Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-03-29
WHY PATRIOTIC
SINGING SOCIETY
WAS ORGANIZED
The Singing Soldier Makes
Best Contented Fight
ing Man

One thing we must have to hold
in our hearts: the true picture of
the boys on the transport Tuscania
when the fatal hour came. Disci-
pline was there, we are assured,
but what songs did they sing! In
general terms the New York Globe
speaks of our soldiers as singing
the battlecry of freedom" and one
wonders If by some instinct the re-
frain from old Civil War days we'll
ed up in "Hurrah, hurrah, we bring
the jubilee" putting in the back
ground the syncopations of over
There" Whatever it was, we can
trust the Globes. words that "the
spirit of America was in the songs
that came from the sinking ship,
rather than in imprecations against
the foe that strikes in the dark and
wreaks his fury on women and chill
dren." The Globe goes on i'll a
nobly impassioned strain:
The songs that rose from the
flooding decks of the Tuscania are
echoing in the hearts of hun
dred million Americans, cheering
them on to redoubled effort. Not
in hymns of hate shall our feelings
find expression. Not in vain
threats. Not in cries for vengeance,
But as we, too, begin to feel the
wounds of the treacherous enemy of
mankind the song that rose to the
lips of our sons facing death shall
swell our hearts with the love of
hnnnr nf EhnptE nf inCtipa that
alone makes war glorious, that dis
pels all doubts, that makes life and
possessions dear to us only for what
they count in the battle for victory.
"Over the crushed bodies of our
soldiers dashed upon the rocks of
the Irish coast we consecrate all that
we are, all that we have, to the
cause of man for which our fathers
raised the standard our armies fight
Inder in France. OF those that have
fallen as men fall it is our part to
be worthy. Cheering each other.
they went to their deaths; cheering
each other, we must bear their
deaths, and, counting not the cost,
so serve that their deaths may not
be in vain. Unhastily, unskillfully,
we took up the burden laid upon us.
Unangrily. unfearfully. we must
carry it, determined only that we
will fight as those fight that know
their strength and the justice of
their quarrel.
"They sang of America, those that
bore our colors upon the water that
engulfed them. SO let us that stand
upon the shores take up their song,
so let us still live to honor them that
have fallen, and to carry on cheer
fully, wisely, thoroughly, the strug-
srI, /,
their lives"
The singing of the army will be
one of the inspiring chapters in the
history of the war. Changes have
already come about. The British
Army is sless of a singing force than
it was in the early days. There is
not so much singing of route songs,
says e. b. Osborn, in The IL
lustrated London News, as there
used to be when the troops were be-
ing moved UP into the forward Sec
tions of the fighting-zone. The Off
Ger who provides this information
insists that this change does not
mean that the fine edge of morale
has been blunted. But changes of
personnel have come over the
Army:
The men are as good as ever
they were-better. perhaps, now that
even the C0nscripted recruits are be-
coming wary veterans and the iron
determination of the whole great
brotherhood is tempered to steel.
But it was the Tommy of the old
Army-who is now no more-and
the Reservists who We're so fond of
singing and whistlng when on the
road or in billets as to surprise even
the gay, gallant poilus who have in
la.M GaFH Vg.l, -
marching chanties-many of them
closely resembling the contingent
rhymes used in children's games. The
Territorials who had had camp holi-
days were also q tuneful race.
But the multitudes that arrived
later on, taken out of industrial oc-
cupations which We're always being
speeded up, had been worked too
hard all their lives to acquire the
habit of open-air singing. The mod
ern factory or warehouse or shop
has no use for chanties; the wheels
of our vast industrial mechanism
have not ground out a single joyous
folksong. The successors of the
Territorials only knew the choruses
of a few popular musical songs:
and their Junior officers-the ma
iority men accustomed to the silent,
engrossing toll and moil of business
life-could teach them nothing bet
ter, as n rule. Such officers and men
look on war as a business rather
than as a sport-the game Of
games-and there can be no doubt
that their point of view makes for
a higher degree of efficiency in the
end. The picturesque side of war
fare has vanished forever; the late
Ivor Campbell Chat new Stevenson
in becoming who fell on the road to
Kut, after serving in France with
his fellow clansmen) spoke salutary
truth when he defined modern war
as organized boredom and said he
felt it's incessant drudgery in his
very bones. So the men Of the New
Armies will march songless for
hours and miles-iust as they walk
ed aforetime TO the dour days work
through the dim, echoing streets of
still-slumbering industrial cities.