THE AMERICAN ARMY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 83, 1 November 1918, Page 7

THE AMERICAN ARMY.

MOST COSMOPOLITAN IN THE WORLD. Just as the United States of America is the most cosmopolite country under the heavens, so is its army—the Army of Freedom, as it is proudly called—the most cosmopolite in tlie world. A contributor to an English paper tells bow he saw a contingent of drafted men in New Yrok on tbier way to camp to be turned into soldiers of the National Army. There were twenty-nine nationalities in that contingent, but that figure did not nearly represent the total of the “foreign element” that have found acceptance in the rapidly-created .great army of tlie United States, for the writer gives the following list of nationalities mixed up with pure Americans in one ol the great training camps:— French 2629 Italians 1364 Polish 726 German 626 Swedish 389 Hebrew 385 Russia 356 Greek .”... 218 Portuguese 168 Lithuanian 116 Spanish t 109 Turkish 67 Hungarian > 62 'Armenian . 59 Slavic 52 Gaelic 42 Danish 41 Syrian /36 Bohemian 31 Norwegian 37 Slavonia 28 Finnish 24 Welsh 21 Dutch H Albanian 9 Arabic 8 Rumanian 7 Lettish 5 Flemish 4 Chinese 4 Assyrian .4 ; Japanese 2 i Ukrainian 2 Bulgarian 2 Serbian v; 2 Phillipino 1 Maltese 1 Hawaiian 1 .Egyptian 1 Adverting to the contingent which gave rise to hi s thoughts, th e writer says: “They carried their trivial belongings, brown-paper parcels, cheap valises tied with rope, string bags. They straggled on in disorder, but they were not sad or morose. That was the dominant fact. A big Stars and Stripes waved before them, and already they seemed to have caught from the flutter of the flag something —a mere hint, but something—of the deification and dignity for which “Old Glory” stands. What wore they P What nation gave them birth P Who knows ? 1 caught a babble of languages, saw a herd of foreign faces, swarthy, olive, anaemic; yet already, on their first day of corporate life, they were moving like proud men. They were of the Army of Freedom, The idea had caught them. For freedom they, or their fathers, had come here. Uncle Sam had taken them in his big, bony arms, to his great, compassionate heart, and now they were about to help repay the debt, and they were doing it with a measure of gallantry and affection.” Ho adds that the war is making America a nation. All these men of many nations will sail to France as Americans, and they will be, after the discipline and the ideals of the camp—Americans all. “Strange is it what the war is doing here in America, strange and wonderful. The effect is so huge that one can see it only as a vast amorphous mass, moving with splutters of luminosity towards a shining goal.”