With Our Soldiers in France | Page 9

have doubled and trebled in
the village in a few weeks, and the peasants have come to the
conclusion that every American soldier must be a millionaire; as the
boys have sometimes told them that the pile of notes, which represents
several mouths' pay, is the amount they receive every month. Compare
this with the $1.80 a month, in addition to a small allowance for his
family, which the French private gets, and you will readily see how this
false impression is formed.
Temptation and solicitation in Europe have been in almost exact
proportion to the pay that the soldier receives. The harpies flock around
the men who have the most money. As our American boys are the best
paid, and perhaps the most generous and open-hearted and reckless of
all the troops, they have proved an easy mark in Paris and the port
cities. As soon as they were paid several months' back salary, some of
them took "French leave," went on a spree, and did not come back until
they were penniless. The officers, fully alive to the danger, are now
doing their utmost to cope with the situation; they are seeking to reduce
the cash payments to the men and are endeavoring to persuade them to

send more of their money home. Court martial and strict punishment
have been imposed for drunkenness, in the effort to grapple with this
evil.
Will the friends of our American boys away in France try to realize just
the situation that confronts them? Imagine a thousand healthy, happy,
reckless, irrepressible American youths put down in a French village,
without a single place of amusement but a drinking hall, and no social
life save such as they can find with the French girls standing in the
doorways and on the street corners. Think of all these men shut up,
month after month, through the long winter, with nothing to do to
occupy their evenings. Then you will begin to realize the seriousness of
the situation which the Young Men's Christian Association is trying to
meet.
Here on the village green stands a big tent, with the sign "The
American Y M C A," and the red triangle, which is already placed upon
more than seven hundred British, French, and American Association
centers in France. Inside the tent, as the evening falls, scores of boys
are sitting at the tables, writing their letters home on note paper
provided for them. Here are men playing checkers, dominoes, and other
games. Other groups are standing around the folding billiard tables. A
hundred men have taken out books from the circulating library, while
others are scanning the home papers and the latest news from the front.
Our secretaries have been on the ground for a week, working daily
from five o'clock in the morning until midnight. They have unpacked
their goods and are doing a driving trade over the counter, to the value
of some $200 a day. In certain cases goods are sold at a loss, as it is
very hard indeed to get supplies under present war conditions. The
steamer "Kansan" was torpedoed, and sank with the whole first
shipment of supplies and equipment for the Y M C A huts in France.
Outside a baseball game is exciting rivalry between two companies;
while near the door of the tent a ring is formed and the men are
cheering pair after pair as they put on the boxing gloves and with good
humor are learning to take some rather heavy slugging. Poor boys, they
will have to stand much worse punishment than this before the winter is

over. Just beside the present tent there is being rushed into position a
big Y M C A hut which will accommodate temporarily a thousand men,
before it is taken to pieces and shipped to some new center. The
Association has ordered from Paris a number of permanent pine huts,
60 by 120 feet, which will accommodate 2,000 soldiers each, and keep
them warm and well occupied during the long cold winter evenings that
are to come. On the railway siding at the moment are nine temporary
huts, packed in sections for immediate construction, and a score of
permanent buildings have been ordered to be erected as fast as the
locations for the camps are selected by the military authorities. Indeed,
the aim is to have them on the ground and ready before the boys arrive
and take the first plunge in the wrong direction.
What is the life that our boys are living here at the front? Let us go
through a day with the battalion quartered in this village. At five
o'clock in the morning the first bugle sounds. The boys are quickly on
their feet, dressing, washing, getting ready for the day's drill. In half an