174 



The Journal of Heredity 



Italians, privates and noncoms, who 

 broke, quit cold and lay down like curs 

 all of a sudden after fighting with dash 

 and courage up to a certain point. They 

 lack the character to "carry on" to the 

 finish. You cannot rely on them at all. 

 The Slav is a mirror — ^he is what his 

 officers and comrades « are. But he is 

 poor stuff — a childish-minded, unstable, 

 moody animal, and seldom over-bur- 

 dened with lo^^alty and reliability. 

 It's a shame to think the clean blood of 

 the old American stock is going to con- 

 tinue to be contaminated and debased 

 by these things from south and eastern 

 Europe. Is there no way to stop it? 

 Again and again I've heard officers 

 here say, "There's just one fighting 

 man in our army — the American!" 

 And when he said "American" he ex- 

 cluded all Wops, Polocks, Slavs, Turks 

 and Asiatics, and we all knew what was 

 meant . 



The negro failed utterly under his 

 own color, but officered by white men 

 he was pretty good! Indeed the negro 

 officer is perhaps the most pitiful thing 

 in the whole war. He failed through no 

 fault of his own — but his color. The 

 negro soldier had no respect and no 

 confidence in his black officer. No 

 matter how good the black officer is, he 

 is first and always a nigger in the eyes 

 of other negroes. And leadership 's 

 surely based on nothing but confidence, 

 — bluff, if you choose to call it so. And 

 no negro can bluff another negro. 



The Indians I've heard of and seen 

 (only a few) have all been good, nervy 

 men and very good soldiers, natural 

 soldiers in every way. And they seem 

 to take naturally to war, shellfire, gas 



and all. I've heard nothing but good 

 words for them from officers who com- 

 manded them and whom they fought 

 under. 



But no fighting man in the war was 

 the superior to the real, tall, lean, blue- 

 eyed, tow-headed .4 mmcaw doughboy — 

 our American, I mean. A red-headed 

 second lieutenant told me of a party he 

 pulled with a bunch of real Americans 

 who had been without food for thirty 

 hours and for half a day without water. 

 The Boches pulled a counter attack on 

 them at dusk after harassing them all 

 day with shells and grenades. He 

 said he told his men to "go out and 

 meet them' ' and not to retire until they 

 heard his whistle blow. He said his 

 men went out at 'em with howls like 

 madmen before he'd given the word. 

 He said the crash of the meeting of the 

 two bodies of troops was reall}^ tre- 

 mendous and that he could not bring his 

 men back from the pursuit till they had 

 driven the Boches a kilometer north- 

 ward. Several men he had to threaten 

 with his revolver to force them to 

 retire. "Just let me get one more, 

 Lieutenant, just one more. Sir! Please!" 

 they'd beg him. And the bayonet and 

 butt was the order of the fight on our 

 side all through. It's so typical of the 

 stories the doughboy officers tell that it 

 must be our fighting way, the national 

 method of getting at 'em. 



The devil of it is that the Americans 

 got bumped off too fast — and the re- 

 placements were too often "not there." 

 In the papers the "draft army" is O. K., 

 but we know about it. You had the 

 right dope in the Great Race. It is the 

 great race and no mistake. 



