Trench and camp. [volume] (Augusta, Ga.) 1917-1919, 1918-01-23
EFFICIENT FRANCE
INDICATES DEMOCRACY
BY WHiTFORD n. SHELTON,
Instructor sin acknowledgements Un


Versity of Pittsburg.
The outstanding fact in any observation
of France at the present time is the SUI
preme concentration of every energy and
every impulse on Waging and winning
the war Unlike the United States, where,
for the great majority of the people, the
war is still only an unpleasant abstrac-
ton, France is showing the effects of
over three years of devotion to a noble
and patriotic purpose. 1t has become a
distinctly personal matter to every in
dividual, no matter how remote his local
ity, or how obscure his station. In the
quiet rural districts the war has laid its
heavy hand on every able bodied male
and drawn him into the mighty armies.
But the work must go on; the crops must
be planted and harvested and it is the
sturdy, patient women of France, re-
gardless of the burden of grief they bear
in their hearts. who make every available
acre deliver it's maximum of food and
fodder. In the same manner the indus
trial centers have been stripped that the
armies may not dWindle and here again
the women have filled the gaps in the
ranks of labor and kept the fires burn
ing as brightly and the wheels turning
as buSily as ever before.
1t seems unlikely that the inconSpicu-
Gus and unimportant provincial towns,
far from the battlefronts, should feel the
stress of it so keeny, but there is not a
one that does not foster some activity di-
reCtly connected with the alI-pervading
war. There are literally thousands of
hospitals scattered throughout the land
where all the different degrees and varie-
ties of physical and mental distress are
treated and cured. In this connection it
is interesting to note that among the
many hospitals for all manner of pur-
poses there are also specially equipped in
StitutionS for the care of the horses that
the war has manned and broken. In ad-
dition to all wounded sent back to them
from the trenches these people of the pro-
YinceS of France have been called upon to
care for the thousands of refugees from
raVished Belgium and their occupied dis
tricts of France, human wrecks who have
lost every earthly possession and suffer
the still greater anguish of the knowl-
edge that those dearest to them are in
the power of the brutal and merciless in
yader.
Every seaport through which supplies
may be brought is the scene of a con-
slant and feverish activity. Every ship
must be kept in notion cargoeS must be
landed and rushed to the front to make
way foc others that arrive in an end
less procession. Munition and arms
factories in every section keep up vol
ume of equipment rushing TO the armies
/ in the field the like Of which was never
dreamed before this war compelled the
the stupendous and lavish expense .ot
every variety of instrument of destruc-
ton.
All of this gives but a faint idea of
the earnestness with which France is
Wagng the war, but the moral is fairly
obvious; when the American soldier goes
to France and among the French people
he must do SO in no spirit of leYity. I'm
less he is to give very unfavorabIe ini-
preston of our national ideals he must
give evidence of a seriousness of purpose
and firm resolution equal to their own
in order to make possible that unity of
will be required if the spirit of de-
mOCTaCy is to be indicated