Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1919-11-14
MAKING BETTER SOLDIERS-By Frederic J. Haskns

maintain the high level OF the entertain
ments given.
The service clubs and the hostess houses
that came to be institutions during the war
will remain, and will find their way into
every post, no matter how isolated it may be,
and all the advantages of club life, and of
being able to receive their women friends
that were given to men in the national
army, will become the permanent privilege
of those who are in the regular institution.
The American Library association, during
the war, did yeoman service in providing
reading matter for those four million men
who were in the army, reading matter that
was selected with much skill and that was
accepted enthusiastically by the men in the
service. The organizations built UP by the
American Library association will be taken
over bodily by the regular army, as will be
the millions of copies of books which were
provided. There were books enough to fur
nish constant reading for four million men
during the war, and these will serve long
and helpfully in an army which has been re-
duced to 800 900 men. When they are worn
out other books will be provided at the ex-
pense Of the government. Any man in the
service who is a lover of books will always
find himself adequately supplied.
But finally, bigger and greater than all
these incidental agencies that are being sup
piled the army, comes the opportunity to
procure an education. Even before the war
no man in the service was allowed to remain
an illiterate. He was taught to read ana
write and he might be given some technical
skill that was necessary to his work as a
soldier, which would help him in trade
when he became q civilian. There were, how
ever, no regularly outlined courses Of train
ing for the different trades.
Now the regular army Is to become one
huge training school. Whether man 10 sta
toned at Fort Sam Houston, Tex, at Gov
ernor's Island, on the sweeping plains OF
Wyoming, or on the coral shores OF Hawaii,
he will have available to him highly devel-
oped trade schools. There will be the auto
motive school, which will teach him all about
gasoline driven machines. There will be
electrical schools which will make or him
radio specialist or q telephone electrician.
There will be the building department,
where he can learn to be concrete worker,
a. painter, a cabinet maker, or carpenter.
He can learn to be a tailor, a cook, horse
sheer, q typesetter, a printer, pharmacist
q topographer, craftsman, shoemaker, g.
musician, laundryman, clerk, or farm
er He can choose from nineteen call1ngs and
get an efficient training In either which will
give him a certificate which, when he Is
discharged from the army, will admit him
into a union or will get him Job. Together
with all this trade training will go the op-
portunity to take whatever degree OF scnol-
astic work he may care to acquire
Thus the army will become school
which will be open to great numbers OF
Young men who otherwise might miss an
education. Finally, the war department Will
ask for that community cooperation Wh1ch,
during the war, was typifed by the work OF
the War Camp Community service. 1t Will
attempt to make the community surround tEo1 d.
ing all it's army posts understand tnat the
soldier has now become respectable, that he
NAV with perfect safety be taken to the
bosom of that community, and may be MADE
a mart of the community life Now that the
saloon and the brothel are things OF the past'
it is held that the only need of the young
soldier to make him as socially acceptable as
anv other youngster Is: that the community
should show the right spirit.
All of these elements are today part OF
the new army. Congress has made adequate
appropriations for their inauguration. Orders
have gone forth from the war department
Civialian personnel is being employed and
the materials necessary to the plants are be-
ing shipped. Three central schools are being
established for the training Of enlisted in
structors. The army Is to become un1ver-
sty. It is to turn out disciplined and skilled
men who will be valuable citizens. 1t 1s to
demand for its enlisted men that fair treat
ment by the public that is accorded to other
lads in similarly wholesome employment