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SECRETARY BAKER AND PRIVATE CARLISLE BABCOCK 
 
 Headquarters 2nd Division, March 20, 1918 
 
SECRETARY BAKER 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
 BY 
 RALPH A. HAYES 
 
 PBIVATi: 8ECBETART TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH 
 PHOTOGRAPHS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 1918 
 

 Copyright, 1918, by 
 The Centuey Co. 
 
 PulUshed, September, 1918 
 
 OCT -2 1918 
 ©CL\5i)8633 
 
TO 
 
 FREDERICK P. KEPPEL 
 
 THIRD ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF WAR 
 VENIT, VIDIMUS, VICIT 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Mr. Hayes has written an account of 
 my visit to France, and I am privileged 
 by his publishers to write a brief intro- 
 ductory word. This I can do with 
 great freedom now, because Mr. Hayes 
 has ceased to be my private secretary, 
 and become one of that great company 
 of khaki-clad soldiers who are carrying 
 the message of America to the battle- 
 fields of Europe and demonstrating that 
 virility and vigor which free institutions 
 have bred into the man-power of the 
 United States. 
 
 But I am interested, in the first place, 
 to make an observation of a general 
 character about private secretaries, for 
 I began my own life in that relationship, 
 and have always had an interest in the 
 
 vii 
 
viii Foreword 
 
 qualities which make men succeed in it. 
 My own experience was brief, happy 
 and wonderfully instructive, as I had 
 the pleasure of serving William L. 
 Wilson, the scholar in politics, for 
 something over a year of his term as 
 Postmaster-General. The opportunity 
 came when I was very young, so that it 
 was a post-graduate course to me, both 
 because of its associations with a 
 knightly gentleman, and because of its 
 contact with large business affairs. 
 
 I am sorry to say I have no recollec- 
 tion that would justify my believing 
 that I was a very useful or very suc- 
 cessful private secretary; but I learned 
 then, and have learned even more since, 
 that to succeed in such a relationship re- 
 quires tact and good nature and real 
 sympathy with people to start with. 
 The tactless and impatient man to whom 
 other people's troubles are an annoy- 
 
Foreword ix 
 
 ance is himself an addition to the bur- 
 dens of his chief. But, more than this, 
 the private secretary must be content to 
 work another man's hours, to hve an- 
 other man's conveniences, and even 
 when he does not understand, to carry 
 out understandingly another man's 
 plans and purposes. I think it would 
 be impossible to be private secretary to 
 a man whom you did not trust, and very 
 difficult to be private secretary to a man 
 whom you did not admire. 
 
 This, however, views the relationship 
 from the personal point of view, but 
 when a man is private secretary to a 
 public officer new and exacting require- 
 ments are introduced. The chief is 
 then a public servant, the private sec- 
 retary the intermediary between the 
 public servant and the public, and he 
 must bear all of the burden which can 
 be discreetly withdrawn from the chief's 
 
X Foreword 
 
 shoulders, creating understandings 
 where the chief has to be brief, getting 
 people's business done for them by 
 proper subordinates, and still with sat- 
 isfaction, where the chief's time can be 
 saved, and, if other chiefs are like me, 
 the private secretary must be eyes, ears, 
 memory and adviser. 
 
 So, it is a complicated and difficult 
 task, and this introduction will perform 
 a useful service if it draws the eyes of 
 the people who see it for a moment to a 
 fairly large class of very important pub- 
 lic servants, who toil quietly along, sub- 
 merging their personality and conceal- 
 ing their gifts until they become unseen 
 parts, but very responsible parts, of the 
 great mechanism by which public service 
 is performed. 
 
 Mr. Hayes became my private secre- 
 tary at the age of twenty-three. He 
 had not been away from college long, 
 
Foreword xi 
 
 and he brought freshness of viewpoint 
 and enthusiasm for service which char- 
 acterizes high-spirited American youth 
 when given its chance. It would not 
 be fitting for me to write here the praise 
 of him which I feel, but his success was 
 instant and constant, and as the burdens 
 of the War Department increased day 
 by day from those of peace to the in- 
 tense activities of warfare on a great 
 scale his efficiency and adequacy grew 
 with them, and when he sought release 
 in order that he might enter the active 
 military service I consented to his going, 
 only because I felt that I had no right 
 to deprive so rich a mind and generous a 
 nature of an opportunity to engage di- 
 rectly in the heroic adventure. 
 
