goes, but within the four walls of a quiet room
it gave a pretty good account of itself. It was
particularly disquieting to men without warning
of it, men for several years accustomed to asso-
ciate all such disturbances with the business of
killing. The French general and his aids rose
hurriedly and with ejaculations ! Every man in
the two rooms decreased the distance between
himself and the ceiling. Only General Pershing
remained unperturbed ; at least, no sound came
from within and his door was not opened.
After the field had been cleared and the com-
posure of the innocent bystanders restored , I took
up again my task of waiting. Colonel Boyd was
courteous and interesting; indeed, the American
officer overseas as I saw him was two things
busy, very busy, and always courteous . He has
no time to waste, but he is efficient without being
66
a 'gump ." His efficiency is branded with his
Americanism ; water-mains, railroads , and ware-
houses built by Uncle Sam's engineers carry no
"made in America " label, but their origin is un-
mistakable . They look and they act the part !
36 HUTS IN HELL

There are French cities now that remind one of

a section of Bridgeport, Conn. , or of Chicago.
And what romance walks with those who have
come so far to make the paths straight for de-
mocracy ! An Oregon company of engineers, while
excavating in a certain city that nearly girdles a
beautiful harbor, dug up a cache of Roman coins
bearing the head of Marcus Aurelius. The tombs
of the past are being opened in more ways than
one by these soldiers of the present ; the old and
the new are joined together, and the West has
come to the East .
But we have wandered far afield . In the mean-
time General Pershing has completed his schedule,
and I am ushered into his presence. Perhaps I
suggest the personality of the man when I con-
fess that I carried away not the slightest recollec-
tion of the room in which our interview took
place. He had just completed instructions to cer-
tain officers , and was dismissing them when I
entered . He greeted me with the suggestion of a
smile, and, after I had seated myself at his invita-
tion and directly across the flat-top desk from
him , he waited for me to speak.
When I faced General Pershing, I found a man
who looks like his picture. He is slightly heavier
than I had expected to find him, exceedingly well
proportioned, and amply tall . He is erect with-
out the conscious effort of those who begin soldier-
ing after years in the undisciplined pursuits of
 PERSHING 37

peace. His eye is gray and clear, his close-cropped

mustache accentuates the firmness of his mouth .
His skin is of the ruddy texture of health, the
health of vigorous action out-of-doors . I have not
consulted " Who's Who in America ," and I know
that he is older than he appears ; but he looks and
acts virile fifty. His inches are all those of a sol-
dier, and his presence carries the assurance of a
man of action.
In the weeks which I spent in France following
my hour with the commander- in-chief of the over-
seas forces the almost startling efficiency that I
found everywhere, and in some instances under
difficult and extreme circumstances, was at once
associated with him, with the personality of this
other " quiet man " who has soldiered in every
place where the flag of his country floats, and who
is now intrusted with what Lincoln gave to Grant.
General Pershing's promptness is fast becoming
proverbial . On October 19, 1917, he was re-
quested to pass judgment upon the sawed-off
shot-gun as a possible weapon of trench warfare.
Seventeen days later the originator of the idea was
notified that the gun had been adopted.
When General Pershing spoke, his first sentence
clearly stated his attitude toward the matter be-
ing considered. It is my impression that no cir-
cumstance would find him able to cover his

thoughts with words ; his mind is hopelessly di-

rect ! His famous " speech " at the tomb of La-
38 HUTS IN HELL

fayette, Lafayette, we are here," was true to

his best form , and what could have been more
complete ?
As to the opinion men have of him, ― those

who have been associated with him closely and

-
those who have met him casually, as I did, one
word tells the whole story confidence. A cer-
tain gentleman high in British political life said
in my presence,
99
"General Pershing is a great re-assurance.'
In the opinion of the writer he will be followed
with enthusiasm and real affection by many, and
all will have faith in his leadership .
When we discussed the morals of the soldiers
in France, the General's face lighted ; and well it
might, for no nation has ever been represented by
cleaner-living men than those who wear the uni-
form of the United States in France to-day ; and
the programme of the military authorities in
France to safeguard and inform the country's
fighters is a source of gratification and pride to
all who believe that efficiency and morality are
twin brothers. General Pershing said,
"When the report shows an increase in the
venereal rate of one thousandth of a per cent, I learn
99
the reason.
Army medical officers and with two of these
it was my privilege to have conferences - are
constantly in the field investigating conditions
that affect army morale and morals . Their find-
 PERSHING 39

ings and recommendations are the basis for orders

and constructive activities that never relax their
vigilance. Early one Sunday morning the General
motored nearly thirty miles to a certain brigade
headquarters, which while American authority
was in control served both French and American

troops . This situation made it embarrassing, to

say the least, for any action to be taken affecting
the recognized customs of our splendid allies . But
General Pershing's trip was not a pleasure-jaunt.
Several French wine-shops had been injuring the
discipline of American soldiers. Conditions had
not been improving. General Pershing perma-
nently closed every wine-shop in the village, and
so diplomatically did he proceed that the cordial
relationship between the two armies was not
disturbed.
His own attitude both toward alcohol for bever-

age purposes and toward vice is in harmony with

the programme of the War Department and the
Navy Department at home, and he is earnestly
enthusiastic for that programme. Some of the
details of the programme as applied in France
must be worked out by indirect methods rather
than by direct, but the programme shall not suffer.
For instance, in the villages at the front where our
leadership is in control I found no orders against
the distribution or the use of the popular bever-
age of France, light wine ; but neither did I find
any light wine. It was not available.
40 HUTS IN HELL

Our conference revealed General Pershing's own

firm religious convictions and his determination
to give to the army a religious leadership second
to the leadership of no other branch of the service.
He spoke with kindling eyes of what he hoped to

GENERAL HEADQUARTERS
AMERICAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCES.
France, March 4, 1918 .

To the Young People

of the Churches of America :

I am glad to have the opportunity of sending you

greetings and hearty approval of the concerted support
the church forces of the country,. through you , are giving
the Government . The great active moral influence of the
churches of America cannot fail to add power to the
Nation.
After all , it is to the young people , whose vision
reaches far into the future , and whose aggressiveness of
spirit gives force to their will , that the country looks
for strength . Your efforts will serve to unite our people
more closely in their determination to give the down-
trodden throughout the world the same free democracy
that we ourselves enjoy .
While the young people at home may be depended upon
to do their full part , the soldiers who represent you,
encouraged by your loyalty, may be depended upon to give
a good account of themselves in this battle for the
principles of liberty .
With very best wishes , I remain ,
Yours sincere

"JohnHerrang
.
To Dr. Daniel A. Poling,
American Y. M. C. A. ,
12 Rue d' Aggesslan,
Paris, France .
A MESSAGE FROM GENERAL PERSHING TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE
OF THE AMERICAN CHURCHES
 PERSHING 41

secure for the men through the chaplains, and re-

ferred to the work of investigation he had com-
mitted to his old friend and the friend of his
family, Bishop Brent. His words were the words
of a constructer and prophet, as well as the words
of a forward-driving warrior . He expressed his
gratitude for the Y. M. C. A. and his appreciation
of the support from the religious and moral agen-
cies at home. He barely referred to the criticisms
that some temperance leaders had visited upon
him after his order against " spirits " was made
public and before opportunity was given for the
General himself to explain the order with refer-
ence to its silence on wine and beer, also its rela-
tion to circumstances associated with army life in
France. He is too busy to give attention to small
things and too big to misunderstand the real heart
of the anxious men and women whose sons had
been intrusted to him .

The last words spoken to me by this leader who

represents so much of the idealism and faith of his
country to-day were of the men . I shall not for-
get many things that were said in that interview,
but with distinctness above everything else that
was said I shall remember the dozen words with

which the quiet soldier revealed his pride and his

confidence in those who fight now to achieve a
lasting peace .
General Pershing's life has had a great tragedy ;
under unspeakably sad circumstances his family
42 HUTS IN HELL

all but one boy - was destroyed in a fire while

he was on duty on the Mexican border .
General Pershing's wife and children were re-
ceived into the church by Bishop Brent when the
bishop was presiding over the Philippine diocese,
and while the General was stationed in Manila.
Since his acceptance of the post in France the
General himself has been welcomed into the fel-
lowship of the church by his old friend, now serv-
ing as leader of the chaplains of the American
army. There is something vastly re-assuring in
the manifest poise of a man who is so transpar-
ently unaffected in great decisions and whose
personal example is so high a challenge to ac-
knowledge the authority of the spiritual.
It was after office-hours when I found my way
down the ancient stairway and into the court-
yard. Out through the guarded gates I passed,
the gates through which Napoleon marched his
legions when he turned them toward Moscow, the
city of their destruction. And as I thought of
Bonaparte and of his programme, of that unsated
ambition and pride which brought about the over-
throw of the military genius no time of the past
or the present has duplicated, A I was glad that
America's man of the hour on the field of democ-
racy's destiny has not forgotten to place first
things first ; that he retains so clear a conception
of relative values in so disturbed a time.
 CHAPTER V

SEICHEPREY

HE head-lines that told the story of the

THbattle of Seicheprey brought me a sensa-

tion entirely apart from the thrill of anxiety
and pride with which we all read of the heavy
attack, the loss of ground, the desperate fighting,
the recapture of the village, and the gallantry of
American troops in the most extensive assault yet
directed against our lines on the western front.
It was the name of the village that gripped me ;
gripped me with the memory of things that I shall
never forget, of kaleidoscopic days that were eter-
nities of supreme emotion.
It was about Seicheprey that our first division
permanently in the line, our first division to be
made fully responsible for a sector on the western
front, experienced its first general gas attack and
its first general raids . It was here that the Ameri-
can soldier established in fact what in his own
soul he had never doubted , his ability to meet
and defeat the finest shock troops of imperial Ger-
many, and under conditions and in an event
chosen by the German command to demonstrate
America's military inferiority .
There will be a thousand greater occasions for
43
44 HUTS IN HELL

American arms in this war than that which fell

on Friday, the first of March, 1918, and than
those which immediately preceded and followed
it . But in the chronicles of this conflict those

days will remain as the days which first sent back

from the flaming front to every officer and every
man in the ranks the triumphant message, "We
have met the enemy, and they are ours .'
It was the moment when the American army was

baptized by fire into the sacrificial comradeship of

democracy's international Calvary.
The village nestles among the hills in the
shadow of Mount Sec, Mount Sec before which
and on which so many thousands of gallant
Frenchmen have laid down their lives , and within
which now mass the German batteries that over-

look the immediate plain where our forces lie

intrenched . It rests, or did rest, well within our
first line, a kilometer beyond the last battery of
"75's," and at the same distance from the great
camouflaged military road that the papers have
announced was the objective of the recent attack.
One catches occasional glimpses of it as he ap-
proaches it through the deep connecting trench , a
picture of desolation framed with crumbling walls.
From it the trenches lead on again, but not far,
for Seicheprey is close to the German barbed wire.
The officers and the men who hold it are con-
stantly on the alert. German guns always com-
mand it, and perhaps a dozen times a day drop
 SEICHEPREY 45

shells into it . No men are billeted there beyond

the capacity of the bomb-proofs. These shelters ,
aside from the direct hits of high-power shells ,
give practically complete protection .
There are no villagers in Seicheprey ; those who
lived there and who tilled the fields round about
are gone. It is a community without a woman,
and from morning until night it does not hear the
small voice of a child . It is a city of ruin, a place
of most melancholy memories .
Seicheprey is holy ground ; lying midway be-
tween Toul and Metz, it is in the heart of the
salient that next to Verdun has witnessed the

bloodiest fighting on the French front. It is an

honor and a high trust for an army just to be
there. It stands before one of the two gateways
to the heart of France. It has seen the tide of
war surge back and forth many times among its
houses and up and down its street. Again and
again it has been captured and surrendered and
recaptured.
Out from it, or hard by, twenty thousand glori-
ous Frenchmen have been buried by the hands of
their comrades or the shells of their foe. I have
seen the war planes high above it , German planes
with shrapnel bursts about them, hurrying home
from observation-trips behind our lines, and the
silver planes of France in hot pursuit . From a
blackened hill behind it I saw an air duel above
the German lines, and a German flyer brought
46 HUTS IN HELL

down in smoke and flames. I have seen our

wounded carried out from it, German wounded
brought into it ; and stumbling through its single
street I have watched the passing of our first pris-
oners of war. From it I have watched the chill

winds of February driving through the shredded

orchard trees on the hillside that dips into the
open field where the poison gas has found so many
victims and where it lies in ambush in the noisome
shell-holes. Beyond the field is what was once a
forest ; the shattered tree-trunks now remind one
of the broken columns in a cemetery .

I have seen Seicheprey under a barrage.

Crouching in an abandoned trench by the side
of a runner from battalion headquarters, to which
we were returning and scarce one hundred yards
away, I witnessed through terror-widened eyes
that most appalling sight of modern warfare.
Once I looked down from the summit of the Cana-
dian Rockies upon a cloudburst in the Bow River
Valley. Once in Oregon among the dunes of the
Columbia I turned my pony's head away from an
approaching storm , and flung myself headlong
upon my face while with the sound of a hundred
mountain torrents and in inky darkness the swirl-
ing tempest of sand swept over me. But this was
a cloudburst of steel, an avalanche of iron ; the
pouring upward of the earth in sudden geysers ,
choked with trees and rocks and the fragments
of houses; a continuous, mighty thunder in which
 SEICHEPREY 47

were mingled the throaty roar of multiple dis-

charges, the moan of the shells through the air,
and the shock of the explosions at contact with
the objective. It was an overwhelming noise fill-
ing all spaces .
Seicheprey! It was then a jagged scar. It

must be now, after this fresh surge of the human

flood, an open wound. There I saw heaven touch
hell. There I beheld the soldiers of my country

writing a new page in the book of her glory.

Seicheprey taught me the sacredness of com-
radeship . From a parapet near by one early
afternoon I looked across the intervening 170
yards to the German lines. The snow was falling.
Strangely out of place in No Man's Land were
scores of crosses marking the graves of French
soldiers. When the crosses were placed there,
they were behind the men who reared them, but
after the final adjustment of the lines they were
found between the hostile trenches. Peaceful and

white was the battle graveyard. Now the men

who made it and who tended it for so many weary
months are gone. Soldiers in khaki fill the

trenches behind it, and the dugouts echo the

words of an unknown tongue ; but in another
springtime, when the flowers bloom redder be-
cause of their long, rich watering, in the dark
night the hands of the stealthy American patrol
will straighten the crosses as tenderly as would
the hands that put them there.
48 HUTS IN HELL

Seicheprey ! I found a French gas-mask out

from Seicheprey. It has sacred ground upon it,
the soil of France . And where the face of its

wearer pressed into it there are blood- spots. Dur-

ing the raid on the first of March our allies came
down from the right, and dropped in behind our
lines at a distance of five hundred yards. There in
the open they lay, a reserve against a possible
breaking through of the enemy. The enemy did
not break through; but there a few hours later,
after the raiders had been hurled back, terribly
punished, I found this mask. I shall keep it as
a token of the unity of free peoples which in the
providence of God and in His time will make the
world safe for democracy .
I shall hope that in the great peace I may lead
my children down the street of Seicheprey re-
stored and tell of the glory that I saw there.
 CHAPTER VI

A DUGOUT DIARY

N Monday morning, February 25, I opened

ONmy eyes in the great bedchamber of the
Archbishop's house in Toul, hard by the
cathedral. Rather, it had been the Archbishop's
house, and even now the underground entrance
leading to the cathedral was in use. It was no
longer an entrance, however, but an " abri " or
anti-aircraft shelter for the secretaries and guests
of the Y. M. C. A. officers ' hotel which, follow-
ing the removal of a French general, occupied
the fine old building .
I opened my eyes slowly, reluctantly, and tried
to close them again without disturbing the knock-
ing at the door ! It was no use ; the secretary was
determined, and I surrendered . Out through the
writing-room, where above the mantelpiece were
embossed the seals of the cities of the old diocese,
- among them those of Nancy and Toul , — in
less than ten minutes I walked , ready for break-
fast and a trip to the line.
I was to spend three days in a wine-cellar
Y. M. C. A. canteen, " close up, " as a relief for
"Heints," a strong-bodied, big-hearted young
49
 50 HUTS IN HELL

Methodist preacher, a " Northwestern " man of

football fame, who for several weeks had been on
the toughest job of the division without a rest or
66
a chance to clean up. His was a ' one man's

stand " ; there was no room to " sleep " an assist-

ant .

West drove me in. After making several calls

to drop men at the huts en route we reached Man-
dras, where we left the car. Machines were not
allowed to go farther than this point until night.
We were now only a mile from the military road
that marked the back of the first line . It was

a beautiful morning and comparatively quiet.

Shells came over regularly, and our guns were
not idle ; but nothing broke within half a mile of
us. As we hiked up the road and swung around
"Dead Man's Curve," we discussed the evangeli-
zation of the world ! We reached Boumont, just
a mile from Mandras, and hurried through its
tumbled buildings to Rambecourt. An hour
served to cover the two miles to our destination .

The going was muddy, but the footing beneath

the surface slime was firm .
Heints protested at first ; but "orders is
orders," and he threw his things hurriedly to-
gether and accompanied West back to the car .
I was soon to feel the wrath of his friends . Offi-

cers and privates all swore by him. Only my

assurance that he was gone temporarily and to
• get a bath and fresh insect-powder saved the situa-
 A DUGOUT DIARY 51

tion. I immediately got into action behind the

counter. A lieutenant just in from the trenches
intrusted to me a German stick grenade — a gre-
nade attached to a wooden handle about twenty
inches long, that he had promised my friend.
He said :

"It's safe now. I fixed it ; only don't get it

near the fire." I put the fire out .
For several hours during the middle of the day
I had the assistance of a secretary from an ad-
joining hut. His presence gave the man in charge
a chance to stretch his limbs in the open and go
to the company kitchen for " chow." While the
dimensions of the canteen were not more than

twenty feet by fifteen, it was a busy and crowded

place. From early morning until late at night
men filled it ; indeed, they stood generally in a
long queue reaching up the entrance stairway and
out into the old open court. My sales in three
days and two nights totalled nearly 4,000 francs,
or $800 . The men bought everything we had,
and all that we had - oranges, jam, candy, cig-
arettes and tobacco, bar chocolate, etc. , and a
score of things that a man needs to keep himself
fit, from tooth-paste to shaving-brushes .
The canteen service of the Red Triangle at the
front is an absolute necessity. There is no other
place " alive " within miles ; the villages are
utterly empty, for in the years that have passed
since the war began even the broken furniture has
52 HUTS IN HELL

completely disappeared . Not a villager remains.

The Y. M. C. A. sells nothing from the stand-
point of traffic for gain ; it hopes to keep its losses
as low as possible, but it constantly " short-
changes " itself . Tons of supplies are given away
outright in the " trench trips," and daily the can-
teens serve hot drinks free . Now and then criti-
cisms are heard because the extreme difficulty of
transportation and the high cost of every com-
modity, a cost that constantly fluctuates, cannot
be generally understood ; but the commissary de-
partment of the Red Triangle is giving vastly
more than one hundred cents for the dollar ; giv-
ing it with efficiency and despatch.
My first afternoon in the cellar was uneventful
but strenuous. I found myself compelled to learn
the ropes under pressure. Men wanted every-
thing that was hard to find ; and it seemed, too ,
that every man was either just out of the trenches
which began right there and extended in com-
municating trenches, the reserve and the most
advanced trenches , nearly a mile on in front of
—
us or just going in, and therefore in a great
rush. I was slow on the prices , too ; but, when I
was in doubt , I simply put it up to the men ; only
once was I deceived , and then the Y. M. C. A. got
too much money ! I saw but one man in France
who had a dishonest streak in him, and I speak
with deep sympathy of that man ; he was born
with a twist, and was killed by a shell only a few
 A DUGOUT DIARY 53

hours after a Y. M. C. A. secretary caught him

in the act of stealing from a comrade. The fel-
lows over there are a " plumb-line " crowd.
I made chocolate in the big iron bucket, and
gave it away; that is, I tried to . But why dwell
on that tragedy? It was better the next time.
One of the men from the first-aid room gave me
a few lessons while he swept out for me.
At about six o'clock a chap who had been eying
me for some few minutes said, " Say, I know you;
who are you? "

He was right. He had been president of a

Christian Endeavor society in Newport, Va.
With fine frankness he told me of uniting with the
First Church of Christ there; we had met at a
State Christian Endeavor convention . Another
lad who had listened to the conversation remained

long enough to tell me that he lived in Macon,

Ga. , and that he saw me first in Griffin, the same
State. He was the " birdman," in charge of the
carrier-pigeons, and had been in that first affair
back in 1917 when Germany captured her first
American prisoners . By the way, a strangely im-
pressive sight it is to see a white dove circling
above the battery to get its bearings and then
flying swift and straight toward the red flag in
the trenches to which its training calls it.
A considerable crowd was lingering about while
I lunched out of a can of peaches and on crackers.
Breakfast was brought in to me by one of the men,
54 HUTS IN HELL

who carried it back from the company kitchen

in my mess kit, and I took it with one hand
while I " shoved the stuff " with the other. Din-
ner I went out for, as already related ; but " lunch "
was a less formal affair . While I munched away,
I watched the fellows, those who were ready to go
in. They were fully equipped , had their gas-
masks at attention , as we all did, and were in hel-
mets. There was very little profanity, no vileness ;
and some of them did not smoke. I was often sur-
prised by the number of men who spent no money
on cigarettes. As for the swearing, the Y. M. C. A.
hut has an atmosphere that, while it does not
stifle cursing, does make the men themselves pre-
fer to be without it . They welcome a place that
is different! The secretaries remember first that
they are there to minister, and to minister to all ;
they do not preach at the fellows, but some of
them are real geniuses . One put up a "menu "
that said among other perfectly rich things,
"Please don't swear ; the secretary is trying to
break himself of the habit . "
And let us be perfectly frank about the ciga-
rette problem that troubles so many of us . That
it is a problem I am fully persuaded . Leading
medical authorities in all armies recognize the
fact that the nicotine bondage now fastening
upon the men and women of the war-ridden na-
tions will be a slavery of heavy chains for the
next generation. Giving evidence before the city
 A DUGOUT DIARY 55

exemption appeal courts in Montreal in January,

1918, Dr. G. E. Dube said that he was appalled
at the amount of illness prevailing among men of
military age, and that he attributed the trouble
chiefly to cigarettes .
Personally I hate the cigarette . I have seen
its fine fiendishness . But to-day society has time
for only absolutely " first things." Some seem
to think that because the world is on fire the time
is ripe for an anti-smoking crusade. I do not.
Just as the next generation must carry largely the
financial burden of the war, so it must solve the
many physical and moral problems that this gen-
eration let fall from its hands when it gripped the
sword. Personally, I have put the cigarette, for
the man in the service who uses it, in the same
class with the strychnine the doctor prescribes.
There are hundreds of thousands of men in the
trenches who would go mad, or at least become so
nervously inefficient as to be useless, if tobacco
were denied them. Without it they would surely
turn to worse things . Many a sorely wounded lad
has died with a cigarette in his mouth, whose
dying was less bitter because of the " poison pill . "
The argument that tobacco may shorten the life
five or ten years, and that it dulls the brain in the
meantime, seems a little out of place in a trench
where men stand in frozen blood and water and
wait for death .
This statement is not a defence of the ciga-
56 HUTS IN HELL

rette; it is an honest effort to make clear the

position of the Y. M. C. A. , facing an immediate

crisis in a diseased world, and required to function
or fail. I found splendid opportunities to help
the non-smoker without appearing to " preach."
When he didn't "use them," I said, " Shake,
neither do I. How do we live ? " When a man in
trying to make even change suggested "another
pack," I said, " Better try something else ; you've
driven enough coffin-nails to- day." In many huts
Dr. George Fisher's book on tobacco is placed on
the counter by the side of the cigarettes . The
men have here available the positive instruction
that at least does them no harm. In the educa-

tional campaign which will follow the war those.

who were able to adjust themselves to the pecul-
iar needs of this abnormal time will have the
greater ministry.
At nine o'clock I took down the stovepipe that
ran up through the little window in the far corner
of the selling-section of the canteen, and dropped
the heavy gas-curtain ; a little later the double
gas-curtains at the door were also dropped . A
99
good hour was spent in " cleaning up . Boxes
were re-arranged with the assistance of the man
who lingered ; I laid the fire for the morning, and
studied the stock so as to be quicker on my feet
the next day. I left a few candle stubs on the
table for the "gas-post," the man standing on
guard to protect the soldiers in the billets, signal-
 A DUGOUT DIARY 57

corps room, and first-aid dressing-station from

being surprised by a possible gas attack. All of
these men were in this same dugout or series of
dugouts. For another hour I wrote a few brief
letters and filled out my order-blank for the next
day. Our stock was very low.
It was now nearly midnight . There were no
stragglers left in the canteen , and all about me I
could hear the regular breathing of the tired
sleepers . Putting on my helmet and pushing
aside the curtains, I climbed the steep stairs , and
walked for a few minutes in the chill February
night beneath a cloudless sky. The guns were
going ceaselessly; back and forth the huge shells
moaned like tired and unwilling men ; they were

not tired when they landed ! Down on the line

the rat-rat-rat-rat-rat-rat of the machine guns,
with the explosions so close together as to give
almost the sound of ripping canvas, rang out at
irregular intervals. They were spraying No
Man's Land, searching for enemy patrols. The
huge trucks and great wagons that had been
pounding the road since early dark bringing up
supplies and ammunition were still busy ; it was
a good night for the " mule-skinners " (mule-
drivers) and for men at the wheels ; they could
move faster, and the moon reduced to a minimum
the danger of accidents .
I stood for a minute or two by a dirty pool in
the centre of what had been a formal garden, and
58 HUTS IN HELL

wondered where the grace and beauty of the an-

cient house had gone. Only the pool, the crushed
marble walls of the chateau, and the splintered
trees remained of that which had been the glory
of an ancient name.

