I believe that I not only know what the American soldier does in France, but that I begin to know what _he is_.
_He is a representative American._ And he is living on a moral plane which is _above the moral plane of civilian life at home_.
I have found soldiers who are a disgrace to the uniform; there are individual cases and there are groups of cases that give me keen regret. I wish that the army had a "Botany Bay," that those who insist upon practising the indecencies could be segregated. However few these men are,--and they are indeed the small minority,--they constitute a menace to morale, and exert a demoralizing influence upon those with whom they are associated. Then, too, there are a few officers who represent the old idea that the soldier is necessarily a victim of his passions, and must be allowed, even encouraged, to gratify them. But such officers are in a decreasing ratio to the whole, and privates who bring an unfavorable judgment upon their country are the exceptions, that assist in proving the rule.
On one occasion two hundred men from just-arrived transports began their self-appointed task of painting a certain French city a livelier hue. Very quickly they discovered that "decorators" of their class were not in demand. The naval patrol sent them back to the ships with battered heads and wiser minds. Two hundred men out of more than _fifteen thousand_ tried to be naughty, and failed! I can imagine a lurid head-line, "_Recently Arrived Soldiers Paint City Red_." Such a head-line would have been unfair and untrue. That story of a thousand men from the rural community of northeastern America is absolutely false. I have investigated it in every French port where American troops land and in in every other place where any considerable number of our men have been quartered. My inquiries have followed three lines, the military, the Y. M. C. A., and civilians. While conditions were worse at the beginning, before our military authorities had their own police programme operating, nothing at all approaching this condition _ever_ existed.
Our leaders in France have not conquered the vices that society has battled against from the first organized beginnings of civilization; but, if the American Expeditionary Force is not setting an example in moral idealism to American civilian life, then I have walked through France with my eyes closed and my ears stopped.