Part 29

=239. The War's Nameless Heroes.= All these great preparations at home were more businesslike than they were stirring and warlike. They meant a great change in the life of the whole nation. Workers were shifted from all kinds of small, unimportant peace-time tasks to a few gigantic businesses on which the success of the war depended. All the efforts of the nation were centered on saving goods, time, and money, and producing goods to carry on the war.

[Sidenote: =Not a war of great names=]

The "home front" did not give great honors to those who held it. But the war was fought to preserve the rights of free citizens, and it had the nearly united support of a whole people. There are few famous names in the fighting abroad, and few, too, at home. It was a war in which the average man was the hero. He did not expect medals for doing his duty in battle, or a high salary for doing his duty at home. But he did it, and unbelievable deeds were accomplished--fleets built, factories multiplied, waste lands planted, two million men sent across the seas, and the war brought to a swift end.

[Sidenote: =The Burial of an "Unknown Warrior"=]

England had a great state funeral not long ago. It rivaled in ceremony the honors paid to dead queens and kings. Throngs followed the great procession to Westminster Abbey, where England's famous dead of all time are buried. A tablet was placed above the tomb of a hero whom a nation united to give its highest honors. The name on that tablet was "To an Unknown Warrior." In America, too, the deeds of the great number, in battle or at home, will always be nameless.

[Sidenote: =The spirit of heroism needed in peace=]

If each person, instead of looking straight ahead at the task to be done, had looked to see who else could do it, America's war program would have failed. It has been said that in a great nation any one person, by himself, is lost, and does not count. The chapter in American history just ended proves that when his country is in danger, each citizen can and must act as if the result depended on him. This spirit of patriotism among millions of those whom history will call nameless heroes brought victory in the war, and if it is still followed in peace, will bring "victories no less renowned."

[Sidenote: =An unparalleled war=]

=240. The World's Greatest War.= The war of 1914-1918 is the greatest history has ever known, because of the number of nations in it, the number of lives lost, the cost in goods and money, and the changes it has made among nations.

[Sidenote: =A record in shipbuilding=]

Its size is too vast for any one mind to picture it fully. The front-line trenches, with all their turns and twists, were six hundred miles long, nearly equal to the straight distance from Philadelphia to Chicago. Mountains of material had to be sent across to keep our soldiers well fed and warmly clothed, and furnished with the cannon and shells they must have to meet the enemy. Only about two out of three men in the army could fight, for the third man had to keep these mammoth quantities of supplies steadily moving toward the front. Ships were the thing our government needed most, since it was fighting so far away from home. American shipyards grew so rapidly that they broke all records for number of ships launched and swiftness in building them. The United States soon led the world in shipbuilding for this war.

The War Department was so anxious to keep our men warm and comfortable that it bought up all the wool in the country. The army had to have thirty-five million more pairs of woolen socks than were made for the whole nation in 1914. It used more woolen blankets in one year than the one hundred million people in the United States buy in two ordinary years.

[Sidenote: =Attacks carefully planned=]

=241. A War of Science.= Every movement in the war had to be planned as exactly as possible. This was a war of science, rather than a war of dashing adventure, as those in the past had been. Before attacks were made on the enemy, a barrage, or curtain-like rain of shells, was turned on his lines. This "curtain of fire" moved forward at a fixed rate, and the men walked behind it. They had strict orders to go only so many yards a minute, or their own guns would kill them.

[Sidenote: =Use of poison gas=]

Poison gas was one of the new weapons of this war. It caused almost one-third of our losses in 1918. Science produced new gases so rapidly that inventors had to be continually making new gas masks to strain out the deadly fumes. Over thirty kinds of gas were used during the war.

No one commander could be present at once on every part of the hundreds of miles of battle-lines, or even a small part of them. The war had to be carried on largely by telephone. The Americans strung one hundred thousand miles of wire in France.

[Sidenote: =Pershing trained for his work=]

=242. Pershing Heads the Army.= The youngest of American generals, John Joseph Pershing, was put at the head of the American forces. The choice of Pershing was hailed everywhere as a wise one. A war so immense and mechanical needed a general who had studied the art of war thoroughly, as Pershing had. He had seen much actual fighting, and was the only American general who had commanded a division in actual war. He carried with him the love and respect of all national guardsmen. They would have followed him anywhere he wished to lead.

We have already heard how he had routed Villa's bandits in Mexico. He had also led a charge of colored troops against the Spaniards in Cuba, and had conquered a powerful savage tribe in the Philippines. Before he was sent to Mexico he had been governor of a province in the Philippines for four years.