I slept profoundly that night ; general shelling

does not disturb one's rest unless it stops. I say
that I slept profoundly ; I did until two in the
morning when the gas experience, related else-
where, crept into my diary.
The second day was quite as busy as the first,
and there were at least a score of feature stories .

The life of a hut-manager is not monotonous ; his

contribution to the cause of his country is second
to the contribution of no other. My little glimpse
of his parish was quite convincing.
All the morning the talking-machine was busy.
The selections varied with the mood of the man
playing it. I wanted to choke the chap who
started Homer Rodeheaver's " Tell Mother I'll
Be There." No violence was used, but several
besides myself choked before the record was fin-
ished. Mother is everything plus, over there.
To the fellow who has seen her blessed face in
dreams beneath a battle's flaming sky she will
never be taken for granted again. A thousand
little things bring him close to her the socks
that he tries to darn, the button that he sews on,
the food that reminds him. A letter from a
mother makes a lot of heaven over there - - if it
 A DUGOUT DIARY 59

is the right kind, if it is the kind that makes a son

proud of his mother. A message of courage, of
cheer, of news ; details of the commonplace,
the coming of the spring birds back to the house
he built, the addition to the neighbor's home, the
new paper on the wall, the bright gossip of the
street or town, the tragedy of the bread that
burned while you wrote him, such a message
builds morale faster than flags, or music, or the
speeches of captains.
Just before dinner a stretcher-party brought in
a man who had been painfully, though not seri-
ously, injured by the explosion of a " 75." His
helmet had deflected the fragment . He was stand-
ing in the door of the bomb-shelter when he
fired the gun, but one ear had been nearly severed
and his neck had been deeply cut. After he had
been fixed up I put him on a box by the little
stove, and gave him some hot tea.
He was shaken and nervous . In just such a
situation the secretary has his " big chance. "
The boy said: " This will sure kill my mother.
She's a frail little thing, never could stand trouble ;
when she hears I'm hurt, she'll just lie down and
die."

I came back with " Don't you believe it. That

isn't the way it works at all . When your mother
hears of this, she'll say : ' Thank God, he's only
wounded . Now I know he's safe for a little
while."" And I went on : "You have yours;
60 HUTS IN HELL

comparatively few men ever get two wounds, and

after nearly four years of war still there aren't
enough wounds to go around . "
But it didn't do the business .
Then I asked him where he lived, and he said,
"The Bronx."

" I'll tell you what I'll do , old man, " I said ;
" I'll call her up as soon as I reach New York,
and later I'll go and see her."
Bang! he blew up ! Down into his hands went
his sore head, and then he was better. He was
just a boy after all and through it all . But what
a boy !
When I went up to " mess " that day, an orderly
pointed out to me through a crack in the camou-
flage a ruined plane a kilometer away in the open
and under constant observation from both lines.
In it was the body of a famous German flier.
Things had been too hot for our men to go out
and bring in the remains . Mt. Sec towered above
us, nine hundred feet high. We knew that it was
a vast nest of German guns . Like Gibraltar it
stands in front of Metz . But it is not impreg-
nable. Twice the French have demonstrated

that ; and, when the hour strikes, Mt. Sec will

not turn these allied armies back.

I felt something cold touch my hand, and,

looking down, saw a kindly-eyed , well-fed dog
inspecting me. These dogs are the only " original
settlers " left on the line. They were lost in the
 A DUGOUT DIARY 61

first rush, I suppose ; and now, cared for by the

fighting men, they watch the walls that daily
dwindle, and wait with dumb loyalty for the re-
turn of their masters .
One of the men brought me a “ beautiful "
fragment of a mustard-gas shell. His little gift
helped a lot, for it told me that I was beginning
to " arrive." Later I received the nose of a shrap-
nel “ made in Germany " ; the shrapnel broke
above the dugout, and the nose dropped " dead "
in the entrance. Another fellow, a youngster who
must have fibbed a lot to get into the army,
pulled a Testament out of his upper left-hand
pocket to replace it with something else, and
then said, as he thought out loud, " Nope," and
back went the book. There is an unadmitted
tradition that the " book " keeps German steel
away from the heart, and it does in more ways
than one .

That evening I had plenty of assistance, and

things moved like clockwork. There was nearly
a catastrophe, though. Two of the men were
trying to fix a carbon lamp that had been useless
for several days , and it caught fire . The way
that dugout emptied itself was a sight to behold.
After eight o'clock we had a " home-talent "
frolic , and it was some show. There was no room
for acrobatics, but practically everything else that
a well-ordered minstrel show should have we had.
"At midnight in his guarded tent " - that
62 HUTS IN HELL

doesn't really fit here, but at midnight the Pierce-

Arrow arrived with oranges , blood-oranges from
Italy. We were out of everything but tobacco,
and I was desperate before the oranges came.
What fellows they are who keep the supply lines
open for the Y. M. C. A. ! Day and night they
work, with a smile . Every risk the ammunition
drivers run, they accept, and without complaint .
They left me fifteen boxes of oranges , and a good
word that sang me to sleep. This night I slept
better, and there was no gas alarm .
The third day it rained - shells ! At ten the
"
entrance suddenly darkened as if the gas-curtain
had been dropped . It looked as if every man of
General Pershing's army was trying to come to
see me in a great hurry, and ahead of every other
man who was bound in the same direction . For

several minutes I had noticed the quickened fir-

ing and that the explosions were unusually close ;
but, feeling safe myself and being busy, I had
paid little attention to the noise. The Germans
were trying to muss up the batteries just behind
us, and a torrent of shells was now falling. The
big outdoors had suddenly become too small, and
the men were taking cover.
One chap, longer and louder than the rest,
came in waving one boot above his head, and in
his sock feet. When I inquired solicitously after
the other shoe, he sang out, " Left it; didn't need
it , anyhow."
 CALIFORNIA

Y. M. C. A. SERVING SOUP AND HOT COFEE TO WOUNDED MEN

One hundred yards from the front line.
 A DUGOUT DIARY 63

He was cleaning his equipment in front of his

billet when an " H. E." (High Explosive) dropped
just across the street from him and close against
an old wall. He cut the " Kaiser's party " in a
hurry. A shell dropped in the old pool , two just
to the right of the entrance, and several others
did spring ploughing in the abandoned garden
hard by. But not a man was scratched, and not
a missile reached its objective . The " doves of
peace " from Germany presently stopped coming
over, and we breathed more freely.
While we were giving our friend of the lonely
shoe some unsolicited advice, a sergeant came in
and told a thrilling tale of an alarm that had
been distributed along the road by a wild-eyed
"runner " holding his nose and yelling, " Gas !" at
the top of his voice.
At six o'clock Heints came back. He was as
fresh as a daisy and as happy as a lad just arrived
"out to old Aunt Mary's." It was with a pang of
regret that I surrendered the place to him. It was
not easy to go away. Always I shall remember
that dark place and treasure my recollections of it.
May all the men I knew there come safely home !
It was a long jaunt back. In one village we
passed through, the clock in the church tower had
stopped at 4.30 P.M., when the first shell hit it ;
in another at 2.25 P.M. Both had been silenced

in the early days of stern fighting before Toul.

When will they start again? Ah, no ! that is not
64 HUTS IN HELL

the question. " How soon shall the power that

turned back the clock of civilization be stopped ? "
that is the question . That question America is
answering with her treasure and with the best of
her breed.
By a long line of trucks and wagons we ran, —
two hundred of them, ready to go on in under
cover of darkness. In another place fifty-seven am-
bulances were ready for quick action , and by them
a hundred fresh artillery horses were watering .
That night I slept again in the house by the
cathedral . I dreamed of muddy men and burst-
ing shells, of scampering rats and a phonograph,
and I awoke - disappointed .
 CHAPTER VII

"HE'S A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS"

ITH a wild clatter a twelve-foot section

of the ceiling came down. We sat up in

WTT
our bunks and waited. It occurred to

me that no shell had exploded above, within, or

immediately about the "hut," and that this in-
terruption of our peaceful slumbers must be due
to the vibrations from our own batteries ; there
was consolation in the thought. But I did not
fall asleep again. Our guns were going on at a
terrific rate now. It was no ordinary shelling of
enemy objectives, no mere following of a regular
schedule by which " big ones " and " little ones "
are dropped on military roads, headquarters , and
concentration-points in “ Germany."
Pest, secretary in charge of the "hut," who in
happier times is physical director of the Young
Men's Christian Association in Newark, N. J.,
said : " Something doing. That's a barrage ;

wonder whether they're coming across or whether

we are going over. The first brigade is due for
relief to-day; guess the Hun knows it, and is
' speeding the departing guest .' We'll sure have
company for breakfast if our fellows keep on
stirring up the animals.”
65
66 HUTS IN HELL

Presently the " company " arrived . First the

gas-alarm was given, and we hurried into our
masks. I kept on my waterproof, so that my
friends would not see my knees in action! Then
the shrapnel began to spray, and high explosives
felt out our guns. The throaty roar of our seventy-
fives mingled with the longer and nearly double
shocks of enemy explosions. We knew that "Wil-
liam " would not waste shells on us ; but we knew,

too, that we were desperately near the places he

was trying to find , and that even modern military
science is not always exact.
There was a stern patter on the roof spent
shrapnel; a few minutes later it came again with
a sterner knocking and the sound of an explosion
directly overhead, but high. Hummel got up and
opened the door. He looked out, and then closed
the door. Simultaneously with the banging of the
door a huge explosion took place in our back yard.
Hummel said that he saw the field go up as high
as the spire of the ruined village church . There
was a mighty rush of wind and a scream of steel ;
a fragment of high explosive tore out the sash of
a window, and " carried on." This particular
piece of projectile passed through the hut less
than twenty-five feet from the cots.
From three o'clock in the morning until seven
the shelling was heavy, the roar of the guns was
continuous. It then lessened, but for the rest
of the day and through the night there was no
"A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS " 67

quiet. During the barrage, the reason for which

we learned a few hours later, our village suffered
more than usual. In one billet six men were in-

stantly killed and five were horribly wounded .

In another billet there was a fatality, and a French
soldier was killed at the meeting of two streets as
he walked towards his home, going back on his
first "leave" in two years .

We waded through the mud to our " mess " just

across the street ; good, steaming hot, and well
prepared it was. I went back for a "second," as
is the privilege of every man provided he waits
until all have had the first serving.

It was the first day of the month, and so while

Pest fixed the packs for the trenches, and Hum-
mel (Rev. Mr. Hummel, of California, if you
please) completed a sink and drain which his deft
hands had begun the day before, I took account
of stock, and incidentally packed more securely
on the shelves the supplies that were in quantity.
The bombardment was shaking things loose. At
10 A.M. Pest and I started for the trenches, with
the former remarking to Hummel that if things
continued so active the supply-truck would hardly
get in, and that it might be well to " shove the
stuff " a bit easy to conserve what we had.
Up the road we hiked toward Germany. Our
sacks held a hundred pounds of chocolate, nuts,
cigarettes, and oranges, things that the regular
and necessarily severe front-line mess could not
68 HUTS IN HELL

duplicate. The oranges came from Italy, and the

chocolate was made by Americans in French or
Swiss factories taken over by the Y. M. C. A.
Trench supplies are never sold ; these are " spe-
cials," gifts to those who for days at a time must
bear the body and nerve destroying ordeal of the
most advanced places . No man who has not
seen the faces of the men and heard their " Thank
yous " can appreciate what these trench trips of
the Red Triangle mean to the soldiers of the Re-
public. Every day the secretaries go " in," and
clear in. To the last observation-post they carry
the extra food, the bit of luxury, and the strong
man's word and grip of comradeship that build
fighting spirit and morale.
For a mile the going was easy, the road-bed
straight away toward the trenches ; and the foot-
ing beneath five or six inches of mud was firm.
At " Dead Man's Curve," a bad spot which bends
out from behind a great ammunition-dump and
passes between batteries on into another ruined
village, we took a short cut across the field .
The mud at the bend was red, and the road was
filled with blood ; an empty supply-wagon had
been caught there earlier in the morning. The
two men on the driver's seat and all of the mules
had been killed . For five hundred yards we con-
tinued across the shell-ploughed field ; now and
then we were forced to turn out of the direct path
to avoid shell -holes close together ; several times
 "A HUN , BUT WE'RE AMERICANS " 69

I found as many as three small craters with rim

touching rim .
The firing continued heavy, and the moaning
missiles passed one another high above our heads.
There were explosions half a mile away, and the
surface of the earth was churned with fury ; but
no shells dropped near. We entered the com-
munication-trench at the far edge of the great
military road that at this particular point paral-
lels the first line of fifteen miles. It runs directly
in front of the last heavy batteries, and to a
height of twenty feet is carefully camouflaged
with branches and painted canvas . The camou-
flage does not disguise the location of the road
itself; but it does hide the movements of troops,
munitions, and supplies from the enemy observ-
ers , who here look down upon our lines from a
famous mountain which towers nine hundred feet
above our position.
The morning was cloudy; mist was in the air,
and a little later it began to snow. We caught
glimpses now and then of another ruined village,
the battalion headquarters (a kilometer from the
head of the communicating trench), where we
reported before going on to the most advanced
positions. Presently we met a lieutenant coming
out. He was smiling, and without being asked
for information told us that the enemy had come
over in force with shock troops after shelling the
lines for twelve hundred meters on either side of
70 HUTS IN HELL

the eight-hundred-meter front which bore the full

weight of the infantry attack. He gave us no
details ; but, as he hurried on, he assured us that
"the boys brought away the bacon."
We reported to the major on reaching head-
quarters, and learned from him that the company
we had planned to serve that morning had been
very "busy"; that it was digging itself out, re-
opening the trenches after the intense bombard-
ment, clearing away the dead, looking after the
wounded; and that he would prefer to have these
supplies taken into Company K, where things
were in better order. He spoke with pardonable
pride when he informed us that already the men
at the most advanced listening-posts had been
served with food and red-hot coffee . We began
to understand the heavy firing of the morning.
Our guns had been supporting the infantry, and
German guns had been trying to silence them.
A sergeant, covered with blood but happy, had
just made his report for Company I. He accom-
panied us until our paths, or rather trenches, sep-
arated . He was going back to the " busy " portion
of the front. His story was interesting, to say
the least. During the preparatory bombardment
which preceded the raid he was buried in a dug-
out. When the barrage lifted for the raiders to
come across, he dug frantically toward the faint
light that came through a tiny opening in the
shattered roof. Suddenly two hand-grenades
 " A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS " 71

were hurled through his little window of hope.

Both exploded, but the sergeant miraculously es-
caped. Indeed, the grenades helped him out!
He despatched the thrower, and leaped into the
heart of the counter-attack. How fierce that
counter-attack was may be judged from the fact
that every commissioned officer of his company
was killed or wounded before it was crowned with

triumph.
The Germans were forced into our supporting
barrage, and were virtually annihilated .
It was
a demoralized remnant indeed that reached Ger-
man lines to make a report far different from what
had been anticipated . But our losses were not
light. Our first infantry captain to die in action
was killed that morning at the head of his men.
Five out of the six lieutenants "up " at the time
were wounded, and the sixth followed his gallant
captain. The sergeant spoke slowly when he re-
counted the losses, but he was jubilant when he
recalled the perfect support given by the artillery.
We knew and he knew that the first great test
had come, and that Americans had not been
found wanting in courage, initiative , or skill .
Presently we reached company headquarters as
the major had directed us, and heard at length
the story of the morning. With a guide we now
went on. Hip-boots did little good, for the
66
" chicken-ladder " trench floor had been badly
smashed by the shelling. Often we sank to our
72 HUTS IN HELL

hips. The boys were mighty glad to get the candy

and fruit. The Italian oranges were our leaders !
A soft-voiced Southern lieutenant gave us addi-
tional details , and told us how the gallant French
on our right came down and dropped in behind
us at a distance of five hundred yards . There in
the open they lay, a reserve against the possible
breaking through of the enemy. No Man's Land
looked strangely peaceful through our parapet,
and the German barbed wire a hundred and
seventy yards away was more like loganberry
trellises in Oregon than part of a war machine in
France. The company had lost only one man
during the shelling, and it had not suffered in
the raid.
It was nearing one o'clock when, returning, we
reached the place where our friend the sergeant
had left us. Pest looked down the trench toward
headquarters, and then down the front line toward
the low ground where we had originally planned
to go, and where the boys were "busy." Surely
things were cleaned up now, and they would be
hungry for a bit of chocolate and a strong word.
I followed him toward the left, but not without
forebodings . There was plenty of noise in front
of us, and I was sure that the enemy would not
co-operate with the engineers who were restoring
our trenches, by refraining from shelling them.
The "little ones," three-inch high explosives , were
falling not far away; but we were well covered.
"A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS " 73

We crossed the low ground where the boys had

suffered so seriously from the gas attack three
days before, and then entered the woods, whose
tree-trunks bore many new wounds .
At the far edge of the woods our progress was
completely blocked . Working parties filled the
space. All about were the marks of the bloody
struggle.Not all the dead had been carried back,
but the wounded were either out or had been
started toward the rear. There were yet bodies in
the barbed wire, hanging like ghastly scarecrows.
We emptied our sacks, and right about faced.
The firing was steadily increasing, and we hurried
our steps . When we came to the place where we
had entered the woods, we found our way barred
again. Two stretcher parties were resting under
the cover of the little ruined forest.One carried
the remains of the second lieutenant, who had
been killed by a trench mortar; the other bore a
wounded German prisoner, a fine-looking, husky
Bavarian whose legs had been fearfully mangled.
The carriers were worn out ; it had been a " busy"
morning for them, too . They were within a hun-
dred yards of the point where it was necessary to
leave the trench and take to the open. The trench
had been so shattered by the shelling that a
stretcher could not be carried through it . The
light had been growing steadily better, and it was
very apparent that German observers, at this
point less than two hundred yards away, would
74 HUTS IN HELL

quickly spot a party taking to the open. But

there was nothing else to do . Pest volunteered to
lend a hand, and together we carried the wounded
prisoner to the point where with assistance we
lifted him to the parapet .
The two stretcher parties now started down
across the low ground in the open, their burdens
shoulder-high, not only for greater ease in carry-
ing, but to give the " kultured" gentlemen across
the way a square and open look. The going was
heavy. After carrying for perhaps three hundred
yards the four of us who had lifted the burden
at the parapet were relieved. Pest and I now in-
creased our speed in the direction of battalion
headquarters, which were in plain view and not
more than a kilometer away as the bird flies .
Suddenly hell opened . A barrage was put down
upon the field. I can hear to-day as distinctly as
I heard it then the close-up crash of German guns,
and almost simultaneously with that the cry of
the officer in charge of the stretcher, " Scatter ! "
Then all about us the shells dropped and broke.
I suppose that the barrage lasted ten minutes ,
hardly more, but it was a kind of eternity. It
seemed to my terrified eyes that no foot of ground
about us was left untouched . That night an ob-
server in our line, on his way back after being
relieved , stopped long enough to say that more
than two hundred shells fell within a radius of

fifty yards from the centre of our party.

 "A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS "

I sprawled upon my face, and rolled over into

a very shallow shell-hole. At my right, and not
ten feet away, suddenly a man was lifted into
the air; five feet he seemed to go up. He turned
over, and came down with a flop into a shell -hole
filled with water. Aside from the shock and

bruises he was uninjured . The " three-inch ” had

gone in, by his side and at an angle, almost under
him. But in the open and in soft ground high
explosives are not particularly dangerous unless
they score direct hits. They penetrate so far
before they explode that they are largely smoth-
ered ; and, while they kick up a great commo-
tion, their bark is worse than their bite.

Fortunately for our little party, this barrage

had no shrapnel mixed with it ; had there been
shrapnel, the story would be of another sort.
But I was so profoundly frightened that I made
no distinction between high explosives and
shrapnel.
I found myself trying to hide behind a rock no
larger than a baby's fist. I envied the white dog,
which wheeled about on his hind legs, barking
angrily in a dozen directions at once, trying to
cover each new explosion. I envied not his bark,
but his potential speed, and called him a fool for
not using it.
And then I heard some one say, or perhaps
it was my own heart speaking, - "Run for it !"
and faster than I ever left the scratch on a cinder
76 HUTS IN HELL

path, in the days when I was credited with 10 1-5

seconds for the hundred-yard dash, I got away.
As I ran, I thought of two things. First , I
breathed a prayer of thankfulness for the addi-
tional five thousand of war-risk life-insurance that

I had taken out just before leaving New York;

and then I remembered the ancient tale of the
colored brother who heard the bullet twice, once

when it passed him and once again when he

passed it! And I did my best to emulate the
hero of the tale. Two men reached headquarters
before I did, but they were younger men and un-
impeded by trench coats .
I followed Pest into the presence of the major,
- we ran a dead heat ! - and heard his report .
The major smiled, a trifle anxiously, told us of
the comparative safety we had really enjoyed be-
cause of the soft ground and high explosives, and
then inquired , “ Did the carriers stay with the
prisoner? " Pest replied , " I am not sure, sir ; I
did not look around, but I am inclined to think
that he is out there alone." Some one felt it in
order to remark that if the Hun wanted to kill
his own wounded, he ought to be given the privi-
lege of doing so " without mussing up any good
Americans "; and then the major said: "Yes ,
he's a Hun, but we're Americans. Go back and get
him ."

I am writing these lines more than five thou-

sand miles from the candle-lighted room in the
 "A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS " 77

bomb-shelter of that battalion headquarters ; but,

as I write them, I cross the sea, and stand again
by the side of the rough table where I stood that
March afternoon when the major startled me out
of my terror into soberness and quiet with his " Yes,
he's a Hun , but we're Americans. Go back and
get him." I believe that I am better for trying to
give the German the benefit of the doubt ; for half
thinking that, after all , he may not have recog-
nized the nature of the party crossing the open
field . But the major waived the whole question of
German " frightfulness," and leaped at once into
the heart of American traditions of war and
America's military idealism. He saw only a
prisoner, wounded and under fire, and he knew
his duty .
And before we continue this story let us halt
for a moment with the " major. " I saw him only
once and under tense and extreme circumstances.
His battalion had just come through a baptism
of fire that will not be forgotten when the story
of America's part in the great war is told. I do
not know how he looked in a dress uniform or
when he was clean-shaven ; I have no conception
of what his carriage was in a drawing-room ; and
I am uninformed as to his church affiliation — if
he had any. But he acted like a soldier that
afternoon and talked like a Christian. I am sure
that he was every inch a soldier, too ; for he
fought through the Spanish-American war, and
78 HUTS IN HELL

was a major in the Philippine constabulary . He

enlisted in the British army ; but, when the Stars
and Stripes came to stand by the side of the
Union Jack, he moved over, and was commissioned
a major in the national army. I intended to
write him a letter after I returned ; but now that
will be unnecessary, for to-day at the top of a
column I read, " American colonel killed in ac-
tion, " and below, " Lieutenant-Colonel Richard
H. Griffiths , commanding a battalion of infantry,
has been killed by shell-fire in Picardy . He
emerged from a dugout just as a German shell
arrived and exploded directly in front of him."
And now he stands at attention before the
Commander whose orders, whether he thought
of it in that way or not, he so completely
obeyed.¹

1 A letter from Lieutenant David R. Morgan describes

the circumstances under which Lieutenant-Colonel Griffiths
was buried:
"The regimental chaplain was sick. There happened to
be a Red Cross chaplain visiting us from Paris, so he offici-
ated. The Boches were within a few hundred yards of us,
so he had to whisper the ritual. It was pitch-dark and the
boys had to be mighty careful to keep their shovels from
clicking against stones. A few officers were present.
"The burial took place at midnight. A lantern or a candle
would have helped, but the crackle of a match would have
meant death. Twice the ritual was suspended while the
mourners took to cover to avoid German bullets.
"Privates had gathered wild violets and poppies at the
rear of the trenches, keeping them fresh in a dipper of water
in a dugout. These were laid on the graves at night.
"A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS " 79

As the major spoke, he turned to a lieutenant,

and said, " Get those carriers, and send them
back." Pest and I followed the lieutenant into
the open. The lieutenant inquired of Pest the
location of the prisoner ; and the man from New-
ark replied, "I'll show you." It was at this point
that the writer made a speech. The speech was
brief, but logical and unanswerable . I told Mr.
Pest that he had no business to go back. True,
the barrage had lifted, but the Germans had
another one where the first one came from, and
they might decide to spare it ! Then, too, he
- Pest -
had done not only his full duty, but
more. To go back would be to expose himself
needlessly and also to run the risk of having the
trenches closed to the Y. M. C. A. "What will

the army over here say if it gets the idea that you
Y. M. C. A. fellows are sticking your heads above
parapets and rambling around in open fields ?
How long will it stand for the Y. M. C. A. man's
assuming a rôle that does not belong to him?

