The Nenana daily news. (Nenana, Alaska) 1918-1921, 1918-08-26
AMERICANS ARE
NOW SCATTERED
OVER BIG AREA


athwart international boundaries
shows American fighting men hold.
ing their footing on strangely alien
soils. AS it now stands army units
of the United States are at tneir
grim work in six countries, France
Germany, Russia, Austria, Italy and
! Belgium.
The swelling volume of their
movement overseas has been 50 nee
essary response to the emergency
OF the nations responsibility, so
| thoroughly implied by the original
war declaration, and so entirely
natural a picture to a people pre-
pared by three years observation
OF world war. that it may take a
historians perspective to visualize
completely the departure from ira
ditions and the smashing OF pre-
cedents that the movement involved.
Checking the six American artil-
lery has been reported on the French
line opposite Mulhausen, several
miles inside the border of the Ger
man empire. In Austria, the olive
drab uniform supports Italian sec
tors which swing round the toe
of Lake Garda, and American filters
have manoeuvered over the Vene-
tlan lowlands, where the Austrian
drive was forced back this spring.
In Belgium, they have gone over The
top with Australians and in France
their forces in action now can be
counted by army corps. In Russia
at Vladivostock and now on the
frozen reaches of the Thurman coast
they are putting disciplined force
behind the manifold manifestations
of national purpose. Likewise, in
England, 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-i lung ;,,r-
neylngs of nation whose military
history has shown more than one
instance in which volunteers, ordered
to cross a boundary, have sat down,
private and officer alike, to debate
the constitutionality of a warlike
expedition to foreign soil, AMI still
more instances where military Or
carnations have successfully op-
posed national attempts to send
them beyond their own state lines.
Yet today, under the urge of the
war resolution, which directed the
administration "to exert all of it's
power and employ all of it's re-
sources to carry on war against the
Imperial German government and to
bring the conflict to a successful
conclusion" drafted men and vol
unteers have not raised single pro-
test of serious import.
1t was not until January of the
year that the supreme court
formerly construed the Constitution
% allow any sort of war operation
The nation desired to carry on. The !
court said of contentious opposing !
hat view that they "were too frivo-
Gus for notice." .-=>. IT,.
Yet long before the decision the
'irst drafted American had fallen
n battle overseas and legions more
lad streamed after him to every
quarter, almost, of the European
ointment.
Thus the historian has been given
large and interesting mile-post to
'uild in the future, but for the
verage American, the news of the N
ay shows that this interest is purely
bstract. 1t having been definitely
ecided, upon due and formal con-
Iteration, that a complete defeat
Germany was necessary to dem
cracy in the world, the nation has
OF even remembered precedents of
lstory or traditions of the past.
Apparently, the men least in
lined to consider that have been |
lie soldiers who have gone gravely
ut with good cheer into the valley