THE SPIRIT OF THE PEOPLE
There could not have been a spirit more eager for service, more
inspired by patriotic zeal, more willing to do whatever would aid the
Government in its prosecution of the war or support the efforts of
the fighting forces than was manifest among the great masses of the
American people. Whatever they were asked to give to provide the means
of war, whether by taxation, by buying of bonds, by outright gift,
by sacrifice, by personal effort, they gave with ungrudging heart
and overflowing hands. They offered their sacrifices and volunteered
their effort without waiting to be asked and they spontaneously
aligned themselves in every organized activity for the war and joined
their voluntary efforts together for the nation-wide team-work that
alone would make it a success. The sense of personal responsibility,
the understanding of the importance of individual effort, had a new
birth in their hearts and the deep-lying springs of love of country
gushed forth anew at the call of her need. There could not have been
a more triumphant vindication of the worth to humanity of American
institutions and American ideals than was given by the spirit
manifested by the American people throughout our participation in the
world war. So high, eager and intense, indeed, was the general wish
for rapid progress in war production and war making that its desires
frequently outran possibilities and led many to demand results that
only a miracle could produce.
Men of trade, industry, engineering, of all manner of business and
professional life willingly agreed to the curtailment, even the
complete stopping of their own affairs if the Government needed
their services, their supply of coal, or their raw materials for its
war production, or turned to its uses the ships in which they were
accustomed to import or export their goods. In and out of the various
committees, boards and administrations that directed the country’s
business life for war purposes went a constant stream of these men,
anxious only to serve their country and ready to make any sacrifice
for America’s sake. “Tell me what you want, let me know what I can
do, and I’ll do it,” was their unvarying appeal. Every official and
every civilian in the temporary service of the Government who came
into contact with the business and professional men of the country
will bear witness to the patriotic and self-sacrificing spirit that
was shown by them from the moment the nation entered the war. Over
and over again these officials, permanent and temporary, have said to
the writer of this book, in answer to her inquiry as to the spirit of
those of whom they had had to ask sacrifices of this sort: “They’ve
been splendid”--“Their spirit couldn’t have been finer and more
patriotic”--“My experiences with them have made me prouder than ever to
be an American and a fellow citizen of such men.”
Great numbers of these men, scores of them, leaders in all kinds of
business, experts in technical and engineering fields, gave up their
high-salaried positions or left their offices in charge of subordinates
and offered their services to the Government. It was a war in which the
scientific expert at home, the man of business, the engineer, was of
equal consequence with the fighting man and the sum of the ability, the
knowledge and the experience thus put into the hands of the Government
could not have been purchased at its market value for millions of
dollars.
As the Government is forbidden to accept free service they were paid
a nominal sum and were known as “The Government’s dollar-a-year men.”
Putting their own affairs aside they worked with zeal, long hours and
incessantly, drawing upon their knowledge and their connections, making
engagements and holding conferences indifferently for noon or midnight,
that the nation might get itself upon a war footing quickly and
efficiently and make its war stroke mighty and decisive. The chairman
of one of the Government boards who had come in contact with many of
these men and was familiar with their private position and importance
in the business world estimated that they were sacrificing profits and
salaries that would aggregate as much as $30,000,000 per year.
The response was equally zealous in every phase of life. Periodicals of
every sort--daily and weekly papers, magazines, trade journals--opened
their columns for the publication of articles that made known what
the Government needed and thus circulated far and wide, through city,
town and country, information concerning the need for food production
and food conservation and how these could be accomplished, and how and
why fuel should be saved, concerning the Red Cross, Liberty Loans,
War Saving Stamps, pro-German propaganda. They gave the use of their
advertising columns for campaigns for the collecting of money for war
sufferers and for the big-brothering of our own fighting men. An expert
estimate of the value of this donated space put it at $2,000,000.
Hundreds of pages for these and similar purposes were paid for also
by business firms. Department stores gave the use of show windows for
displays that would aid war work and war relief organizations. Artists
and illustrators turned their pencils and brushes to the work of making
posters and illustrations for the Food and Fuel Administrations, the
Labor Department, the Shipping Board, the Liberty Loan and Savings
Stamps campaigns, and other work that would aid in prosecution of the
war, giving in all about three thousand poster designs, cartoons,
paintings and drawings.