"The next night a Boche high explosive demolished the

little cemetery, exposing the bodies. We had to bury Colo-
nel Griffiths four separate times."
Lieutenant Morgan, who is an active Pennsylvania Chris-
tian Endeavorer, speaking further of Lieutenant-Colonel
Griffiths, said: " The breast of his coat was covered with
medals. He did not know what fear was. He never sent a
man anywhere until he went first. I have seen him calmly
walking along the street with the shells dropping on all
sides."
80 HUTS IN HELL

Granted that you did the only thing you could

do by helping with that prisoner when you ran
into the immediate need, this return trip is another
proposition. "
I laid hands on my friend ; but he started up
the road for the open field, showing the way to
the lieutenant, and with a heavy heart I followed
another officer to indicate the carriers who must
go out to help bring in the wounded man . Pest
had made no reply to my speech, and I knew that
my logic was sound ; but that didn't satisfy my
heart, with Pest out there. And Pest's heart
would not have been satisfied, had he allowed me
to win the debate.
I came back and stood at the head of the road

leading through the tumbled walls, out by some

abandoned trenches with tangles of rusted wires
above them, and on into that open field where so
many brave men had fought and died since the
first rush came down from Metz . " Poor place to
spend a vacation," said the sentinel, who stood
post there, and scarcely had the last word left
his lips when that field again became an inferno .
I could not see my friend and those who had gone
to join him, a slight rise in the ground and an
old cut-to -pieces orchard obscured the view; but
the air was full of earth and rocks, and I was
sure that I saw fragments of bodies in the vortex.
Surely men could not come again unscathed
through such a horror.
 166
A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS " 81

And now I was forced into the sickening ac-

knowledgment that, while my logic had been
sound when I sought to dissuade Pest from return-
ing to the prisoner, my nerve had not been . I
knew that my feverish urgency was not unmixed
with personal fear. Never did a more sick and
anguished heart cry out to God than the one that
supplicated for that stretcher party . But it did
not appear! When the suspense became unbear-
able, I hurried to the major ; and, when I told
him the situation, he became very grave. He had
been trying for some minutes to silence our own
batteries, fearing that the enemy would continue
to concentrate their fire on objectives near our
battalion headquarters if our firing continued to
stir them up. And our fire was stirring them up !
Our shelling was deadly and unrelenting. The
major wanted to give that party in the field a
chance to get back. But his communications
were down. Already two runners had been de-
spatched, and the signal-corps men were working
frantically.
I asked for permission to go down the road a
little way to see whether there might be a sign
of the men. I could not face my own soul without
knowing for myself what Pest's end was . The
major understood , and down the road I went. A
great fear possessed me, but it was a new kind of
fear. I reached the edge of the open place ; there
was no sign of life anywhere. The snow was fall-
82 HUTS IN HELL

ing again, and I hurried on. I met a runner ; he

had not seen the party. Three minutes more,
and I was on the spot where the first barrage
broke; and still there was no sign.
Suddenly the tightening about my heart loos-
ened, and I fairly shouted, " There would be
something left, if they were dead." A second run-
ner was skirting the woods we had passed through
earlier in the day. I ran to meet him , and fairly
choked him to get the information that I was
desperately searching for. " Yes," he had seen
them . They had waited till the shelling stopped,
and then from the cover of the woods he had
watched them rush the stretcher back to the

trench. They had followed close against the

lower side of the trench, the longer way into
the village . This brought them into the lower
end of the town, and gave them a slight cover for
the entire distance. It was the way we should
have taken in the beginning.
"And now," the runner said, " this is our ' busy '
afternoon," – I had heard the word so often that

day, " and we must get to headquarters ' toot

sweet ' !" The youthful veteran instructed me to
follow him at a distance of twenty paces , and he
led the way down the road which skirted the edge
of the field farthest from the German lines . The

snow was falling more rapidly now, and we were

practically safe from observation . We walked
in the shallow ditch by the roadside, so that in
 66
A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS " 83

case shelling was resumed we could avail ourselves

of its protection. By lying flat we should be on a
level with the surface of the ground.
The road was deep in mud, and I saw the prints
of French boots ! Then I remembered what the
lieutenant had said in the morning of the gallant
French reserves, and realized that I was on the
exact spot where they had waited in the open be-
hind our trenches. A rush of emotion over-
whelmed me, and I wept. Suddenly in front of
me I saw a mask, a blue gas-mask, half buried in
the mud, lying where the brave Poilu had dropped
it only a few hours before. When I showed it to
the major a little later, soaked with water and
with blood, ruined and useless, he said, " Take it
99
home to your children ; you are a millionaire.'
Yes, a millionaire in the treasure of sentiment, by
the wealth of the vision the blue mask brings to
me of the comradeship of democracy in suffering
and in sacrifice.
Before we reached the edge of the village the
batteries became busy again, but at first their
objectives seemed to be well beyond the town.
Then without warning the fire assumed the inten-
sity of a barrage, and the range was shortened so
that the projectiles fell all over " headquarters."
Such a spectacle I had never seen before. It was
as though the heavens had opened and precipi-
tated an ocean of soil, bowlders, and trees upon
the earth. No, rather the earth itself seemed to
84 HUTS IN HELL

open as the result of some great sickness and

vomit this terrifying spectacle upon us. The

ground trembled , and the noise became literally

deafening. I stood transfixed behind the runner.
I was conscious of no other emotion than one of
complete amazement . I had been in the midst of
the former barrage, and had not seen it! We were
perhaps one hundred and fifty yards away from
this one, and so soon does one become accustomed
to the eccentricities of shell-fire that we felt our-
selves in no danger. We listened to the shells as
they described their low arc above us, and knew
instinctively whether they would land to the
right or to the left, near us or relatively far away.
One's judgment in these matters is much akin to
his judgment of a batted ball ; only he judges the
shell altogether by its sound .
But we were roused from our stupor. Off at
our left, not far away, a shrapnel broke, the first
I had seen that day. For an instant I was para-
lyzed. The balls flew all about us ; dirt spattered
us ; and then we ran ! Straight toward that bar-
rage we sprinted . Our one chance- and I knew
it as well as the splendid fellow in front of me
was those abandoned trenches with their caved- in
dugouts ; we were not more than fifty yards from
them . It was shrapnel now and no mistake.

That we were not hit is merely one of the hourly

miracles of the front . But we did reach, without
being wounded, the old barbed wire with the bar-
 " A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS " 85

rage being pulled across the village and shorten-

ing in our direction , and with the shrapnel
overhead. Both of us dove head first into the
trench, and a good eight-foot plunge it was , into
slime and water six inches deep . There we waited
until the affair was over.
As suddenly as it begins, intense shell-fire
ceases ; this demonstration against battalion head-
quarters lasted in all not more than ten minutes .
Then, save for explosions well up on the ridge or
behind it in the region of the batteries, compara-
tive quiet reigned. With my new-found friend I
climbed out of our refuge and hurried into the
village. Here I received another shock; aside
from three men wounded, several old walls tum-
bled in, a score of small craters in the streets , and
yards of destroyed camouflage the bombardment
had done no injury. I was sure that bodies would
be scattered everywhere. But the major was at
his table, working furiously and as if nothing had
happened; the signal-corps room hard by had
been mussed up ; one shell had dropped close by
the wall of the major's bomb-proof, and another
had destroyed the camouflage at its entrance ;
but these experiences were with the day's work.
With the first explosions just beyond the town the
men had taken to the cellars, and there remained
until the storm was over. The last few hours had
given me a vivid demonstration of the truth of
the statement that I had often heard, but scarcely
86 HUTS IN HELL

believed, "It takes a thousand shells to kill a

man by shell-fire .”
My first inquiries were for Pest, and he was re-
ported safe and waiting for me in the communi-
cating trench ; the sentinel at the head of the old
road had given him a statement of my move-
ments . The prisoner had been carried in, and
presently he was hurried by in an ambulance
bound for the hospital. Every hand that I had
seen touch his stretcher had been a kindly, minis-
tering hand ; and the men who were risking their
lives to bring him out had been prompt to express
their admiration of his nerve ; he was suffering
terribly. He in his turn, when bearers " eased
off " their load in the hard going of the open field,
would say deeply between his groans, " Schön,
schön!" ("Fine, fine.")
Shells exploding half a mile away had made
me very nervous in the morning ; but now as I
hurried back, ploughing through the mud and
snow of the communicating trench, sinking often
to my hips, and pulling myself out as best I
could, no sounds worried me . Men were coming
in the relief; they looked clean and fit. A

machine-gun company passed me, and was eager

for a few words of information . It was great to
have good news for those fellows ! At last I
reached the main road ; its inches of mud with
firm footing beneath seemed a paradise. The
field in front of the batteries had been reploughed
 "A HUN, BUT WE'RE AMERICANS " 87

since we crossed it in the morning, and there

were many new craters about " Dead Man's
Curve."
As darkness came down, we reached home!
and home it is to thousands of hungry-eyed lads
who have become men in an hour. Home it is
to these far-called soldiers of freedom, who pay

the sterner price of the world's redemption . It

holds them to their yesterdays ; it grips them
with their past. By its tables they sit and think
and write ; about its fire they talk and muse. In
the atmosphere of its manly decency they breathe
deeply and are purified ; and the fellowship of
those other soldiers who wear the red triangle
makes them fit and strong in their hearts . Ah !
as I stepped across the threshold of that place
fenced with rough boards and set where heaven
touches hell, I saw all things become new. We
could not win this war without the Young Men's
Christian Association ; for, even though our
armies reached Berlin, our souls would lose their
way .
I put my trophies out of sight - the masks
and some pieces of shell that I had taken from
a shell -hole after I scrambled up from the first
shock of the barrage. A few hurried changes
were made, and then we relieved Hummel, who
had been working like a lonely Trojan all day.
Out of the corner of my eye I watched Pest.
He didn't even know that he was a hero ! When
88 HUTS IN HELL

I think of him, I shall always see him as I saw

him swinging down the road with the lieutenant,
bound for the open field , head up and chin out,
leaning slightly forward as he took the long and
easy stride of the trained athlete - a soldier and

a Christian, under higher orders than any that

man ever gave or refused, facing death to be
merciful, risking his own life to salvage the life
of his enemy .
And Pest is more than one man; he is a type.
This one day of his life, a trifle more than ordi-
nary, to be sure, but not unlike scores of days he
experiences, is a single page from the ledger of
service which the Y. M. C. A. secretaries are
writing on every front where freedom bleeds .
 CHAPTER VIII

"GAS! GAS! GAS! ”

AS! Gas! Gas!" and the hand-siren rang

" GAthrough the dugout in accompaniment to

the cry of the sentinel . The first shout
sounded far away; I was sleeping deeply. The
second brought me to my elbow, and the third
sent my hands down through the inky darkness
to the mask on my chest. I was wide-awake and
in absolute command of every faculty. I remem-
ber the surprise with which I noted my calmness.
I had feared that in just such circumstances I
should go to pieces, or at least bungle things and
fail in those first fateful seconds. But I adjusted
my mask with precision , with deftness that my
fingers had never before possessed ; and I recalled
every item of the instructions I had received.

I held my breath until the mouthpiece was be-

tween my teeth, attached the nose-clamp, shoved
the mask far under my chin, and then pressed my
face well into it while I firmly fixed the holding-
bands about my head. Then I inhaled deeply,
filling my lungs with the chemicalized air, exhaled
violently, and noted with satisfaction the " glub,
glub " of the little rubber exhaust that told me
the machine was " hitting on every cylinder."
89
90 HUTS IN HELL

All the while I was fully conscious of the sounds

and movements about me. I heard the rats scurry
squealing into the corners. I scratched method-

ically on several inhabited portions of my anat-

omy. I listened to the muffled voices in the
signal-corps room, which was just beyond the
thin partition ; the men on duty there with
the trench telephones wore French masks that
had neither nose-clamps nor mouthpieces. But,
masks or no masks, signals and messages must go
forward without delays. These lads of the signal
stations , along with those " standing post ” to give
the warning, must add to the dangers that all face
the extra ones that fall to the lot of men who are
charged with the safety of their comrades. I lis-
tened to the soldiers stirring in the billets behind
me forty-seven bunks were there ; and just

across in the first-aid dressing-station I heard the

stretcher party.

To all of these matters I was keenly alive while

I adjusted my mask (I had on all my clothes) ,
groped for the door opening out of my private
sleeping-corner, which was almost exactly as large
as the cot it contained, and stepped into the cen-
tral room occupied by the Y. M. C. A. canteen .
Here I found candles burning feebly.
Does this all sound like rare presence of mind
and complete self-control ? Do not be deceived.
It was simply a case of nerves paralyzed with
terror and of muscles responding mechanically to
 "GAS! GAS ! GAS ! " 91

suggestions previously received . The acuteness

of my perception and sense of hearing were evi-
dences of acute fright .
The canteen soon filled with begoggled soldiers ;
we stood elbow to elbow, and waited. Was there
gas in the room? I wondered. Hardly time for
that, because of the heavy blankets sealing the
entrance to the cellar ; one stairway and one deep-
set window were the only openings through which
either air or gas could penetrate . These were
closed at night. The dugout itself was a kilo-
meter back from the advanced trenches, and on
comparatively high ground. I remembered that
on the preceding day an officer in discussing a
possible gas attack had said that our position was
very favorable. But of course the enemy might
be sending over gas-shells in a bombardment of
the batteries just behind us, in which case our hole
in the ground might become a veritable death-
trap to any one without a mask.
The ruins high above us trembled with the vi-
brations from our own guns. I looked up, and
noted that the arched roof of the cement wine-

cellar which was the basis for the entire dugout,

or rather system of dugouts , where we were
quartered did not show even a crack. We were
in one of the finest bomb-proofs in that entire
sector. After more than three years the direct
hits of high explosives had not penetrated it . To
its original thickness and strength had been added
92 HUTS IN HELL

the tumbled-in walls of the glorious old building

which once stood above it. Now and then shells
bursting near the entrance to our shelter forced
in the heavy curtains with the rush of air follow-
ing the explosion.
The firing from our own guns became more
intense and rapid . What did it mean? Were we
under general attack? Was a raid to be received ,
or were our lads to deliver one? Was our barrage
-for the bombardment had assumed the inten-
sity of curtain fire- a reply to German guns, or
was it the initiating of a local offensive? I found
myself getting out of hand, but remembered the
alert officers out there in the greater danger, whose
orders would answer my question soon enough.
Now another matter thrust itself upon my at-
tention; my mouth and throat were full of saliva ,
and I didn't know what to do with it. At this
point — and a vital one it is — my instructor had
failed me. There are so many things to remember
that it is surprising more is not forgotten . I be-
came desperate. My predicament was far worse
than a patient's in a dentist's chair with jaws
clamped wide open and a rubber sheet jammed be-
tween his teeth .
In the latter case one can signal
with his hands, and indeed, under great provoca-
tion, a man has been known to kick the shins of

his tormentor. But I knew that neither signalling

nor kicking would now do me any good. There
were questions, pressing questions, that I wished
 "GAS ! GAS ! GAS ! " 93

to ask; and I could not open my mouth to ask

them. I could not even talk through my nose,
for that was in a vise. My head now felt like a
Noah's ark. It was a case of strangle or swallow.
I decided that I had a choice between allowing
the saliva to pour through the tube into the chem-
ical can of the mask, or of somehow getting it
down my throat. I took a deep breath, held
firmly to the mouthpiece, and swallowed . Later
I learned that I had done exactly the right thing.
Minutes passed, and my eyes began to burn,
and my goggles became blurred . I heard muffled
coughing, and a sweat broke out upon me ; were
we to be trapped without a chance for our lives ?
But no orders came, and we waited on. Being
in a group and in the station of a special gas sen-
tinel, I knew that we were to depend upon this
sentinel for further instructions and not to " test
for gas " ourselves. Testing for gas is done by
filling the lungs to their utmost capacity through
the tube, releasing the nose-clamp, pulling the
mask slightly away from one cheek, and sniffing.
If gas is still about, the odor will be detected
unless the gas is odorless; and the lungs, being al-
ready occupied by air, will not be affected. How-
ever, if your test has revealed the presence of gas,
your mask has now become filled with the poison,
and this must be got out . After readjusting the
nose-clamp the lungs are emptied , and refilled
through the breathing-tube ; then simultaneously
94 HUTS IN HELL

the mask is pulled away quickly from the cheek,

and the breath instead of being exhaled through
the tube is blown violently into the mask itself.
By repeating this rather hazardous operation
several times the mask is entirely cleared.
But to return to the case in hand. I was fast

becoming blinded by the moisture on my " win-

dows." I now followed the instructions of my
teacher, and brought out my " window-cleaner,"
the preparation which each man carries for thor-
oughly cleansing his goggles. Leaving the nose
firmly held and continuing my strong bite on the
mouthpiece, which is not unlike the mouth-hold
in a football nose-guard , I pulled the bands off
my head, the mask away from my cheeks, and
with the speed of desperation cleansed the two
glasses . After readjusting the mask, to free it
from any possible gas I used the method described
above.

Nearly an hour had passed . " All clear," came

the cry, and again the hand-siren sounded . The
reader cannot imagine the relief with which I un-
covered my face. The men went quietly to their
places; it was now apparent that the real seat of
the trouble, whatever it was, had been located
some distance away. In the morning we learned
that only a " trace " of the gas had reached our
high ground. The batteries continued their in-
tense firing, but again we stretched out in our
bunks . I had just covered myself when the warn-
 "GAS! GAS ! GAS !" 95

ing came again, " Gas ! Gas ! Gas ! " and for another
thirty minutes. I stood at attention. But after
the second alarm our relief was permanent . I
then made a record of the exact number of min-
utes the mask was in service, and turned in, to
remain undisturbed until morning .
This record, for which special charts are pro-
vided, is absolutely essential. The chemical in
the British mask (box respirator) is good for forty-
eight hours. The can containing the chemical is
then exchanged for a new one. The mask itself,
with proper treatment, lasts for a long time.
While the more quickly adjusted, but far less
reliable, French mask is also carried by our men,
the British mask is chiefly relied upon. It is

complete protection against every gas thus far

developed; and the scientific men of the Allies
are daily lessening the fiendish menace of gas.
The spirit of the men who face the poison is ex-
pressed by Corporal Harold Hall of Bridgeport,
Conn. In a letter to his mother he says : "We
were under a heavy gas for four hours, and, to
tell the truth, I'm glad we were, as I was always
afraid of gas . But now that I've been through a
good gas attack I don't fear it at all, as there is
absolutely no danger if a fellow is on the alert and
not careless . Oh, this isn't such a terrible war,
after all . We are used to it, and do not mind it
near so much as you people at home do."
When day broke, we learned of the disaster that
96 HUTS IN HELL

had overtaken our lines lower down. The first

general gas attack experienced by Americans
since the entry of the United States into the war
had been directed against our sector. In the
marshy ground on our right one company had
suffered terribly. Men had died almost instantly ;
others had been carried back with little hope of
recovery; and for several days a large number
continued to develop the symptoms of the poison-
ing. Such is the nature of this fiendish weapon
of refined barbarism. For hours it may hide its

deadly sting, and encourage its victim by exer-

tion and exposure to weaken himself for its final
assault. Absolute rest and protection from the
elements are vitally essential in all cases where this
breath of death has found its way into the lungs .
The suffering accompanying and following ex-
posure to gas is too horrible to describe. Only a
people completely committed to the propositions
that the end justifies the means, and that might
makes right, could have conceived the gas attack
and first used it as a weapon against humankind .
My second serious experience with the gas came
in a Y. M. C. A. hut above the ground and farther
back. During the shelling incident to a general
raid across our lines we used our masks for some
time. The introduction of gas-shells has made it
possible to reach a much wider area with this
fiendish weapon than was the case at the begin-
ning, when only the trench containers and pro-
 "GAS! GAS ! GAS ! " 97

jectors were used, and when the wind was relied

upon to carry the fumes into the enemy's posi-
tions . Gas-shells are mixed in with shrapnel and
high explosives, and when thus employed are
often very deadly. Fired alone, they are distin-
guishable because of their peculiar explosive
sound; but, when they are sent over in a general
bombardment , the only way to be sure of escaping
them is to use the mask continuously.
Old shell-holes are often death-traps because
of the gas that settles in them. The poison fumes,
being heavier than air , will lie for hours, and under
favorable atmospheric conditions for days , in the
bottom of a crater or an abandoned trench . Sol-

diers seeking shelter in these holes are trapped .

The French commanding officers at one time is-
sued a general order prohibiting French soldiers
from entering shell-holes . In some instances the
"active " portions of the trench system are cleared
of gas with shovels . Soldiers in masks actually
shovel the heavier-than-air poison lying at the
bottom of the trenches and filling the dugouts ;
they fling it over the parapets , where the air can
reach and disperse it . The shovels have canvas
flappers attached, which serve as fans. Clouds of
chlorine gas are also dispersed by the use of a
hypo-solution in a special sprayer.
The writer has a friend who entered a shell-hole
near the head of a communicating trench which
ran from a military road to battalion headquar-
98 HUTS IN HELL

ters. He descended to lay a foundation for a

Y. M. C. A. hut, and was completely overcome as
soon as he stooped to begin work . A gallant
French soldier, seeing the danger, leaped into the
crater, and, standing as nearly erect as he could,
pulled the unfortunate man to his feet. He held
him there until others came to his assistance.

My friend went to the hospital for three weeks .

Much of the acute pneumonia and pleurisy,
and thousands of cases of tuberculosis , reported
among the Allies are superinduced by gas. For
days men doctor persistent colds, only to find at
last that the " stuff" has somewhere scorched

them. I had been five days from the front, and

was scores of miles removed from the scene of my
last possible exposure, before my case was pro-
nounced " gas-poisoning." For several days my
"cold " had been increasingly annoying. My
lungs were sore, my throat burned, my vocal
chords were affected , and I coughed deeply. The
mucous membrane of the mouth, throat, and nose
became painfully inflamed, and even bled ; my
head ached constantly, and my eyes on the sixth
day completely crossed . I could not have got
more than a touch of the stuff. I have absolutely
no recollection of any particular time when the
thing might have occurred ; indeed, I had con-
gratulated myself that I had been unusually
prompt to use my mask and exceedingly careful
to take no chances.
 "GAS ! GAS ! GAS ! " 99

Two months later a thorough examination re-

sulted in the following report : " Röntgen exami-
nation of the thorax showed increased density of
both apices , left more than right ; marked thick-
ening of right hilus." All of which means, accord-
ing to the obliging man of science, that the lungs
were left with scars as lungs are scarred from
pneumonia or incipient tuberculosis .
In the writer's slight case the depressing nature
of the poison because of its action upon the organs
of respiration and the nerve-centres was par-
ticularly noticeable. For weeks I experienced the
constant sensation of smothering, felt " full " and
66
' stuffed, " as the proverbial " stuffed toad " looks.
At night, when I could sleep at all, I suffered
dreams of horror, and awoke struggling for a full
breath; then always followed appalling wakeful-
ness . My appetite returned slowly. I was fa-
vored with the best of care, enjoyed a delightful
ocean voyage at just the right time, and had a
perfect general physical condition to begin with.
I have the assurance that my glimpse into what
so many blessed sons of the republic must behold
with wide-open eyes will leave no permanent evil
after-effects . But it will cause me to see forever
the travail of those who must experience the
birth-throes of the new and better world, and the
picture of Democracy's youthful martyrs will not
fade from my eyes while the flowers of memory
put forth and bud .
100 HUTS IN HELL

I think of Liberty Bonds now in terms of gas-

masks ; one fifty-dollar bond will almost buy two
gas-masks !
A driver on a truck or a wagon is especially
exposed to the menace of gas. He is entirely re-
moved from the warnings of the special gas sen-
tinel, and the noise of his vehicle gives him no
chance to distinguish the peculiar sound of the
bursting shell. Down into a bit of low ground the
brave fellow swings ; a sudden giddiness seizes
him. He is fortunate indeed if it is only a whiff
and he can adjust his mask before greater disaster
overwhelms him.

