Our Army at the Front Part 14

Secretary Baker riding on flat car during his tour of inspection of the American Expeditionary Forces.]

Secretary Baker carried his office with him, a delightful discovery to the men in the aviation-fields, who had some problems sorely pressing for decision, and who found, when they told them to Mr. Baker, that he had no aversion to taking action on the spot. For example, at aviation headquarters, Mr. Baker asked if the fliers who came first from America were the first to have their commissions after the final flights in France. He learned that because of some delay in giving final instruction, through no fault of the aviators, these first commissions had not been given. Mr. Baker inst.i.tuted a full inquiry at once, and at the end of it directed that the commissions, when finally awarded, should bear a date one day in advance of all others, so that the priority rightfully earned should not be lost.

After hours in the field, during which hundreds of machines with American pilots flew in squadron formation, and many experts did spectacular single flights, Mr. Baker made a short speech to the fliers.

A French officer, who had been instructing at the field, said to Mr.

Baker: "With all these machines in the air, you see no more than a tenth of what America has in this one school. You will soon have no more need of French instruction. We have shown everything we know, and your young men have taken to the art with astonishing facility, as well as audacity, nerve, and resource. The danger and difficulties fascinate and inspire them. I think it must be what you call the 'sporting spirit.'"

As he was leaving the aviation-field Secretary Baker said: "The spirit of every man in this camp seems in keeping with the mission which brought him to France. The camps, appointments, and organization are admirable. It is gratifying to learn from their French instructors that our young aviators are proving themselves daring, cool, and skilful."

On the night of March 18 Secretary Baker began his preparations for a visit to the trenches. With a general commanding a division and one other officer he motored to the farthest point, where he dined and stayed the night in a French chateau. At dawn the next morning the party made ready to go on. But the Boches appeared to have a hunch.

They sh.e.l.led the road on which Secretary Baker had planned to travel with such ferocity that the officers in command refused to take the risk of permitting Mr. Baker to go over it. The American general and all the French officers then begged Mr. Baker to give up the trip to the trenches. They wasted a lot of persuasion. Mr. Baker just went by another road. A colonel of about Mr. Baker's build had loaned him a trench overcoat, and some rubber boots, and the secretary had a tin helmet and a gas-mask, but he would wear the tin helmet only for a moment, and the mask not at all.

The officers in charge of the party found presently, to their acute horror, that even the trenches were not enough for Mr. Baker. Nothing would do him but a listening-post. And when he had finally got back safe, and had come back to the communication-trenches from the front, everybody breathed a sigh of relief. The relief was premature, for the liveliest danger of all was on the return motor trip, when an immense sh.e.l.l buried itself in a crater not fifty yards from the secretary.

Fortunately, the debris flew all in the opposite direction, and n.o.body was hurt.

The First Division heard an address the following day from Secretary Baker. "It would seem more fit," he said, "and I should much prefer it, if, instead of addressing you, I should listen to your experiences. Your division has the distinction of being the first to arrive in France. May every man in your ranks aim to make the First Division the first in accomplishment. With you came a body of the marines, those well-disciplined, ship-shape soldiers of the navy.

"Yours was the first experience in being billeted, and in all the initial details of adjusting yourselves to new and strange conditions.

In this, as in developing a system of training, you were the pioneers, blazing the way, while succeeding contingents could profit by your mistakes.

"Day after day and week after week you had to continue the hard drudgery of instruction which is necessary to proficiency in modern war. You had to restrain your impatience to go into the trenches under General Pershing's wise demand for that thoroughness, the value of which you now appreciate as a result of actual service in the trenches.

"If sometimes the discipline seemed wearing, you now know you would have paid for its absence with your lives.

"If I had any advice to give, it is to strike hard and shoot straight, and I would warn you at the same time against any carelessness, any surrendering to curiosity, which would make you a mark needlessly. The better you are trained the more valuable is your life to your country, as a fighter who seeks to make the soldier of the enemy, rather than yourself, pay the supreme price of war.

"On every hand I am told that you are prepared to fight 'to the end,'

and I see this spirit in your faces. Depend upon us at home to stand by you in a spirit worthy of you."

Next Secretary Baker spoke, though informally, to the Forty-second Division, far better known as the Rainbow Division. There he explained some of the reasons for military secrecy.

