The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, October 14, 1918, Page 4

When the Boys Come Marching Home Radical Reforms Will Be Backed by the Veterans—Government Will _Apply War-Ti_me Efficiency to the Problems of Peace The soldier not only gives his time to his country for nominal pay but he works hard, doing over and over again the complicated tasks and exercises until he is 100 per cent efficient. Then he must face harder toil and even death in Europe. The very least the people-at home should do is to prepare thoroughly for his return to _civil life. BY PRIVATE E. B. FUSSELL (Formerly of the Leader Staff) HE other morning my friend, Private Joe Perkins, and.I were going up the company street together. Joe was going te “sick call” that comes every morning at 7 o’clock. I had a pair of tan shoes in my hand that I was taking to the supply sergeant. “What’s the matter, “Trying to get out of the job of Joe?” I asked. unpacking those rifles that came in yesterday ?” “No chance,” said Joe. “All I've got is a little sore throat, but I might as well get it tended to; it don’t cost anything. What’s the matter with those shoes of yours? Trying to ‘gip’ the govern- ment out of a new pair?” But as it happened, I wasn’t trying to “gip” the government, The stitching on one of the shoes had started to tear and both were a little run down at the heels. In civilian life I probably would have worn them a month longer until the soles wore out, and then either had them soled or thrown them away. As it was, because it didn’t cost any- thing "and because the commanding officer has pasted placards all over the camp {elling the men to watch out for their shoes, I was taking them to the supply sergeant to have them fixed. NO FAKE ECONOMY IN THE ARMY Joe went up and saw the medical officer, who swabbed his throat out and gave him a dose of castor oil, which Joe didn’t like very well, but the next day ™~ was as fit as a fiddle, whatever that is. And in two or three days my shoes came back from the reclamation department, not only with - new heels and new stitching, but with new sewed half soles, because the cobblers in the reclamation division figured that-the shoes would break:down more quickly if they were used with the old soles, which were getting ready to wear through, anyhow. Now in civilian life Joe probably would have let_ his little sore throat go. He might have been all right the next day, or he might have got pretty sick and been laid up for a week. I probably would have let my pair of shoes go as they were, especial- ly if I had been doing heavy work like I am doing now, and didn’t care:particularly for appearances. But one of the rules of the army is that every man who is sick must answer sick call, whether he wants to or not. The government.needs the men; it won’t take the chance of contagion developing and spreading through camp. And the government reclamation service urges, too, that attention be paid to clothing and equipment as well as to human lives. It’s the old adage of “A stitch in time saves nine,” given a very practical application. At the prices- of material .bought at wholesale and with army labor it probably cost the government about™ 30 cents to fix that pair of shoes of mine. If I had let them go a little longer 'it would have meant a - new pair that would have cost the government be- tween $3 and $4. The antiseptic and castor oil that Joe Perkins got cost the government very little but they may have prevented the army from losing .. Joe’s labor in the ordnance warehouse for a week, to say nothing of -preventing an epidemic that might have spread through the whole camp. I was “thinking of these things~the ‘other night when the talk in the tent was on one of the favorite topics of the soldier. R ; The two most important topics that a soldier .girls back. . talks about are “eats” and work—what he had to eat today, what we are going to have tomorrow, and who is going to be on K. P. (kitchen police) tomorrow and the day after, whether the work to- morrow is going to be harder than it was yesterday, whether we are going to get through in time to have Saturday afternoon off, and so forth. - FEW WILL CONTINUE TO BE SOLDIERS Next to the subject of eats and work is the ques- tion: “When are we going across?” . Make no mistake about it, the soldier, whether he is private or officer; infantry, artillery or ord- nance; regular guardsman or draftee, is waiting (not any too patiently), watching, hoping, yes, and sometimes praying, for the day when he will “get across” and be in the thick of it. But on this particular night of which I am speaking, we had cussed and discussed the menu for the day in full, we knew who was going to be on K. P. for the next day and most of us knew what jobs would fall to ourlot. There didn’t' happen to be any new rumors as to who was “going-over” next, and we fell, naturally, into talk about that other great topic of the soldier, which is: “What will happen when the war is over?” Generally the talk is largely per- sonal, about getting our old_jobs and our old friends and our old I don’t believe there is more than one man in a hundred in the army today who expects to fol- low it as a profession; 99 want to get back to.civil life as quickly as they can. But they want the war settled on a basis that won’t call them out again, five or 10 or 15 years from now. I don’t believe, f in our own company, at least, that there is a man "who would leave now to go back to civil life if given the chance, with the war as it is today. They feel that war is a mean job, and that the quicker it is settled for good the better it will be for all concerned. . This night when we were talking we got farther than the personal question of whether Private Brown would get his old job and Private Smith his old sweetheart (only she isn’t old, at all) when- The value of organization is one of the big lessons' the soldier gets every day of his life. “He will not for- peace came. We got to talking about general- changes that would be likely to come. - Here were millions of men, an army greater than anything the United States had ever dreamed of before, gathered together, with Uncle Sam feeding them and clothing them, giving them. physical exercises and regular hours, giving them a chance to play when there was opportunity—(in some companies, our own among them, baseball, boxing, field meets, basket ball and other sports are a part of the regular schedule, and considered just about as important as drill or anything else). All these things were being done for the men that they had been accustomed to do for themselves before the war. Would it make them lazy and inclined to look to the government for help the rest of their lives? This was a question that somebody brought up. NOT DEPENDING ON THEIR REPUTATIONS But nobody seemed to think this was probable. Uncle Sam serves good food, better in a great many instances, and with a' menu a lot more -properly balanced, than many of the soldiers have been get- ting at home.- -But soldiers are individualists enough to appreciate ordering a meal for them- selves when they get a chance, even if they don’t get such good food. One man likes more sugar in his coffee than the government ration (though it’s hard to get more at a restaurant), another drinks his black, and so on. And again, though Uncle Sam’s uniform is a mighty serviceable set of clothing, I don’t imagine there is a man who won’t give up leggings and buy a black or blue or fancy suit as soon as war is over. No, the - sentiment seemed to bé that there was no danger of the government taking over on contract these things that mankind, since the history of the world be- gan, had been in the habit of doing for itself. . Somebody brought up the subject of pensions, but everybody seemed pretty well agreed that while pensions might be necessary in some special cases, government war insurance, which every man in the bunch had taken out to the full limit of $10,000, would .pretty well attend to this end of things. And we went on to talk about - other things—government owner- ship, the control of the railroads . and telephone and telegraph lines, which the government found it necessary to have to control the transportation of men and food and the transmission of intelligence— would these be likely to go back into private hands? Most of the men thought not; they thought, for the most part, that government control was more likely to grow into government ownership, and most of them, I think, hoped so. 3 ¥ I know one bunch that did. That bunch was part of a group of which I was one, shipped from Georgia recently, on a three-day trip to this camp at Waco, Texas. We made the trip in a day coach and though some of us had money enough to buy get it when he comes back to the factory and the farm. Already the returned soldiers of Australia have organized a league and joined with the Labor party. -In Canada they are ¢ oo 95 per cent organized for political action. = - PAGE FOUR - ° 7 3