I VERY cordially call attention to this account of the work of
one of the field sections of the American Ambulance in France,
told out of his own experience by a young man, a graduate of the
University of Virginia, who has been driving an ambulance at the
front. The article came through Hon. A. Piatt Andrew, formerly
Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury, and for two
years treasurer of the American Red Cross. Mr. Andrew has taken an
active part in the organization of the work. He writes that many
American college graduates are engaged in the field sections, and
that they and others "have been working for months with a devotion
and courage which have commanded glowing tributes of gratitude
and admiration from many French officers." In a second letter Mr.
Andrew states that the faithful Mignot (spoken of in this article)
was killed when the Germans bombarded the headquarters of the
field section.
Every young man just leaving college--from Harvard, from Yale,
from Princeton, from Michigan, Wisconsin, or California, from
Virginia or Sewanee, in short, from every college in the
country--ought to feel it incumbent on him at this time either to
try to render some assistance to those who are battling for the
right on behalf of Belgium, or else to try to fit himself to help
his own country if in the future she is attacked as wantonly as
Belgium has been attacked. The United States has played a most
ignoble part for the last thirteen months. Our Government has
declined to keep its plighted faith, has declined to take action
for justice and right, as it was pledged to take action under the
Hague Conventions. At the same time, it has refused to protect
its own citizens; and it has refused even to prepare for its own
defence. It has treated empty rhetoric and adroit phrase-making
as a substitute for deeds. In spite of our solemn covenant to see
that the neutrality of unoffending nations like Belgium was not
violated; our solemn covenant to see that undefended towns were
not bombarded, as they have been again and again bombarded in
France, England, and Belgium, and hundreds of women and children
killed; our solemn covenant to see that inhuman and cruel methods
of warfare--such as the use of poisonous gas--were not used,
we have, in a spirit of cold, selfish, and timid disregard of
our obligations for others, refused even to protest against
such wrongdoing, and, with abject indifference to right, the
professional pacifists have spent their time merely in clamoring
for a peace that should consecrate successful wrong. What is even
more serious, we have wholly failed to act effectively when our
own men, women, and children were murdered on the high seas by the
order of the German Government. Moreover, we have declined to take
any effective steps when our men have been murdered and our women
raped in Mexico--and of all ineffective steps the last proposal to
get Bolivia and Guatemala to do what we have not the manliness to
do was the most ineffective.
But there have been a few individuals who, acting as individuals
or in organizations, have to a limited extent by their private
efforts made partially good our governmental shortcomings. The
body of men and women for whom Mr. Andrew speaks is one of these
organizations. I earnestly hope that his appeal will be heeded and
that everything possible will be done to continue to make the work
effective.