A soldier's mother in France

Mrs. Rothschild, of Kensington Palace Green, a street in an exclusive residence district of West London, is president of a society for the distribution of Jewish literature among English Jews serving at the front, or wounded in hospitals. Not long ago the society held a large mass meeting in a seaside resort where many wealthy Jewish people go in summer.

The object of the meeting was to raise money, and Mrs. Rothschild made a special journey from her country home, a distance of twenty or thirty miles, to the resort. She did this in her zeal to make her pet war work a success, but—in so doing she broke a law of Great Britain, got herself arrested and was fined sixty shillings, about fourteen dollars and fifty cents.

For Mrs. Rothschild, ignoring the fact that gasoline is so scarce in England that most pleasure motor-cars have been retired and automobiling, except for war purposes, has been practically eliminated, deliberately hired a car to take her from her home to the meeting.

The zealous Mrs. Rothschild knew the law. She could not help knowing it, because every private car in Great Britain and almost all taxi-cabs have huge gas bags on top, and are driven by gas instead of petrol, as they call it there. But all she thought of was her war work and her mass meeting.

There are not many such women in Great Britain, but every once in a while they are caught and fined. Marie Corelli, the novelist, an ardent patriot on the surface, was heavily fined for food hoarding. At a time when food was terribly scarce in England, when even the rich went without meat, butter or sugar, and many working people ate dry bread and canned salmon, Miss Corelli’s secret larder was found to be stocked with hams, bacon, butter, sugar, tea, and all manner of delicacies to last for nearly a year.

I remember another woman of prominence who had seventeen Persian cats for whom she managed somehow to buy cream. When she was arraigned she pleaded in extenuation that the cats were used to cream, and that she gave three days every week to canteen work at one of the railroad stations. The flinty-hearted judge fined her nevertheless and threatened her with a prison sentence unless the cats’ diet was placed on a war footing.

These instances are mentioned in order to illustrate a condition of things to which we here in the United States are not altogether strangers. I was in Europe ten months out of the first year of our participation in the war, and when I returned in May I was naturally delighted to find signs that the country was thoroughly awakened, and to learn that almost every woman I knew was up to her eyes in war work.

I knew already that American women generally were aiding food conservation, saving meat, wheat and sugar for the allies, for what the United States has voluntarily sacrificed to feed Europe has done more to earn the friendship and gratitude of our allies than anything else we could have done. It is placed on a par with our war loans of money. It has redeemed us from the reputation of being dollar worshipers.

There is no question of our zeal and our generosity. There may be a question of our efficiency as war workers. It is not enough to conserve food. We must conserve effort as well. There is no reason why we should repeat the mistakes made by our allies in the beginning of the war. Just as we are benefiting from their experience in fighting Germans in the trenches, we should take advantage of their experience in war service behind the lines.

Their experience has convinced them that it is better to have a few large organizations at work than to have many small ones. It is better for various reasons. One reason is that every community has people like Mrs. Rothschild and the lady with the seventeen Persian cats. They give with one hand and waste with the other.

Another reason why it is better to support the Red Cross and the Y. M. C. A. than, for example, to form a society for furnishing enlisted men with special comforts, is that many such societies mean a duplication of effort. There are seven large organizations working officially in the war zone. Besides the two just mentioned the Salvation Army, the Knights of Columbus, the Jewish Welfare Board, the American Library Association and the Young Women’s Christian Association are doing excellent work. Among the seven our soldiers get about all the little food luxuries they need.

Soldiers are omniverous candy eaters, and they deserve all the candy they want. But ship space is precious. It is so precious that the War Department had to deprive us of the great privilege of sending packages to our sons. Only essentials, asked for by the soldiers and approved by their officers, can be shipped now.

The Y. M. C. A. has to work hard to keep its canteens supplied, for not only is shipping space limited, but the railroads all over France are congested with freight. The Red Cross uses its own motor-trucks except for long hauls. So it seems a real duty to ship as little as possible overseas, and to distribute as much as possible through one of the seven official organizations.

That is the economical way, and the only way in which the cost of distributing can be kept down. Every separate society means more overhead charges.

