THE AMERICAN ARMY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1897, 31 October 1918, Page 4

THE AMERICAN ARMY.

MOST THE

WORLD

Just as tlie United Stales of America is the must cosmopolite country under the heavens, so is its army —the Army oi' Freedom, as it is proudly called —the most cosmopolite in (he world. A contributor to an English paper tells how he saw a contingent of drafted men in New York on their way to camp to be turned into soldiers of the National Army. There were twenty-nine nationalities in that contingent, but that figure did not nearly represent the total of the “foreign element” that have found acceptance in the rapidly-created great army of the United States, for the writer gives the following list of nationalities mixed up with pure Americans in one of the great training camps: — French 2020 Italians 1354 Polish 720 Derma n 025 Swedish 38!) Hebrew 383 Russian 350 . Greek 218 Portuguese 108 Lithuanian 115 Spanish I (| 9 Turkish Of Hungarian 02 Armenian 59 Slavic 52 Gaelic 12 Danish -11 Norwegian 37 Syrian 30 Bohemian 31 Slavonian 28 Finnish 21 Welsh 21 , Dutch 11 Albanian 9 Arabic 8 Roumanian 7 Lettish 5 Fiend"h 1 Chinese 1 Assyrian '. 1 Japanese 2 Ukrainian 2 Bulgarian 2 Serbian 2 Persian 2 Philippine 1 .Maltese i . 1 Hawaiian 1 Egyptian 1 Adverting to ilie contingent which gave rise In Ids thoughts, the writer says: “They carried their trivial lielongings, hrown-pnper parcel", cheap valise" tied with rope, string bags. They straggled on in disorder, but they were not sad or morose. That was the dominant fact. A big Stiirs and Stripes waved before (hem, and already they seemed to have caught from the flutter of the Hag something—-a mere hint, hut something—of the deification and dignity for which “Old Glory” stands. Wind were they.' Wind nation gave them birth.’ Who knows.’ 1 caught a babble of languages, saw a herd of foreign faces, swarthy, olive, anaemic; yet already, on their first day of corporate life, they were moving like proud men. They were of the Army of Freedom. The idea had caught them. For Freedom they, or their fathers, had come here. Facie Sam had taken them in ids big, bony arms, to his great, compassionate heart, and now they were about to help repay the debt, and they were doing it with a measure of gallantry and affection.” He adds that the war is making America a nation. All these men of many nations will sail to France as Americans, and they will lie, after the discipline and the ideals of the camp —Americans all. “Strange it is what the war is doing here in America, strange and wonderful. The effort is so huge that one can sec it only as a vast amorphous mas", moving with splutters of luminosity towards u shining goal.”