Chambers of Commerce and other business organizations had their war
service committees which were on the alert for ways in which such
bodies or their individual members could serve the nation. There was
hardly a woman’s club in the whole country but had its committee for
war work which brought its members into line for war service of varied
sorts. Churches and religious bodies set themselves to raise money
and to give personal services that would be not only contributions
toward the winning of the war but would also be of deep and abiding
influence upon the national life. Their members and committees held
meetings to further the cause of America in the great war, distributed
war literature, furnished workers for the various campaigns for war
purposes and war relief, gave Bibles by the hundred thousand to the
fighting forces and in the quickening of Christian spirit which was
born out of the tense emotions of the time the various denominations
united their hearts and hands as they had never done before in common
service for the needs of the country.
Young people and children were anxious to do their share, however
small, in work for the war. The Boy Scouts were especially efficient
and eager in many kinds of service. They sold millions of dollars’
worth of Thrift and War Savings Stamps; they gave noteworthy aid in
every Liberty Loan campaign, securing over a million subscriptions;
they were active and helpful in the uncovering of certain forms of
enemy activity; they located for the Government quantities of walnut
trees and groves whose timber was much needed for airplane and gunstock
production. Girl Scouts also were busy and useful in the Liberty Loan
campaigns, in the selling of Thrift and War Stamps, the cultivating of
war gardens, the making of sandwiches and dainties for hospitals and
canteens and in Red Cross service. In the School Garden Army for the
summer of 1918 there were enrolled 1,500,000 children under sixteen
years of age whose garden work produced an amount of food worth an
average of $10 for each child. When the armistice was signed the plans
were well under way for the tripling of that number of members for the
following year. The Boys’ Working Reserve, which admitted only boys
over sixteen, had 250,000 members who spent the summer of 1918 in work
on farms and in truck gardens. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and other
boys’ and girls’ clubs diligently collected nut shells and fruit pits
needed for the making of gas masks. In schools all over the country
children to the number of nearly 10,000,000, from the kindergarten
to the high school, were enrolled in the Junior Red Cross and as its
members they sewed and knitted and folded bandages, raised money for
its service in many ingenious ways, saved food and money and salvaged
all manner of household wastes. As “Victory Boys” and “Victory Girls”
they enlisted by the thousands to aid in the great campaign which in
November, 1918, raised over $200,000,000 as a war-chest for the seven
chief welfare organizations working with the American fighting forces,
each one of them agreeing to earn a certain amount for this war service.
The great body of industrial workers, with few and unimportant
exceptions, united in the single-hearted and patriotic purpose that
moved the whole country. There were some frictions and difficulties,
due in part to the workings of enemy agents among them, in part to the
influence of racial animosities among those recently come from Europe
and in part to the rapidly rising costs of living. There was also in
the early months among the foreign born lack of understanding of the
issues at stake and the reasons for America’s participation in the war.
But adequate information, the clearing out of enemy influences and the
efforts of the War Labor Administration to make equitable adjustments
of all difficulties between employees and manufacturers soon brought
the great mass of workers to enthusiastic support of the nation’s war
efforts.
The wonderful story of the financing of the war would have no chapter
more interesting and thrilling, if only the facts concerning it could
be gathered together, than that which would relate the aid given by
industrial workers the country over who bought bonds and stamps to the
full extent of their ability. The enthusiasm and unanimity they showed
in shipyards, munition plants, coal mines and all places engaged in
war production work proved their appreciation of the ideals at stake.
In one large munitions plant they worked on Labor Day, offering their
time without compensation, in order to give to that holiday a new and
more solemn significance. In many manufacturing concerns, shipyards
and mines they were willing to forego all the usual holidays in order
to increase the output. In plant after plant the employees pledged
themselves to work steadily without stop or hindrance and to give their
utmost endeavors to their share of the upholding of the men who had
gone overseas. Members of the War Labor Administration who took part in
the adjustment of difficulties were enthusiastic in their commendation
of the loyal spirit shown by the great body of employees and their
desire to give their full and hearty support to the Government’s
program of production for war purposes.
