WHAT AMERICA IS LEARNING

Evening Star, Issue 16625, 7 January 1918, Page 6

WHAT AMERICA IS LEARNING

"LOVE AMONG THE RUINS" IN PRANCE. Sometimes it is said that America will learn much from the mistakes' of England in making war on our common foe. Whatever America may learn from the admitted blunders of those who are ever their own severest critics, America will have infinitely more to learn from Bnglandfs magnificent successes: from the rule of law above the reign of terror, the sure foundations of peace and justice that -underlie the passing lurid hour, the noble dignity and tranquil confidence, the faith and hope and charity that portray the soul of England on the firing line in Franco as surely as in Trafalgar square or on the plains of India or on the sea that no longer estranges kinsmen. In France I have been seeing the little white crosses amid the poppies and the clover, the shell holes, and the blackened tree-spines, the roofless, paneless houses of the inoffensive poor. The high roads themselves poured out an epitome of the Empire, in the red, brown, and black of inscrutable peoples of the Orient. Behind the lines by cool and ordered method the work went on that kept each fighting unit at the top notch of fitness. Women, did whatever the wiseacres once declared women could never do. They not merely nursed the wounded: they sorted and repaired equipment, thoy kept accounts, they manufactured; and sometimes in assiduity and efficiency they outdid the men beside them. The case of the girl who was injured in a collision with a locomotive while driving an ambulance was only typical. Her first question to the surgeon who amputated her leg was "Can 1 drive another ambulance?" She was own sister to the Tommy of whom a surgeon of a hospital ship has told me. 1 lie soldier was carried aboard with both

icgs nearly gone, his right arm all but cut away, and a patch over the wounded check. When the surgeon asked "What Happened to your cheek?" he grinned and wiiiKed the other eye and answered: "Fritz kissed me, sit."

On one historic battlefield I might ha.vo had my pick of "souvenirs." I did not take- one of the many relics of the mortal struggle that lay in the rank grass. It was hallowed ground—not a museum, but a mausoleum. Out of the maze of shell holes where the detonating damnation had fallen from the skies, a gleaming chalk mound (that seemed much higher than it was) held aloft a group of crosses marked with the names of heroic regiments. 1 felt that I wanted to lie down in the grass with my face upon my sleeve, alone and silent, in communion with the translated host in glory. Were all the rest of the beauty of the world demolished, there still would be, as an American woman in Prance has written me, "the beauty of soldiers' deaths."

A training eamp showed me the intensity with which your young men learn and teach, and the devotion of their seniors in precept and example. One Brushwood Boy of an instructor was saying to his men : " It's just as. it is in football. You watch tho ball, because that is the thing that makes the goal. In this bayonet drill vou watch not the man but the bayonet, because the bayonet is the thing that is to take your life. Keep your eyes on tho point of "it." With, that they weut into the grim business of " long poiut," "short point," and "jab" as if the enemy were at the door of a homo of England and they stood defending wife or sweetheart, mother or sister within. I wrote homo that it w r ill take the first casualty lists to create in America, that final inflammation of the spirit tha"S makes armies irresistible. That this .supreme incentive will come to us as it came to you is a fact we must accept, as the price of keeping faith with our ideals and taking the sole course compatible with honor.

Thereforo we learn of you. Wo find on your part a magnanimity we could not have expected, for wo did not deserve it. Instead of saying to us indignantly " Why was your Government silent when Belgium was ravaged?" or "Why did you stay out of it so long, and why did your President seem to intimate that the cause of England was no better than the cause of her enemies ?" you gave us a twohanded and a whole-hearted welcome. You even found excuses for us when we could not find excuses for ourselves. Many among you to-day are saying something like this : "We see now that Mr Wilson was wise and statesmanlike. Because of your formidable German element he could not have moved sooner if he was to move with the country unified behind him."

"We recognise with a fervent and an abiding gratitude that England built and kept the living wall that shut away the inundation of the Hun from our shores. It is now clearly seen what Germany meant to do with us. She was determined that America should bo the yokefellow of the subjugated remainder of tho world. The part of procrastinator and cunctator is of the past. Wo are with you now; and we are glad that we may look you in the eyes, \yith heads erect. It was my great satisfaction to find beyond the Channel hand-picked men, from America, whose knowledge of railway-building is not to be rattled out of their heads by all tho Busy Berthas or "whizz-bangs or poisonous magic of Klingsor's evil garden. We must, and we shall, learn by your experience; we should do you a poor service if we flung our volunteers and our drafted men prematurely into the trenches. But even before we are schooled to the gas mask and steel helmet and indurated to the trench routine, we are building up behind you a reinforcement of all but illimitable resources in men and munitions that will not fail you. Late as we were, we were not too 'late. You would probably have triumphed in the long run without us; with the help we bring the victory is assured.

There are many things you of England knew long ago that we of America are finding out. The combination of the best qualities each nation bring-- to the fellowship is irresistible. The Balkan 'Alliance was founded on a common hatred of the Turk, and little else ; on such a basis it could not last. Ours is founded, not simply on a common detestation of Prussian militarism, bat on the reciprocal affection of brothers-in-the-blood and members of s. household indivisib l *- -