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Show made and Intelligent criticism never i does any harm, but the biggest traitor is the man who deliberately take hold of a monkey-wrench and makes monkey of himself by thrown It Into official 'machinery." . . " J. W. DE3AKIN,' ;. E Company, Twentieth Infantry.1 February 2, 191S. .. .. , . Jl SOLDIER'S VIEW Editor Tribune-1-The following letter, let-ter, in substance, was sent to the Herald-Republican on their attitude toward to-ward the present administration, and Secretary Baker In particular but they refused to publish It, though my Information In-formation aa an enlisted .man Is at first hand:. , ; 8ir-4 can Justly claim to have a knowledge of what war conditions mean, Kour of my brothers are graduates grad-uates of the 'Royal Military academy. One of thon) has already given his Ufe i lor the sabred cause of. democracy; another has hod ' the military cross conferred npon him for galantry at Tprea. ' ' ' '-' ' "My faftlef' Is at large contractor tor the British army at the present "time, and f know what all this means. Because I was finishing my collegiate work tn America preparatory to entering enter-ing a business Ufe. I enlisted under -the banner of Uncle Sam, and I am glad I did so. "Sir. we in England, know what raising an army means. It took s two years to raise an efficient fighting force of 2.000,000 men, and we were working hard all the time, and we know that America has done wonders . In the short time she has been at war. It Is comparatively easy to trans-- trans-- port an army across the Straits of Dover, but It is vastly different when the transportation Is across the Atlantic At-lantic ocean. Tet the present administration admin-istration has sent, ant is sending, men over all the time. It may te argued , tkat Canada has - done the same, but . sir, here is a point that has been generally gen-erally overlooked. There has never at any time been more than 250,000 men from all the colonies put together in the (British army on the western front. It takes quite a little time to perfect an organization that is capable capa-ble or feeding, clothing and equipping v2,000,000 men, to say nothing of inaugurating in-augurating a vaat insurance scheme to take care of them all. "Have you realized that practically all the complaints come from the national na-tional army? "Of course mistakes have been made. You see, we are a democracy and In a democracy such mistakes era unavoidable. I suppose the idea' way to conduct a war would be to give some strong personality the full power pow-er of autocracy, but we cannot fight the devil and become devils ourselves. I myself are surprised that so few mistake have been made. I "We In the army are not suffering so much as all that. We are still man-! aging to live. Some of us are not as smart as wo might bo. Recently itj lias been forcibly home upon me that I do not know my right from my left, but I would hesitate before giving a senator iwhI for making a kick against cruel treatment. beeauHe someone higher up. In the wisdom of superior knowledge, gave tno extra drill for my lamentable ignorance, v "What America wants' at the present pres-ent time is men who will got down to business. Mistakes will always be |
