Albuquerque morning journal. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1903-1926, 1919-08-23
BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Doughboys for Children Quick Iself-Lack
of Common Tongue No Bar to Quick Friendship With
French Youngsters.

stances such as these a number of
, men might naturally reel that they
! should lay in a sufficient supply Of
! champagne to last them in lne4noly,
| if nothing else, through the rest Of
| their lives
/ remember particularly one of my
men who dined almost exclusively on
champagne one evening and returned
to his company with his sense of hon
| or perhaps slightly distorted and his
common sense entirely lacking. The
company commander, captain Arnold,
of whom | spoke before, was standing
| in front Of the billet when this man
appeared with his rifle on his should
er, saIuted in the most correct mill
tary manner and said, Il desire the
company commanders permission TO
shoot Private So-and-SO, who has
made some very insulting remarks
concerning the town in which / lived
in the United States
Little Trouble Results.
Trouble of all sorts. however was
very small considering the circum-
stances, and decreased with every
month the troops were in France. We
always found that the new men who
arrived for requirements We're the ones
who We're most likely to overstep the
bounds, and with them it was gener-
ally the novelty rather than anything
else.
Then came the question of French
money. We were al paid in francs.
To begin with. our soldiers received
eight or ten times as much pay as the
average French soldiers. This put
them in the position Of bloated pluto
Gratis. Then, too, none Of us had very
much idea of what French money
meant. Since the war the paper OF
which French money was made had
been of very inferior quality, and /
know / personally felt that when |
could get anything concrete, such as
good dinner, in exchange for these
very dilapidated bits of paper, I ha3
made a real bargain. The soldiers, /
am sure, were of the same opinion.
Prices tripled wherever we were in
France. Indeed, | doubt if in all their
existence the lite villages in our
training area ever had a tenth part of
the money in circulation that APP
peared just after payday for the
troops
OF course, the French overcharged
our men. It's human nature to take
as much as you can get, and the
French are human one should re-
member in blaming for this that our
troops before sailing for France were
overcharged by people in this country
When the doughboy wanted eggs for
instance, he wanted them badly, and
that was all there was to it, In every
company there was generally one good
crap shooter" What the French did
not get he got and, contrary to the
usual theory of gamblers money he
usually saved it, One of the trials OF
an officer is the mems money. Before
action, before any move, the men who
have any money Always come to their
c. O. and ask him to keep it for them.
| remember once an ola sergeant
came to me and asked me to keep two
or three thousand francs for him. ]
did. Next day he was A. w. O. =. He
had not wanted to keep the money for
fear of spending it if he got drunk.
When he came back ! tried him by
court martial, reduced him to the
ranks and gave him back his money.
During the twenty months that
spent in Europe, | was serving with
troops virtually the entire time, com
handing them in villages, all through
the north of France. through LuNem-
bourg and Germany, and in all that