202 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Prince is fighting for her very life. Not until this same 

 spirit of national solidarity which.j)ermeates all France is 

 suffused throughout America will we accomplish those 

 things which the President has set as our task. 



The most heroic, the most courageous and the most 

 inspiring figures in all this vast theatre of war are those 

 women of France who are the mothers and grandmothers, 

 the sisters and wives of the men who have gone forth 

 from their fields and shops, their marts and vineyards to 

 give all they have that France and all the world might 

 be saved from the onrushing invader. Theirs are the 

 burdens of greater weight, theirs are the sorrows far 

 more bitter and deep, theirs are the anxious waitings 

 and longings the like of which the world has never known 

 before. All those whom they hold most dear in life have 

 gone from them they know not where. They must re- 

 main at home, working as never woman worked before 

 at the same old humdrum tasks from sunrise till long 

 after the shadows lengthen and the evening comes. The 

 men go out to new experiences, new conditions, new 

 fields and often to portions of the country hitherto un- 

 known to them. Not so the women. In the fields they do 

 the work which once strong men grew weary in the do- 

 ing ; in the stores and shops, in the vineyards, everywhere, 

 the women have taken up the work which once taxed 

 the strength and nerve of rugged men and they do it 

 with a look of resigned courage and dogged determina- 

 tion which is the spirit of all France. The war without 

 this type of women would be an absolute impossibility 

 and they deserve the gratitude of all the allied nations. 

 Comradeship and fraternity between men and men 

 and between men and officers is quite apparent in the 

 French army. The cheer and good will which actuates 

 the "poilus" is truly wonderful. They emerge from their 

 underground life in the trenches, dirty, grimy, muddy, 

 tired, possibly with the trench itch or some equally trying 

 disease, carrying a pack often weighing fifty pounds or 

 more and they come swinging through the villages led 

 by their bands, at a step so quick and full of life that one 

 marvels at their almost endless vigor. They return to 

 the trenches with the same characteristic determination 

 to stay until the last gun has been fired, until the last 

 star shell has flared up and died away and the last battle 

 plane has soared aloft over the enemy lines, until there is 

 in very truth, "peace on earth, good-will to men," and a 

 League of Nations to see to it that Democracy shall pre- 

 vail in every nation under the sun and right and truth 

 shall have their everlasting due. Our American boys 

 have gone to France with the same steadfast purpose 

 and they will stay until the curtain is rung down on the 

 last act, in spite of all the trying obstacles which may 

 tend to swerve them from their chosen path. 



One night when on duty as an ambulance driver at 

 one of our most advanced posts behind the French lines, 

 a battalion came down the camouflaged road out of the 

 inky blackness and paused to rest close by our post be- 

 fore taking up the final kilometers march to the trenches. 

 The men fell out at a low whistle from their command- 

 ing officer. A poilu came up to the ambulance where my 



friend and I were sitting and asked us if we belonged 

 to the American Red Cross. With our broken and often 

 unintelligible French we carried on a conversation with 

 him. While we were talking a man approached and 

 placing his hand on our friend's shoulder asked him for 

 a drink of "pinar" from his flask. Pinar is a brand of 

 cheap war wine which the French soldiers drink instead 

 of water. Every poilu carries a flask of pinar at all times. 

 Our friend reached for his flask and removing the cork, 

 handed it to the man whose face and uniform could not 

 be seen because of the great darkness. The man drank 

 deeply, thanked the poilu and walked away. As soon as 

 the figure had become indistinguishable in the night, our 

 friend turned to us and said that that was their com- 

 manding officer who was in charge of the battalion and 

 that he had walked twelve kilometers with the men. I 

 tell this little incident to show the spirit of fraternity and 

 equality which apparently exists between the French of- 

 ficers and men. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that 

 many of the officers have risen from the ranks and know 

 full well the hardships of the French private. 



The Alpine Chasseur bands are very fine indeed. In 

 every Chasseur band, besides the usual number of instru- 

 ments, there are sixteen men with French hunting horns. 

 To hear these bands as they come down one of the streets 

 of a little French village at the head of a battalion on 

 the way to or from the front is exhilarating to a de- 

 gree. When the men are "en repos" in some village be- 

 hind the lines these bands practice nearly all day and one 

 is surprised to hear them playing parts of the world's 

 most famous operas with a skill and technique worthy of 

 our largest and most widely known military bands. 



Thus very briefly I have traced France at War as it 

 appeals to me. Doubtless to other Americans who have 

 visited the war zone other phases of the work would be 

 outstanding. France at War is a nation consecrated, 

 every man, woman and child. With this spirit France 

 can never lose. 



France, sore distressed, called out in pleading tones 

 to America three thousand miles away, and America has 

 heard and America is coming and America will stick 

 until war shall cease forever. That is what France con- 

 fidently believes. Then a League to Enforce Peace will 

 be uppermost in the minds of men and a foundation will 

 be laid upon the blood of countless thousands and upon 

 that foundation the structure of universal peace will be 

 built. He who lags behind at such a time as this only 

 postpones that for which all the world looks and longs, a 

 permanent international peace. 



T UTHER GOODRICH JONES, son of W. Goodrich 

 Lj Jones, president of the Texas Forestry Association, 

 is in France with the Tenth Engineers (Forest). He 

 writes home that since September he has been engaged 

 in work of various kinds in the French forests, from 

 swamping and tree-felling to surveying. At the time of 

 last writing he was a clerk in battalion headquarters 

 office, where his familiarity with French, Spanish and 

 German was valuable. Young Jones graduated from 

 Princeton last June. 



