Going through the long communication trench, between the ruined city of
Rheims and an observation lookout, with its view of the German front
trench, we passed several soldiers digging an opening in the soft white
marl, into a parallel trench. The captain in charge called my attention
to a French poilu. His hair was quite black, save for the half inch next
to the scalp and that was white as snow. If one had lifted up his hair
and estimated his age by the last two inches of the jet locks the poilu
would have been about thirty-five, but the hair, pure white at the
roots, and a glance at his face told us that he was fifty-five to sixty.
"He passed inspection," said the captain, "by dyeing his hair, and
several weeks ago he broke the bottle of dye. Now he is half scared to
death for fear he will be thrown out, because he is at the beginning of
old age. Still I have no better soldier, no stronger, braver man. But I
am hoping much from a friend in Epernay, to whom I sent for a bottle of
black hair dye."
So long as the Frenchmen have that spirit France will never be defeated.
Many weeks ago I was in a manufacturing town near Pittsburgh. The wind
was sharp and chill. All overcoats were turned up at the collar. On a
box stood a young Australian lieutenant. His cheeks held two fiery
spots. He was telling the story of the second battle of Ypres. While he
talked you walked with him the streets of the doomed city, you heard the
crash of the great shells as they smashed through the public buildings;
you witnessed the burning of the Cloth Hall and shivered as the noble
structure fell. One laughed with him in his moments of humour and wept
over the sorrows of the refugees. He pleaded with the Welshmen and the
Cornishmen, and told them that the motherland was bleeding to death and
that now every boy counted. He flogged his hearers, scoffed at them,
praised them, wept, laughed, reviled, transformed and finally conquered
them.
At the close, shaking hands with him, lo! he was burning with fever,
with skin hot and dry. "Lieutenant, you should be at the hotel, in bed.
You will kill yourself speaking in this cold air."
"Well," he answered, "there are plenty of our boys who are perfectly
sound who will be killed inside of three months. I have the t. b.,
(tuberculosis), but I believe that I can pull through a year. I have
enlisted over one hundred coal miners from Wales and iron-workers from
Cornwall. I am willing to die for the motherland, after a year of t. b.,
since my pals will be dead within three months through bullets. And when
I die I want to die with the consciousness that I have kept my manhood."
I left that poor, wounded, half-dead young soldier with the feeling that
I had been in the presence of a superior being.
Over against these heroes stand the slackers. There are hundreds and
thousands of young men from allied countries who are of draft age, who
find refuge in this land. There are other thousands who have been
exempted, one because he has a flat instep, another because he has had
trouble with his eyes or his teeth; or has tuberculosis, in its initial
form, or is a victim of bronchitis. Most of these men owe it to their
country and themselves to tear up their exemption papers. They earn
their living in this country, working ten hours a day, but they will not
work six or eight hours a day for Old England, thus releasing some young
man to go to the front.
The question is not whether the youth has an exemption paper. The heart
of the question is, Has he any moral right to accept an exemption? This
war is being fought by untold thousands of soldiers who could obtain
half a dozen exemptions. They prefer to run the risk of death in six
months, to looking after their own hides and keeping well away from
danger for the next six years or sixty. No one who has been in the coal
regions or in the great mines of the Rocky Mountains but realizes that
there are an enormous number of allied slackers in this country. They
have left their country to its dire peril at a moment when Old England
is bleeding to death--when every man counts and when the cripples, the
invalids, the old men, the women, everybody who can give four hours or
eight of work a day should enter the great war offices or commissary
departments and do office work, and thus release the stronger men for
their work at the front.
The time has fully come when Americans should ask themselves the
question whether or not they have a moral right to support with money
that could be far better used, in the war stamp purchases or Red Cross
work, all these slackers and cowards, at a time when the motherland asks
them to throw away their exemption papers, in an hour when civilization,
liberty and humanity are treasures trembling in the balance.