Lest We Forget Part 27

Organized and trained 45 ambulance companies, totaling 5580 men, for service with American soldiers and sailors.

Built and maintained four laboratory cars for emergency use in stamping out epidemics at cantonments and training camps.

Started work of bettering sanitary conditions in the zones immediately surrounding the cantonments.

Established camp service bureaus to look out for comfort and welfare of soldiers in training.

Supplied 2,000,000 sweaters to soldiers and sailors.

Mobilized 14,000 trained nurses for care of our men.

Established a department of Home Service and opened training schools for workers.

Planned convalescent houses at all cantonments and training camps. Increased membership from scant half million to approximately 22,000,000.

For War Relief in other countries, including Great Britain, Russia, and Serbia $7,581,075 To supply food to American prisoners in Germany $343,304 For supplies purchased for shipment abroad $15,000,000

The Jewish Relief Societies of this country have also forwarded large sums of money to relieve the terrible suffering among their people in Russia, Poland, Turkey, Palestine, and others of the war-stricken countries. Approximately $24,000,000 was sent abroad for this purpose during the first four years of the war.

One evening the train drew into the station of a little town in France.

It stopped long enough for half a hundred tired, dusty soldiers to gain the platform, then puffed away out of sight. They were not the fighting soldiers--they were engineers. The men looked about in a bewildered way for the train with which they were supposed to connect. But it was nowhere in sight; it had gone. They were sorry not to meet the rest of their company, but there was nothing for them to do but remain in the town overnight. They walked the streets, and found that every hotel, boarding house, and private home was filled to the last cot. Thousands of American troops were in the town, on their way to the front. The engineers had ridden for many hours and were very hungry, but their pockets were nearly empty.

Suddenly they stopped before a large building painted a deep blue, and bearing the sign,

Knights of Columbus Everybody Welcome.

The half a hundred men walked in, pa.s.sed group after group of soldiers and sailors, and found the secretary. Soon they were dining on Knights of Columbus ham and eggs, without money and without price! The secretary himself served them.

They entered the large lounging room, found tables covered with good reading books, easy chairs and writing benches set about the room, and a stage at the back with piano, victrola, and a moving picture screen.

So when they least expected it, but most wanted it, they found a place that seemed like home. Knights of Comfort, the Knights of Columbus have been called, and comfort they have given to thousands of soldiers and sailors. About $50,000,000 has been raised by the society for one year of such good work.

Almost on the very battleground is another source of comfort to the fighting men,--the little huts with the sign of the Red Triangle,--the Y.M.C.A. There is hardly one American home which has not received from some soldier a letter on paper marked with the little red triangle.

Thousands have been written at the benches inside the huts, and thousands of books and magazines found in the huts have been read in spare time by the soldier lads.

Usually only the paper for letter writing is furnished at the huts, and the men buy their postage stamps. Often fifty to a hundred men are in line to purchase stamps, so that at times the secretary heaves a sigh of relief when at last he has to hang up the sign "Stamps All Out." In one hut as many as three thousand letters have been handled in one day, besides parcel-post packages, registered letters, and money-orders.

The United States government has realized the valuable services of the society and recognized it officially, permitting its men to wear the uniform, and to accompany the soldiers right into the trenches.

Often before and always after the men go into battle, the "Y" workers bring up great kettles of hot chocolate and a store of biscuit. This is a G.o.dsend to the men who have been fighting for hours with little, if anything, to eat.

Pa.s.sing over the battlefield, the workers write down messages from wounded and dying men, to be sent to their relatives. They learn all they can about those who have been taken prisoners, and so bring comfort to the people at home.

The secretaries send to the United States free of charge money from the soldiers to their home folks. In one month, a million dollars was brought to the Y.M.C.A. with the simple instructions that it be delivered to addresses given by the soldiers. The controller of the New York Life Insurance Company in France has had charge of this.

The a.s.sociation has nearly 400 motor trucks engaged in various kinds of transport work. It aids greatly in caring for and entertaining the soldiers, as many as 4000 of them at a time. It has opened many hotels in France, four of them in Paris, and owns several factories for the making of chocolate. It holds religious services for the men, providing preachers of all the different faiths. So it, too, shares in the G.o.dlike services of the Red Cross and Knights of Columbus.

Near the trenches and at training camps, other work has been done similar to that of the Y.M.C.A. and Knights of Columbus, by the Salvation Army. The soldier boys have especially enjoyed the doughnuts and pies furnished them by this society.

It has, it is said, placed 153 comfort and refreshment huts at the front in Europe, and is building many more. It maintains about 80 military homes, caring for about 100,000 men each week. It operates nearly 50 ambulances. Over 700 of its members are devoting their lives to war work in the trenches and at the camps. It was the first, it is said, of the societies of mercy at the front, and spent for the work mentioned $1,000,000, all made up of nickels and dimes of small givers, before the society made any "drive" for funds.

