AMERICA’S VANGUARD

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 145941, 26 September 1917, Page 5

AMERICA’S VANGUARD

PREPARING FOR THE BATTLEFRONT. ' \ YOUTH AND PHYSIQUE, French Headquarters, July 27. The American vanguard is in I) ranee, in spite of all Germany’s efforts to prevent its arrival, and there are millions more where these men came from. Like the first hundreds of thousands of men from the British Isles and the Dominions, who at the call of country and right followed close on the heels of .French’s “contemptible little army at the beginning of the war, they are all volunteers. 1 In other words, there are no men. like them on the Gorman side, because Germany, in the first place, is fighting for her own selfish, material aims, which do not attract volunteers from outside, whereas these young fellows, making all due allowance for adventurous spirit and the inclinations of youth, arc idealists. . Look for a moment at the map of the United States and notice how the Mississippi divides the from north to south, with over two-thirds of the total area to the west of it. Out of the whole population of the United States, a number greater than all the people who live in those western, twothirds were either themselves born on tills side of the Atlantic or are the children of European parents. In the case of moat of them, that is to say, there is a strong prima facie probability that they entertain a rooted objection to the military systems of Europe, and it is in .spite of that ingrained dislike of modern armaments, as well as in the teeth of all their traditions, that the United States are in the greatest of all wars by our side and that those first-fruits of the- crop of fighting men, whom Germany herself has in her blind folly sown on American soil, are now soldiering in France thousands of miles from their homes.

UNIVERSITY MEN IN THE RANKS

The first thing in their outward appearance which struck me yesterday, when I visited one of the string of villages in which they are quartered, was their youth—not, however, too extreme —and' their look of physical strength and health. Most of them are splendidly big and strong, and their bodies are certainly first-class material, as good, 1 should say , as any white man’s country can produce. As for their intellectual qualities, a good proportion of the recruits in this first lot are university, or what wo should call public school, men—the chauffeur who drove me round was an undergraduate of Trinity, Cambridge, as well as of Harvard —and they ought to train on rapidly. If they do not it will not he for lack of willingness and sticking to it. Eight to ten hours’ hard work—American drill for discipline and setting up and also practical field training—is the order of tho day. Old hands and new go at it together. That seems an eminently wise arrangement, Instead of forming some regiments of “veterans” and .some of younger men out of the. material available on this side of tho Atlantic tho same number of regiments will he created in which* the two sets will march shoulder to shoulder, and for two obvious reasons the best nso will bo made of the valuable stiffening of tho old guard. FRIENDS WITH THE COUNTRYSIDE. At an acute angle with the valley along which the Americans are billeted runs another valley, in which are cantonments of a certain crack corps fresh from tho fighting front. In the space between the two valleys are the training grounds on which the Americans are daily coached in all tho branches of field tactics necessary to this part of their military instruction. This fusion of the two armies acts admirably, not only in quickening the process of getting the newcomers to tho war into fighting trim, but in creating a feeling of comradeship and understanding between the in.

In tho great number of cases tiro language- difliculty lias still to be got over, but for all that tho sympathy between Young America and the old people and women and children is plainly to be seen. When the work of the day was over I saw little knots of Americans standing and sitting round cottage doors all along the rambling streets in which they are billeted—brown-faced, brown-shirtcd young fellows, with shady brown cowboy hats, obviously on excellent terms with the village folk, young and old. Sometimes there were blue uniforms as well as brown in tho groups, uniforms faded and warworn, and the thought of tho contrast between the men who know and the men who have yet to learn what modern warfare means, even though many of tho Americans were fresh from battlefields of their own, was bound to suggest itself not only, I think, to the passing spectator, but to tho newcomers themselves. THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE. It certainly is present in the mind of the American general in direct command of this first contingent of the armies of our new Allies. There is about him none of tho cocksureness, none of tho readiness to belittle in .superior manner the methods of the French and English officers, none of the “Wo are going to show you how to do it” spirit, which one might possibly expect to find in a professional observer who has viewed from the outside the mistakes that have been made and tho lessons that have had to be learned. On the contrary, he is a man who approaches tho war with a strikingly complete knowledge of its difficulties, and yet with all tho humility of a learner and inquirer. To profit by the experience that France has bought with her life-blood, to observe and consider how best and most quickly America can play her special part in helping to win the great victory—that is the attitude in which he seems to face tho duty entrusted to him. With officers who can add that spirit to their own competent knowledge of the profession of soldiering, with armies such as will certainly bo shaped from material so good as that of which these men are the first samples, with a people stirred by tbe enthusiasm for the right and hatred of tho evil which has brought the United States to stand by our side, their entry into _ tho lists makes doubly sure tho inevitable end of tho war. and the good that must come out of all its horror and cruelty and suffering.