 The trip which Mr. Hayes has de- 
 scribed was undertaken in order that 
 we who went might see with our own 
 eyes the things done by our Army in 
 
xii Foreword 
 
 France, to see on the ground the things 
 remaining to be done, and so make our- 
 selves more useful to help at home in 
 these various enterprises. The physical 
 things we saw, Mr. Hayes has described. 
 They represent a triumph of American 
 industry, ingenuity and labor trans- 
 planted in an incredibly short space of 
 time to a foreign soil. From the ports 
 of debarkation to the front line trenches, 
 the paths are lined with evidences of 
 broad imagination, comprehensive plan- 
 ning and swift execution. In this great 
 task General Pershing and his expert 
 staff have had the major portion, but its 
 success has fundamentally rested upon 
 the coordinated industry and labor at 
 home, and together it represents the 
 flowering of preparations long in the 
 making at home, preparations which in 
 the supreme hour of emergency have not 
 failed. 
 
Foreword xiii 
 
 In the trip we discovered that an- 
 other building was also being erected on 
 this foreign soil — the building of the 
 American spirit, caught up from field 
 and factory at home, filled with new 
 purposes, taught new arts, but every- 
 where strong and wholesome. As the 
 American industrial spirit had turned 
 out great construction work, so the 
 American political spirit had turned out 
 a great army, and the virility and virtue 
 with which free institutions endow peo- 
 ples were manifesting themselves in an 
 army which sang as it marched along 
 the highway, adapted itself to its new 
 environment, neighbored the people 
 among whom it lived, and engendered in 
 its service fresh inspiration about the 
 cause for which it fought. 
 
 When this army returns to the United 
 States it will tell piecemeal of the hero- 
 isms of this great struggle. Books will 
 
xiv Foreword 
 
 be written, some of them filled with 
 statistics and stories of strategy, some 
 of them filled with the romance of in- 
 dividual or group action, but who will 
 preserve to future generations the tonic 
 atmosphere of this great picture as a 
 whole ? The story will be lifeless which 
 tells of railroads built and rivers 
 dredged, but deathless the story of the 
 children of America who joined their 
 industry and their art, their courage and 
 their ideals, in common cause with the 
 Allied Armies, and to share the sacri- 
 fices which have been exacted in the de- 
 fense of liberty and the vindication of 
 justice. To suggest that there will be 
 glory enough to go around is inappro- 
 priate, for this glory is indivisible, and 
 will be the common possession of the 
 Allied peoples who have won it. With 
 the British, French and Italians we will 
 be tenants in common of a fee simple 
 
Foreword xv 
 
 estate in Freedom, and the estate will 
 have neither metes nor bounds. It will 
 pass by descent in common to the chil- 
 dren of men, and its blessings in the 
 course of years will sanctify the sacri- 
 fices made to acquire it. 
 
 This is the picture which Mr. Hayes 
 and I went to Europe to see. It is the 
 only picture worth seeing now, but it is 
 supremely worth seeing. 
 
 Secretary of War. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Secretary of War Baker and Private 
 Carlisle Babcock . . . Frontispiece 
 
 PACING 
 PAGB 
 
 Group Picture Taken at Hotel Crillon, 
 Paris 24 
 
 Inspection of U. S. Salvage Plant . . 25 
 
 Secretary of War Baker — An Inter- 
 ested Spectator in the Working of a 
 French 155 Gun 48 
 
 Inspecting 155 French Gun ... 49 
 
 Inspection Party on Observation Car . 64 
 
 General Pershing and Secretary of War 
 Baker at the Artillery Training 
 Range 65 
 
 Secretary of War Baker Taking a Look 
 at Enemy Trenches 96 
 
 Colors of 18th Inf. Passing in Review . 97 
 
 Inspection Party on Flying Field . .112 
 
 Watching Some of the Sixty Planes . 113 
 
Illustrations 
 
 FACING 
 PAGB 
 
 General Pershing Talking to Miss Pat 
 Moore 144« 
 
 Secretary of War Baker, General 
 Pershing and Miss Irene Givenwilson 145 
 
 Secretary of War Baker at the Graves 
 of American Soldiers of 165th Inf. . 160 
 
 Secretary of War Baker and General 
 Pershing Examining Guns, Projec- 
 tiles, etc 161 
 
SECRETARY BAKER 
 AT THE FRONT 
 
SECRETARY BAKER AT 
 THE FRONT 
 
 THERE was business as usual at 
 the War Department on the 
 twenty-sixth of February in nineteen 
 hundred eighteen. True, "business as 
 usual," like charity, has been made to 
 cover a multitude of sins, and the usual 
 business of the War Department is not 
 done wholly as popular fancy pictures 
 it. But that is the fault of popular 
 fancy. 
 