In general attacks, where gas is extensively

used, both sides are compelled to fight in masks ;
the attacking foe must enter territory he has pre-
viously drenched with his poison . With a gas-
mask on a man is not more than fifty per cent
efficient. In any sort of combat, but particularly
in hand-to-hand fighting, it is a fearful handicap.
The temptation to tear off the mask becomes prac-
tically irresistible. Heroic doctors have been
known calmly to lay aside their masks when with
their faces covered they could no longer serve
their suffering charges .
An enemy constantly strives to deceive its op-
ponents into believing that gas is about to be
used or has been used . If an unhampered raiding
party can find trenches filled with men in masks
in the all-important second when it leaps over the
 UNIV . OF

CALIFORNIA

A GAS ATTACK
American soldiers in their trenches wearing gas-masks.
Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, N. Y.
AIMBOTLIAD
 UNIV . OF

"GAS ! GAS ! GAS 101

parapet, the success of its venture is virtually

assured . Three days following the first general
gas attack experienced by the American army the
first general raid on our lines came across. Before
the raid exactly the same methods were pursued,
and the same demonstrations were made within
the German lines that had preceded this first gas-
attack. Many of our lads believed that a second
gassing was imminent, and got into their masks.
Just before the German barrage was lifted from
our trench to the territory behind it, and at the
exact time fixed for the starting of the raid, Ger-
man patrols sent into No Man's Land shouted in
perfect English, " Gas ! Gas ! " It was hoped that
the Americans would be deceived into believing
that their own patrols were giving the warning
and that the raiders would find themselves con-
fronted by begoggled opponents . In this instance
the strategy completely failed ; the raiders were
virtually annihilated.
It is interesting to note that in the affair just
referred to long pipes filled with explosives were
for the first time used against us to destroy our
barbed wire. These pipes, some of them sixty
feet long, were stealthily shoved under our wire ,
and at a signal were exploded simultaneously,
with the concentrating of a brief barrage on the
wire entanglements . Large sections of our wire
were blown completely out of the ground.
Riding from London to Glasgow one afternoon,
- 102 HUTS IN HELL

I became acquainted with a captain of the Black

Watch. He was returning from Mesopotamia.
For two years and six months he had been in
service without a " leave." He was counting the
miles to Dundee, and his eyes had the light of
the home fires burning in them. We had talked
about many things. He had told me of the death
of General Maude, of the capture of Bagdad, and
had given me what he believed to be the reasons
for General Townshend's defeat . Finally I said,
"Do you use the gas out there? " and he replied :
"No; we have it ready, but we have never used
it. The Turks are Christians. They don't use
it."
His answer gives more clearly than any argu-
ment I have ever listened to the statement of the
difference between the spirit and programme of
the Central Powers and the spirit and programme
of the Allies. Gas was "made in Germany ";
Autocracy and Absolutism are its parents. Only
a stern military necessity has finally forced it as
a weapon into the hands of Democracy. Military
necessity, I say, for not to meet gas with gas would
be like opposing rapid-fire guns with spears . The
"culture " that ravished Louvain, and that left
on the cities of northern France the scars of rap-
ine and murder that will never out, has made
the air a poison breath.
 CHAPTER IX

"THEY SHALL NOT PASS "

GLIMPSES OF THE SPIRIT OF THE TRENCHES

E were seated together at a Liberty-Loan

WEdinner in Buffalo . He was in the British
uniform and " wore " a cane, not a dress
cane, but a heavy stick that took the place of a
crutch. A naturalized American citizen, he en-
listed first in an Irish regiment. After recovering
from a serious wound he was discharged, but a
few weeks in New York left him a restless man

with eyes turning ever toward the sea. On the

thirtieth of November, 1916, he re-enlisted, this
time with a Canadian regiment in Toronto.
Again he was " shot to pieces ." Now he hobbles
about with the same nervous eagerness that

forced him away from home the second time.

Another honorable discharge has not satisfied him ,
and he said to me,

"I hope I get over this so that I can re-enlist ,

99
this time under the Stars and Stripes.'
No man who has been " over there" is ever

again satisfied while water remains between him

and the front. Not that he forms an appetite
for war ; he hates war. But so long as the fighters
103
104 HUTS IN HELL

fight he will be in the valley of discontent when

he is not on the field of action.

In England and in Scotland I found scores of

men pining for France. They had been eager to
get back to " Blighty." With straining eyes they
had watched for her shores through the mists of
the morning as the hospital ship found the chan-
nel of the home port, but now they begged for a
chance to get back. Lieutenant- Colonel Cote, on
his way to rejoin in Italy his command which he
had left on the Somme when a bullet through his
shoulder and back laid him low, said to me:
"I could not stay. They offered me a desk in
London, and it was tough to leave the wife and
little girls ; but I couldn't stay."
At that time he was one of six men in the Brit-
ish Empire who had three times received the
"D. S. O. " (Distinguished Service Order) — once
in South Africa where he enlisted as a private,
and twice in France. After five months he was
sufficiently recovered from his third wound to
report for duty.
What is this spirit, the spirit of the trenches ?
There is humor in it. Lieutenant Johrens, who
returned with me from France, was on the Tus-
cania when she was sent down by submarine at-
tack. As the destroyer which picked up the boat
company of which he was in charge cruised about
in the darkness near the scene of the catastrophe,
the officers heard singing in the distance. Search-
 "THEY SHALL NOT PASS " 105

ing out the spot from which the voices came,

they found twenty privates on a catamaran,
shouting lustily the refrain of the popular song,

" Where do we go from here, boys?

Where do we go from here?”

The Lieutenant added that a French pastor in

Tours on being told the story seemed deeply im-
pressed, but not even slightly amused . The next
Sunday, referring to the incident, he said impres-
sively to his sympathetic congregation :
"Our brave allies are not only men of action ;
they are all men of deep spiritual conviction. In
danger their thoughts turn instinctively toward
God. As they clung to their frail raft in the dark-
ness of the tempest and the blackness of the
night, they searched their hearts , and with the
mingled emotions of men facing the vast un-
known they sang that glorious old Billy Sunday
hymn,
'Where do we go from here, boys?
Where do we go from here?" "

The humor of homesickness makes no pretence,

and is unashamed . A chap from Montana came
up to the canteen counter behind which I stood,
and said ,

"Say, did you ever hear the story of the Statue

of Liberty ? " and I replied,
"Which one? "

He tipped his helmet forward, mocked me with

a deep bow, and said,
 106 HUTS IN HELL

"This one : A fellow had been started toward

Davy Jones's locker three times by ' subs .' Fi-
nally he got a tub that made through connections ;
and, as he came up the harbor of ' little ol ' Broad-
way,' he saw the ' Lady ' standing up there and
looking out through the mist, holding the lamp
up to the window for him, and saying, ' Hello ,
kid; welcome home! ' and he swallowed his
Adam's apple, stood at attention, saluted, and
said, ' Thank you, madam ; I'm mighty glad to
see you. But, if you ever see me again, you'll
have to turn around! " "

He didn't wait for a laugh . He knew that the

tale had " whiskers " and that many a man now
old " had kicked the slats out of his cradle " in
protesting against its resurrection. He hadn't
told it to amuse me, but to " spill himself." But
I laughed just the same, for it was richly done.
I watched the artist of the story as he proceeded
to unlimber " Jenny," the fifteen-dollar talking-
machine that stood in the far corner of the cellar
in which this particular Y. M. C. A. canteen was
located. No corner of that cellar was as far as
thirty feet from any other corner . It was not
more than sixteen hundred yards from our most
advanced position, and directly in front of a
great battery which just then was exchanging
"calls " with the enemy. It sounded like a dozen
Fourth of Julys outside, with cannon crackers
and bombs not excluded .
 "THEY SHALL NOT PASS " 107

The story-teller fingered through the records

until he found the one his mood called for ; then
he removed his helmet to ease his weary head,
-
regulations allowed him to uncover while
underground, - sat down on a biscuit-box di-
rectly in front of the sound-chamber, and , with
his unshaven chin in his dirty, cracked hand ,
waited, close up, for the first word . There, in
that old cellar under a ruined French chateau, I
heard Alma Gluck sing " Little Gray Home in
the West." She has sung it to vast multitudes
in great halls, and to distinguished people in quiet
parlors ; she has set the world a-weeping with
the exquisite pain of her song ; but she never sang
more effectively than she sang that night among
the noisome odors of a dark dugout of the front
line, with shrapnel and high explosives for an ac-
companiment and a homesick lad from Montana
for her audience .

What is the spirit of the trenches? It is the

spirit of rare comradeship . I never saw a man
injure another man up there, or seek to. Quarrels ?
Sure! and personal encounters now and then, but
these are few and far between. There are little
time and strength for them, of course, and there
are few opportunities ; but, when they do happen,
they are differences of words that do not have two
meanings and of fists that come through the open.
I have seen a man carry, in addition to his own
kit, the entire equipment of another man who
108 HUTS IN HELL

was suffering from gas. Three miles and a half,

under the severest conditions of opening spring,
through mud-filled trenches he walked with his
double load, helping a man he had never seen
before .

In one of our companies were two Portuguese.

One could not speak English. He was terribly
dependent upon his " buddy." While I was with
the battalion to which his company belonged, the
"buddy " was killed. The distress of the man
who did not understand the language of the coun-
try he loved and for whose just cause he had
volunteered his all was most affecting. But how
the other men of that company got about him !
They swore that he should not have a single
lonely minute . Indeed, they nearly ruined the
chap with their kindness. They were in a fair
way to destroy his stomach with their gifts and
his constitution by their vigilance, which actually
robbed him of sleep , when a wise-headed corporal
took command of the situation and set them
right .
It is this spirit of man's thoughtfulness for his
brother, man's tenderness with man, that reas-
sures me when I ask, " How will this stupendous
man-hunt affect the heart of the race? " And the
fighter is not unaware of the question. Indeed , he
asks it himself . I heard a young major who was
saying a farewell to a group of his friends at a
church banquet in a Canadian city say,
 "THEY SHALL NOT PASS " 109

"I go away determined, God helping me, to

do my hardest duty; to render my country and
the empire an enthusiastic and utmost service ;
and to carry myself so that when I come back, if
I come back, little children will run to me as con-
fidently as they do now."
What is the spirit of the trenches? It is the
spirit of service that has no interrogation points .
One night a shriek of agony came ringing back
to our line from a listening-post in No Man's
Land. A chaplain was " up," a Roman Catholic.
He crawled down the shallow communicating
trench to the wounded soldier, found him with a
foot smashed by a grenade, unconscious, and
bleeding to death. He stanched the flow of blood
as best he could, and somehow got the man back.
And then, after the stretcher party had carried
the " casualty" to the dressing-station, and while
they waited for the ambulance, he prayed with
the lad. A few days later he said to me, " I didn't
think a Catholic's prayer would hurt a Protes-
tant boy." And it was a Protestant padre, we
are told, who ministered to the dying Major Red-
mond on a battle-field of Flanders.
There is no " grousing " in the trenches . I heard
no complaints from men who were straining their
vital forces to the utmost. It is great to hear
them when they come out, though ! How they
do vent their spleen upon springs that are a bit
uneven, these fellows who have been wallowing
110 HUTS IN HELL

in mud and ice for days without a word in their

misery !
A runner came in one morning after thirty -six
hours of continuous duty. He was chilled to the
bone, and one foot was in bad shape. He had
neither overcoat nor blankets ; his entire equip-
ment had been buried by the shelling incident to
a raid. We leaned him against the great tea-
boiler, and while he stood there warming his body
we poured hot drinks into his stomach. Turning
away for a moment, I was startled by a clatter
behind me. There he was, his cup on the floor;

he was dead asleep on his feet .

I have seen lads fall asleep on the rough boards
of a Y. M. C. A. hut, with only the nondescript
materials for covers that we could hastily throw
over them. Not even the noises of great bat-
teries, and of hundreds of soldiers passing in and
out, disturbed them in the least.
Not a whimper, not a whisper of rebellion, came
from them. Oh, I do not believe that I shall ever
again complain about any hardship without de-
spising myself. What a task we at home have,
to be worthy of them!
There are so many tales of unalloyed courage,
and so many to tell them well, that I have pur-
posely committed this chapter largely to a very
faulty pen-picture of another side of the spiritual
portrait of the American soldier. His bravery is
very prompt and very honest, and no soldier of
 "THEY SHALL NOT PASS " 111

the world is braver. He confesses his fear, which

is not pretended ; tells how fast he ran, how para-
lyzed his tongue was, how he caught himself say-
ing, " Engine, engine number nine, running on
Chicago line," or wiping his forehead with his
revolver! But all the time he has not turned
away from the line of duty by a single hair.
The type of his courage is unmistakable. It
would be very poor form for an American to speak
of this in any way that would make invidious com-
parisons, and to speak thus would insult the
American soldier, who so thoroughly appreciates
and so enthusiastically magnifies at his own ex-
pense the prowess of our allies who have done so

much for us, who for four years have stood be-
tween us and destruction, and who even now must
very largely teach us the modern art of national
self-defence. "Private Peat" was of course
over-enthusiastic in his praise, but he indicated
a quality of bravery that I never failed to find in
the American army in France when he said :
"They are far ahead of the English and French
in many ways. They are more active, more
quick in thinking, and can decide in an instant
what to do in battle. They have already made
a wonderful record . Every allied soldier honors
them ." I saw the native genius of American
fliers strikingly illustrated in an aviation contest
between student fliers and their instructors.
Every event - bomb-dropping, handling of ma-
112 HUTS IN HELL

chine guns, and trick flying was won by the

students .
And the spirit of the trenches is not confined
to those who stand in the mud of the trenches
and experience their horrors . In Basingstoke,
England, one night I sat with a queenly woman
of seventy in front of a typical English grate
fire. The war has taken much away from her ;
and, as she talked with such quiet determination
and in tones so rich with suffering, she said, “ We
who have been in the trenches for nearly four
99
years
Ah, yes, the women too have been in the far-
thest places of the line. The long vigils of the sol-
dier in nights that promise only terror and in days
that bring only hardship are not kept alone. The
mothers of men, their wives, their sisters, and
their sweethearts stand there too . And not only
these, but the fathers and the brothers denied the
privilege of bearing arms, but entering into the
supreme ordeals of those who do bear them, by
day and by night, in tense silence suffer in spirit
the agonies which the bodies of their sons and
brothers must experience at every station of the
flaming trail that leads from the base to the far
rim of No Man's Land.
In a city of Scotland one night I was introduced
by the " provost, " the mayor. He was quiet, but
fully master of the situation . At the close of the
meeting my host told me that the chairman who
 "THEY SHALL NOT PASS " 113

had presented me had that afternoon received a

message informing him of the death in action of
his third and last son. The provost was in the
trenches that night.
I have watched the long hospital trains pull
into London stations during a " big push." I have
seen the crowded ambulances dash by, and the
dense crowds lining the streets. I have caught
at the tightening of my throat when some griev-
ously wounded man has waved a hand, or smiled ,
or wriggled a foot (if the arm was helpless) at the
shouting multitude. And no less glorious has
been the spirit of news-laddies who in rags and
tatters have pressed their papers upon bandaged
-
Tommies who were able to sit up laddies from
the submerged East Side, pauperizing themselves
for a week because their hearts called them. And
no less glorious than the spirit of these newsies
has been the devotion of the flower-women, just
as poor as the boys in " Cæsar's coin " and just
as rich in true devotion , some of them in black
with only memories to fill the chairs where strong
men once sat - flower-women who, with tears in
their eyes that for the soldiers' sake they will not
shed, crowd about those wagons of mercy, shower-
ing the blanketed figures with primroses and
daisies.
What is this spirit , this spirit of laughter and
of tears ; this spirit that goes and that stays; this
spirit that slays without becoming cruel and that
114 HUTS IN HELL

turns, as the needle turns toward the pole, back

again toward hardness and danger, choosing to
walk the trench of death rather than to linger in
the paths of life ; this spirit that is both old and
young, and that flourishes in the thin soil of pov-
erty as luxuriantly as it blooms in the fields of
the rich?
It is the spirit that I found in the Gillespie
home in Edinburgh. When the war came, there
were two sons to add strength to the grace that
two daughters brought to that fireside. Now the
line runs out to the valley of the Somme, and ends
there beneath the flowers of Flanders . Tom died
in the rear-guard fighting from Mons to the
Marne. Bey fell at the head of his men in a
charge on the twenty-fifth of September, 1915 .
Tom's oars (he was captain of the Oxford eight)
hang in the hall and his picture at the left of the
mantel in the library. Bey, whose letters to his
mother have been published as " Letters from
Flanders," was the finest scholar turned out by
Oxford in a generation . His picture hangs just
across the mantel from that of his brother.

In that room we sat and discussed the mighty

advance just then at its height ; the possibility
of its reaching the Channel ports, capturing Paris,
overrunning France, separating the British and
French armies. We discussed the worst! And
then they said, they who had laid so rich an offer-
ing upon the altar of liberty :
 "THEY SHALL NOT PASS " 115

"Back against the shores of this island the

British fleet will stand and hold, hold while
America brings up the reserves of civilization .
They shall not pass! They shall not pass!"
What is this spirit ? I found it everywhere.
The very stones of France cried out with its
voices ; the shattered trees of the forest were the
strings of a harp that sang with it ; the eyes of
the smallest child were filled with it ; and aged
men in the fields, and gray-haired women pushing
carts through the streets of the cities, were monu-
ments to it that cathedral-levelling shells could
not destroy.
As a troop-train pulled out of a great station
in Paris late one afternoon, I saw a sight that will
always remain with me as one of the most appeal-
ing and suggestive pictures of this war. Perhaps
five hundred people were standing on the plat-
form, saying a last good-by to their loved ones
and friends bound for the hungry front. With
hands outreaching and faces in the sun they stood
in a great tableau of farewell as we drew slowly
away. And as I looked into the profound depths
of those faces, I was swept by a torrent of emo-
tion that left me a changed man. They, and mil-
lions of others they represent, are the fathers and
mothers, the sisters, wives , sweethearts, brothers,
and friends of unnumbered and never-to-return
young men. All have felt the agony of this war's
separations and loss, have poured out their treas-
116 HUTS IN HELL

ure and their blood . We cannot speak for them,

we who only now begin to enter into their suffer-
ing. But we can speak for ourselves ; we can
deliver our own souls .
We too have been in this war since 1914, but
until a few months ago France and Britain fought
our battles for us . As surely as the principles for
which we now fight, and our American ideals and
liberties, were governing facts with us four years
ago, so surely the same misgoverned power that
threatens them now threatened them then. The
British fleet in the North Sea, the British Tommy
in the trenches of Flanders, and the soldiers of
France, have made the wall of iron and the dike
of flesh and bone against the flood of autocracy
and absolutism that otherwise would have broken

through to ingulf Europe, America, and the

world.
The United States is forever in the debt of those

who for unspeakable months held the lines against

the day of her arrival. What we do , and all that
we can do, will not be an unmerited investment
from the standpoint of those peoples who, war-
weary and impoverished, yet hold fast. As for
ourselves , it is the price of our progress and of
our very life.

He is less than a loyal American and he is with-

out the knowledge of gratitude who speaks with
a slight of the allies of his country. The broken
men in London's streets, the cripples by the Seine,
 "THEY SHALL NOT PASS " 117

the armless lads who wear the badge of far-away

Australia, the bandaged ones from New Zealand
and the maimed from Canada, leave me blinded
with my tears of pride and acknowledgment.
The wide-eyed women of Brittany in their simple
black, and the children so strangely quiet, the
matrons of England, Italy, Ireland, and Wales,
and their sisters in the Highlands and Lowlands
of Scotland, whose unshed tears are like lost rivers,
tell me of my debt, America's debt.
And let us not forget the plight of Serbia and
Montenegro, the complete agony of Roumania.
If our war is just and if Justice never forgets,
then the United States will not remain a nation
long enough to lose from her memory the travail
of these hapless people to whom all is now lost
but honor. And nothing that Russia, Russia be-
trayed by those of her own household and de-
stroyed by an unscrupulous enemy - nothing
that Russia does now or fails to do hereafter will

wipe from the page of history the imperishable

glory of her six million sons dead or maimed , who ,
inadequately equipped and hopelessly led , were
fed in Freedom's name to the ruthless god of war.
To-day Democracy has become as one nation ;
thus she stands or falls . The far-bending line
behind Mt. Kemmel and in front of Amiens , and
every line that shall confront Imperial Germany
until autocracy has been finally conquered, is our
line . It is not four thousand miles away, and
118 HUTS IN HELL

there is no ocean between it and us. It runs

through the heart of the United States and of
Canada. Those who hold it with their backs
against the wall of destiny, whether they fight
beneath the Union Jack, the tricolor of France,
or the Stars and Stripes, are soldiers of the Re-
public.
This spirit of gratitude and understanding is
the spirit of the American trenches , for in them
are Americans who have entered into the suffer-
ings of a world that loves liberty enough to give
the best, the last, and all, to preserve it . I found
no boasting in our trenches ; men did not say,
"We have come to win the war ." They said with
an all-convincing earnestness, "We have come to
help win the war." And now behind our trenches
are fathers and mothers and friends; these too
have entered into this vast fellowship of pain,
and they too begin to know .
More eloquently than any words of mine can
describe it the verses of Private William I. Grun-
dish, Company C of the U. S. Engineers, A. E. F. ,
- verses which first appeared in the Paris edition
of The New York Herald, - have given a voice to
the soul of the American soldier. Private Grun-
dish called the poem
 "THEY SHALL NOT PASS " 119

FACING THE SHADOWS.

66
When I behold the tense and tragic night
Shrouding the earth in vague, symbolic gloom,
And when I think that ere my fancy's flight
Has reached the portals of the inner room
Where knightly ghosts, guarding the secret ark
Of brave romance, through me shall sing again,
Death may ingulf me in eternal dark,
Still I have no regret nor poignant pain.
Better in one ecstatic, epic day
To strike a blow for Glory and for Truth,
With ardent, singing heart to toss away
In Freedom's holy cause my eager youth,
Than bear, as weary years pass one by one,
The knowledge of a sacred task undone."

Lieutenant Dinsmore Ely was killed in France

in the aviation service on April 21 , 1918. On
April 29 his father, Dr. James O. Ely of Winnetka ,
Ill. , received a letter from him written just before
his death. The letter ends thus :
"And I want to say in closing, If anything
should happen to me, let's1 have no mourning in
spirit or in dress. Like a Liberty Bond, it is an
investment, not a loss , when a man dies for his
country. It is an honor to a family, and is that
the time for weeping? "
"It is an investment, not a loss, when a man dies
for his country." Here is the spirit of the trenches :
it is the spirit that cries, " With this I give my-
self." It is sacrifice, and sacrifice is the spirit of
victory .
 CHAPTER X

THE GREATEST MOTHER IN THE

WORLD

SAW her first in a great base hospital in the

I north of England. Her ward was filled with
wounded British soldiers. In writing of her
one hesitates to use the only word in the language
of our race that expresses the adoration of those
young heroes as their eyes companioned her from
cot to cot. One hesitates to use the word because
it has been associated with so many small and
trifling things, because it has become such a
commonplace. But it is the only word : they
worshipped her.
What I saw in their eyes that day I have seen
in my mother's eyes as she arose from prayer ; I
saw it once in the eyes of a battle-widow kneeling
before a shrine in Paris ; I caught a glimpse of it
in the eyes of my son when, leaning against the
cradling embrace of his mother's arms, he looked
for an instant with a baby's questioning into his
mother's face ; I beheld it in supernatural glory

near the fortress city of Toul when a soldier of

my country, a lad in years but a veteran in sacri-
fice, in the delirium of his suffering whispered that
name which is above all other names in the vocab-
120
 WORLD'S GREATEST MOTHER 121

ulary of the dying. It is not the tribute of either

sex exclusively, nor of any particular age ; it is
the supreme testimony of the human soul, and
to those who behold it a fleeting glimpse of the
things that are " hid with Christ in God ."
This woman was not old, and she was not
young. Her hair was white, and her cheeks were
the vivid hue of her native land. She was not
beautiful by the artist's test, but it is seldom
given to any one to study a more attractive face.
A stranger would always see first and remember
last her eyes and her mouth ; why, I cannot say,
for as I write I find it impossible to describe them.
She was just above the medium in height, ath-
letic of figure ; and she moved about with the
unhurried swiftness of the born nurse.

But the impression she left upon me was not

the impression of one who deftly, tenderly cares
for the sick and the injured . When my eyes fell
upon her, and as they followed her, and when I
turned away from the great hospital, I thought
of my own mother. Now, although I am writing
of her, the face that rises before me is not her
face ; it is my mother's face.
She stopped presently by a bed that held a
fearfully broken lad from London's great East
Side. In half a dozen places the shrapnel had
sought his vitals , and quite as many times the
kindly cruel scalpel of the surgeon had searched
out the creeping poison. The foot of the bed was
122 HUTS IN HELL

raised so that the bandaged head was inches be-

low the level of the tired feet. When she touched
-
the boy, he smiled . He could not see her, his
eyes were covered, and he could not move his

head. Even the smile must have cost him pain.

But I never knew before that a man's mouth

could be so beautiful . It was as if the lips had

responded to something electric in that white-
gowned woman's touch ; it was as if her fingers
had healing in them, as if her hands bore the same
divine ministries that the hands of the Galilean
carried to the halt and lame and blind nineteen

hundred years before. I found myself whispering,

"And the child was cured from that very hour."
I saw her next in France and not far behind

the lines, and I saw, in the eyes of the men she

ministered to there, what I had seen in England .
I never learned her story. Somehow I never
cared to know it ; I never inquired . Once when
a chaplain started to tell me, I stopped him . I
knew that it would be brave and beautiful ; but
the war has many stories, and we must save our
dreams. I prefer to remember her in the spirit
of the words of one her hands were laid upon:
"I wonder what she did before she went to war
- for she has gone to war as truly as any soldier.
I am sure in the peaceful years she must have
loved and been greatly loved . Perhaps he was
killed out there . Now she is ivory-white with
over-service, and spends all her days in loving.
 WORLD'S GREATEST MOTHER 123

She will not spare herself. Her eyes, — ah ! her

-
eyes, they have the old frank, comprehending
look of her yesterdays ; but they are ringed with
being weary. Only her lips hold a touch of the
old color. Over dying men she stoops, and is to
them the incarnation of their mother or of the
woman, had they lived, they would have loved ."
I saw her first in England and then in France.
I shall not see her again. In the air a winged
monster paused and let loose his fury. She is not
dead, but gone to her coronation. She lives to-day in
the hearts of ten times ten thousand women and
thousands more, this greatest mother in the world.