But what becomes of individual effort? it is suggested. We want to do something more than give money. We want to give personal service. Of course. I should like to see women in the United States in the same close personal touch with the government and with the army and navy as the women of England are. I should like to see over here an organization of women like the British Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, the “Wacks” as they are called. These women are regularly enlisted members of the army. They sign up for the duration of the war, they are under the war ministry, they are subject to discipline, they have their own officers, a uniform, they live in barracks and they are paid by the government.

The “Wacks” are organized to take the places of men who are needed to fight. They do all kinds of clerical work, they cook, wait on table at officers’ mess, they have charge of supplies, they have almost entirely taken over the signal branch, telephoning and telegraphing and the like. There really seems to be little that the “Wacks” haven’t taken over in the way of civilian tasks. They even assist the veterinarians in taking care of sick and wounded horses and mules.

There are about twenty thousand women in this branch of the British service. Some of them work in Great Britain and others in France. Often they have served under fire, and always with great bravery. The telephone and telegraph operators have been cited for coolness and devotion to duty under shell fire and air raids. Great Britain is proud of her Women’s Auxiliary Army.

She is proud also of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, known as the “Wrens,” of the great land army of women who work on farms and help feed the country and the army in France. Altogether there are over a million women in Great Britain who have signed up for government controlled war work.

I talked with General Pershing about the possibility of organizing women in America to release men for the trenches. I told him that it distressed me to see men in uniform working at card indexes, sorting mail, pounding typewriters and attending to telephones. He said that it was only a question of time before some of this work, at least, would be taken over by women.

“I know that we shall have to have women telephone operators,” said the commander. And within a few months the first women telephonists were actually in France.

General Pershing told me at the close of our conversation that he should, if consulted, recommend that the work of our women be begun at home, in the cantonments. That strikes me as an excellent idea.

Women ought to be signed up for clerical work, garden work and especially for housekeeping work in all the cantonments. A uniform is absolutely necessary, and the women should be officered and disciplined by women. They should take over most tasks not actually military, thus releasing officers and men to drill. In this way the work of speeding up a huge army would be greatly accelerated.

Our army in the cantonments and in the field abroad is very well fed, but there is no standard which has to be maintained in all the regiments. If a company has a good mess sergeant the food is good, well selected, well cooked and served. If it has a poor mess sergeant the food is abundant but not well cooked or served.

If the officers of a regiment are as zealous, thoughtful and resourceful as they ought to be the men are as well taken care of as they would be at home. I have in mind as a model officer a young first lieutenant, a Yale man, in command of a company of negro stevedores, at one of the great ports which we are using in France.

These men were all from the cotton fields of Georgia and Alabama and the levees of the lower Mississippi. They were magnificent physical specimens, but fully seventy-five per cent. were illiterate. Some officers would have looked upon them as animals only fit to work. But this officer was a real person, and to him each stevedore was an individual.

He made out of scanty materials a comfortable, sanitary, up-to-date camp for his regiment. He had a bath house and a swimming pool, a laundry, a big, cool, screened kitchen, a club for officers and a sitting-room for the men. He had a cooking squad that was the envy of the neighborhood and meals that were famous for miles around.

He told me how he did it. He said that he felt sure that among all those negroes there must be a lot of individual talent, and he went to work to find it. He found one man who was a soup and meat cook when he was not a cotton picker, and this man was made soup and meat cook. He found another cook to whom he entrusted the vegetables. Another man was taught in the town to cook desserts and pastry.

When spring came this resourceful young lieutenant planted a garden, detaching certain men from their stevedoring long enough to spade, cultivate and plant. He had one of the happiest, healthiest, most efficient working forces I saw in France. Why? Because he possessed many of the housekeeping instincts of a woman.

Not all, perhaps not many, officers in our army have housekeeping instincts, nor have they time to do what this young Yale man did. The housekeeping work of the army ought to a very great extent be in the hands of women. It is the work they know how to do. It is important, and women would be as proud to succeed in it as the soldiers are to win victories.

I would not like to be interpreted as being against all small organizations for war work. Many of the existing ones are doing good work. I know that all women can not leave their homes for regular work in any organization. But unless some miracle ends this war within a year, I hope to see a great army of American women enlisted like soldiers, for the duration of hostilities uniformed and paid workers behind the battle line here and in France, Italy, and wherever else the war calls for workers.