 One remembers how the War Council 
 looks in the movies. It comes near the 
 end of part two in the five-reel thrillers, 
 and its elements are now rather stand- 
 ardized: the heavy- jowled generals 
 seated around the massive table; the 
 chests adorned with many medals; the 
 
4 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 profusion of important-looking docu- 
 ments; the pointings to the great map 
 upon the wall. One recalls how, after 
 some curtain-raising comment from per- 
 sons near the foot of the table, all eyes 
 and the lens are focused upon him whose 
 glittering garments and face of iron 
 at the head of the group bear testimony 
 to the lavished attentions of the cos- 
 tumer and the make-up man. And one 
 recollects how, in a dozen scorching sen- 
 tences which, assisted by "filler," fairly 
 sizzle on the screen, and accompanied 
 by much pounding of the table and more 
 pointings at the map, he defines by 
 metes and bounds the policy of the em- 
 pire in the impending crisis, and how as 
 he sits down the others arise, and to the 
 accompaniment of vigorous noddings 
 and spontaneous applause, the meeting 
 adjourns because the oracle has spoken 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 5 
 
 in the land is clear, or will be made so. 
 The plot becomes well thickened in reel 
 three, one remembers, until the citizenry 
 of the invaded land springs to arms, ex- 
 pels the opposing horde, and (the 
 maiden and the man having been re- 
 united and the country having resolved 
 never again to be caught unawares) , the 
 five-piece orchestra vigorously attacks 
 the national anthem as a finale. 
 
 We picture the secretary of war as 
 sitting in a council-room weighing the 
 merits of volunteering as against con- 
 scription, the constitution of overseas 
 contingents, the advisability of inter- 
 vention in the East, and such like things. 
 This is so; but there is more. There 
 is always the unending line of the more 
 or less faithful. There are landlords 
 willing to sell to the Government lands 
 described as corner lots in the Elysian 
 Fields, with all improvements in and 
 
6 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 paid for. There are the cranks who 
 come with whispered intimations of 
 what their scheme will do if they are 
 encouraged to the extent of being given 
 a job and an appropriation to develop 
 it. There are the volunteer advisers, 
 armed to the teeth with briefs and brist- 
 ling with knowledge as to just how it 
 should be done ; and the meanings of "it" 
 are legion. There are the professional 
 job-seekers — no longer suppliants for 
 work or even for a position. That is a 
 method crude, and ancient. Nowadays 
 this species produces a pound and a half 
 of home-grown, commendatory letters, 
 tells with naive modesty the financial 
 sacrifices his act involves; mayhap de- 
 scribes his valiant services in political 
 trenches, throws about it all a veil of pa- 
 triotism — with the emphasis on the 
 "pay" — and indicates that he might be 
 induced to heed a call for his services in 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 7 
 
 such a place as would befit his dignity, 
 utilize his organizing genius and capital- 
 ize his administrative cunning. 
 
 There are the eccentric Inventive 
 visitors with a device about which the 
 world revolves ; a contrivance so terrible 
 that of necessity it will end the institu- 
 tion of war, and emancipate the race. 
 Often this type is on the point of yield- 
 ing to the entreaties of a foreign Gov- 
 ernment. But he comes to give his 
 own country one more chance and he 
 knows that none other than the secre- 
 tary of war can pass upon the mechan- 
 ical construction, and technical practica- 
 bility of his proposed invention. 
 
 There are the professionally Efficient 
 folk — they who know how the whole 
 land and all that dwell therein can be 
 roused to a realization of the issues; 
 who know the secret of conducting the 
 nation's business in such Utopian and 
 
8 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 expeditious fashion that everyone who 
 approaches the public trough may be 
 contented and some may even be satis- 
 fied. Bulging brief cases prove their 
 claims ; everything is carefully typewrit- 
 ten with wide margins, much underlin- 
 ing, and extravagant use of the red half 
 of the ribbon. Their talk begins with 
 a reluctant reference to red tape and 
 they come to a strong conclusion with 
 a dissertation on cutting the Gordian 
 knot. These are the people who deal 
 daily, in terms of the market, with Re- 
 juvenation and Reorganization; they 
 are the guardians of the saw-dust twins 
 who would do your work ; and they must 
 talk about it in hopelessly general and 
 generally hopeless terms. 
 
