A CIVILIAN VISITOR
Destiny always plays the flying wedge. There is always the significant
little happening, half noticed or miscalculated, which trails great
happenings after it. On March 19, 1918, a derby hat appeared in the
front-line trenches held by the American Army in France. This promptly
was accorded the honor by the army and the Allied representatives of
being the first derby hat that had ever been seen in a trench. The hat
had the honor to be on the head of the first American Secretary of War
who had ever been in Europe in his term of office. And this first
American Secretary of War away from home was presently to have the honor
of helping to create the first generalissimo who had ever commanded an
army of twenty-six allies.
All of which is to say that Newton D. Baker, on a tour of inspection of
the A. E. F., whose visit was to have such terrific fruition,
repudiated the war counsels which would have kept him out of the
trenches on this gusty March day, and went down to see for himself and
all the Americans at home how the doughboy was faring, and what could be
done for him.
And as he peered over the parapet into No Man's Land, Secretary Baker
said: "I am standing on the frontier of freedom." The phrase grew its
wings in the saying, and by nightfall it had found the farthest
doughboy.
The Paris newspapers announced, on the morning of March 12, that
Secretary Baker was in France. The troops had it by noon. And questions
flew in swarms. It was discovered that he would review the brigade of
veterans who had returned from service at the front on March 20, and
that meanwhile he would investigate the lines of communication.
After a few days in Paris, during which Secretary Baker delivered all
the persuasions he had brought from President Wilson on behalf of a
unified command of the Allied armies, and had, it was rumored, turned
the scale in favor of a generalissimo, the distinguished civilian went
to the coast to see the port city which was the pride of the army and
the marvel of France.
The secretary rode to the coast on a French train, but, once there, he
was transferred to an American train, which had to make up in
sentimental importance the large lack it had of elegance.
A flat car was rapidly rigged up with plank benches. This had the merit
of affording plenty of view, and, after all, that was what the secretary
had come for.
After rolling over the main arteries of the 200 miles of terminal
trackage, Secretary Baker inspected the warehouses, assembling-plants,
camps, etc., and walked three mortal miles of dock front which his
countrymen had evolved from an oozing marsh. He paid his highest
compliments to the engineers and the laborers, and amazed the officers
by the acuteness of his questions. If his visit did nothing else, it
convinced the men on the job that the man back home knew what the
obstacles were.
Secretary Baker's next visit was to the biggest of the aviation-fields,
where again his technical understanding, as it came out in his
questions, astounded and cheered the men who were doing the building.
[Illustration: _Copyright by the Committee on Public Information_.
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 instituted 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 shelled 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
shell buried itself in a crater not fifty yards from the secretary.
Fortunately, the debris flew all in the opposite direction, and nobody
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 assures us that the knowledge of
our army in France which some assume to exist does not, in fact, exist.
"If we were to announce the identity 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 assignment 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.