"While it was in training at home I saw a good deal of the Rainbow Division," he said "Then, one day, it was gone to France, where it disappeared behind the curtain of military secrecy which must be drawn unless we choose to sacrifice the lives of our men for the sake of publicity. The enemy's elaborate intelligence system seeks at any cost to learn the strength, the preparedness, and the character of our troops. Our own intelligence service a.s.sures us that the knowledge of our army in France which some a.s.sume to exist does not, in fact, exist.

"If we were to announce the ident.i.ty of each unit that comes to France, then we would fully inform the enemy of the number and nature of our forces. Published details about any division are most useful to expert military intelligence officers in determining the state of the division's preparedness, and the probable a.s.signment of the division to any section.

"But now it is safe to mention certain divisions which were first to arrive in France and have already been in the line. This includes the Rainbow Division, famous because it is representative of all parts of the United States. This division should find in its character an inspiration to _esprit de corps_ and general excellence. It should be conscious of its mission as a symbol of national unity.

"The men of Ohio I know as Ohioans, and I am proud that they have been worthy of Ohio. A citizen of another State will find himself equally at home in some other group, and the gauge of this State's pride will be the discipline of that group of soldiers, its conduct as men, its courage, and its skill in the trenches. You may learn more than war in France. You may learn lessons from France, whose unity and courage have been a bulwark against that sinister force whose character you are learning in the trenches. The Frenchman is, first of all, a Frenchman, which stimulates, rather than weakens, his pride in Brittany as a Breton, in Lorraine as a Lorrainer, and his loyalty and affection for his own town, or village, or home. In truth he fights for his family and his home when he fights for France and civilization. Thus, you will fight best and serve best by being first an American, with no diminution of your loyalty to your State and your community.

"With us at home the development of a new national unity seems a vague process compared to the concrete process you are undergoing. You are uniting North, East, South, and West in action. We aim to support you with all our resources, to make sure that you do not fight in vain."

The brigade of the veterans was reviewed on the last day of the camp inspection.

Secretary Baker went by motor, with officers and aides, as far as the foot of the hill from which he was to review the troops deploying in the Marne valley. Twenty days of rain had made the hilltop inaccessible by motor. As Secretary Baker started up one slope, General Pershing and his aides ascended another, and the two men met at the top.

The brigade swept by at company front, with full marching equipment.

They were the first brigade to be reviewed after it had been in action, and they held to their flawless formation, chins up and chests out, in spite of clogging mud that was almost too much for the mules.

The review ended in compliments all around. Secretary Baker's enthusiasm was conveyed even to the lesser officers. General Pershing said: "These men have been there and know what it is. You can tell that by the way they throw out their chests as they swing by."

America at last had her veterans. They were to dignify the coming gift of them to heroic size.

CHAPTER XIX

A FAMOUS GESTURE

When America had put the power of all her eloquence into the growing demand among the Allies for a unified command, and when, as a result of this pressure, General Foch, chief of staff of the French Army and hero of the battle of the Marne, had been made generalissimo, General Pershing put into words in what the French called a "superb gesture" the final sacrifice his country was prepared to make.

The first of the great German drives of 1918 had halted, but the battle was nowhere near its end. General Foch was sparing every possible energy on the battle-front and heaping up every atom of force for his reserve.

And on the morning of March 28 General Pershing went to headquarters and offered the American Army in full to General Foch, to put where he pleased, without any regard whatever for America's earlier wish to fight with her army intact.

It was the final sacrifice to the idealistic point of view. It had indisputably the heroic quality. And as such it was rewarded in the countries of the Allies with appreciation beyond measure.

"I have come," said General Pershing to General Foch that morning, "to say to you that the American people would hold it a great honor for our troops if they were engaged in the present battle. I ask it of you in my name and in that of the American people.

"There is at this moment no other question than that of fighting.

Infantry, artillery, aviation--all that we have are yours, to dispose of them as you will. Others are coming, which are as numerous as will be necessary. I have come to say to you that the American people would be proud to be engaged in the greatest battle in history."