I came one bitter night in February into the

crowded, dirty station at Toul. One of my trav-
elling companions was a lieutenant of the "Rain-
bow Division," who hailed from Marion, O. , and
who talked a lot about his wife and baby. His
head was clean-shaven, " because," he said, “ ker-
osene was expensive and hard to procure ! "
On the same train with us were a dozen Red
Cross nurses transferring to a new base hospital.
They were wonderful girls . Until morning

brought the cars that were to carry them on to

their destination nearer the line they sat on their
blanket-rolls. While they waited, they sang
"Keep the Home Fires Burning," " Over There " ;
and they sang the old songs, " Kentucky Home,"
124 HUTS IN HELL

"Swanee River," " Tenting To-night on the Old

Camp-Ground "; and they sang some of the
hymns that have body and distinction and that
last, " Rock of Ages ," "Nearer, My God, to Thee,"
"Lead, Kindly Light " ; the " Marseillaise " was
sung again and again, while we all stood, and
"The Star-Spangled Banner." The night rang
with their voices.
During the informal concert a French troop-
train pulled in, and the poilus tumbled out. They
heard the singing ; and, although they could not
understand the words of the songs, they caught

the spirit of the singers. Like statues they stood

leaning upon their long guns and listening to
those women of a far land brought near by the
ministry of a common pain. About us were the
high-piled sand-bags that re-enforced the abris
(shelters) conveniently placed for a quick retreat
in case of an air raid . Only a few very faint lights
were shown. But the faces of those French sol-
diers seemed to build a warming fire on the
station platform, and the choir lighted a candle
that did not burn out. It was a night never to be
forgotten.

Wonderful is woman, this woman of war !

"The bravest battle that ever was fought,

Shall I tell you where and when?
On the maps of the world you will find it not;
' Twas fought by the mothers of men."
 WORLD'S GREATEST MOTHER 125

And this woman of war is the woman of work.

As, in the brave days of old , woman, free of spirit
as she was free of limb, carried the extra weapons
of her mate into the heart of the conflict, and in-
spired him to superhuman deeds, bearing equal
share with him in the front of battle, so the
woman of to-day, for the first time in long gener-
ations given equal freedom with man to do the
world's work, has sprung to the side of her mate.
In the factories of England , in the fields of Russia,
in the mills and mines of France, on the firing line
itself, and in the Red Cross behind every bloody
trench of the war-mad world , she is giving herself,
body, mind, and soul, for the preservation of the
institutions of her people.
I have seen her pushing her cart through the
streets of Rennes and Tours, bearing great loads
down the highways of Brittany, tilling fields with
the first glimpse of spring, close behind the lines.
She is in all places, for her tasks are the tasks of
the universal need.

But England gave me my best opportunity to

study carefully the woman of work. A girl sold
me my ticket at Liverpool ; another took it. A
girl gathered the baggage together at the Pad-
dington station in London. Young women were
at the desk of the hotel - not a man in sight any-
where. Women are conductors on the London
trams and guards as well as ticket-sellers in the
tubes. I saw them doing the heaviest labor of
126 HUTS IN HELL

canal-boats and harbor tugs. They were plough-

ing in the country and driving munition-vans in

the cities. In one of the greatest shell-factories I
saw scores of young women at lathes, and other
scores managing intricate machinery with deftness
and precision . What price the next generation
will pay for these strained bodies- some of the
loads are necessarily heavy ones - I do not know,
but womanhood asks no questions when the voice
of sacrifice calls .

One is impressed by the number of wedding-

rings worn by the women of work; thousands of
wives, yes, and widows, of soldiers are serving
Britain in these new ways. Many must add their
earnings to the scant home store, and so the
babies are cared for by grandparents or public
nurseries while the mothers labor for the cause

the father fights for or may have died for. In

munition-factories matrons are provided who
look after the interests of the younger girls. Of
course, grave moral problems are arising from
these new and complicated relations of women
to the world that has for so long been man's
world exclusively. These problems will not be
solved in a day.
After three years of war 4,766,000 women were
employed in England, or 1,421,000 more than
were employed in 1914. The number of women
workers is increasing at the rate of 18,000 every
week. The Minister of Munitions announces
 WORLD'S GREATEST MOTHER 127

that from " sixty to eighty per cent of the ma-

chine work on shells, fuses , and trench-warfare
supplies is now performed by women. They
have been trained in aëroplane-manufacture,
gun-work, and in almost every other branch of
manufacture."
In a statement made later, in the House of
Commons, the Minister of Munitions referred to
the fact that nearly one thousand large guns were
destroyed or captured, and between four and
five thousand machine guns destroyed or cap-
tured, in the great German offensive which began
on the twenty-first of March, 1918, and that in
this same period the ammunition lost amounted
to about the total production of from one to three
weeks. But he declared that the loss had been
more than made up in less than one month, and
that nine-tenths of the huge output of shells
which was then sufficient for the continuation of
an intensive battle throughout the summer was
due to the labor of three-quarters of a million
women.
I heard a great iron-merchant say : " Ah ! sir,
the women are saving the country. When I my-
self urged a holiday upon them, — and not in a
year have they taken one, - they said: 'What
will our men at the front do when we stop? Will
the Germans sit back and rest too ? We will have
our holiday when the war is over and the lads
999
come home.'
128 HUTS IN HELL

She was just a slip of a girl ; but she smiled at

the baby boy in her arms, and said, " His father
is in France ." She continued : " This is my first
day with him in ten months . He is asleep when
I get home at night, and he is asleep in the morn-
ing when I leave for the shop ." And she smiled
again as she added : " O, he is a fine sleeper, sir,
and the ladies at the church [referring to the
nursery ] have no trouble with him. It is good,
though, to have him in my arms with his eyes
open.. " And, though I blinked my eyes hard as
I looked at this brave English girl having an en-
forced vacation from shell-making because of
"back-strain," she had no tears in her eyes.
And in excess of all that her hands find to do,
as when Spartan mothers sent their sons away
and with the same spirit, Democracy's woman of
work is giving her flesh and her blood to be food
for the carrion-birds of countries she has never
seen, while still beneath her heart she carries
the developing life that is the hope of the future.
I saw a great parade in London, one hundred
thousand women marching in a vast demonstra-
tion after the triumph of suffrage — mothers,
wives , sisters, and sweethearts , little daughters
dressed in white, and gray-haired battle-widows
of the Crimea. The faces of the marchers were
inspiring, but my eyes did not rest upon them.
I looked longest at the black masses of men and
boys crowding close against the lines that kept
 WORLD'S GREATEST MOTHER 129

the street open for the parade. To the eternal

credit of manhood let it be said that the faces
of the men were generally faces of old men and
that the faces of the boys were the faces of
children .
But I saw more than the crowd of men and
boys. On those faces I saw the light of discovery,
and I seemed to hear a voice, a voice that speaks
down through the years from a Roman cross,
"Behold thy mother." The clamor of the un-
paralleled conflict has been the quiet in which for
the first time woman's cry for justice has been
really heard and fully understood.
Great Britain, the butt of our jokes because of
her stolid slowness and stubbornness in an opin-
ion or tradition, saw her window-smashers turn
to munition-makers, saw her social butterflies don
the garb of Red Cross nurses, saw her women
rise to help win the war ; and Great Britain was
convinced.
""
And what have we found this " new woman,'
this woman of war, to be ? First of all, we have
discovered that she is not new; that she is the
woman of old, the woman of yesterday, to-day,
and forever.
But, while woman has not changed, her times
have; and with intelligent heroism she is fighting
against fearful odds, to adjust the machinery of
society to meet modern needs. One has declared
that already three-fourths of woman's former
130 HUTS IN HELL

sphere has slipped away from her. Back at the

beginnings of the race she was in all things part-
ner of the man. She not only bore children and
reared them ; she was armor-bearer as well, tent-
maker, planter, tender, and reaper of the harvests.
But gradually changes came. Men no longer
spent all of their time in fighting or preparing to
fight. They began to relieve women in the fields
and to assume more and more the heavier portion
of building-operations. Women found more time
for the nursery and kitchen, for the loom and
spinning-wheel.
As civilization progressed, still fewer men went
away to battle, and war became less frequent.
Minds with leisure became inventive, and ma-
chinery simplified household labors . Even the
nursery was invaded ; for the cry was no longer,
"Give me sons, many sons," but, " Give me fit
sons," and the honor in mere numbers in child-

bearing gave way to the distinction of quality as

well.
Then, too, the home itself reached out beyond
the pioneer clearing which formerly held all of
its activities, until its interests became identified
with all the problems of a society no longer
bounded by family, village, tribal, or even racial
lines. It is as unreasonable to insist that women
in their social and political relations to-day re-
main as they were before the advent of the public
bakery, the tailor-shop, the candy-kitchen, the
 WORLD'S GREATEST MOTHER 131

public school, and the legalized saloon as it would

be to insist that they go back to the spinning-
wheel or that they assume again as a normal
occupation the hod-carrying of the builder.
Civilization faces a female ultimatum to-day.
Ah, more than that, it is a racial ultimatum ; for
effete women produce their kind, and final racial
standards are fixed in the womb. This is the
ultimatum : Parasite or partner?
Woman must be admitted on equal terms to
participation in all activities of modern society,
or she must occupy an ever-narrowing sphere
that will crowd her at last to the soft couch of
voluptuous idleness , where Roman splendor waned
and Grecian greatness died.
Do you say that woman's sphere is in the home?
Because I so believe I am intensely concerned
that she shall find no barred doors anywhere that
open to knowledge and power which will make her
more competent in her paramount task of mother-
hood . For the sake of the future we must not
consent to send woman into the social arena

short of being fully armed.

Woman is to-day following the unerring sex
instinct that warns her to keep always by the
side of her mate. Her cry for political freedom
is a plea for and a movement toward a fuller
understanding, a more blessed helpfulness, be-
tween husband and wife, mother and son, male and
female . Those who grow not together , grow apart.
132 HUTS IN HELL

I have seen towering trees fall before the joined

cuttings of two axe-men who, working together,
with blow following blow, hewed to the heart of
the monarch of the forest. I have seen a giant
workman laying the bricks of a city pavement,
with his left and right hands toiling in perfect
unison and with almost incredible rapidity . In
the crash of a great line drive on the gridiron I
have felt the swaying of the human mass in dead-
lock, and then the impact of the reserve from
the back field that has destroyed the balance
and forced the ball over the line.
Just as the tree falls slowly before the attack
of a single axe-man, just as the paving waits on
a "one-handed " layer of bricks , just as the grid-
iron struggle remains undecided until it has felt
the drive of the reserve back, so society waits
to-day on the fulness of the strength of woman-
hood.
For the times that are to come with the close
of the war we must now prepare ; for the reforms
that will be possible then, for that mighty new
dispensation of social justice, we must doubly
arm ourselves. No resources of power available
for the world programme of peace, sobriety, eco-
nomic freedom, and democracy, dare be over-
looked. Hear the female ultimatum to the race :
a drag or a lift, a plaything or a mate, a parasite or
a partner.
 CHAPTER XI

THE FIRST CROIX DE GUERRE

SENTINEL barred our way. " Can't take

A the 'bus' in for half an hour yet ." Barnes

turned to me, and said , " Shall we walk or
wait ? " We left the car for the driver to bring
up when the failing light would make his journey
safer, and hiked up the road.
We had been stopped at the edge of the woods
between the third and second lines, half a mile
from a little village that marked the point within
the second line which was our immediate destina-
tion. Machines were not allowed beyond the

cover of the trees before dark. A few yards above

the sentinel who had challenged us the road came
under the eye of German observers .
Ten minutes of brisk walking brought us to
the second line. There had been a great air fight,
with eighteen planes in action, only a few hours
before ; and three Germans had been dropped .
An anti-aircraft gun manned by the French was
so carefully camouflaged that even when standing
within ten feet of the spot where it raised itself
unhurriedly out of the earth to go into action,
one was quite unaware of its presence.
133
134 HUTS IN HELL

Barnes, an old-time Endeavorer from Ohio,

whose business in Cleveland was big, and who
brings to the generalship of a front-line Y. M. C. A.
division a genius for leadership and a personality
that make him a marked man, was in a hurry to
be off. A mile and a half of open country lay be-
tween us and the most advanced "75's." In

front of these was the military road along which

were scattered the several ruined villages we must
visit before returning to headquarters.
The "front line," by the way, is not a string
without thickness ; from batteries to the most ad-
vanced trench it is a mile deep at least. The
great battle highway, in front of the hidden guns
that are the most exact engines of death the war
has developed, is screened carefully from the
enemy to cover the passing of trains and men.
From it deep communicating trenches run down
to battalion and company headquarters, the dug-
outs, the reserve trenches, the machine-gun nests,
and the " laterals " that stretch away for miles
facing Germany.
The gray of a February evening, whose heavy
sky completely hid the sunset, was our protection
as we left the second line behind us and swung
with long strides across the open. Then, too, we
were nearly three miles from enemy trenches, and
by the time we had come to closer quarters it
would be pitch- dark.
Not a fence or a hedge broke the monotony of
 THE FIRST CROIX DE GUERRE 135

that vast open space. Abandoned trenches, that

in a need could be quickly made war-fit, scarred
it in all directions, and shell-holes pocked it
thickly. Almost I thought myself again in the
dead season of late fall upon the high plateaus of
Montana or Wyoming. These craters, the old
ones, were not unlike the ancient buffalo-wallows
of the West ; and the tangled , heavy grass, un-
disturbed for three plantings, reminded me of the
dried virgin turf of my own country.
But I got no farther with my comparisons ; the
sounds in the air and the huge noises in the not-
too-remote distance, where the earth rose in vol-
canic eruptions to meet the sky, were unlike any
range voices I had ever heard . Across this pla-
teau of France Death has herded his flocks, and
here have been gathered some of his bloodiest
harvests.

We steered our course by the "farm " described

to us by the men on the second line. It was a
jumbled ruin overhung with vines, kindly vines
that tried to hide great wounds . A bicycle cou-
rier, speeding back with messages, set us right
again when we lost our way in the deepening
darkness ; but it was black night when we entered
our first objective on the great road .
A private directed us to the officers' mess .
Winding in and out among the shattered build-
ings, we threaded our way to an old bomb-proof.
As I came out of the night, even the flicker of the
136 HUTS IN HELL

candles in the dark, cellar-like room blinded me.

When my vision cleared, I saw approaching me
a young officer who had risen from the head of

the table ; he was the " town major, " the officer
in charge of the village. With his hands he made
a vise and gripped my shoulders, as he said, like
one in a dream, " Poling, what are you doing
here? " and, reaching back a half-dozen years, I
cried, " Pat! " It was Lieutenant Robert C. Pat-
terson , of Huntington, Ind. , — but it was not as
"Lieutenant Patterson " that I addressed him .
We met first at a young people's conference at
Winona Lake. He was president of the Christian
Endeavor society and teacher of a Sunday-school
class in the Presbyterian church at home, an ex-
ceptionally alert and vigorous young man. Out
under the trees early one morning we talked about
the gravest problem a man ever faces, " Where
shall I put my life? " Since those days at Winona
Lake I had not seen him. He had experienced
many changes, enlisting at twenty-one, three
years before our meeting in France; and, when
the challenge of a vast military need had become
unmistakable to him, he had seen service first at
Panama. Later he had been assigned to duty
at home; and in July, 1917, his eager eyes were
among the first in our expeditionary army to see
the shores of bleeding, glorious France. His ad-
vancement had been rapid , from private to ser-
geant, and from sergeant to a commission. He
 THE FIRST CROIX DE GUERRE 137

was wearing the silver bar of a first lieutenant

when we gripped each other " over there," but
before I saw again the lights off Sandy Hook
and my return was not long delayed after our
meeting - he was made a captain.
We did not eat . In his billet we sat on his bunk
and talked . We travelled fast and far in a few
minutes. Things and times had changed since
we last talked together by the quiet lake in Indi-
ana, but some things never change ; we talked
about those things that are the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever.
But Barnes was becoming impatient ; there
were long miles to go yet, and much work was to
be done. The machine had arrived and was wait-

ing, and machines look better under way than

parked on the line.

“Pat ” said a few things quietly, and then

opened his tunic and took out of a deep pocket a
well-worn leather case. In it was the first Croix
de Guerre given by the French government to
an American officer after the entry of the United
States into the war. With it was the official
citation telling of the high courage and deter-
mination which won the coveted cross of honor.
"Take it back; deliver it in person," he said.
You have not forgotten the story of the first
little affair suffered by Americans in the trenches,
the story of the barrage, the trench raid, the tak-
ing of three prisoners, and the offering of America's
138 HUTS IN HELL

first strong lives upon the altar of freedom. You

will never forget the young officer who in that
"violent bombardment, " when communications
were cut and re-enforcements held back, con-
quered the shell-fire to make his report, and then
"carried on " until the black morning was over.
America's first Croix de Guerre never left its place
by the side of my passport and movement orders,
pressed close against my body, until the last inch
of treacherous Atlantic was behind me.
But to me it speaks of the other soldier, not the
one I left out there by the battle road under the
shell-illumined sky of St. Mihiel, not the one in
muddy uniform with the old-young face of a vet-
eran and the insignia of the army of the republic ;
but that other soldier who gave his heart's full
allegiance to the Captain of the great salvation,
and who now, in the far, stern place his quest of
richer, fuller life has called him to, keeps the faith.
As these lines are being written, there lies before
me a letter from the mother of Captain Patter-
son ; and in it I read, " It was through his interest
in our local Christian Endeavor society that he
became a member of the church when he was
thirteen years old."
Out from the International Headquarters of the
Christian Endeavor movement floats a service
flag with 140 stars upon it, and every star repre-
sents 1,000 men - 140,000 young Endeavorers
now with the colors in France or in training-camps
 THE FIRST CROIX DE GUERRE 139

preparing to go - 140,000 young men from the

churches of the United States who have not
"failed to hear the call of highest patriotism."
Long ere these words will find themselves upon
the printed page the 140,000 will have become
150,000, and, if the end of this red pilgrimage be
not soon reached, the three hundred thousand
Endeavorers of military age, and their as yet un-
counted brothers, will have found their places in
the trenches or behind them, and on the ships of
the sea.

How quickly they came ! From my own local

union six officers enlisted within a few weeks ; be-
fore I left for France twenty-three State presi-
dents, active or past, were in training ; and a
great city union, that of Des Moines, found itself
without a young man left on the executive com-
mittee. Within the first year of the war Illinois
and Ohio recorded more than five Christian En-
deavorers in service for every society. A census
of Camp Hancock taken in early December, 1917,
revealed the fact that ten per cent of the men in
training there at that time were Christian En-
deavorers.

On no day in France did I look in vain for

Christian Endeavorers , and no group that I met
there was so small that it did not contain them .
My visit with Patterson that night was only the
beginning, or rather it was a high point, in a day
of continuous Christian Endeavor fellowship . In
140 HUTS IN HELL

every Y. M. C. A. hut I was greeted by Christian

Endeavorers under helmets and with gas-masks ,
at attention.What a fine little group that was
from Maine ! And then there was the brother of
a president of the Oklahoma union.
In one " hut," after the gas-warning which came
while I was speaking had been recalled , a Chris-
tian Endeavorer took me to the rise from which

an exceptional view of the flares from the guns

could be seen. The night was crowded with great
trucks bearing supplies and ammunition along the
midnight roads. Without lights, and forbidden
to use their horns, those unsung, unseen heroes
crept along, passing files of soldiers, soldiers
marching in and soldiers marching out, facing
the risk of the shells that death drops suddenly
from the sky to open chasms in the way or to
strew horses and men in wide windrows under the

ghostly trees . And on many a high seat and be-

hind many a truck-wheel I found my brethren
that night.

In another hut I was greeted by William E.

Sweet, former president of the Colorado union.
He sat on a cracker-box, and told me that Chris-
tian Endeavor made him, that he is president of
the Young Men's Christian Association in Denver,
that he is in France, that he is all that he is try-
ing to be as a Christian, under God , because of
Christian Endeavor.

At ten o'clock that night we turned off the

AMERICAN INFANTRY RESTING, APPROACHING THE FRONT IN FRANCE
From a photograph copyrighted by the Committee on Public
Information. From Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.
 THE FIRST CROIX DE GUERRE 141

main road, and in a dense growth came upon the

last hut within the zone of constant shell-fire. It
was strangely quiet . After heavy knocking the
door was cautiously opened, and a familiar face
peered out at us above a flickering candle.
"Early to bed and early to rise? " questioned
Barnes.
"No ," a big voice replied . " Nothing doing
here to-night. The boys are all up on the line.
Looks like a ' party.' They were ordered away
early and in a hurry."
While he spoke, the chap with the candle had
been inspecting me, and introductions were hardly
begun before we knew each other ; it was Rev.
Mr. Sykes, formerly president of the Minnesota
Christian Endeavor union, and as vigorous a
Christian as ever demonstrated the manhood of
the Master. There in the woods I left him under
a sky whose paths are crowded with iron messen-
gers of death, making a little bit of heaven for
hundreds of men who tread daily the places of a
man-made hell.

Our pace was more rapid now; we ran with

lights from the last hut. In twenty minutes we
were in brigade headquarters , where in the morn-
ing we had registered and secured our passes. I
thought again of the major who in arranging our
papers had shown attention to certain details
that concerned the safety and comfort of the
private soldier. His consideration had particu-
142 HUTS IN HELL

larly impressed me. Democracy differs from

Autocracy in more ways than one when she goes

to war.

Brigade headquarters was just out of the zone

of shell-fire- not that guns of large caliber could
not have reached it, but the German front oppo-
site it had thus far been satisfied with visiting
aërial bombardments upon it. Half a dozen open
mines behind the village testified to the poor aim
but clear intention of an aviator who the day
before had sought to destroy its warehouses.
As we drew away from the slumbering but well-
guarded town, off at the right, dimly outlined
against the swelling bosom of the hill, I saw white
crosses . With arms outreaching they stood above
our new-made graves. In the distance could still
be heard the voices of the guns, and the leaden
sky grew rosy where the great shells broke.
We were only a few minutes late for our mid-
night supper. I pulled off my mud-laden boots
in a daze. I had lived, it seemed, a thousand
years in fifteen hours. What a Christian En-
deavor tour it had been ! Into a dozen States it
had carried me, and back to a hundred choice
and stirring memories. I crept into my blankets
with a mixture of emotions no mortal can analyze,
but in it was unspeakable gratitude to the blessed
boys who are the supermen of our American
citizenship , the torch-bearers of civilization, the
road-makers of Christian peace.
 CHAPTER XII

THE HYMN OF HATE

AW a Dutchman to-day, saw him from here

99
" SAW
up.
The speaker indicated with his hands that
part of a man's body between hips and head.
"You know I'm a pretty good shot . Didn't
see him again."
Pause.
"Do you know what I've been thinking ever
since? I've been hoping he isn't in my fix ; I
hope he doesn't have a wife and kid ."
The red-headed sergeant from Boston was the
spokesman — a sharpshooter and a fluent user of
Sunday-school language - in his own lurid way.
It was night, and he had been hanging around for
some time waiting his chance to " spill himself."
I shall forget all of my own speeches, but never
his . I was moved too deeply for words. I stuck
my hand out, and said , " Put her there! " and he
understood.
I heard no hymn of hate on our line in France.
I saw prisoners of war treated like men ; they
had fought like men, our fellows said . I saw
wounded prisoners brought out with every con-
143
144 HUTS IN HELL

sideration and care. And as the result of a raid

that came over early in March a German captain
of infantry lies by the side of an American captain
of infantry. He was buried with military honors.
Why? That was the question I asked, and the
answer I received was a look of surprise.
Modern warfare has not changed the traditions
of American arms . I say that there is no hymn
of hate on the American front in France. There
will be desperate deeds a-plenty. In the out-
pouring of passions men will become the instru-
ments of appalling vengeance. War is not pretty.
Americans will not lightly regard a crucifixion,
and they will punish treachery. Atrocities will
have their own reward. Men cannot sing songs

of peace while handless babies cry in pain before

their eyes, and girls big with child name their
despoilers. It is not difficult to be charitable with
those who have seen so much and suffered so

greatly, when they for the moment use the only

weapon their foe seems to value and to fear.

But the programme of the army has no hymn

of hate. Its spirit is the spirit of punishing wrath
without malice ; its thrust is not for man, but for
a system ; it looks upon its foes with even pity
and regret while it abhors and hates and destroys
the power that makes them bloody pawns.
I listened one evening to the address of a one-
armed French colonel. He had been left for
dead before Verdun. Thirty-six hours he lay in
 THE HYMN OF HATE 145

the open, suffering the tortures of a living, earth-

born hell . He said :

"The German ' Hymn of Hate ' saved Paris .

