Part 63

The work of the Salvation Army with the armed forces of the United States does not need any word of commendation from me. Perhaps I may be permitted to say, however, that as a representative of the War and Navy Departments I have been closely in touch with it from its inception, both in Europe and in the United States. I do not believe there is a doughboy anywhere who does not speak of it with enthusiasm and affection. Its remarkable success has been due solely to the unselfish spirit of service which has underlain it. Nothing has been too humble or too lowly for the Salvation Army representative to do for the soldier. Without ostentation, without advertising, without any emphasis upon auspices or organization, your people have met the men of the Army as friends and companions-in-arms, and the soldiers, particularly those of the American Expeditionary Force, will never forget what you have done.

Faithfully yours, (Signed) Raymond B. Fosdick.

From Honorable Arthur Stanley, Chairman British Red Cross Society.

British Red Cross Society Joint War Committee

83 Pall Mall, London, S. W.,

December 22, 1917.

General Bramwell Booth.

Dear General Booth:

I enclose formal receipt for the cheque, value £2000, which was handed to me by your representative. I note that it is a contribution from the Salvation Army to the Joint Funds to provide a new Salvation Army Motor Ambulance Unit on the same conditions as before.

I cannot sufficiently thank you and the Salvation Army for this very generous donation.

I am indeed glad to know that you are providing another twenty drivers for service with our Ambulance Fleet in France. This is most welcome news, as whenever Salvation Army men are helping we hear nothing but good reports of their work. Sir Ernest Clarke tells me that your Ambulance Sections are quite the best of any in our service, and the more Salvation Army men you can send him, the better he will be pleased. I would again take this opportunity of congratulating you, which I do with all my heart, upon the splendid record of your Army.

Yours sincerely,

(Signed) Arthur Stanley.

Extract from Judge Ben Lindsey’s picture of the Salvation Army at the Front:

“A good expression for American enthusiasm is: ’I am crazy about’—this, or that, or the other thing that excites our admiration. Well, ’I am crazy about the Salvation Army’—the Salvation Army as I saw it and mingled with it and the doughboys in the trenches. And when I happened to be passing through Chicago to-day and saw an appeal in the Tribune for the Salvation Army, I remembered what our boys so often shouted out to me as I passed them in the trenches and back of the lines: ’Judge, when you get back home tell the folks not to forget the Salvation Army. They’re the real thing.’

“And I know they are the real thing. I have shared with the boys the doughnuts and chocolate and coffee that seemed to be so much better than any other doughnuts or coffee or chocolate I have ever tasted before. And when it seemed so wonderful to me after just a mild sort of experience down a shell-swept road, through the damp and cold of a French winter day, what must it be to those boys after trench raids or red-hot scraps down rain-soaked trenches under the wet mists of No Man’s Land?... Listen to some of the stories the boys told me: ’You see, Judge, the good old Salvation Army is the real thing. They don’t put on no airs. There ain’t no flub-dub about them and you don’t see their mugs in the fancy magazines much. Why, you never would see one of them in Paris around the hotels. You’d never know they existed, Judge, unless you came right up here to the front lines as near as the Colonel will let you!’

“And one enthusiastic urchin said: ’Why, Judge, after the battle yesterday, we couldn’t get those women out of the village till they’d seen every fellow had at least a dozen fried cakes and all the coffee or chocolate he could pile in. We just had to drag ’em out—for the boys love ’em too much to lose ’em—we weren’t going to take no chances—not much— for our Salvation ladies!’”

Harry Lauder’s Endorsement.

In speaking of the Salvation Army’s work before the Rotary Club of San Francisco, Harry Lauder said:

“There is no organization in Europe doing more for the troops than the Salvation Army, and the devotion of its officers has caused the Salvation Army to be revered by the soldiers.”

Mr. Otto Kahn, one of America’s most prominent bankers, upon his return to this country after a tour through the American lines in France, writes, among other things:

“I should particularly consider myself remiss if I did not refer with sincere admiration to the devoted, sympathetic, and most efficient work of the Salvation Army, which, though limited in its activities to a few sectors only, has won the warm and affectionate regard of those of our troops with whom it has been in contact.”

Mr. David Lawrence, special Washington correspondent of the New York Evening Post and other influential papers, in an article in which he comments on the work of all the relief agencies, says of the Salvation Army in France:

“Curiously enough the Salvation Army is spoken of in all official reports as the organization most popular with the troops. Its organization is the smallest of all four. Its service is simple and unadorned. It specializes on doughnuts and pie, which it gives away free whenever the ingredients of the manufacture of those articles are at hand.

“The policy of the organization is to place a worker and his wife, if possible, with a unit of troops. The woman makes doughnuts and sews on buttons, while the man helps the soldiers in any way he can.

“The success of the Salvation Army is attributed by commanding officers to the fact that the workers know how to mix naturally. In other cases there had been sometimes an air of condescension not unlike that of the professional settlement house worker.”

In a recent issue of the Saturday Evening Post, Mr. Irvin Cobb, who has just returned from France, has this to say of the Salvation Army:

“Right here seems a good-enough place for me to slip in a few words of approbation for the work which another organization has accomplished in France since we put our men into the field. Nobody asked me to speak in its favor because, so far as I can find out, it has no publicity department. I am referring to the Salvation Army. May it live forever for the service which, without price and without any boasting on the part of its personnel, it is rendering to our boys in France!