In nothing did the spirit of the people have more enthusiastic and
practical expression than in the effort to increase the production of
food which enlisted the services of men, women and children in every
walk of life, in cities, towns, villages and country regions, from end
to end of the land. It has already been told, in “Feeding the Nations,”
how marvelously that production of food was increased. Farmers
everywhere, under the spur of the great need, added, if they could, to
the area of their cultivation, worked longer hours, and endeavored to
improve their methods, while their wives and children took charge of
barn-yard chores. Business men in country towns coöperated by lending
financial assistance where it was needed. In agricultural states whole
communities, or even whole counties, sometimes organized themselves
upon a sort of coöperative basis for increase of food production,
people in the towns providing needed labor and money.
Business and professional men frequently took their vacations or spent
week-ends upon farms, lending a hand in farm labor. Women took up farm
work and, as told in “The Work of Women for the War,” a goodly sized
army of them aided in the raising of more crops. The home war garden
movement swept the country with enthusiasm and in the summer of 1918
planted over 5,000,000 home plots that produced more than $500,000,000
worth of food. In New York City there were in that year 64,000 of these
home war gardens, besides the school gardens, the number exceeding
even that of the gardens of London. The patriotic, mounting spirit of
the people caused the tillage in 1918 of an increase in food producing
acreage of 10,700,000 acres, whose produce excelled the value of that
of the previous year, itself a record, by $614,000,000.
There was everywhere the greatest eagerness to do anything for the
men of the Army and the Navy that would give them help or pleasure.
The story of the organized effort for that purpose is told in “Big
Brothering the Fighting Forces.” But, in addition, there were
numberless movements of smaller scope that enlisted the aid of
many people. Hundreds of thousands bought “smileage tickets,” for
seats in camp and cantonment theaters, and donated them to welfare
organizations for distribution among soldiers and sailors. Many
newspapers, clubs and business concerns collected money for the
“smokes” of which the Army and the Navy consumed enormous quantities.
The support of these tobacco funds enlisted the aid of men, women and
children who gave money, organized entertainments, solicited help, did
a thousand things to help swell the total. The value of the tobacco,
cigars and cigarettes thus contributed for the comfort of our soldiers
and sailors amounted to many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The navy needed binoculars, opera glasses and telescopes, and over
50,000 patriotic Americans sent their instruments. Quantities of
musical instruments were donated for use in camps and at sea. The work
of collecting and distributing phonographs and records was organized
into a system that included the whole country, and machines by the
hundred and disks by the thousand were given or loaned to it or bought
for it and sent out to camps and hospitals, to troop transports,
battleships, cruisers, destroyers and in great quantities to the men
overseas. The Over-There Theater League, organized and directed by
men prominent in theatrical affairs, included among its members and
supporters practically all the theatrical managers and the important
people of the stage in the United States, all of whom gave their
services for the providing of theatrical entertainment for the men
overseas. Moving picture actors and managers contributed services to
the Liberty Loan campaigns and other phases of war effort.
Old men and women who were too disabled to do anything else joined the
ranks of the knitters and made helmets, sweaters and mufflers, to go
with the mountainous stacks of these articles made for the Army and
the Navy. Hundreds of ministers, college and university professors
and other professional and business men spent in the shipyards, or in
munitions factories or on the farms their summer vacations of from two
to twelve weeks, while some of them even gave up their positions in
order to remain in this most necessary work. Many people owning country
homes or estates turned them over to the Government to be used as
hospitals or convalescent homes for wounded men. Every community in or
near which were camps of any sort opened its homes to the soldiers and
sailors and gave them hospitality, friendship, entertainment.
When the Red Cross asked for 5,000 tons of clothing for the destitute
in France and Belgium the people gave it 10,000 tons. Successful men of
business gave their time, their experience, their best thought and work
to the directing of relief organizations. There were many of these,
perhaps two score, in addition to the seven most important and every
one of them was generously supported. So willing were the people to
give that crooks and criminals made rich harvests by collecting money
under false pretenses. Many millions of dollars were stolen in this
way whose givers believed it was to be used for the benefit of their
country’s fighting men. It was estimated by those familiar with the
work of the relief organizations that the American people contributed
for these several welfare purposes close to $4,000,000,000.