Down across Belgium the gray barbarians came,
thrust forth by a philosophy of ' Might makes
right ' and believing that terrorizing a people will
conquer its will to resist. They gave their bayo-
nets an extra twist and lingered with them to be
cruel; they lost seconds. In the market-places of
Louvain they dishonored women and girls ; they
lost minutes. They butchered hostages, and left
the scars of rapine and murder upon the cities
of Flanders and Picardy ; they lost hours.
"France had her chance ! Britain came ! When
we turned, we had no time to hate, no time for
the extra bayonet-thrust. We saw no individual
German. It was for France ! We heard her cry
in the weeping of our women; she spoke to us
from her fields watered with the blood of our
brothers. Vive la France ! Vive la France!"
I learned as a lad that to master another, or to
master a task, one must first be master of himself.
Once in a great football contest I saw a college
defeated because her captain and star tackle was
goaded into slugging by the constant " dirty
work " of the lesser man opposing him. I felt at
the time that the blow which knocked the unfair
player into the mud with a streaming, broken
nose was less than he deserved , but that same
blow put my hero out of the game.
146 HUTS IN HELL

I have a book, the supreme ethical, moral, and

religious volume of all time. In it is written that
he who treasures an evil passion in his heart , or
allows it residence in his soul , is by so much less
than the man he might be. No hater can be at
the height of his possible efficiency in physical
strength, in moral courage, or in spiritual stamina.
In the long run a nation loses power in propor-
tion as her system of faith disregards moral values.
Germany has temporarily changed the map of
Europe, but unless God contradicts Himself she
is farther from triumph to-day than she was when
her legions stood before Liége. No long-distance
gun from Krupps' can outrange the truth .
"The German ' Hymn of Hate ' saved Paris."
Yes, and it will be written at the end, " The Ger-
man ' Hymn of Hate ' saved America and the
world." It was not the " Star-Spangled Banner,"
that hymn of unsullied glory, that sent America
marching out of her isolation into the slaughter-
plains of Europe ; it was the " Hymn of Hate,"
the hymn of submarines and Zeppelins, of poison
gas and unnumbered atrocities, the hymn that
mingled with its chorus the cooing of infants
about to drown and the screams of women about
to suffer the greater death.
What Britain and France and Russia and
America, perhaps, could not have done, Germany
has done herself.

But is this system of faith practical from the

 THE HYMN OF HATE 147

standpoint of the individual, the individual who

has suffered, suffered in his own body and in the
flesh of those dearer to him than his own life, the
tortures of hell? I have visited in scores of Brit-

ish homes of mourning, and have generally found

the fulfilment of the promise, " As thy days, so
shall thy strength be.”
In Cooke's Presbyterian Church, Toronto, Can-
ada, one Sunday morning of November, 1916, I
listened to a sermon preached by Rev. Mr.
McGaw, then assistant to Dr. William Patterson.
Mr. McGaw later became pastor of a church in
Montreal. He is as Irish as his name suggests .
His own family has been in France from the be-
ginning; when the sermon to which I refer was
delivered, two brothers were lying in hospitals ,
wounded. At the close of the service Mr. McGaw
prayed; and, as he prayed, I found myself in a
sweat of amazement. He said:
"Our Father, thou knowest that we do not
pray for the triumph of German arms ; we pray
for the destruction of the power that has wasted
the world, for the despoiling of the ruthless de-
spoiler, for the toppling of the last crown of
autocracy, and that the last throne of militarism
shall be tumbled down. But, our Father, as we
pray for our own who suffer, for our wounded
brethren, for our dying comrades, for our widowed
and our orphaned and our bereft, we pray for
the sufferers of the enemy."
148 HUTS IN HELL

By my side that morning sat a returned Cana-

dian soldier with blinded eyes. As I lifted my
head after the prayer, I looked into the face of
my friend who had made so great a sacrifice, and
his face was illumined by a "light that never was
on sea or land." I was wrong. McGaw was right.
The Christian must not forget whose he is and
whom he serves , even though the vindication of
righteousness seems afar off and tardy. He must,
for the sake of his country as well as for the dem-
onstration of the faith committed to him, be
a "doer of the word." He must so speak now
that when the war is over he will not be ashamed.
That the soldier does not expect to find the
"Hymn of Hate " in the pulpit, and is resentful
when he hears it there, is at least suggested by a
paragraph from a letter in " Letters from Flan-
ders," written by Lieutenant Bey Gillespie, one of
the earlier martyrs of the war, a Scotch lad of
brilliant promise, whose happy part it was to
speak, in speaking his own heart, for hundreds
of thousands of other British youths less able
than he to make vocal the quests and question-
ings of their souls :
"Personally I do not care for a mixture of the
two styles ; and when the cleric says, ' Please God
the Germans will take it in the neck,' it makes me
wriggle in my chair and feel uncomfortable all
down my back. However, when he left our
German enemies alone and got to those others
 THE HYMN OF HATE 149

with whom a bishop is more particularly con-

cerned, he was very good ; and I think the men
enjoyed him, for it was something quite new to
most of them."
In the London Times, March 15, 1918, ap-
peared a remarkable letter from a British officer
who had shortly before reached a convalescent
home in Holland after three and one-half years'

imprisonment in Germany. It was a ringing pro-

test against the agitation of the pacifists in Par-
liament and a calm but intense arraignment of
the " Landsdowne letter," which had appeared
only a short time before. But, wonderful as was
the letter itself, the spirit in which it was written
was even more wonderful . The concluding para-
graph is as follows :
"Unless Germany is beaten in the field we can-
not win this war. Any peace based on com-

promise, whatever its terms , can be only a degree

better than a British defeat . The loss of life , of
money, of time, will have been to no purpose.
The whole terrible tragedy will have to be begun
over again. And let no one think that it is for
reasons of revenge or in order to enable us to
impose harsh and heavy terms that we must
defeat the German armies. On the contrary, let
us be very generous in the hour of our victory,
but until that hour comes let us cease to wrangle

about peace terms . For the moment there can

be but one war aim - to defeat Germany."
150 HUTS IN HELL

That religion does not make the fighting man

less bold, his hand less certain , and his heart less
resolute, is evidenced by the fact that the mighti-
est soldiers since Christianity became a factor in
the affairs of men have been, to the fulness of the
light they possessed, worshippers of the Naza-
rene, followers of Him who, being the Prince of
Peace, was not afraid to die for the truth . And

the greatest of the captains, who in the height of

his power denied the sway of the Galilean, cried
out in his defeat, "What an abyss between my
deep misery and the eternal reign of Christ ! "
When this war is ended , ended in the triumph
of Democracy, -and until such triumph comes
it must not end, the words of Julian the Apos-
tate will live again : " Thou hast conquered, O
Galilean."
 CHAPTER XIII

A MAID OF BRITTANY

T was sunrise in Brittany. From the windows

I of the lazy train I watched the morning come
across the rugged hills. The thatched stone
houses set in formal fields took shape out of the
gray dawn. The unsightly, close-trimmed tree-
trunks, which were like the gnarled and twisted
fingers of a heavy hand, became clearly defined
against the sky . Cattle appeared in the meadows,
and presently people were moving in the roads.
Villages were more frequent, and before the world
was fully awake we stopped at a city.
Until now I had occupied a compartment alone
on my journey from Saint Nazaire to Brest ; but
my privacy was invaded by a most delightful
family, a father and mother and their daughter,
the daughter an exquisite miss of five . The par-
ents took the seat opposite mine, and the little
girl with her two dolls established herself by my
side, but without so much as a glance in my
direction.
I continued to be occupied with the smiling out-
of-doors until the light allowed of writing. I was
increasingly conscious of the child . Her rich
brown hair and richer eyes, her delicately tinted
151
 152 HUTS IN HELL

skin, the deftness of her tiny fingers, the laughter

in her voice, made her, for a father far removed
from the children of his own fireside, a picture to
revel in .

Presently our train stopped again . While we

waited for the unloading of baggage and the
changing of engines I amused myself by throwing
walnuts at the children, who scampered about
in wooden shoes, trying to catch a glimpse of my
hat and uniform, with which they were already
familiar as the distinguishing dress of an Ameri-
can in France. They were ragged and dirty, but
very polite ; and their thanks for the nuts were
profuse.
The commotion attracted the attention of my
little travelling-companion ; and, unconscious of
her nearness to me, she came to the window and

stood with her hand on my knee while she watched

the wild scramble without. When the train

started again, she discovered herself, and was in

confusion ; but my smile and the friendly recog-
nition of her parents re-assured her ; and, though
I could not speak her beautiful language, and she
knew not a single word of mine, we were soon fast
friends. She received the sweets my bag revealed
with a courtesy and " Merci, monsieur," and then
told me all about her dolls . My attention was
perfect, and the fact that I could not understand
her vivacious prattle did not in the least dis-
courage her.
 A MAID OF BRITTANY 153

How glorious a morning we spent together !

When I brought forth the picture of my lads and
lassies , she was happy beyond words, or rather
with many words ; for she talked with lips and
hands, eyes and body, both to her parents and
to me. And then she became very quiet, and sat
for several minutes looking at the pictures in her
hands and at me. Perhaps she sensed her new-
found friend's home-hunger ; the sympathy of a
child is perfect consolation .
When the morning lengthened toward noon,
and the little head nodded, I made a pillow for
it in my lap ; and while she slept I lost my fingers
in her curls .
It was with a pang that I saw the father prepare
the luggage for removal from the compartment ;
and, when my little friend's bonnet was brought
down from the rack, the day became suddenly
dark and uninviting. I assisted my travelling-
companions to alight, and with the perfect cour-
tesy of their country they thanked me for my
small kindnesses. I was out first, and the bags
were handed to me; then the gentleman stepped
down and gave his hand to his wife. Last in the
doorway was the child . With her pretty bonnet ,
her soft fur coat and her dolls , with her silken
hair and dimpled cheeks, she was a darling fairy.
I held up my arms, and into them she came.
With an extra hug I set her upon the platform .
For an instant she stood and looked up at me;
154 HUTS IN HELL

and then, to my disappointment, without a word

of good-by or a sign, she ran to her mother, and
said something in a tone of inquiry . The mother
smiled and nodded . The little one came tripping
back. Up reached her arms, and out puckered
her lips. Down went my arms in an eager swing.
Close about my neck she threw her chubby arms,
and on either cheek she kissed me.
Only a watchful guard saved me from missing
that train ! I stood as a man bewildered while
the little group disappeared, and for the rest of
the day I was not lonely. The touch of a baby's
hands and the pressure of a baby's lips had lifted
me above high mountains and carried me beyond
far seas .
 CHAPTER XIV

THE FIGHTING PARSON

66
ID you mean what you said about the-
"D preacher just now? Do your thinking
quick, and be prompt about speaking. If
you meant it, I'm going to punch your nose."
The speaker was " Angel Face," or as he was
called , following the militant speech recorded
above, " Gyp the Blood ." His parishioners in
S , California, might not have recognized his
language and his style of delivery on the occasion
which introduces him to my readers ; but they
could not have made a mistake in the speaker
himself ; the figure and presence of their pastor
would identify him anywhere, even at a prize-fight.
And the language used was fully warranted .
For two days one of the few "misfits " that the
Y. M. C. A. must briefly contend with in France
had been making himself particularly obnoxious
to the clergyman who finally squelched him. The
chap was new, and of the type that seeks to cover
ignorance with bluster and to be impressive by
emitting loud noises . He made the preacher the
target of a good deal of his profanity, and for
nearly two days the preacher turned the other
cheek.
155
156 HUTS IN HELL

But, having fulfilled the Scripture, the preacher

took a turn around the truck that had carried the

party to its work, a hut was being erected,

and then clamped down upon the shoulder of the
vilifier a hand that was heavy and callous with
two months of service on the " line" and preached
as already related . The mourners' bench was
instantly crowded !
" Can't you take a joke ? " the frightened husky
stuttered .
"No, not that kind," the California divine re-
plied, and continued , " We'll call it quits, since
you didn't mean it; but don't try to be funny
again until you have studied a joke-book."
The applause that greeted the " clean knock-
out" was not audible; but it was loud, and the
name " Gyp the Blood " was the reward of the
victor. The preacher is " wanted " in France, but
only the Fighting Parson need apply. Surely it
will be unnecessary to add that the "big fight "
is not of the kind just described , although the
spirit that secured the decision there is the spirit
absolutely essential to success in the other.
The present war has made many calls upon the
church, and has laid new and heavy obligations
upon the ministry. I do not aspire to deal with
the general programme of organized religious
forces, nor do I pretend to discuss seriously the
peculiar religious problems growing out of these
unparalleled times. I am ambitious only to pre-
 THE FIGHTING PARSON 157

sent a pen-picture glimpse of the preacher as I

saw him in France, the American preacher in
action with the American overseas forces.
At the outset I disclaim any prejudice for or
against. I saw him under all conditions , from
port of entry to the front lines, from cosmopoli-
tan Paris to the odoriferous country village, from
training-camp to hospital, at times when he was
conscious of being inspected and was on his
mettle, and when he thought himself unrecog-
nized and with no fellow countryman about . I
have no special brief prepared for him ; I judged
him by the measure of a man. France has only
one uniform to-day, the uniform of the soldier ;
all other distinctions as to dress have been
removed.

I found a few preachers in France who made

me thankful for the vivid picture of my own
ministerial father, which I carry always with me,
they were so disappointing! One was trying to
smoke ; it was painfully apparent that it was his
first attempt. He was doing his best to be a
good fellow, and succeeded only in being a fool .
Another was rather loudly arguing with a young

Y. M. C. A. secretary and trying to convince him

that no man could really get on with the men of
the army unless he smoked cigarettes and drank
the French wines. The younger fellow won the
debate, and did so without my seconding speech,
which for the other members of the recently ar-
158 HUTS IN HELL

rived party I felt constrained to make, since I

was a veteran of several weeks' standing.
Both of these illustrations relate to the use of
tobacco, and it will be well to add that a preacher
who would feel himself called upon to conduct an
anti-cigarette crusade on the western front would
be equally a misfit with the one laboring under the
sad delusion that to grip the hearts of the men in
uniform he must lower his own personal standards .
First of all, a man to succeed with men any-
where must run true to form, must be honest and
be his best self; he may be very sure that the
American soldier will not misjudge him or be
deceived by him. War has an amazing aptness
for ignoring reputations and discovering charac-
ter. If the preacher did not smoke on the western
side of the Atlantic, he does not need to smoke
on the eastern side ; it will take more than smoke
to make him a winner. Of course he may run
true to his best form and yet be a failure, but he
is doomed from the beginning if he turns his back
upon his personal ideals and standards .
It is a pernicious fallacy that you must be like
men to be liked by them ; sometimes men want
you to be different . There are supreme occa-
sions in a man's life when, sick of himself and of
his kind, he longs for a comrade and a guide whose
language, whose habits of mind and of body, are
the opposite of his own. Such times come more
frequently where the iron death moans by than
THE FIRST AMERICAN TROOPS TO REACH EUROPE MARCHING THROUGH
LONDON AMID THE CHEERS OF THOUSANDS OF OUR BRITISH ALLIES

Copyright by Committee on Public Information.

 THE FIGHTING PARSON 159

elsewhere. A cad or a Pharisee has no place in

France to-day, but there are no depths in real
religion and simple piety too profound for the
men who stand for their country's sake in a
soldier's narrow place between life and death .
I heard a first lieutenant from Mississippi say
to a young United Presbyterian minister : "I
came to talk to you to-day because you are dif-
ferent. I feel myself slipping. At bayonet prac-
tice a man loses a lot of the things he doesn't want
to forget. "
I would not refer to this if it were the only
incident of its kind.

I have given my two stories of preachers who

got away with a poor start. I saw hundreds of
preachers in France, American preachers with
the Y. M. C. A. and others serving as chaplains.
They are a great lot! Measured by every obliga-
tion of their ordination, and by their ability and
their willingness to adapt themselves to these
unprepared-for and utterly unanticipated condi-
tions, they are a great lot! The American preacher
in France is a minister. He is doing a tremen-
dous work now, and he will do a far greater work
when he returns.
I wish that every pastor in America could have
at least six months in actual service overseas. It

would pay any congregation to finance its minis-

ter's trip abroad for service with the Y. M. C. A.
As to the programme of the Kingdom itself,
160 HUTS IN HELL

these men who have heard the great spiritual

voice of Civilization in her rebirth, who have toiled
and listened through long and terrifying days that
crowded out of their lives the petty and super-
ficial things, who have thrilled with the uncovered
cries of men for the answer to their heart ques-
tionings, for the realization of their soul quests,
will not return to be contented within the ancient
walls of ecclesiasticism and sectarian differences .
They, with the hundreds of thousands they have
ministered to, will strike mightily against the
props of outgrown systems. With the re-enforce-

ments already promised from missionary lands,

they will save us from ourselves, and together we
shall set Christ free in His own temple. These
who have seen the folly of a too long divided com-
mand on the western front , and who have wit-
nessed the wisdom of a generalissimo there, will
call for a United Army under the Divine General-
issimo, to press forward on the spiritual front of
the world.

One day I saw six men building a road from a

military highway in to a Y. M. C. A. supply ware-
house. They were working in the rain , breaking
rock and standing ankle-deep in mud. Four of the
six men were preachers, preachers to large and dis-
tinguished congregations at home. The combined
salaries of the six amount to $30,000 ; one man, a
Wall Street broker, draws $ 12,000 ; divide $ 18,000
among the other five men !
 THE FIGHTING PARSON 161

In a first-line Y. M. C. A. division fifty-two sec-

retaries were working night and day, doing the
work of one hundred and twenty-five men.

Twenty-eight of the fifty-two were preachers .

Ah, but you say, how well were they doing it?
This very question was in my mind, and I asked
the divisional secretary to tell me how many of
the twenty-eight he would keep if he could secure
the secretarial assistance he would consider ideal.
He went over his list carefully, and said, “ Twelve. ”
Rather disquieting ! I then asked him how many
of the laymen he would retain by the same test,
and after quite as careful consideration he said,
"Ten," and added : " O, they are all great fellows.
You have asked me an efficiency question, and I
have applied my ordinary business standards ;
but some of these very men may prove to be very
efficient. "

The two interesting items are these : twenty-

eight out of fifty-two secretaries in a zone where
thirty-five secretaries are under shell-fire daily,
where the most desperate chances are daily taken
and the most menial and body-wearying tasks
are daily done, were preachers; and the preachers
and the laymen stood side by side, and were of
the same stature when a business man's efficiency
measurements were applied to them.
I found my own pastor directing the affairs of
a busy port-of-entry canteen with all the earnest-
ness and success that mark his ministry at home.
162 HUTS IN HELL

I saw the pastor of a large New Jersey "First

Baptist Church " levelling the floor in a Y. M. C. A.
officers' tent. At a brigade headquarters another
minister was in charge of a hut on the first
line, set out in the woods for the fellows' com-
pleter isolation from even the advantages of a
ruined village, and at the point where all lights
are turned out at night by supply and ammuni-
tion trucks creeping up to the line. Another, a
graduate of Northwestern University, a strong-
bodied, great-hearted, husky saint, was alone
in the dugout, the most advanced permanent
Y. M. C. A. station in any army. Just 1,600 yards
it is from our most advanced trenches, and directly
in front of our last batteries of "75's." I saw a
young minister, who is the " informal chaplain "
in a great seacoast city, marching at the head of
a little funeral party that bore three black steve-
dores to their last resting-place.
But why multiply instances ? The American
preacher is just short of omnipresent in France,
and he is doing the work of the war from Alpha
to Omega with two-handed masculine energy and
unselfish Christian zeal. His spiritual message
may be shoved across a hut counter along with a
can of beans or a bar of chocolate, or it may be
quietly spoken about a red-hot stove just before
closing-time at night, when he gathers those who
care to stay, for " family prayers " ; it may be
whispered in broken sentences to the lad who has
 THE FIGHTING PARSON 163

been gassed or to the man dying from his wounds .

In a thousand ways it may be given, but it is
being delivered .
The minister who left America to preach to
the boys at the front, who departed with the
words of his people, admiringly spoken, ringing in
his ears , and a purse of real American money
ballasting his trousers, has had some heavy seas
in passage; but he has arrived. Rude shocks have

awaited him, and his whole plan of campaign has

been ruthlessly changed; but he has not turned
back. To-day he is carrying on, and he will stay
through. I saw no more inspiring figures in the
beautiful land where so much of America's future

is now shaping, and where so many of her hopes

and fears are centred, than the preacher of the
gospel of the Son of God.
I have not said anything about the formal
religious services. They are not neglected . The
number of these increases with the raising of each
hut and the arrival of each new chaplain and sec-
retary. The pulpit messages our fighters are lis-
tening to in France are the most eloquent and
soul-feeding that are heard by Americans any-
where in the world to-day. Their messengers are
from the first line of our American congregations,
and these men of God are preaching as they never
preached before.
I have had one ambition for this very faulty
picture of the American preacher overseas -to
164 HUTS IN HELL

leave with my readers the impression of the

manhood of the ministry in a time when those
who are less than men are either pitied or

despised.
I reached a Paris hotel one evening utterly
tired , dead for rest. I defied the teachings of
Horace Fletcher , however , and ate my supper.
-
Before I had finished my meal I was late
the doors between the dining-room and the parlor
were opened, and the programme of the weekly
session of the Paris secretaries' club of the

Y. M. C. A. began. I gulped my food to get out

of the way .
Then a man began to read in a voice that
rested me and warmed my heart, a voice of rich-
ness and vibrant with personality. He read from
"Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush." I stretched my
legs far under the table, leaned hard into the
chair, and with my back to the speaker drank in
the music of his speaking.
The reader was " Dr. Freeman," Freeman of
Pasadena, one of the best-loved men in France
to-day. He is a " corker," a " prince," the " real
stuff," a "humdinger," and a hundred other
things, by the ringing testimony of those who
know him over there. I followed his trail from
the sea to the mountains . I saw the division that
set up
he "'set up " on the line, travelled the roads over
which he distributed his equipment, and heard
the men he led there tell how by day and by night
 THE FIGHTING PARSON 165

he filled his own hands with the meanest tasks

and spared not his own body. In Brest I found
his manly prayer of purity and strength on the
wall of a captain's room. In Toul his successor
told me of his unfailing resourcefulness and cheer.
Had he his own way, he would be on the line
still, out in the greater noise and danger. But
he is a good soldier. Now the spiritual director-
ship of the Y. M. C. A. for France is in his firm
hands.

We sat through a raid one night after I had

"borrowed" a pair of his socks and mussed up his
room, and we talked of the great days that are
to be when the boys come home.
Ah, one of the compensations for the war is
the friendships it has made among Christians and
the vocabulary it has given them, in which words
of faith and fellowship have crowded out the
smaller words of doubt and selfishness.
One of the best-loved men I found in France

was Freeman of Pasadena, a preacher.

[NOTE. - I wish to say that the preacher referred

to in the opening of this chapter is Rev. William
L. Stidger, pastor of the first Methodist Episcopal
Church of San José, California. — D. A. P.]
 CHAPTER XV

THREE NEW GRAVES

UT of a blue and sea-cooled sky the sun

Ο
OUTlooked down upon an ancient city of
France. Great ships fantastically camou-
flaged lay in the harbor; darting to and fro were
smaller vessels ; the streets of the city were
crowded with curious soldiers in khaki stretching
their cramped limbs after two weeks in the re-
stricted quarters of a transport.
From a military hospital three army hearses,
accompanied by their formal escorts and pre-
ceded by officers, slowly climbed a central hill
toward a cemetery. Three American flags were
draped about the caskets, and several bouquets
of flowers supplied by friends of the dead men
were carried by the drivers. As the quiet group
moved through the street, civilians and the mili-
tary stood uncovered ; a platoon of marching
French soldiers brought its guns to attention,
and even the small children removed their head-
coverings ; the populace had long since become
accustomed to military funerals, but the heart of
France never wearies of honoring the hero dead.
Through the long rows of cross-marked graves
the little procession made its way by the tri-
color of France, the Union Jack, and the crescent
166
 THREE NEW GRAVES 167

marking the graves of Algerian soldiers who gave

their lives for a cause that had not raised its ban-
ner in their own land, but for which they were
glad to die by the side of their brothers who spoke
a tongue that they did not even understand.
When the three open graves were reached, the
caskets were placed upon the supports ready for
lowering, and the brief burial service was begun.
Quietly surrounding the graves were first the
soldiers and then the simple peasants of Brittany,
who had come to mourn their own dead and who
now remained to honor the memory of those who
had journeyed from the great nation beyond the
sea to help fight the battles of democracy, of
civilization, and of their beloved France.
The chaplain of the occasion read the names
of the dead soldiers , and then said: " These men

were denied the privilege of dying at the front ;

with fine ardor they enlisted, and with bounding
enthusiasm they stood upon the deck when the
ship took the path to the open sea . They were
black men, sons of fathers or their grandsons lib-
erated by the emancipation of 1863. In the quest
of a larger freedom than was ever won for a single
race they turned their faces toward the fields
where white and black and yellow mix themselves
to blend the colors of a just and lasting peace.
They fell beneath the hand of disease that might
have stricken them at home. It is the irony of
fate that no shells ever moaned above their heads,
168 HUTS IN HELL

that no hoarse-voiced command ever sent them

charging into the enemy's lines, that no portion

of their dream of conflict and triumph ever came

true. But they had not fallen short, and their

coming has not been in vain . In their own hearts
they were soldiers ; by their own decision they
gave their lives to their country , and in the sum
of the contribution America makes to this un-

paralleled endeavor their gift will not be lost.