[Sidenote: =Fights squarely=]

=243. A Boy Who Was Made of Fighting Stuff.= As a boy, Pershing was brave and modest, with the ability to stay by a hard task until he finished it. John was a hardy, active boy. He played at mimic war and attended school. He played "hookey," and got into fights with his fellows, but he was square. One day the father saw the signs of battle-torn clothes and a bruised face. "Been fighting? Never let any boy say that he has licked you," was the father's remark. John had expected a whipping.

At day school he was a plodder. But he did win a prize, a nicely bound volume of the _Life of Washington_. This was offered by the president of the school board. John's mother was there. The children clapped and called for a speech. "I'm sorry you didn't all win a prize. I'm going to grow up like Washington," he said.

[Sidenote: =Studies at West Point=]

In the 70's, when times were bad, John had to help earn the family living, and he did it by teaching some of the hardest schools in the district. He took the examinations for West Point when he was twenty, and defeated his friend. "I'm sorry you could not win too," he said. At the end of his first year at West Point he was made class leader, a position won only by hard study.

[Sidenote: =Made a general by Roosevelt=]

After he graduated from West Point, honors and promotions came fast. Roosevelt had passed by eight hundred and sixty-two older officers to make him a brigadier general. At the beginning of the war he was major general, and later Congress promoted him to the full rank of general, a very rare honor, and the highest in its power to give.

[Sidenote: =Arrival in France=]

When Pershing, with a few officers and engineers first landed in France the news spread quickly. "The Americans have come." Their arrival meant that the United States would soon take part in the fighting in earnest. New life and fresh resolution came into the hearts of the war-tired veterans of France.

[Sidenote: =Germany's last great effort=]

=244. The Great Danger in 1918.= Russia had fought bravely for the Allies at the beginning of the war, but about the time the United States entered, a revolution drove the Czar from his throne. Russia was so upset by the revolution that after a year it gave up trying to keep its army at the front, and made peace with Germany. Hundreds of thousands of German soldiers were thus left free to attack the Allies in the west. Germany thought that if she could succeed in taking Paris before many Americans arrived in the trenches, the war would be won. It was her last chance to win.

THE CONCLUSION OF THE WAR

[Sidenote: =Need of a united front=]

=245. Foch the Allied Supreme Commander.= Before the spring of 1918 each of the Allied armies had been acting on its own plan. The places where the trenches of two armies came together were, of course, the weakest, and were favorite points for German attacks. It was now decided to have one commander for all the Allied forces. Foch, a French general highly skilled in the science of war, was chosen for this great task.

[Sidenote: =The German advance=]

=246. The Crisis of the War.= In their great drive the Germans always struck at the weakest point. They found this where the French and English armies were joined. They drove forward in mass formations or solid blocks. Thousands upon thousands were mowed down by the English and French guns, but on they came. Back, back the Allies fell, day after day, until the Germans reached the Marne again. The world held its breath. Each day the Germans were expected to break through, but each day the Allied troops retreated. Slowly they moved, fighting like demons and always holding at vital points.

[Sidenote: =American troops scattered along the front=]

America was eager to be of the greatest possible help in the grave danger to Paris and France. The Allies were short of reserves. General Pershing, putting his own honors second in the same generous way he had done at school, decided to scatter the Yankee troops all through the French and British lines, wherever they were needed.

[Sidenote: =Rushing troops to France=]

Germany had sneered at our nation because she thought our people were so devoted to dollars that we could not or would not fight. Now she began to learn how high the war spirit flamed in the soldiers we were preparing to send by millions to France. By the help of England's great fleet, we were able to send over more than a million men by the summer of 1918. The American troops then formed a united army, fighting under their own flag. They took over a hundred miles of the front, relieving tired Frenchmen. Another million arrived by November.

The Allied command gave Pershing command of the region between the Aisne and the Marne. The Germans thought the Americans untried, and expected to break through by using their best "shock troops."

[Sidenote: =The battle of Château-Thierry=]

In July the Germans struck a terrific blow at Château-Thierry. Without waiting for artillery, Pershing struck, and in six hours had captured as much ground as the Germans had spent six days in getting possession of. The Americans were advancing with great rapidity. The Germans were dumbfounded. They did not have time to remove their supplies.

[Sidenote: =The turning point of the war=]

By the brilliant generalship of Foch the great German attack was stopped in the middle of July, and after that it was the German army which was in danger.

Now Pershing got ready for St. Mihiel. He drew from the French and English ranks the Americans he had sent to learn war from these veterans. Now he also had tried men. St. Mihiel was important. It threatened the famous battlefield of Verdun and protected the great German fortified city of Metz.

