Some War-time Lessons: The Soldier's Standards of Conduct; The War As a Practical Test of American Scholarship; What Have We Learned?Keppel, Frederick P. (Frederick Paul)
Philosophy
Some War-time Lessons: The Soldier's Standards of Conduct; The War As a Practical Test of American Scholarship; What Have We Learned?
Keppel, Frederick P. (Frederick Paul)
World War, 1914-1918
It was for the first time in France, properly coördinated
under Army control. The misfits and the workers who had worn themselves
out were returned to this country and their places taken by fresh blood.
I remember in this connection a paragraph tucked in the middle of the
uncompromising officialdom of the daily departmental cable: "Send over
plenty of welfare workers and remember the best men you can send are the
women."
Let me take this chance to say a word about the criticisms we have been
hearing of this welfare work abroad. In the first place, the success of
the work in this country among the men in training set up an expectation
which it was humanly impossible to meet under the conditions overseas;
in other words, the men who went over assumed standards as to the
minimum amount of attention which it was their right to expect, the like
of which had never been dreamed in the history of mankind. As a matter
of fact, and taken as a whole, the treatment which they received was
admirable and the comparatively few who now doubt the truth of this
statement will come to realize it as time goes on. They will see that
the misfits, the over-wrought, stood out in their minds like men out of
alignment at parade, that they simply did not notice the thousands of
men and women whose work for them was all that their own mothers could
have asked.
The following official cablegram records the state of educational,
recreation and welfare work at the end of April, 1919.
"Educational activities: Roughly there are 209,000 students embraced in
this scheme. Ten thousand are at A.E.F. University at Beaune, some 7,000
are attending French universities. 3,000 attending British. There are
roughly 130,000 men at Post Schools, which correspond to our elementary
schools in United States. 55,000 are attending the Divisional
Educational Schools, which correspond to our High schools. In addition
there are approximately 58,000 men in specialized vocational schools
where they have full shop facilities of A.E.F.
"Athletic activities: Athletic activities increasing daily in scope and
popularity. Figures for February show 6,500,000 individual participants
in games. In addition to mass athletics, unit championships are being
played in football, basketball, soccer, boxing, tennis, swimming, tug of
war, golf, track and field.
"Entertainment activities: Reports of entertainment officers show
monthly attendance for A.E.F. of between eight and ten million. Moving
pictures, professional talent from United States and particularly
soldier shows being utilized in all parts of army and have done much to
take care of leisure hours of troops. Horse shows have been held in
nearly every division of A.E.F. and have proved very popular. Amount of
all this work now being carried on is little short of stupendous."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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