The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1919-10-31

Lsame spirit. OF course there were
other assignable reasons. Its pos
session did relieve us of the prospec-l
| tive embarrassment of being pushed
Into the Marine and did give the Allies
better jumping off place for July 10.
The Germans made stiff resistance IN
order. as they .fatuously thought, to
teach us lesson-at least to rob us
OF the JOY of an easy success. Which,
in the light Of how we crowed over
| it, is fairly amusing.
| But, allowing for the sake of argu-
ment that all American staffs were
made up of nothing but Napoleons and
Nestors. even so they builded better
than they knew. Even if those June
operations had cost us 100000 lives.
they would hive been worth it. When
it is considered what effect their fight
ing had on Allied morale, It may be
questioned whether any like number
of troops in the same space of time
contributed as much to the final vic
tory as did the Second and Third
United States Divisions at Chateau
| Thierry. The mother of every boy
who was killed there can say that
no soldiers life was ever given more
effectively during the whole war.
| The effect on the French was i'm,
mediate, visible, startling. The droop-
/ ing French morale revived as mid
summer flower lifts its head after a
cooling shower. To appreciate this, it
must be remembered that the French
Hope of effective American interview
Ition had begun to fade, which was a
natural and not altogether unforeseen
consequence of the original French in
sistence that we should make a show
ing in France even before we were
ready to fight.
| BY the late spring of 1918, more
than year had elapsed since we had
declared war on Germany. Almost a
year had passed since our first little
contingent (only $1,000 raw troops)
had landed q. St. Nazaire.
| That landing. by the way, was gro
tesquely exaggerated by the eager
French public. The number was wild
" estimated in the French press at
from $1,000 to 10000, altogether the
texaggcration was due less to deliber-
ate propaganda than to the fact that
the excited French journalists, watch
ing from the windows of the Grand
Hotel in St. Nazaire, used to count
the troops marching by each day from
the piers 10 the camp, and never
guessed they were always the same
soldiers, doomed each night to return
to the ships to sleep because no ade-
quate preparations had been made to
receive them.
So now, nearly year later the
French were beginning to wonder
where we were. 1t was their own faul.
unless possibly, you consider it our
fault not to have had large and COM
pletely equipped army with ample
boats (and ample French docking Ia
cilities) ready when, to our own con-
siderable surprise. we declared war in
April. 1917 THE raising of French
hopes was a deliberate French policy
which first showed itself when, at the
beginning of our intervention, Joffre
upset the applicant in Washington by
conveying straight to the public the
French desire that American troops
no matter how few or how unframed
be sent at once to stiffen French
morale.
No one not close to the councils Of
Chaumont and Washington will ever
realize how mistakenly that pressure
was maintained afterward and how in
gcniously varied were the political de-
vices to hurry the Americans--no me-
cessarly to hurry their final achieve
ment, but to hurry their immediate
display. The sending OF Pershing in
May, 1917, months before he could
hope to be followed by any consider
able force, represented yielding to-
that pressure.
| But there was much more to which
he did not yield. After General Sibert,l
who was the first commander of the
First Division, had returned to Ameri-
ca, it was fairly we'll known in France!
that he had differed with his chief in
wishing to hustle the troops into the
trenches. When President Poincare
came down to review our troops and
told them rather pointedly that they
looked fit for the hardest combat.
Frederick Palmer. the censor, pulled
the teeth of that subtle suggestion by
coming softly to the war correspond
ents and assuring them that il they
mentioned it in their dispatches i
would be deftly dcleted therefrorn.
But meanwhile the French public
had been fed for year by continu-
Gus movie display OF aSammies" in
training and "Sammies" in action. and
there was not cinema in France that
\ did not make much of Pershing's ia
mouse "All that we have Is yours"
j speech, which Clemenceau adroitly
circulated from one end of France to
the other. Indeed, he had written it.
as one might have guessed who noted
how much more fluent and natural il
was in French than in English. So
Pershing's most famous utterance was
written by Clemenceau, although OF
course it was shown to PershiAg be-
fore il was published. and represented
the substance if not the exact wording
Of what Pershing had actually said to