The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1918-08-01
UNITED STATES FORCES
IN SIX COUNTRIES
They Are Carrying on Their Grim Work
on Strangely Alien Soil-France, Ger
many, Russia, Austria, Italy
and Belgium.

Washington, D. c., Aug. 1.-The war
map with its trench lines struggling
athwart international boundaries shows
American fighting men holding their
footing on strangely alien soils. As it
now stands, army units of the United
States are at their grim work in six
countries, France, Germany, Russia, Aus.
tria, Italy and Belgium.
The swelling volume of their move.
ment overseas has been so necessary a
response to the emergency of the nations
responsibility, so thoroughly implied by
the original war declaration, and SO en-
tirely natural a picture to q people pre-
pared by three years observation of
world war, that it may take historians
perspective to visualize completely the
departure from traditions and the smash
ing of precedents that the movement in
volyed.
Checking the six, American artillery
has been reported on the French line
opposite Mulhausen, several miles inside
the border of the German empire. In
Austria, the olive drab uniform supports
Italian sectors which swing round the
toe of Lake Garda, and American fiers
lands where the Austrian drive was
forced back this spring. In Belgium,
they nave gone over the top with Aus
tralians and in France their forces in
action now can be counted by army
corps. In Russia, at Vladivostok and
now on the frozen reaches of the Muir
man coast they are putting disciplined
force behind the manifold manifestations
of national purpose Likewise, in Eng
land, Scotland and Ireland, they fill up
the school camps and prepare themselves
for action.
These men, drafted nearly all, are the
agents in the far-fung iourneyings Of a
nation whose military history has shown
more than one instance In which volun-
teers, ordered to cross boundary, have
sat down, private and officer alike, to
debate the constitutionality of war.
like expedition to foreign soil, and still
more instances where militia organiza-
tions have successfully opposed national
attempts to send them beyond their own
state lines.
Yet to-day, under the urge of the war
resolution which directed the admins
tration ITO exert all of its power and
employ all Of its resources to carry on
war against the imperial German gov
eminent and to bring the conflict to a
successful conclusion" drafted men and
volunteers have not raised single pro-
test of serious import.
It was not until January of the pres
ent year that the supreme court formally
construed the constitution to allow any
sort of war operation the nation desired
to carry on The court said of conten
tons opposing that view that they were
too frivolous for notice"
Yet long before the decision the first
drafted American had fallen in battle
overseas and legions more had streamed
after him to every quarter, almost, Of
the Eurasian continent.
Thus the historian has been given
large and interesting mile-post to build
in the future, but for the average Amer
lean, the news of the day shows that
this interest is purely abstract. It hav-
ing been definitely decided, upon due and
formal consideration, that a complete
defeat Of Germany was necessary to de-
mocracy in the world the nation has not
even remembered presidents of history
or traditions of the past
Apparently, the men least inclined to
consider that have been the soldiers who
have gone bravely but with good cheer
into the valley Of the shadow overseas,
and there are making good the purpose.