Throughout the war the American people gave whatever was needed for
its prosecution, whether themselves, their loved ones, their energy,
their labor, their time, their thought or their money, with an ever
increasing ardor of patriotism and intensity of purpose. A spendthrift
and wasteful nation disciplined itself to the practice of care and
economy, and a nation of individualists, jealous of personal rights,
acceded willingly to Government interference in private business and
Government control of business relations for the sake of the country’s
need. Hating war with a profound unanimity of feeling and conviction,
the whole people joined hands with an equal depth of conviction and
feeling that this war must be pushed through to a victorious conclusion
in the quickest possible time.
The spirit of the American soldiers at Belleau Wood and in the Argonne
Forest was the same spirit that animated the people at home and it
brought the whole nation into a closer union and a more understanding
comradeship than it had ever previously known. In the army at the
front were three hundred thousand negroes, among the most valiant
of its fighters; representatives of fourteen tribes of Indians, as
contemptuous of death as any of their forefathers and as devoted to
their country as any of their comrades; men of almost every racial
strain under the sun, and all of them loyal soldiers of America.
And, just as all these troops in uniform were joined together in the
democracy of their crusading spirit, so all the people of the nation
behind them were joined together in feeling and effort and purpose--the
purpose that America should win the war for democracy’s sake, the
utmost effort needed to realize that aim, a passionate patriotism that
blazed at white heat in every heart.
The occasional rumbles of dissatisfaction that were heard in some
of the centers of alien population during the first months of our
participation in the war, due chiefly to enemy propaganda of one or
another form, soon ceased as better information was spread among them
and the country’s cause had no more whole-hearted and self-sacrificing
support than was given by those same crowded centers of foreign born
people. Thoroughly representative of this rapidly changing spirit and
of our foreign-born citizens throughout the land was the East Side of
New York City, where German propaganda and disloyal socialism together
did their best to create trouble. But the American Army contained
no better and more valiant soldiers and none more inspired by the
crusading spirit than the thousands of lads from that region, whose
unyielding courage, soldierly qualities and loyalty to their comrades
in battle won the praise of all who shared with them the dangers of
shell fire, gas and machine gun bullets.
And just as fine and staunch in its different way was the patriotism of
their families at home, for whom the absence of their men meant much
self-sacrifice and even sometimes serious financial troubles. But they
proudly hung their service flags in their windows and supported the
Government’s war program in every way in their power. Their purchases
of thrift and war stamps constantly increased and in the second Liberty
Loan campaign they more than doubled their subscription to the first,
in the third they multiplied their subscription to the second by sixty
and in the fourth they more than trebled their subscription to the
third, buying in it $50,000,000 worth of bonds.
It was on the East Side of New York City that the “block party” had
its birth--unique fruit of the war and symbolic of the war’s influence
upon the people of the nation. For such a party all the people living
in a block, or several adjoining blocks, decorated their houses and the
street with flags, colored lanterns, ropes of greens, bright fabrics;
and on the appointed night everybody swarmed into the street and to the
accompaniment of music and cheers speeches were made, a huge service
flag, with a star for every man of the block in service, was strung
across the street and then all the nations and races represented among
them told one another the news they had heard from their soldier and
sailor lads, sang patriotic songs and danced on the pavement and
sidewalk all the rest of the evening. Soon the block party spread to
all parts of the city and established itself even in the exclusive
residence districts where men, women and children, janitors and those
whom they served, house maids and mistresses, met on the pavements,
talked and sang and cheered and danced together as the service flag of
their block was swung to its place and floated above them, their bond
of union in common devotion to their country.
The block party, although it did not make its appearance in just
that form in all sections, yet was significant of what was taking
place in the hearts of the people all over the land. For out of their
universal spirit and its white heat of devotion was being born a fresh
realization of democracy and of its meaning to humanity and a new
dedication to its ideals.