The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-11-14
SOCIAL ANARCHY
Continued rom Page one.)

/ woman Is gong TO De
to find in France. Not that there are
not millions of good women in France,
| but they do not talk the English Ian
guage, excepting few hundred thou
sand foreigners who are there; and
| speaking broadly they are not avail
able for the American soldier. So the
thing that he hears is the voice of
| the siren. She whose way of old has
laid hold on hell.
Natures Way.
! Here in America, we are able some
what to shape the conditions which
surround our soldiers. In Europe we
may not do it. In Europe we must
send to the American soldier Ameri-
can homemade influences. Other
| wise nature is going to assert itself.
| Those who have known fairly init
mately the conditions of the soldiers
of this war in Europe feel that the Y.
| M G. A, or some similar organization
! offers the only way to combat sue
| cessfully those social evils so common
and so generally accepted in Europe
and so deadly to the spiritual and
physical life of our men.
Social Confusion.
To explain conditions it may be well
to set down in this paragraph some
facts which may possibly make a
squeamish reader vince. But these
facts will be the commonplace facts
which our American soldiers must
4
can public to know the facts. To be-
gin, France has been battle-ground
for three years. Five million soldiers
at one time or another have been TAX
en- from their homes and billeted in
| the villages of northern and eastern
| France near the far-flung battle line
from Ostend to the Alps. Some of
these soldiers have been British sol
| diers, Moroccan soldiers, Philippians
| from Africa, Cinnamon from French
| 70 Ia Tdn
South African Dutch, Australians, Ca
nadians, East Indians and Russians. 1t
may be imagined that they have va
riety of notions about the thing which
we disguise under the name of moral
| ity-these soldiers from the ends of
| the earth.
They have been living in French
houses with French women whose
husbands are on the battle line; or
these soldiers have been living in tents
or barracks near the homes of French
soldiers who are on the battle line.
Hundreds of thousands of women at
the romantic age, attached and unat-
tached, married and unmarried, daily
have been associated with these mill
ions of soldiers, for a little time. For
a month or for three months these
soldiers have occupied one village
after anothe-, have gone up to the
front to do their fighting, and then
have returned to another village.
know exactly what has happened in
this awful social confusion. One must
not get the idea that the women of
France have acted differently from
other women. The same number of
soldiers coming from the same far
| corners of the earth with the same
varying ideas of morality, if they
were billeted in Kansas villages or
Maine villages, or Louisiana villages,
or California villages, where the men
were gone, where the young girls of
| the manageable age had new lovers
every two or three months-lovers
| who felt they were going into battle
never to return, would produce exactly
| the same conditions that exist in
| France.
Social Nightmare. ru
1t is not a moral breakdown. When
| the war is over, when moral condi-
| lions are resumed, France will be the
same beloved country she has been al
ways. But for a generation she will
| have a sort of a social nightmare, just
| as America would have under similar
conditions.
1t is into this social anarchy that
we are sending our American troops
1t is the social anarchy necessary in
| every war. 1t is the by-product of
| war. And yet it is possible to save
our men-to take our soldiers into
this and keep them normal and
| wholesome to the end. But the only
| organized influences at work for the
salvage of our men in this dreadful
social cataclysm are organizations
| like the Y. NJ. C. A. And the one
big important thing which the Y NJ
| G. A. does is to combat lonesome
| ness in the men. The first thing the
| devil does to a man before gra bling
him, either at home or abroad, is to
| smear that man over with lonesome
;e
an acute and awful experience. To
combat that lonesome the Y NJ
c. A. must spend literally hundreds
of millions of dollars in this war
The Y. NJ. Hut.
Now, having presented the black
side of the picture, one may be justi-
| fed in presenting the brighter
| shades. Imagine a great camp con-
tanning thousands and thousands of
young men living in barracks or bill
leted upon the population; then i'm
agine, somewhere in that camp,
| long building-perhaps ninety feet
| long in some cases perhaps 200 feet
| in other cases-and from fifty to
seventy-fve feet wide. 1t is built of
| boards according to an approved pat
ern made by American engineers 1t
is one-story and as well lighted as
| economy of fuel in the winter will
permit. 1t has a hip-roof and inside
the rafters often show, tho some
| times they are covered with compo-
sition board and wall paper. Gener-
ally the floors are of dirt covered with
| sand or sawdust, tho som etimes board
floors are availa BILE.
| Scores and scores of writing desks
covered with writing paper are scat
tered about the place, along two sides
| of a long central aisle; and sometimes
| two, sometimes three pianos are about
| ard fa lac hi
all sorts of games are scattered
among the writing desks and at one
/ end of the room is counter and at
| the counter are three or four or half
! dozen American women, selling
! chewing gum, chocolate, toilet arti-
cles, various small articles of mems
| furnishings like carriers. hat-bands,
cuff buttons or small jewe1ry, and a