World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, American
Some of the Socialist party leaders are beginning to see a great
light on the subject of loyalty to the government, and are advocating
a new policy toward the war. Their last party platform read like
one of Trotzky’s messages to the Petrograd Soviet, but now even the
late Socialist candidate for mayor of New York, who appealed for the
pacifist vote, and got it, is beginning to talk about revising the
platform.
Unless it is revised, the Socialists are going to lose their adherents
at present serving in France. The Jewish boys who, a little over a
year ago, were orating from soap boxes against the draft and against
what they called “this profiteers’ war,” are among the hottest young
patriots and keenest fighters in the American army.
I saw some of those boys at Camp Upton last autumn. I saw one who
was sitting in a corner blubbering like a small child because he was
being sent to Spartanburg. He was being transferred because he was
continually begging to be allowed to go home. His captain told me that
the only thing to do with him was to send him so far away from New York
that week-end visits home would be impossible.
I saw other Jewish boys who were unwilling soldiers then, but every
one I saw in France was enthusiastic about his work, and as little of
an internationalist as the young man in the aviation camp. The Jewish
soldier has made good. I was told so by many officers, and I saw it for
myself.
Our soldiers have not been taught to hate the Germans, and I don’t
think they do hate them. It is certain that the French people with whom
our men associate do not. But they scorn and loathe the Hindenburg
method of making war, and this attitude our men share. They regard the
Germans with horror rather than hatred, and so must all Americans who
even faintly realize what is going on every day and hour in the invaded
districts of Belgium and France.
Our soldiers, many of them, have seen this terrible thing, and it has
made their blood run hot in their arteries, it has set their jaws hard,
and caused their eyes to blaze. What theories they have ever had about
internationalism have been dissipated by the facts with which they are
faced.
The submarine war has come home to our men, sometimes as a bitter
personal experience.
In a Y. M. C. A. canteen I came upon a young corporal who had found
a seat behind the piano, and he was sitting there weeping his heart
out over a letter from home, a letter telling him how his brother had
died when the Germans torpedoed the _Tuscania_. I sat down beside this
soldier. He seemed to need somebody, and I was the only woman near. In
a few minutes he was himself again, outwardly at least, and he read me
the letter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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