GENERAL ALLAIRE’S FINEST
“I know that my boy is being well cared for in his regiment, and I’m
not afraid of what may happen to him as long as he is on duty. But
what about his off hours? What is to prevent him from falling into bad
company?”
I know that this thought has troubled the minds of many mothers of
soldiers now in France. And no wonder. Ever since the first training
camps were set up in this country the most lurid tales have been spread
abroad about the alleged immorality of the soldiers’ off hours. Some of
these tales were spread by pro-Germans, pacifists and cowards who hoped
to defeat the draft laws. Others were the result of a certain kind of
imagination. The vast majority of them were untrue.
But even if any of them were true, if boys of twenty-one, away from
the restraining influences of home, found unusual opportunities for
immorality right here in the United States, what must it be in France?
Many American women have it firmly fixed in their minds that France is
a shocking immoral country. It isn’t, but I do not hope to be able to
unsettle the conviction.
I will content myself with saying that even if France were a second
Sodom or Gomorrah, our soldiers would be safe there. As safe, or safer,
than they would be at home. The reason is that they are under military
discipline and military supervision every hour of their lives. In their
off hours they are supervised by the most efficient and powerful police
force in the world, the military police of the American army.
Military police is what we call them for short. They are really
assistant provost marshals. They are everywhere in France where there
are American soldiers. They police Paris and all other cities, towns
and villages in our zone. They are found sitting at a little table in
all the railroad stations, and every traveling American soldier, be he
officer, non-com or private, has to report the minute he arrives to the
station marshal. This applies to all holders of military passes, Red
Cross and Y. M. C. A. workers, and war correspondents.
The marshal examines the papers of the traveling officer or soldier,
stamps them and enters the name and destination of the traveler in
his book. This happens when the soldier leaves his base and when he
returns. They keep track of our men on all their travels.
They also keep track of our soldiers in their daily walks abroad,
whether on duty or pleasure bent. There are certain rules in our
expeditionary force which apply to all alike, from General Pershing
down to Bill Smith, private, just arrived from Camp Funston or Camp
Upton. One of these rules is that no member of the expeditionary force
may associate with women of the submerged class.
If a military policeman sees an officer or a soldier in such company
it is his duty immediately and without any delay to separate the two,
and gather the offending man in. If he fails to do so, and the fact is
established, the policeman is punished. But he doesn’t fail.
Some of our younger officers, only a few, I was assured, didn’t believe
at first that a simple private soldier would dare arrest them for the
offense of having a “good time.” Two of these very new lieutenants
tested it out in Paris once. They annexed a pair of women of the
underworld and started out to find whatever may be left of the night
life of the French capital.
What was their indignation when a slim youth of about twenty-three,
wearing the uniform of a private, with the sole addition of a brassard
marked A. P. M., walked up to them, saluted and stepped politely
between them and the open door of the taxi-cab.
“Beg pardon, sirs,” he said courteously, “I am obliged to remind you
that you are transgressing the provisions of section ---- of regulation
---- of orders ---- relating to associations with women. I shall have
to request you to accompany me to headquarters.”
The two very new young officers declined the invitation, first with
indignation, then with good-natured appeals to the soldier’s sporting
blood. The soldier remained adamant, and then one of the officers,
getting genuinely angry, thrust his fist under the man’s nose. “What
would you do if I were to push your face in and go on my way?”
The soldier policeman promptly drew his automatic and thrust it under
the lieutenant’s nose. “I would do my duty, sir,” he replied, still
courteously. But he was an American and couldn’t hold in any longer.
“By God,” he exclaimed, “I wish you’d try it on. You’re the kind of an
officer the American army could afford to lose suddenly.”
That settled it. The two officers went to headquarters, and they were
punished. The one that attempted to frighten the young policeman got
sent back to the United States. The men at headquarters agreed with the
policeman that the United States army could afford to lose a man like
that.
The military policeman, who is found all over our zone in France, does
not wear blue clothes and a peaked cap. Neither does he carry a baton.