Letters from officials, friends, and soldier boys tell what glorious work these and other similar societies have done and are doing. They bring a little touch of heaven into the very worst places and conditions, and show the G.o.d in man.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOHN MCCRAE.

THE WORLD WAR

The story of the World War is the story of the control of the sea by the Allies, of land fighting on two fronts, the western and the eastern, and of separate scattered campaigns in Africa and Asia.

THE WESTERN FRONT

Here the war really began and here it seems likely to be decided and ended. The Germans who planned the war were ready and, using their railroads built for that purpose, rushed their armies to the Belgian border before France had hardly begun to mobilize. Luxemburg was overrun at once and Belgium invaded. The brave Belgians under General Leman held up the advance for several days at Liege and saved France and western civilization. The Huns soon occupied nearly all of Belgium, taking Brussels on August 20 and Antwerp on October 9.

They pushed on directly toward Paris, driving the British who had been landed, the Belgians, and the French, before them. They advanced to within twenty miles of Paris, near Meaux on the Marne, and were there defeated September 5-10, 1914, and forced to retreat to the Aisne, where they entrenched themselves.

The Germans had driven the British south by constantly threatening to outflank them, and there had been a race to the gates of Paris. Now the British turned the tables and, in attempting to outflank the Germans, there was a race away from Paris to the North Sea, with the final result that the enemies were lined up opposite each other, from Switzerland near the German border to the coast between Dunkirk and Ostend.

Until 1918 trench warfare continued. The Germans sought to drive the English out of Ypres, but did not succeed. In one of these attacks on April 22, 1915, gas was used for the first time.

The British and French won a great victory on the Somme, July, 1916, taking nearly 75,000 prisoners. This battle is recognized as one of the turning points of the war, for it caused the extensive retreat of the Germans the following spring. The Huns devastated the territory from which they retreated more completely and mercilessly than any army, even barbarians, had ever done before in the history of the world. The British attempted to capture Lille and the bases of the German submarines on the Belgian coast at Ostend and Zeebrugge, but were unsuccessful.

In November, 1917, General Byng, in a surprise attack in which for the first time a large number of tanks were used, broke the famous Hindenburg line of trenches and captured 8000 Germans. He soon lost all the territory he had gained and many men, through being surprised himself by attacks on both sides of the pocket or salient which he had pushed into the German lines.

The Battle of the Somme referred to above was intended to relieve the terrible pressure of the Germans on the French forts at Verdun. The German Crown Prince had attacked these in July, 1916, determined to break through at whatever cost. But the soul of France rose to the occasion and declared, "They shall not pa.s.s!" The Battle of Verdun lasted from July until December, 1916. The Germans lost half a million men, _but they did not pa.s.s_. Before many months every vantage point which the Germans had won was back in French hands.

In 1917, the French pushed the Germans back between Rheims and Soissons to the Ailette River, where they remained until the Second Battle of the Marne, July, 1918.

Little of importance happened during the winter of 1917 and 1918, and Germany, with Russia out of the way, prepared to deliver a final blow and win the war, before American troops should arrive in force. The Germans, with large numbers of troops from the eastern front, were so confident, that great fear was felt among the Allies that America would be too late.

The German plan as it unfolded itself was to attack, wave after wave, with tremendous numbers of men; to use great quant.i.ties of a new and more terrible gas; to pay no attention to losses, but to break through where the French and English lines joined; then to push the French south towards Paris and the English north towards the sea. They expected to take Amiens, forty miles from the mouth of the Somme, and to push down the river to the sea. With the broad river between them and the French, a small force could keep the French from crossing, while the great German army captured or destroyed the British, who would be hemmed in by the sea.

The attack was launched on March 21 over a front of fifty miles and it nearly succeeded. It brought the Germans to within six miles of Amiens, which would have been captured if the English on Vimy Ridge had not prevented them by holding the German line from advancing. The Germans waited a month, planning an attack which should capture Vimy Ridge and prepare the way for the capture of Amiens. In this they were unsuccessful.

Not being able to divide the armies of the French and English or to take the Channel ports, they turned in May toward Paris. They attacked in tremendous force between Rheims and Soissons and pushed forward thirty-two miles to the Marne. On July 15 they launched another great offensive over a front of fifty miles from east of Rheims to west of Chateau-Thierry. They crossed the Marne and were making some progress when, on July 18, the French and Americans struck them on the flank between Soissons and Chateau-Thierry. The Germans were forced to retreat, having lost 220,000 men, hundreds of guns, and vast stores.