[Sidenote: =American victory at St. Mihiel=]

=247. Germans Cry "Kamerad."= On September 12 the Americans burst forth in a rain of shot and shell such as the Germans had seldom before witnessed. The fierce battle raged for four hours. The Americans then charged across the river yelling like demons. The German soldiers had been taught to despise these "green American troops." But these same Germans now cried "Kamerad" in dead earnest. Five miles of ground were gained before these "green" Americans halted.

The next day our artillery opened fire at 1:30 in the morning. Before the day was done, more than one hundred and fifty square miles of German territory were in our possession.

Both the French and the English were busy. The French were driving at the center of the great line stretching from the North Sea to Switzerland. The English were driving the Germans out of the Belgian cities.

[Sidenote: =The greatest American battle=]

=248. Battle of the Argonne.= Many large battles were fought by the Americans, besides the smaller clashes that occurred. The greatest one was in the Argonne Forest. This was a half-mountainous, woody country, much of which was covered with underbrush. The Germans had fortified it strongly. Besides their great cannon, they had filled the Argonne with nests of machine guns, placing them in gullies and behind trees, stumps, and rocks, for protection. Here too, they had their best fighting men.

The battle started on September 26. This was the most bloody fighting of the war. Companies and regiments were cut off and lost for a time. The Germans were bound to hold the forest, and the Americans were bound to win it. Gradually the Germans were forced back, thousands were captured, and thousands more were killed. They could not stem the American tide. After many days of hard fighting in which the Americans proved themselves fully equal to the best shock troops of the German army, victory fell to the better army.

[Sidenote: =Allied victories on all fronts=]

The storm was just breaking loose on Germany. The combined navy of the Allies was choking out her life in spite of the submarines. The English in Asia were capturing the strongholds of the Turks, and the Italians now were gaining against the Austrians. Calamities came fast. Bulgaria, an ally of Germany, surrendered. Turkey followed. The hungry people of Germany began to plot revolution against their rulers, and the armies were retreating toward the Rhine.

=249. The Kaiser Runs Away.= Seeing that his cause was lost, the German ruler, the Kaiser, gave up his throne and fled to Holland. The German generals agreed to an armistice November 11, 1918, by which they gave up much fighting material and moved back many miles across the Rhine into their own land.

[Sidenote: =The bravery of ordinary men=]

=250. American Soldiers in Battle.= The American doughboys were splendid fighters. The officers had to check the rash daring of their men, they did not need to urge them forward. The Americans were drilled in methods of attack rather than defense, from the start. A joking comment was made that it took only half as long to train American troops as it did others, because they only had to be taught to go one way.

The ordinary American showed what courage lay behind the quiet round of his peace-time life. Our soldiers were clean and full of high spirits, and they were keyed to the most stubborn efforts by knowing that they were not fighting in a selfish cause. They "fraternized" famously with the French children of the villages.

[Sidenote: =Work of the Peace Conference=]

=251. The Treaty of Peace.= After the armistice, the nations which had won the victory planned to meet at Paris to make a treaty of peace. President Wilson went over to France to take part in this meeting.

The men who made the peace treaty gave France her two states, Alsace and Lorraine, which Germany had taken in the war of 1870. They divided Austria into a number of separate states, giving to each kind of people its own government. They took land from Germany and Russia and created Poland. They also decided that Germany should pay Belgium and France for the destruction of property in those countries.

[Sidenote: =Opinion favors a League=]

[Sidenote: =Why the League was defeated=]

=252. America and the League of Nations.= Included in the treaty was an agreement called the League of Nations. Its purpose was to combine all nations, great and small, in a covenant which would work for the peace of the world. The need of a league was urged by men of different parties in this country during the war. A great number of Americans were in favor of such a world agreement. This country had always been a peace-loving people, and had fought in the hope that this would be a war to end war. But after the armistice Europe remained more unsettled than anyone had expected. In spite of all the treaties, wars of various kinds continued in Europe. President Wilson toured the country speaking for the League, but met much opposition. The American people came to believe that under the League they would be too closely bound up with European affairs, which were now so disturbed.

In 1920 the question of entering the League in its original form was widely debated. It was the chief point on which the presidential election turned, and the result was overwhelmingly against the League as it had been drawn up at Paris.

