River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1918-04-18
Boys in France
in Splendid Shape

River Falls mothers who have
boys in France will find our boys
abroad are in splendid shape. DIR.
Luther H. Gulick who has been look
ing up army conditions in France.
returned last month and delivered
the following lecture to Camp Fire
girls in New York:
I'VE are grateful indeed to the
kindly Providence who has guided
our affairs so that we have the privi-
lege of coming back from France to
be with you here today. We are
bearers to you and to the girls of
America of many, many happy mes
sages from your men in the Ameri-
can Army in France. 1t has been
the great privilege of Mrs. Gulick
and of myself to study how our men
are getting on over there. Every
where in America mothers and sis.
tiers and sweethearts are anxious as
to the conditions which surround
their men. We have been given ev-
cry facility for finding out the facts,
both by the War Work Council of
the Y. M. c. A. and by the American
military authorities. The conditions
in our own army in France have
been so improved and cared for by
General Pershing that there is bet
ter opportunity for clean bodies and
clean characters there than in our
average American communities. On
ly one man out of three hundred
over there is incapacitated by those
diseases which in the past have been
supposed to be associated with army
life. This is a much lower record
than that which is here in America,
in our own families, in our own men.
The message to the girls of
America is this: You will be women
when these men come back, and
there are none whom our men will
be more eager to see than you,
young women, mothers, sisters and
friends.
These men will not be the same
boys who went over. They will be
accustomed to recreation on very
much broader scale than that which
the average American man has had.
They will be men who are not fami-
liar with having their social life con-
nected primarily with anything that
is lowering. Thus, the greatest
thing that American women and
girls can do is to prepare to live up
to the level of the army that is COM
ing back; to make home the most
beautiful and interesting place there
is; to know the arts of camping, out
door cooking, to know how to make
life happy and beautiful is the main
thing. These men will not come
back caring to see you in khaki or
doing military tactics. They will
have had all and more of that than
they care for, but to see you and be
with you as women, women who are
playing their own part rather than
trying to play the mans part in the
world. This is the program of
Camp Fire, and there could not be
anything better adapted to being
ready for our men when they come
back than is the program of the
Camp Fire Girls. Be ready to well
come the finest, cleanest, strongest
group of men that have ever been in
an army in the world. When our
men come home, they will be heroes,
men who have gone through the fire
and who have looked death straight
in the eye and came back unafraid,
men who have been purified by that
experience. Let us all live up to
this splendid possibility and preserve
the fine things which have been Gre
ated under the army conditions.