God measures us by what we are ; deeds are not
the outward manifestation of character ; we fail or
we succeed first in our own souls. Into the body
of the same earth out of which they came in a far
distant land, which holds those who loved them and
who had great pride in their setting forth, we lower
their bodies. We commit their spirits to Him who
was called the Prince of Peace, who is the rewarder
of every righteous action ; who gives the keys of
everlasting life to all who have kept the faith .”
A prayer followed, and then an ebony-skinned
bugler stood at the head of one of the graves. He
turned the bell of his instrument into the sunset,
and out toward sea beyond the land-locked harbor
the clear notes rang. There is no firing-squad in
a French cemetery. Back from the grave-crowded
God's half-acre the platoons marched, and then
dispersed. The day was drawing to a close ; the
graves were filled ; the earthly record of three
humble colored men who died for their country
was completed .
 CHAPTER XVI

A TALE OF TWO CHRISTIANS IN

FRANCE

E was called the "Count." How he came

HRby the name, and who christened him, I

do not know. At home he is a travelling
salesman. I saw him first with an odoriferous
pipe between his teeth and a week's growth of
beard on his face, standing in the doorway of a
Y. M. C. A. secretaries' mess at the headquar-
ters city for the First American Division — the
first division permanently in the line on the west-
ern front . He was short and stocky, with the
face of an Irish fishing-smack captain and a cough
that sounded like the fog-horn off Nantucket
Light .
I liked him instantly - liked him in spite of
his pipe. Men who worked with him all swore
by him. He was one of the key men of the fifty-
two who under the leadership of a great-hearted
and tremendously efficient Ohio business man
were carrying the work of the Y. M. C. A. through
the vital experimental stages, directly behind and
within the fighting lines on one of our sectors in
France.
169
170 HUTS IN HELL

His particular job was hut-building, and as

superintendent of as nondescript a crew of car-
penters as ever drove a nail he had already raised
a dozen or more shelters under the menace of con-
stant shell-fire ; and when I saw those shelters
they were keeping out the weather and housing
a thousand comforts for twelve thousand soldiers.
Among those who knew him it was the con-
sensus of opinion that he was a short man be-
cause so much material had been used in making
his heart. His body was constantly under the
whip of his sympathies. Far into the night his
"camionette" searched the road for stragglers.
Often he tore the blankets from his own bed to
supply a man whose experience with French
wines had been disastrous, and who would have
been put into the guard-house had the " Count "
not given him shelter under the cover of his light
truck.

He had been on the job for weeks when I met

him, but his ardor was as intense as when he
began. "Why try to sleep when slumber only
brings visions of bedraggled lads who need friendly
rooms, warming fires, writing-tables, talking-ma-
chines, red-hot drinks, and the comradeship and
sympathy of the Y. M. C. A. secretaries? " This
was his question for all interested friends who
tried to give him advice as to his own welfare.
He religiously blasphemed his laryngitis, fla-
grantly disobeyed his considerate chief, and for
 TWO CHRISTIANS IN FRANCE 171

hours broke every rule that the American Federa-

tion of Labor has ever indorsed.
He celebrated the last Sabbath of my associa-
tion with him by persuading a United Presby-
terian minister to work all day on a Y. M. C. A.
hut for four hundred drivers of supply and ammu-

nition trucks, who were quartered in a desolate

forest miles from every comfort. By putting in
the entire Sunday he gave those men a warm room
in the evening. The " Count's " tired face was
unusually attractive as he stood eating his late
supper that night, and his ministerial friend
looked as if he had a fuller understanding of the
text, "The Sabbath was made for men. "
A few hours before I left this division the
"Count" brought me a Testament, and said ,
"Doc, I'm not in your line ; but there's no telling
when I will ' get mine ' out along the road some-
where. Suppose you mark my book up ; hit the
places you know that have the stuff, and I'll be
obliged ." I " marked it up " a bit, and put a line
or two on the title-page, and left it for him. He
was away before I had finished . I am not sure
that we said, " Good-by " ; at any rate, we have
not separated .
The " Count's " words do not always do him
justice. The tobacco he smokes is not of a fancy
brand. Theologically he is hard to locate ; but he
is an unassuming, unequivocating follower of the
"Inasmuch," and a two-handed man of the Christ.
172 HUTS IN HELL

" Smith " was altogether different ; tall and

shallow-chested, thin of face and red-headed, he
looked every drop of the Scotch that flowed un-
mixed in his veins. He was a " graduated " Brit-
ish Tommy. One lung was gone, and the rest of
him had been so badly used in the blowing-up
of a sap-head that the hospital judges refused to
give him another chance to die for his country in
the trenches .
He was one of the immortal " First Hundred
Thousand," the glorious " Contemptibles " who
fought from Mons to the Marne, the mightiest
rear-guard action known in the history of wars.
He was one of those who suffered the horrors of

gas in front of Ypres. But he could not rest in

London - rest there with his wife and babies,
rest there with his laurels. Across the Channel
the cause of his race still trembled in the balance,
and it was thither that his heart commanded him.

When the army refused him absolutely, he

finally secured a position as an automobile-driver
with the American Y. M. C. A.; and so he car-
ried me from an ancient city in Brittany to a
great barrack camp established by Napoleon , but
now filled with American artillery in training.
The judgment of his associates would warm his
kindly heart if he could hear the words with which
they told me his story. The hacking, deep -seated
cough that racks him is more than the evidence
of his torture. To those who have heard it and
 TWO CHRISTIANS IN FRANCE 173

who know him it is the token of a higher heroism

than that with which he tunnelled under the
enemy's lines or faced the shock of their attack.
As I watched him disappear among the French
soldiers bound for the front , who crowded the
station on the night when I took my departure,
the words of another soldier came to me : "He
that endureth to the end shall be saved ."
 CHAPTER XVII

LLOYD GEORGE

STEPPED out of the taxi, and found myself

I in front of three old-fashioned houses . The

vicinity was one of distinction; but the
houses before me, dwarfed by the Privy Council
Building and the Foreign Office, and hard by the
Parliament Buildings , were the strays of another
century. Westminster Abbey, not far away, gives
them an excuse for staying. Looking up, I read,
"The First Lord of the Treasury, No. 10," and
knew that I was before the portals of historic
" 10 Downing Street," for a century and a half
now, with only a few intervals, the official home
of Britain's Prime Ministers, and in reality the
"White House" of the United Kingdom.
I lifted the ancient knocker that for perhaps
three centuries has announced guests and that
for at least a century and a half has called attend-
ants to usher in the statesmen and the politicians
of the earth . The door swung open, and a quiet
man dressed in a business suit took my card.
About me on the high walls of a small square
hall hung the antlered heads of deer. I followed
down a long and simple but impressive passage
174
 LLOYD GEORGE 175

to another hall, where I ran, head on, into a well-

set-up gentleman of thirty-nine, - Major Wal-
dorf Astor, who was coming to meet me. He
was delightfully informal. Through another wait-
ing-room one passes into the Council-Chamber
of the War Cabinet. Here all the British Cabi-
nets have met since the Prime Minister estab-
lished himself at " 10 Downing Street."
The room is worthy of the greatness it has
treasured. There are bookshelves about its long
walls , and the lighting is good . The books are
scarcely visible now, for they are curtained closely
with maps and charts ; here the far-flung battle
lines of the Empire, which have become the front
of civilization , are daily traced by the fingers of
the men whose hands hold Democracy's destiny.
The eastern end of the chamber is flanked on
each side by two chaste Corinthian columns . A
great table commands the centre of the room.
It is covered with green baize and well set off by
heavy, formal chairs. The room was furnished
with a larger cabinet in mind ; but every session
of the War Council is attended by those responsi-
ble for the numberless leadership tasks of the
struggle, and there are seldom vacant places .
There is only one picture in the room now.
Above the mantelpiece which tops the fireplace,
on the southern side, and directly behind the
chair of David Lloyd George it hangs, a portrait
of Francis Bacon. He was Lord Chancellor once,
176 HUTS IN HELL

although he is better remembered as a master of

human thought.
It is said that the present Prime Minister uses
the chamber as his workshop , that it is his favor-
ite room , and that he is more often in it than
anywhere else . Perhaps because of its conveni-
ence - doors open out from it into the rooms of
secretaries ; and then, too , it is large enough to
receive special deputations without waste of
energy or time. Perhaps this convenience of the
place attracts the leader in whom are centred
now the British Empire's hopes and fears, or is it
the associations of the chamber that call him?
Here sat Pitt and his cabinets. Here, when the
word came from Austerlitz, Pitt said, as he
pointed to the map of Europe that hung then
where it hangs now, " Roll it up ; it won't be
needed for another ten years !" Here they stood
with ringing cheers for Trafalgar, and here broke
the glory of Waterloo . Here Disraeli won the Suez
Canal, and Gladstone's mighty form once filled
the chair before the fire. Does the gigantic little
Welshman lift his head betimes and listen for
the voices of the Past? If he does (and his eyes
are not the hard eyes of a man who does not
dream) , he never fails to hear words prophetic
of triumph, for this room is a Chamber of Con-
querors .
As Major Astor greeted me, we turned to the
right ; and there on the stairway, with his left
 LLOYD GEORGE 177

hand resting lightly on the banister , and a smile

lighting his face, stood the Prime Minister. I
shall always be glad that I saw him thus. He
had just returned from Versailles, where matters
of vast and immediate importance to the western
front were discussed and settled . England did
not yet know that he had arrived . The morrow
was to precipitate him into one of the crucial
battles of his ministry.
As he stood there he knew of the impending
struggle -and he smiled ! - not a perfunctory
tremor of the lips, but a warming glow that made
the great hall a friendly place. The smile was
not for me, but for the gentleman at my side .
Mr. Astor is a member of the Prime Minister's
personal staff, and by his own worth a favorite
and close friend of his chief.

David Lloyd George in the moment when I

saw him on the stairway answered any question
that may have been in my mind as to the personal
quality of his leadership ; he is virile and mag-
netic . Square of shoulder and deep -chested , with
a straight neck that gives his fine head an erect
setting, he has the appearance of added height
that few stocky men possess . His color is good ;
his long hair, which is inclined to curl at the ends ,
is turning rapidly now; his eyes are clear, and
shine ; his voice is rich, and sings . He is one of
those irresistible personalities, a man who not
only dominates and rules by the mastership of
178 HUTS IN HELL

his soul as well as by right of his mental genius,

but who binds men to himself. His is the com-

plete opposite of the phlegmatic, judicial tem-

perament; his keen calculations in debate, his
weighing of an opponent in a political tourney,
are the decisions of an almost unerring intuition ,
and not the conclusions of a cold casuist.
His oratory and his whole leadership are first
of the heart. His enemies have assailed him at

this point, but they have not found it a vulner-

able one. It is the heart of the world that bleeds

and fights and triumphs . Only a master of the

language of the soul can speak to it and for it ,
can marshal its forces and inspire them to super-
human activities, can challenge it over a Calvary
and lead it to victory.

Perhaps no other man in Europe has been so

long familiar to the American people ; certainly
no other political leader of the Old World has
been so popular with the masses in America as
Lloyd George. When he risked his life to deliver
his soul against the Boer War, the United States
cried, " Bravo !" and in his battle with landlordism ,
his struggle with the House of Lords, his cham-
pioning of the rights of labor , and his unrelenting
efforts to better the conditions surrounding the
poor, he had the heart of America with him.
The story of his life is a familiar one and of
the kind that brings a mist to the eyes and a
tightening to the throat, as do the tales of the
 LLOYD GEORGE 179

boyhood of Lincoln and Hanly and Grant. He

was born in a wee house of Manchester, this

Welshman ; but an uncle, whose pride and joy

he never ceased to be, reared the future states-
man among the hills of Wales. The childhood of

Lloyd George was typical of the simple customs

and the religious faith of his people. He was an
active boy. His inclinations from the beginning
were toward the platform and public life. In
Wales, singers and poets and orators are born,
not educated ; an education follows , an educa-
tion in which environment looms large; but a
true Welshman could not, if he would, bury him-
self in the books of universities, the sophistries of
a profession, or the formalities of a calling. He
remains Nature's child .
The activities of Mr. Lloyd George in connec-
tion with the temperance reform began in his
childhood when he " spoke the pieces " and par-
ticipated in the programmes of the Band of
Hope. The ardor of his youth fired many an
audience of his townspeople with an enthusiasm
for "teetotalism " and a determination to con-

quer the traffic in spirits. It was twenty-eight

years ago that he said : " I am a simple Welsh
lad, taught , ever since I learned to lisp the words
of my wild tongue, that ' whatsoever a man sow-
eth, that shall he also reap .' This traffic, having
sown destruction and death , must reap for itself
a fruitful harvest of destruction and crime."
180 HUTS IN HELL

But it has been since the beginning of the war

that David Lloyd George has delivered his
supreme philippics against the "Trade." As Min-
ister of Munitions and as Chancellor of the Exche-
quer he had denounced rum as the super-traitor
of them all. It is not to be doubted that the
words, " We are fighting Germany, Austria, and

March 25th. , 1918 .

Dear Dr. Poling ,

I am following with great interest the

War restrictions on alcohol actually enforced and
those under consideration in the United States of
America.
We have ourselves not been neglectful
of the necessities imposed by War . We have stopped
entirely the manufacture of spirits ; we have cut down
the brewing of beer by more than two -thirds and the
hours during which it can be sold to less than one
third.
Should the exigencies of War necessitate
further restrictions we shall follow with interest
your campaign for the enforcement of War Prohibition
in the United States of Ameria.
Yours truly ,

A LETTER FROM LLOYD GEORGE TO THE AUTHOR, INDICATING HIS

CONTINUED INTEREST IN THE CAMPAIGN FOR PROHIBITION OF
THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.
 LLOYD GEORGE 181

drink, and so far as I can see the greatest of these

three deadly foes is drink," more than any other
words spoken in either the Old World or the
New have advanced Democracy toward total
prohibition . They were the weights that turned
the balance in Canada and in a dozen States of
the American Union. They brought demoraliza-
tion to the liquor forces. Their unequivocating
charge of disloyalty against drink has been irre-
sistible.
We must grant that the Prime Minister has
not been fortunate in some of his words used to

deny the petitions of his temperance constitu-

ents ; that some of his " explanations " have
seemed at least to apologize for these brave
declarations of another time , to discredit them
because of their age. The heart of the church
in Britain, where I found it less than enthusias-
tically friendly toward the Prime Minister, was
a heart more of sorrow than of bitterness, the
sorrow of a disappointment, a disappointment
that was great because so much had been expected .
But I am yet to be convinced that David Lloyd
George has turned away from "the God of his
fathers " and the idealism of his youth; and I am
able, I think, to appreciate in a small way the
circumstances that have made a great man some-
times silent in order that he may have from many
discordant voices the one message, " Get on with
the war!"
182 HUTS IN HELL

Again it is the war! There can be but one task

now. The Prime Minister, with appalling re-

sponsibility for the life of the Empire, surrounded

by men of all political faiths and representatives
of every class, is no longer merely a spokesman,
a prophet, a minister , an executive ; in him con-
centrate to such an extent the directing agencies
of the country that he has become in fact the
administration of the Government .
When I stepped away from " 10 Downing
Street," I had these words ringing in my ears :
"The Prime Minister has not changed ." I believe
that the words are true. I shall continue to be-

lieve in the man about whom they were said .

And, when he speaks again, I shall not be sur-
prised.
I walked back to my hotel . On the way I
lingered by the Thames, where only the swift
patrol-boats were stirring. There was no moon,
and a deep mist closed the sky channel to the
pirate fleet . The city was in darkness and in
peace. Up the Strand I walked to Nelson's monu-
ment , and in the lee of an old building across
from it I stood and studied its shadowy outline.
The mighty shaft was a promise from the past
in which justice did not fail, in which freedom
was not lost. It made me strong . The night
became as the day, for in it was opened the
window of hope. The sum of the experiences of the
past two hours totalled the assurance of victory.
 CHAPTER XVIII

WORTHY OF A GREAT PAST

HESE are times when it means much to

T know where some things are whose roots
run far back and deep down . Before me
as I write is a cathedral-shaped block of age-
bevelled and worm-eaten English heart of oak.
Its miniature spires rise not at all unlike those of
a Gothic cathedral. It came from one of the
original roof-beams of Holy Trinity in Hull , the
largest parish church in England . As the warden
placed it in my hands, his arm swept the high
and vaulted nave and he said, " Six hundred and
thirty-four years ago it was placed here." Six
hundred and thirty-four years ago ! Two hundred
and eight years before Columbus started on his
journey ! Six centuries, and nearly a half more,
before I stood there that fragment was part of a
mighty support lifted by the hands of men and
fitted above an altar that even then stood upon
the ruins of another altar.
America is very young, but in a new and very
vital way she now enters into the brave and
worthy things of the past.
Six weeks in England and Scotland during a
campaign for wartime prohibition gave me a
183
184 HUTS IN HELL

vivid picture of the motherland and her unrelent-

ing traditions, her customs anchored in the ages,
her unyielding might. It was early in the year ;
but even so the fields had begun to smile, the
grass was green, and presently the hedges began
to bud. The khaki-colored lanes - for soldiers
-
were on every path were bursting into song ;
there were birds everywhere.
I walked by the Humber, down which some of
the Pilgrim Fathers sailed ; and in Southampton
far to the south I stood before the new Pilgrim

monument just in front of the ruins of King

John's water-palace. Here John Alden, “ a youth
of the city," joined the immortal company; and
from the dock hard by the Mayflower sailed .
I wandered down the streets Dickens has
immortalized, and I climbed the "keep " of Con-
isboro, and stood in the window where Sir Walter
Scott placed Rebecca and the wounded Ivanhoe.
I heard my footsteps echo through the cathedrals
of London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. That su-
premely exquisite creation at York, a spectacle
of worship , burst upon my enraptured gaze like
a palace from heaven.
At dusk I followed Canon Braithwaite through
the cathedral at Winchester, England's ancient
capital. It was at the close of a vesper service of
song and prayer. Here twenty-three of England's
kings are buried , and here until Henry VIII . all
were crowned . Here the Crusaders came for their
 WORTHY OF A GREAT PAST 185

parting consecration ; across these Norman tiles

they tramped ere they turned their faces toward
the distant sepulchre ; here is " Bloody Mary's "
wedding-chair, the gift of a pope ; and the great
Canute, whose kingly dust reposes somewhere be-
neath the nave, after he had learned his lesson
from the tide that refused to obey his will , left
his crown upon the figure of the Christ just above
this old altar. In one portion of the cathedral
space is an ancient well that was in the temple
of Diana erected nineteen hundred years ago upon
the spot now covered by the cathedral itself.
While the gray-haired canon talked of the
priceless treasures for which he has long been
responsible , the choir-boys began their practice.
The music filled the mighty building, and rang
in a hundred echoes from column to column and
from the tiles of the floor to the perfectly joined
stones of the vaulted roof. The flare of our torch

so lighted the sculptured figures that they seemed

alive and moving through the air ; the singing be-
came the voices of these men and women, some

of whom were good , all of whom were human,

and who spoke so long ago.
I found particular satisfaction in treading the
stones of Rochdale, the city of John Bright. Here
during our Civil War, in spite of " soup-kitchens "
and pestilence, the cotton-workers stood against
any petition to the English government to de-
mand the lifting of the blockade of the Southern
186 HUTS IN HELL

ports . John Bright's influence for freedom was

quite as effective at home as it was in Parliament.
Scotland gave me the continuation of the story
British men and women are writing in blood
around the world, a story of sacrifice and devo-
tion unsurpassed in history . The pages of the
story blend with the pages that recite the glory
of Wallace at Bannockburn and of Robert the
Bruce. From Castle Stirling I looked out across
the windings of the firth ; from that Gibraltar of
Scottish kings my eye followed the massive
wanderings of the Grampians . I caught just a
glimpse of the Burns country at Dunoon, the
home of Highland Mary, where her wonderful
bronze memorial looks out across the estuary of
the Clyde. Here is the home of another Scottish
bard, Harry Lauder . He is a singer of a different
sort, but he plays upon the same harp of which his
illustrious fellow countryman was such a master.
From the depths of a supreme sorrow he has lifted
up a new song that has comforted a weeping
world. Some day his fellow townsmen will rear
another monument where the little city looks out
toward the sea. On it will be the name of the
gallant " Captain John," Harry Lauder's heroic
and only son.
But my wartime journey was not one of aim-
less wanderings. It brought me to many shrines ;
it brought me face to face with those who fight
the battles of Britain and those who lead them,
 WORTHY OF A GREAT PAST 187

into the homes of a people whose hospitality , even

as their courage and devotion, is unsurpassed
throughout the world . But it was a trip seriously
intended and with stern business involved .
A representative group of men and women,
compelled by what they regarded as immediate
necessity, organized a prohibition educational
campaign for the purpose of bringing to the
British people testimony as to the actual results
accomplished by the prohibition of the beverage
liquor in Russia, Canada , and the United States.
Witnesses were introduced from abroad, and a
great series of meetings was arranged. Both
prohibitionist and anti-prohibitionist supported
the unique effort, which was a gigantic educational
clinic. The addresses of the speakers were edu-
cational rather than agitational, and an open
forum in which questions were freely asked and
answered was a prominent part of each programme.
Wide publicity was secured and a vast attend-
ance. Some of the most prominent political
leaders, members of the clergy, ministers, pro-
fessional men, manufacturers, labor executives,
and writers, as well as all of the officials of the
reform , gave the movement their support . Dr.
Sir George Hunter, the distinguished publicist
and shipbuilder, was chairman of the central
• committee.

The executive genius of the campaign was a

brilliant young Canadian who led the amazing
188 HUTS IN HELL

drive that made the Province of Ontario dry,

Mr. Newton Wylie of Toronto . Wylie is a
wonder! A broken back keeps him out of the
army, but in spite of virtually constant suffering,
he is a human dynamo, virile and indefatigable,
with the double personality of an inspirational
leader and an executive. The campaign he gen-
eralled in Great Britain was a great success . It

addressed one million people from the platform

and millions more through the daily and religious
press, arrested the attention of political leaders,
destroyed the sophistries of the trade, answered
the questions of honest doubters, and over-
whelmed the arguments of the opposition . As
to the supporters of prohibition and the leaders
of the many temperance groups, it brought them
close together, and gave them unity for final
action. As the result of the campaign war pró-
hibition was brought perceptibly nearer. When

it is brought about, Great Britain will have taken

one more step in her age-long history of progress ,
a mighty step toward the victory which means
peace and freedom for mankind .
 CHAPTER XIX

RUM RATION RUINOUS

66
SERVED at Gallipoli ; I was wounded on
I the western front .
" It is my earnest opinion
that the rum ration is utterly bad."
The speaker turned now so that he faced the
larger portion of the audience that crowded the
hall to its utmost capacity, and with which he
had been seated . He then continued,
"I believe that there are thousands of glorious
British lads who would be alive to-day, recovered
from wounds and disease, restored to their country,
their loved ones, and their friends, had this rum
ration not undermined their strength and destroyed
their resistance."
The speaker was a wounded surgeon of the
Royal Medical Corps. The writer had just
finished an address in Weymouth, England . The
date was Wednesday, January 30, 1918. The
presiding officer of the evening was the mayor of
the city. Following the address an hour was
given to the asking and answering of questions
under the direction of the chairman. It was
during this time that the surgeon made his re-
markable statement . The rum ration had been
189
190 HUTS IN HELL

debated, and some apparently earnest temperance

people had gone on record in favor of it.
The writer finds absolutely nothing abroad to
cause him to change his opinion that Sir Victor
Horsley, Lord Roberts, and Lord Kitchener were
correct in their opposition to the serving of rum
as a ration to the soldiers. There was a time
when a single hour of "Dutch courage " won a
battle, and when a battle won a war; but that
time is past forever. If we were to grant the
desirability of the temporary effects resulting
from the ration, we should be bound in the light
of evidence produced to insist that the final re-
sults leave the soldier less able to resist disease,
less competent to take care of himself if wounded.
The argument that rum should be given to drown
the sensibilities, to deaden the terror of men
about to go over the top, is not valid. Rum
enough to accomplish this makes a soldier unfit
to go over the top at all into the situations where
every order must be obeyed promptly and where
every faculty must be supremely alert.
Principal Paton of the greatest public school
of Manchester, England, said to the writer that
at a certain aviation camp six young men were
dashed to the ground and killed because, owing
to the fact that they had taken liquor just before
their flights , liquor to which they were unaccus-
tomed, their machines in the higher altitude got
out of control .
DR. POLING WITH NEWTON WYLIE, OF THE TORONTO " GLOBE"
Mr. Wylie was the executive secretary of the prohibition cam-
paign in Great Britain.
 RUM RATION RUINOUS 191

I have found it quite difficult to show any

tolerance at all for the opinions of certain public
men of Great Britain , clergymen included, who
have asked for the wet canteen in the training-
camps set aside for boys of eighteen.
The effect of the rum ration upon the teetotaler
should have more attention than it has yet re-
ceived. The son of a personal friend of mine
wrote home to England that it was impossible
for him to secure water for several days while in
the trenches, and that the tea supplied him had
the rum put into it before it was served . This
lad had never tasted liquor before he left home.
In that very remarkable book, " Letters from
Flanders," written by Second Lieutenant A. D.
(Bey) Gillespie, who died at the head of his
troops on September 25, 1915, I find the follow-
ing :
"Also I had my first taste of rum, for I have to
stand by and see a lot of that served out to men
as soon as it gets dark. . . . I think that they
should arrange that men who do not want it
could get chocolate or some other small thing
instead ."
While in Scotland the writer received from a
British lady the following portion of a letter
written by her "godson," a Belgian soldier :
"If the war is the cause of many disasters, it
has also its benefits . Among them we concede
the destruction, if I may say so, of alcoholism.
192 HUTS IN HELL