He wears his soldier uniform and a white arm band on which the letters
A. P. M., assistant provost marshal, appear in letters of red. He wears
a belt and a pistol and he carries plenty of ammunition with him.
He is a part of a service which has at its head General Allaire, chief
provost marshal of the army, one of General Pershing’s staff. General
Allaire lives at the sequestered little town which houses the rest of
the staff. Under him are many officers who command the regiments of
assistant provost marshals, and they are held responsible for the
order and good conduct of the army.
In Paris the military police have their headquarters in an
old-fashioned building in the Rue Ste. Anne, close to the heart of old
Paris. The place was a hotel in pre-war days, and it looks very much
like a hotel now, with all the boarders in uniform. The big dining-room
has less style about it than formerly. At present it is furnished with
long pine tables, scrubbed clean, and the dishes are mostly white
enamel ware.
A one-armed French soldier, with a most engaging smile and a pretty
good knowledge of English, acts as elevator boy, and he told me once
that when the war was over he was going to America. “I want to know how
it feels,” he said, “to belong, even for part of my life, to a country
that can produce such boys as these.”
They are a picked lot. It is an honor to be in the service, and only
those in whose honor as well as valor the authorities have the greatest
confidence, ever make the service.
In Paris the lieutenant under whose direct command the force works is
the most single-minded man I think I have ever met. His whole existence
seems bound up in his men. He even spends his off hours with them. One
Monday when I went to the house in the Rue Ste. Anne to have a military
pass stamped by the proper provost marshal, this lieutenant of police
told me that the day before, Sunday, he had taken the half of his men
who were off duty to Versailles. They had a wonderful day, he said.
The authorities even opened the palace museum for the Americans.
“Next Sunday,” he said, “I am going to take the other half of the
force down the Seine to a beautiful place where we can have dinner
out-of-doors and have a look at French life of the old régime. I mean
that my men shall get all there is in a foreign sojourn.”
I told him that I thought he was pretty fine to give all his leisure
to his soldiers. He blushed like a boy and said: “They deserve it
and I enjoy it. Besides, it is a part of my job to make these men as
intelligent individuals as possible. They need to be intelligent. They
have eight hours a day of particularly responsible work.
“Here in Paris they have to keep their eyes out for deserters. It is
their business to know that every American soldier who walks through
a street here has a right to do it. They have to be keen to look for
spies in American uniforms. Oh, yes, they have picked up more than a
few of these gentry. They might have slipped past the French soldiers,
because they don’t know Americans, but they couldn’t fool a U. S. A. P.
M. Every suspicious character gets nabbed sooner or later. If there is
any doubt about his status our men bring him in here. If he can satisfy
us, all right. But there is never an apology due him from the policeman.
“One of our men may be transferred from patrol work to riding on
railroad trains and keeping track of our soldiers on their travels. He
may be transferred to the front, where he becomes a traffic cop and
also one of the men who take captured Germans in charge.
“We have a school here for our motorcycle cops. These men become
inspectors of police. They have an added responsibility. They speed
directly to the scene of any great or small disaster, and they assist
the French gendarmes and military police. When the long-distance gun
hit that church on Good Friday, killing seventy-six people, our men
were the first on the spot. They rescued the wounded and brought out
the dead. They also did excellent service in that great fire near Paris
when the powder works blew up.
“As quickly as an air raid is over our men are out on their cycles
looking up the damage inflicted by the bombs. They report back here
where every bomb fell. Often they are able to put out small fires
caused by the bombs.
“They are a fine bunch,” ended the lieutenant. “Not one of my men has
ever been in trouble, and the fact that our cooler here in Paris often
has as many as a hundred and fifty people in it shows not only that
their work is essential, but that it is performed to the king’s taste.”
With that kind of a police force and that kind of officers commanding
it, you can be sure that your sons haven’t very much opportunity
to go astray. Once in a while a man may evade the military police.
Occasionally I have seen it done. But it happens rarely, and the
chances are a hundred to one against it happening twice to any one man.