This offer was placed immediately by General Foch before the French war-council at the front, a council including Premier Clemenceau, Commander-in-Chief Petain, and Louis Loucheur, Minister of Munitions, and was immediately accepted. American Army orders went forth in French from that day. And on those orders the army was presently scattered through the vast reserve army, from Flanders with the British to Verdun with the Italians and the French. They were not to go into actual battle, except near their own sectors, till the third monster drive, in July, for General Foch makes a religion of the reserve army and Fabian tactics. But they spread through the battle-line from Switzerland to the sea, as General Pershing had suggested, and "all we have" was at work.

Paris acclaimed the move royally. _La Liberte_ wrote: "General Pershing yesterday took, in the name of his country, action which was grand in its simplicity and of moving beauty. In a few words, without adornment, but in which vibrated an accent of chivalrous pa.s.sion, General Pershing made to France the offer of an entire people. 'Take all,' he said; 'all is yours.' The honor Pershing claims is shared by us, and it is with the sentiment of real pride that our soldiers will greet into their ranks those of the New World who come to them as brothers."

Secretary Baker, from American General Headquarters, gave out a statement. "I am delighted at General Pershing's prompt and effective action," he said, "in placing all the American troops and facilities at the disposal of the Allies in the present situation.

"It will be met with hearty approval in the United States, where the people desire their expeditionary force to be of the utmost service in the common cause. I have visited all the American troops in France, some of them recently, and had an opportunity to observe the enthusiasm with which officers and men received the announcement that they would be used in the present conflict. One regiment to which the announcement was made spontaneously broke into cheers."

The British Government issued an official statement on the night of April 1: "As a result of communications which have pa.s.sed between the Prime Minister and President Wilson; of deliberations between Secretary Baker, who visited London a few days ago, and the Prime Minister, Mr.

Balfour, and Lord Derby, and consultations in France in which General Pershing and General Bliss partic.i.p.ated, important decisions have been come to by which large forces of trained men in the American Army can be brought to the a.s.sistance of the Allies in the present struggle.

"The government of our great Western ally is not only sending large numbers of American battalions to Europe during the coming critical months, but has agreed to such of its regiments as cannot be used in divisions of their own being brigaded with French and British units so long as the necessity lasts.

"By this means troops which are not sufficiently trained to fight as divisions and army corps will form part of seasoned divisions, until such time as they have completed their training and General Pershing wishes to withdraw them in order to build up the American Army.

"Throughout these discussions President Wilson has shown the greatest anxiety to do everything possible to a.s.sist the Allies, and has left nothing undone which could contribute thereto.

"This decision, however of vital importance it will be to the maintenance of the Allied strength in the next few months, will in no way diminish the need for those further measures for raising fresh troops at home to which reference has already been made.

"It is announced at once, because the Prime Minister feels that the singleness of purpose with which the United States have made this immediate and, indeed, indispensable contribution toward the triumph of the Allied cause should be clearly recognized by the British people."

Lord Reading, the British Amba.s.sador at Washington, conveyed to President Wilson a message of thanks from the British Government, for "the instant and comprehensive measures" which the President took in response to the request that American troops be used to reinforce the Allied armies in France. The Emba.s.sy then gave out a statement that "the knowledge that, owing to the President's prompt co-operation, the Allies will receive the strong reinforcement necessary during the next few months is most welcome to the British Government and people."

The London papers reflected this sentiment in even stronger terms. Said the _Westminster Gazette_: "It seals the unity of the Allied forces in France, and so far from weakening the determination to provide all possible reinforcements from this country, it will, we are confident, give it fresh energy. All the big loans America has made to Great Britain and France, her heavy contributions of food, her princely gifts through the Red Cross, and the high, stimulating utterances of President Wilson, have done much to strengthen the Allied morale and lend material a.s.sistance to the war against autocracy, but none of these counts so heavily with the ma.s.ses, because there are few families here or in France who have not a personal and intimate interest in the soldiers battling on the plains of Picardy."

The _Evening Star_ wrote: "In a true spirit of soldierly comradeship they will march to the sound of guns, and will merge their national pride in a common stock of courage for the common good. It is a chivalrous decision, and President Wilson, Mr. Baker, and General Bliss have done a very great thing in a very great way. The British and French people are moved by this splendid proof of America's fellowship in the fight for world freedom."