SUGGESTIONS INTENDED TO HELP THE PUPIL

=The Leading Facts.= _1._ This war was so great that it needed the support of every American citizen. _2._ People at home had to do without many things needed by the army and by the Allies. _3._ Nearly all the great powers of Europe were drawn into the war. _4._ Germany, contrary to treaty, invaded Belgium. _5._ The German navy was quickly driven from the seas, and Germany was blockaded. _6._ The American government remained neutral, but most of its people favored the Allies. _7._ Germany sank the _Lusitania_ and other vessels illegally. _8._ President Wilson did not lead the nation into war until the people were unitedly in favor of it. _9._ When Germany declared that her submarines would obey no law, and the United States entered the war. _10._ Congress voted billions of dollars for war. _11._ A selective draft raised a great national army. _12._ The part of the average man in this war stands out more than that of famous leaders. _13._ This was a war of science, and by far the greatest war in history. _14._ Pershing was given command of the American army. _15._ When Russia withdrew from the war Germany used her extra troops for a final great attack. _16._ Foch was put in command of all the Allied armies, and turned the Germans back. _17._ The United States sent more than two million men in all overseas. _18._ The peace treaty changed many boundary lines. _19._ Americans wished to uphold world peace, but in the election of 1920 defeated the League of Nations as it stood.

=Study Questions.= _1._ Name some of the things that were done in American homes to win the war. _2._ Why did everyone wish to do his part? _3._ Why was the United States so late in entering the war? _4._ Make a list of the principal countries that took part in the World War. _5._ What was the importance of the invasion of Belgium? _6._ Give the story of the war at sea. _7._ What disputes occurred between the United States and the different warring countries before 1917? _8._ Tell briefly Wilson's life before he became President. _9._ How did Germany's treatment of the United States lead to war? _10._ How did the United States "mobilize" for war? _11._ What means were used to raise a national army? _12._ What was done to take care of these millions of men? _13._ What did the United States need most at the start? _14._ Why was this "a war of science"? _15._ What training had Pershing had for his new position? _16._ Tell some events of Pershing's boyhood. _17._ What was the great danger in 1918? _18._ Give a number of reasons why a supreme commander for the Allied armies was needed. _19._ What action of General Pershing's reminds you of the boy, John Pershing? Why? _20._ Tell about the battle of Château-Thierry; of St. Mihiel; of the Argonne. _21._ What events led up to Germany's surrender? _22._ Who in your opinion was the real hero of this war? _23._ What did the Peace Conference do? _24._ Do you think we should enter a world league of nations?

=Suggested Readings.= Rand McNally's _School Atlas of Reconstruction_; Perry, _Our Navy in the War_, 170-175.

WHERE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND THEIR CIVILIZATION CAME FROM

INTRODUCTION

[Sidenote: =First settlers from a built-up Europe=]

=253. Why Boys and Girls Should Know about Europe.= In the part of the book just studied, you have become acquainted with men and women who have been great American leaders. Did you ever stop to think that the early settlers in this country, from whom most of our great men sprang, came from countries in Europe already built up? What the settlers gave to this country they got from people who had lived a long time ago. Therefore in many ways their habits and institutions were different from ours now. They had their own ways of living, their own schools, churches, and forms of government.

[Sidenote: =The rulers=]

In most European countries kings and queens ruled the people. Next to the king stood the lords, who were great men and owned acres and acres of land. They had their own soldiers and many servants to do their work and to wait on them.

[Sidenote: =The serfs=]

Below the lords, who spent their time in war, in the chase, and in going to see play-battles, called mock-fights, were the common people. In some countries these people were not free, as you are, but lived in huts in small villages on the great man's land. They had to work on his land, and were only a little better off than slaves. These people were called serfs.

In the few large cities there lived at that time rich merchants who traded in slaves, or went on long journeys to buy and sell their wares. In the cities, too, lived workers in wool, cotton, brass, iron, wood, and other materials. After a time the workers of a given class gathered into a sort of union called a guild, to protect themselves.

[Sidenote: =The roots of our civilization=]

But in neither country nor city did the common man have the many rights and privileges he has now-a-days in America.

These people, so different from us, got their habits and their ways of doing things from still older nations in Asia, in Africa and in Europe.

THE OLDEST NATIONS

=254. Egypt, the Land of the Nile and the Pyramids.= Egypt has always been a land of curious things. It lies across the Mediterranean, southeast of Europe. It is a land of sunshine day after day. Were it not for the Nile River, it would be a part of the Great Sahara Desert. Every year for ages, the Nile has risen in a great flood and its waters have spread out over Egypt. In coming down from their mountain home these waters carry rich earth which they spread over a part of Egypt. The result is that Egypt, in an early day, became the garden spot for nations less favored.

[Sidenote: =Egypt in Bible times=]

Many of you can recall the Bible story of Joseph's brethren who were sent down into Egypt to buy corn because there was a famine in their land. Thanks to the Nile, there was plenty of corn in Egypt. The people of Egypt were among the first of the world's farmers and gardeners of which history has any record.

[Sidenote: =Carrying the waters of the Nile to the land=]