In our northern countries alcohol was a neces-

sity, so to speak. Alcohol did one good ; that

was the idea firmly fixed in the minds of the
people. To-day the governments have abolished
the sale of alcohol in all the cafés. It is forbidden
to sell it to soldiers , the soldiers cannot carry it
with them, etc.; and a man is not the worse for
that, but far better off. I know many soldiers
who every day ' needed ' their drop of spirits, and
I myself was not free from the habit ; yet for
three and one-half years now I have done without
it, and really my health is better. The bad habit
is uprooted. The war has forced me to temper-
ance, as it has forced many others . This must
have happened also to civilians, for alcohol has
become dear and scarce . So much the better."
Much has been said about the " impossible ”
water of France. I crossed and recrossed France
without being at any time so situated that I
could not secure pure or purified water in ample
quantity . The American military administration
deserves great credit for the way in which it has
solved this problem for our overseas forces. From
the port of entry to the last mess-kitchen at the
front I found that where the local water-supply
was inadequate or questionable the great canvas
bags were kept constantly filled with the whole-
some beverage that to-day makes America fa-
mous from the Mediterranean Sea to the Vosges
Mountains. The great water-main laid through
 RUM RATION RUINOUS 193

the French city in which the general headquarters

of the American army was for months located
was an inspiring sight and a ringing testimony to
America's scientific attitude and her war efficiency.
As to the basis for the British rum ration, Sir
Victor Horsley refers to it as the " old pernicious
rum ration " which is given to the soldier as a
deceptive substitute for food, which decreases his
efficiency and reduces his strength. Sir Victor
was one of the most distinguished surgeons of his
time, the recognized medical authority of the
British army for a generation, and a scientist
who in his profession commanded a hearing
through the world. He has referred to the
system of supplying rum to British soldiers as
having been established by the command in
Flanders during Marlborough's campaign at the
beginning of the eighteenth century. He also
says , "It must be remembered, for the sake of
our honor as a profession, that the army medical
service, though an absolutely essential part of
His Majesty's forces, has not only never been
granted a proper place in the administration of
military affairs , but even now [early in 1917]
has no representative on the Army Council. "
The medical profession cannot be held pri-
marily responsible to the British nation for errors
in the vital question of the rum ration and the
medical and surgical care of soldiers .
Sir James McGregor, at one time the principal
194 HUTS IN HELL

medical officer of the army, issued one of the

earliest statements against the rum ration. He
says in his memoirs that on a trying desert march
down the Nile " the men had no spirits delivered
out to them, and not only did they not suffer by
this, but it contributed to the uncommon degree
of health which they had this time enjoyed."
This was written in 1801. Medical men in the
United States are familiar with the experience of
McClellan on the banks of the Potomac in 1862
when a spirit ration was issued in the belief that
it would help stop bowel complaints . After
one month the ration was withdrawn because
drunkenness and dysentery had increased .
The experiences of Lord Roberts in the Boer
War in South Africa and in India , and similar ex-
periences of General Kitchener, caused these men
to become unequivocally opposed to a ration of
rum .
The army authorities of Great Britain have
never answered Sir Victor's following conten-
tions, which had the fullest indorsement of Lord
Roberts and Lord Kitchener :
The rum ration is responsible for

1. Decadence of morale. Causation of " grousing,"

friction, and disorder.
2. Drunkenness, punishments, degradations in rank.
3. Decadence of observation and judgment. Causation
of errors and accidents.
4. Loss of endurance and diminution of physical vigor.
Causation of fatigue, falling out, and slackness.
 RUM RATION RUINOUS 195

5. Loss of resistance to cold. Causation of chilliness,

misery, and frost-bite.
6. Loss of resistance to disease (particularly diseases
occurring under conditions of wet and cold) , namely,
pneumonia, dysentery, typhoid fever.
7. Loss of efficiency in shooting. (Half the rum ration
causes a loss of 40 to 50 per cent in rifle-shooting.
The navy rum ration causes a loss of 30 per cent
in gunnery.)

In Sir Victor Horsley's last letter to Mr. Guy

Hayler of London he spoke of the great riot that
occurred in Cairo, - a riot not set on foot, as had
been reported, because the men wanted more
drink for themselves, but because they would
not stand quietly by and see the officers drinking
heavily in the hotels after the time appointed for
closing canteens to the privates. He also stated
that the enormous loss of men crippled and dead
from frost-bite and cold at Gallipoli was due to
several factors, in which alcohol played a part
not only directly, but indirectly as well, owing
to the neglect of the personal care and treatment
of the men due to the satisfaction and compla-
cency which whiskey-drinking produces. "Men

allowed things to drift," the great surgeon wrote.

I was privileged to be in the front line with
the American forces when they experienced their
first general gassing and their first raid from
German shock troops. I was with them in water-
and mud-filled trenches ; I saw them when for
five and even seven days they had been con-
196 HUTS IN HELL

stantly in the tense expectancy of men who await

a raid; I slept with them and messed with them ;
I saw them in the agonies of the gas and soaked
in the blood of their wounds ; I saw them so

completely exhausted that they fell asleep in

their snow- and water-soaked garments upon the
hard floor of a Y. M. C. A. hut, resting there
without protection only as we found newspapers
and canvas strips with which to cover them-
their own blankets had been buried by shell-fire ,
and they had just come from the more advanced
positions after being relieved.
These men had borne all without a rum ration .
The hot coffee and tea with which the Y. M. C. A.
and Red Cross and their own cooks provided them
did for them all that the rum ration could have
done, and with none of rum's evil after-effects. I
did not hear a single soldier ask for rum. As to
the insistence of some that it is impossible to
supply our forces with coffee and tea under ex-
treme front-line conditions , I was witness to the
fact that under the most extreme conditions hot
drinks were constantly furnished .
It will be kept in mind that by the term " rum
ration " we refer to the regular and daily supply
of spirits as a recognized part of the dietary of
the soldier, and not to the possible use of. alcohol
in special instances by order of medical officers.
As to this latter, I have not seen rum or spirits
used . The men have themselves informed me
 RUM RATION RUINOUS 197

that it has not been prescribed for them. I

imagine that its introduction for medicinal pur-
poses will depend very much upon the personal
attitude of individual medical men toward alcohol
as an internal medicine, just as it does in the
United States . The fact that the medical pro-
fession is represented in the councils of the Ameri-
can army, and by some of its most distinguished
leaders, and the further fact that medical au-
thority in America has banished alcohol from
the American pharmacopoeia, are re-assuring. In
having such men as Dr. Haven Emerson, for-
merly chief health officer of New York City, now a
major in the medical service in France, to counsel
those in supreme authority overseas, we are most
fortunate.

Peculiarly difficult will be the problem arising

where American soldiers are brigaded with Eng-
lish and French regiments . But it is a problem
that must and will be solved.
Under no circumstances will this nation consent
to the establishing of the rum system that now
works injury in the armies of her splendid allies.
That it does work injury, I know .
It is certainly true that the vast majority of
men now receiving the ration of rum, if asked to
express an opinion, would heartily vote for it.
It is equally true that the soldiers of our allies
are not a drunken mob , that they do not fall
under the influence of drink menasse. But the
198 HUTS IN HELL

weakening and deteriorating effect of this per-

nicious narcotic, water-absorbing, depressant drug
poison is unmistakable.
What the surgeon of the Royal Medical Corps
said at Weymouth, and all that he said, is true.
Canada does well to be aroused ; her hurt is
deep. There is tragedy in the situation that ties
the hands of a people who have sent armies of
men clean of alcohol to fight for our common
cause under the flag of their motherland. These
armies, as soon as they leave the three-mile zone
that guards the shores of Canada, pass under an
authority that thrusts upon them the curse which
their own government has destroyed.
The fact that the immediate and noticeable
sensations and effects of rum deceive men into
accepting it as a benefactor instead of a curse
does not relieve a government of responsibility
for finding and following the truth . With my
own eyes I have seen the demonstration of the
-
truth which science establishes alcohol gives
to the armies of democracy trembling limbs,
blinded eyes, deafened ears, dulled sensibilities,
hearts too frail to pump the blood of mightiest
deeds , poverty of soul in times when richest
treasures alone suffice to pay the price of justice
and of freedom .
 CHAPTER XX

PHYSICALLY COMPETENT AND

MORALLY FIT

MUST keep clean for them, and I'm going

"I to do it."
A captain of the American Expeditionary
Force spoke the words. We were standing to-
gether in front of a mantel in an old-fashioned
room in an ancient seacoast city of France. On
the mantel were the pictures of a woman and
four beautiful children. The captain was not a
saint ; he was entirely too profane to be really
good company; but, as he looked into the faces
of his wife and babies, he was very intense and
determined .

There is a question of vital interest to all

Americans and particularly to those who have
sons in the Expeditionary Forces of the United
States, and I went abroad to find the answer to
it. Rather, there are two such questions : first ,
What is the moral character of the American
soldier abroad ? and, second , What are the
American military authorities in France doing
to keep the soldier physically competent and
morally fit ?
There have been black rumors abroad. Stories
199
200 HUTS IN HELL

have been told that reflect seriously upon the

man in uniform. Leaders in high places have
been accused of protecting vice, of allowing what
amounts to a segregated district directly behind
the lines. The charge was widely circulated in

December, 1917, by certain publications, that

more than one thousand Americans from a subur-
ban community of the northeastern section of the
United States were under guard for drunkenness
after their first pay-day in France. Alarming
statements have been made concerning venereal
diseases.

I have found the answers to the questions al-

ready stated .
1. I have studied conditions in England, in
landing-ports and embarkation-ports, in London
and in rest-camps.
2. I have lived in constant contact with five
hundred American officers for a period of ten
days.
3. I have watched the American soldier in
Paris on the street, in the hotel, and in the café.
4. I have conferred with those who have special
responsibility for investigating social diseases
among men with the colors and for conducting a
comprehensive educational campaign to fortify
these men against sexual temptations.
5. I have visited hospitals under virtually all
conditions as to location and the nature of the
diseases treated .
 PHYSICALLY AND MORALLY 201

6. I have had interviews with surgeons and

other regular army officers.
7. The whole matter has been discussed with a

distinguished physician who until recently was

the chief health officer of a great American city
and a recognized authority on the relation of
liquor to vice. This physician is now in the gov-
ernment service in France and is giving special
attention to sanitation and hygiene.
8. I have had interviews with General Per-
shing and several of his staff.
9. I have given particular attention to the
French ports where American soldiers disembark,
spending several days in each of these cities . On
two occasions while I was on the ground as many
as fifteen thousand men came ashore from con-
voys in a single day. These men had their first
shore experience after a long and nerve-racking
voyage.
10. I have been closely associated with more
than five hundred Y. M. C. A. secretaries who
served under all conditions of army life. Among
these secretaries have been some of America's

most prominent business men, ministers, lawyers,

athletes, physicians , nurses , and teachers.
11. I have talked with leaders in the civilian

and political life of France.

12. For four days I have studied conditions in
our general headquarters in France and in a

divisional headquarters at the front.

202 HUTS IN HELL

13. For six days I have messed with private

soldiers under fire ; I was with them day and
night.
14. For six days I served within the front line
as a regular Y. M. C. A. secretary ; three addi-
tional days were spent somewhat farther back,
but within the immediate war zone. For three
of the six days I was entirely in charge of the
dugout which is the most advanced permanent
Y. M. C. A. station in any army, being located
within less than sixteen hundred yards of our
most advanced trench. Directly connected with
this dugout are a room of the Signal Corps, a Red
Cross first-aid station, and billets for forty-seven
men. Three other days were spent assisting in
a hut farther back, but situated above ground
and in the zone of constant shell-fire . During
these days I was brought face to face with men
confronted by the most trying conditions of mod-
ern warfare. I saw them caked with mud , chilled
with snow and ice-cold water, sick and wounded.
I witnessed the treatment that they received ; I
inspected what they ate and drank.
15. I have visited our front-line trenches,
meeting the men and officers and conversing
with them. I have seen the American soldier
under direct fire. I have measured him after
the most extensive raid the Germans had un-
til that time directed against him, and the one
in which the American army really came into
 PHYSICALLY AND MORALLY 203

its own . I have been with the American sol-

dier in a barrage , and later when he carried back
his dead and wounded and the wounded of his
enemy.
16. I have studied the American soldier after
he had marched four miles through mud-filled ,
shell-scattered trenches to his billet, relieved after
eight days of trench life during which he had
suffered everything from rain and snow to gas,
machine-gun fire, bayonet, and shrapnel. I have
seen him in repose and in action. I have seen him
before, and I have seen him after, a charge.
I believe that I not only know what the Ameri-
can soldier does in France, but that I begin to
know what he is.
He is a representative American. And he is
living on a moral plane which is above the moral
plane of civilian life at home.
I have found soldiers who are a disgrace to the
uniform ; there are individual cases and there are
groups of cases that give me keen regret. I wish
that the army had a " Botany Bay," that those
who insist upon practising the indecencies could
-
be segregated. However few these men are, —
and they are indeed the small minority, - they
constitute a menace to morale, and exert a de-
moralizing influence upon those with whom they
are associated. Then, too, there are a few officers
who represent the old idea that the soldier is
necessarily a victim of his passions, and must be
204 HUTS IN HELL

allowed, even encouraged, to gratify them. But

such officers are in a decreasing ratio to the whole,
and privates who bring an unfavorable judgment
upon their country are the exceptions, that assist
in proving the rule.
On one occasion two hundred men from just-
arrived transports began their self-appointed task
of painting a certain French city a livelier hue.
Very quickly they discovered that " decorators "
of their class were not in demand . The naval
patrol sent them back to the ships with battered
heads and wiser minds. Two hundred men out

of more than fifteen thousand tried to be naughty,

and failed ! I can imagine a lurid head-line,
"Recently Arrived Soldiers Paint City Red." Such
a head-line would have been unfair and untrue.
That story of a thousand men from the rural
community of northeastern America is abso-
lutely false. I have investigated it in every
French port where American troops land and in
in every other place where any considerable num-
ber of our men have been quartered . My in-
quiries have followed three lines, the military,
the Y. M. C. A. , and civilians . While conditions
were worse at the beginning, before our military
authorities had their own police programme

operating, nothing at all approaching this condi-

tion ever existed .
Our leaders in France have not conquered the
vices that society has battled against from the
 PHYSICALLY AND MORALLY 205

first organized beginnings of civilization ; but, if

the American Expeditionary Force is not setting
an example in moral idealism to American civil-
ian life, then I have walked through France with
my eyes closed and my ears stopped.
When you see one soldier under the influence
of liquor, do not conclude that the army is drunk !
It is at least suggestive that in three months
spent in England and France, associated with
tens of thousands of soldiers, I did not see a
single soldier , officer or private, under the influ-
ence of liquor on the street, in a public convey-
ance, or in a public building.
When you hear of one syphilitic, or a hundred,
do not traduce en masse the flower of American
manhood now transported to the richly watered
fields of France. An investigation made by a
prominent jurist of the United States, who is
also a leading layman of the Methodist Church,
revealed the following conditions in a certain port
of landing. This city has long borne the reputa-
tion of being among the most immoral of Europe.
The survey covered both white and black troops ,
and was made in areas personally inspected by
the writer.
The record for venereal diseases for four months
preceding my visit was:
206 HUTS IN HELL

Colored Troops White Troops

First Month,
108.7 men in each thousand. 16.89 men in each thousand.
Second Month,
66 66 66 66 12.5 66 66 66 66
30.9
Third Month,
66 66 66 66 8.7 66 66 66 66
21.2
Fourth Month ,
66 66 66 66 2.11 66 66 66
11.

Many of these men were found to be infected

when they reached France . Army discipline, it
will be seen, soon produced results . The rate of
venereal disease for white men when I left that

city was less than one-fourth of one per cent and

for colored soldiers, just about one per cent.
Let us think of our army division in terms of
a modern American city, a city of men, women,
and children. But here are cities of men only,
men between twenty-one and thirty-one. Yes,
men between seventeen and thirty-one. Young
men, red-blooded , far from home, inhabit these

war cities . Put such a city into your moral test-

tube ! Is it not inspiring beyond words that
these cities, by the records of the Surgeon-General
and from the reports of General Pershing, show
a venereal rate far below that of civilian life , and
a decreasing rate ; that they show little drunken-
ness ? And every statement of the War Depart-
ment concerning these vital matters has been
substantiated by my own investigations .
We shall be helped greatly in our efforts to
 PHYSICALLY AND MORALLY 207

appreciate the facts if we remember that every

soldier before he is a soldier is a man; that the
American soldiers in France are our own brothers
and our own sons ; that we have taken the best
from our colleges, our churches, our offices, our
homes, our factories and our farms, to feed the
god of war who stalks across the fields of Europe.
These men have not laid off their American ideal-
ism ; they have not abandoned their American
training and the moral and spiritual instructions
absorbed by American firesides and in American
churches and schools. We indict ourselves when
we believe wholesale charges of evil living, brought
against the finest fruit of our tree of democratic
culture .

The psychology of such charges is demoraliz-

ing. Men falsely accused are inclined to argue,
"Well, I have the name; the mark is on me;
I'll take the game ! " On the other hand, con-
fidence begets confidence. Men are made strong
by the knowledge that other men and that women
and children believe in them. Our brothers and
sons in France have won the right, not only to
our love, but to our esteem and faith as well.

There is no room to-day for the quick-spoken,

casually informed, and misinformed destructive
critic . The constructive critic in the army and
out of it, in France and in civilian life at home,
•
will have increasingly much to do ; not one
iota of service for the soldier and sailor can we
208 HUTS IN HELL

afford to abate. They are always in the danger

zone .
I found the American in uniform building up
about himself a wall of protection in the very
attitude he is assuming toward the moral excesses
practised by the few. He is resenting the indul-
gence that causes his country's civilization to be
misjudged ; he is disciplining his comrade who by
taking improper and forbidden liberties endangers
the freedom of others ; he shows a distinct pride
in the fact that American physical and moral
standards are high. I believe that for every man in
the army that is morally destroyed at least five men
are morally born again . We have spent much
time in discussing the vast task of keeping our
men fit to return to us when the war is over, and
it is time well spent . But there is another matter
quite as important : America must be made and

kept fit for these men to return to.

This is a report on conditions as they exist in
the American army, and does not deal directly
with circumstances surrounding vice and liquor
in England and in France. As to these condi-

tions in England and France, they differ widely.

Vice conditions in such cities as London and
Liverpool are particularly menacing; strong drink
is everywhere a distressing problem. In both of
these vital matters the English problem presents
difficulties in excess of those confronting the in-
vestigator in France. Through diplomatic repre-
 PHYSICALLY AND MORALLY 209

sentations and with the utmost regard for the

customs and feelings of our heroic allies certainly
the same regulations should be applied to our soldiers
overseas that now apply at home.
The results that have been thus far accom-
plished have been accomplished without conflict
with the drinking-customs of our allies. In pro-
portion as it has been found practical for our
military authorities to have absolute police con-
trol over territory occupied by American soldiers
has it been possible to deal effectively with liquor
and vice from the standpoint of administering
regulations and laws.
What is the attitude of the American military
authorities in France toward drink and vice? I
find our leaders in France aggressively and suc-
cessfully promoting the most comprehensive pro-
gramme ever attempted by a nation at war to

keep her soldiers physically competent and mor-

ally fit. An official of the British government , a
man of many distinctions and high in political life,
told me that the eyes of all the nations of Europe
were upon the well-nigh revolutionary policies of
General Pershing and his staff.
The programme of the military leaders has been
effectively supplemented by the Y. M. C. A. ,
the Red Cross , and the Salvation Army. The
Y. M. C. A. is responsible for a ministry that can-
not be overvalued . With its huts, which range
from the commodious double building in the great
210 HUTS IN HELL

cities and in the large training-camps to the foul-

smelling, dark dugouts at the front, with its
canteens and hotels for officers and privates , with
its music and its lectures, its classes in French
and its Bible classes , with its athletic leadership
and its rest-stations high among the quiet moun-
tains, with its religious services and its personal
interviews, it is meeting squarely the moral chal-
lenge of this stupendous occasion. It is the most
potent hope of the church, and God's most fruit-
ful agency, " for such a time as this." A captain
of a company of colored stevedores told me that
the Y. M. C. A. had increased the morale of his
men one hundred per cent.
As I have written these lines, I have had vividly
before me a group of American soldiers . It is
three o'clock in the morning, and they have just
marched four miles through trenches, shell-
obliterated or filled with mud and snow; they
have been relieved from the first line. They are
men from four companies of a battalion of a
division occupying a permanent position on the
western front. They have had the distinction of
experiencing the first extensive gassing directed
against American troops and of repelling the first
general raid over an American front . Of one of
the companies every commissioned officer has been
killed or wounded in the fighting of twenty hours
before ; its captain, a gallant Southern lad, died
on the parapet leading the successful counter-
 PHYSICALLY AND MORALLY 211

attack. They are covered with mud, dead for

sleep, chilled to the bone, but uncomplaining.
Some of them have fallen repeatedly on the way
out, and their faces are as black as their boots.
They lean against the counters and the tables of
the Y. M. C. A. hut, and silently drink the red-
hot tea and eat the cookies and crackers . These
are the men who have given the first clear dem-
onstration of the fighting superiority of Ameri-
can democracy over German autocracy . They
have paid a great price ; but, counting all the
cost, they have found the expenditure justified .
They are the very vanguard of the pathfinders
of civilization ; they are the knights of the
twentieth century .
I should be false to these men if, having the
evidence of their moral soundness, I did not de-
clare it ; and I should be false to those who gave
them as a priceless offering upon the altar of
freedom .
General Pershing and those who are in author-
ity with him in France deserve not a resolution of
inquiry or censure, but a vote of confidence with

the assurance of our co-operation and support.

The American soldier is the worthy inheritor
of the finest traditions of American arms, a credit
to those who bore him, an honor to the nation he
represents, and the last and best hope that civi-
lization will not fail in her struggle to establish
the might of right .
 CHAPTER XXI

VIVE LA FRANCE!

T was the tenth of May, 1917, in New York.

I The great city was alive- riotously, glori-
ously alive. Save for the narrow lane kept
for the progress of the hero of the day her main
artery flowed from building-line to building-line
with a vibrant throng. It was a supreme dem-
onstration of Democracy's melting-pot, a con-
fusion of tongues, a medley of peoples, a human
flood fed by every racial fountain of the earth.
I stood that day where the multitude was
densest, and at the very edge of the throng,
directly in front of the reviewing-platform at
Forty-second Street . We had waited , it seemed,
for hours when suddenly, as such a silence always
comes, a pregnant quiet fell over all the people.
Obedient to the universal spiritual impulse, my

eyes turned from the gray walls of the majestic

library building, and followed where ten thousand
billowing flags rolled back from Fifth Avenue
like the parting of another Red Sea. Old Glory
was everywhere, and everywhere flanking her
were the Tricolor and the Union Jack.
I had scarcely recorded the shock of that emo-
212
 VIVE LA FRANCE ! 213

tion when sharp and high-keyed sounded the hoof-

beats of horses, and drawing rapidly near were
the outriders of a distinguished company .
The eager throng surged against the officers
who guarded the open way; the voices of those
about me joined the cyclonic thunder of cheers
that rolled upon us ; there was a bedlam of horns
and bugles, and then -Joffre swept by!
Ah, I shall never cease to see him , a heroic por-
trait in red and white, painted against a great
confusion and hung beneath a sun-goldened sky.
I was very close to him, and his military cap was
lifted ; he was slightly smiling, and his eyes were
shining islands in seas of tears. His white hair
crowned his massive head rather than belied his
full and ruddy cheeks ; his shoulders were her-
culean and shaped for the load of a nation ; his
chest was broad and deep , to hold the heart of
France.

In an instant he was gone, but in that instant

the Gibraltar of the Marne, the rock against
which the flood of absolutism rolled and broke,
fixed his eyes upon the place where I stood . While
the question, "Is he looking at me? " was shaping
in my mind, clear and strong above the shout of
the multitude rang the cry, " Vive la France !
Vive la France ! Vive la France !"
Three times it came, and from a position so
close to mine that, when I swung about, I found
myself breath to breath with the voice that had
214 HUTS IN HELL

lifted it. The man was young and tall; his right
arm was bound against his chest ; his face was
deeply scarred; and he was in the uniform of the
French Flying Corps . As he flung up his un-
maimed hand and cried, " Vive la France ! Vive
la France! " he was the incarnation of the chivalry
of war .

The mighty Joffre leaned forward, gazed in-

tently, replaced his cap, and then, as warrior to
warrior, saluted .
It was a flash, an eternal moment that remains
with you and in you and of you . From the souls
of the two, the tender, iron hero of the Marne
and the young American who had crossed the sea
to help pay the debt a young Frenchman left us
nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, I caught the
gleam of brotherhood that will not die while a
grateful Democracy remembers Lafayette and
free men bear wreaths to the tomb of Washington.
 DR Y WU
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