 There are the Invitational callers, 
 coming from Their Town to convey an 
 opportunity to speak in the Odd Fel- 
 lows' Hall at a meeting arranged by the 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 9 
 
 Board of Trade when the ears of the 
 world will be cocked to hear the clarion 
 notes that will issue. 
 
 No chronicle could claim complete- 
 ness did it fail to mention the Respect- 
 paying visitors, that ancient if not al- 
 ways honorable species who come bent 
 upon the laying on of hands and the 
 shaking thereof, and whose sensibili- 
 ties would be injured were they to be 
 told that the paying of respects in war- 
 time might well be a pastime of the 
 idle rich or at least of the idle. 
 
 So grinds the grist ; so comes the vast 
 kinship of the Willing: but let it not 
 be forgotten or overlooked that these 
 fantastic folk hereinbefore mentioned 
 are made bizarre by very reason of 
 the fact that they are in the minor- 
 ity. Outnumbering and overmaster- 
 ing them is that greater company of 
 those who represent the glory of democ- 
 
10 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 racy, in constituting a people active in 
 the conduct of the common concerns, 
 and unintimidated in their efforts to 
 carry on the nation's enterprise. Cer- 
 tainly the foibles of these grotesque but 
 unrepresentative elements must not be 
 permitted to lessen the repute or reflect 
 upon the spirit of a people who in al- 
 most unbroken rank have pledged their 
 support and given their treasure and 
 offered their blood for a cause which can 
 be made to be worth all it takes. For 
 these latter are the folk and theirs the 
 deeds that leaven the whole; theirs are 
 the actions that transcend the idiosyn- 
 crasies of the rest, that constitute the 
 temper of the times, that give character 
 to these days when a world is being won 
 to democratic ways — days whose story 
 in the great history will be set apart and 
 written red. 
 
 In time of emergency it is the De- 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 11 
 
 partment of War which principally 
 canalizes the exertions of a nation as 
 expressed in military effort. And 
 within that department the starting 
 place of stimuli, the center of the nerv- 
 ous system, the goal of the venous sys- 
 tem, the starting-point of the arterial 
 system, is the ofSce of the secretary of 
 war. And there on the morning of 
 the twenty-sixth of February there was 
 business as usual. 
 
 Not so on the afternoon of the 
 twenty-sixth. Then it was that an 
 automobile exactly similar to a third of 
 a million others made somewhere in 
 Michigan last year left the War De- 
 partment, quietly picked up a number 
 of pieces of baggage at three or four 
 Washington residences, and deposited 
 them at the Union Station. That same 
 afternoon four persons appeared at the 
 War Department with suspiciously 
 
12 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 fresh hair-cuts. That night four per- 
 sons strolled into the depot and entered 
 the midnight train. One of them — ^the 
 chief of the party — boarded it a few 
 minutes before the great iron gates were 
 opened to other passengers; but there 
 was no fooling the kinky-headed man 
 with the red cap. "Good evenin', Mis- 
 tah Secretary," he said in tones that 
 seemed to roll along the great corridors 
 of the station and to reverberate in the 
 balconies of it. Next to arrive was 
 Major General Black, the Chief of 
 Engineers. Following him was Lieu- 
 tenant Colonel M. L. Brett, accom- 
 panying the secretary of war as aide. 
 These, with Mr. Baker's private secre- 
 tary, comprised the quartet that slipped 
 away under cover of darkness. 
 
 Cabinet officials of these United 
 States have been rather exclusive folk. 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 13 
 
 Until this year of our Lord, no cabinet 
 official had crossed the Atlantic ocean 
 during his incumbency. That fact may 
 argue for their busyness or their pro- 
 vinciaHsm or their domesticity. What- 
 ever the reason, it was the home fires 
 they tended. 
 
 But came the Great War. With it 
 came the transportation of American 
 soldiers to a far part of the world, across 
 three thousand miles of ocean and six 
 hundred miles of France. The novelty 
 of the undertaking, the intervening 
 space between here and Over There, 
 the time required even for the most 
 speedy means of communication, com- 
 plicated the enterprise. And many 
 things are happening in France; some 
 of them are new things under the sun, 
 and not a few of them happen with most 
 uncommon swiftness. The situation is 
 
14 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 not simplified by the fact that the War 
 portfolio in this country is usually held, 
 and wisely so, by a civilian. 
 
 Every traveler ^ returning from 
 France and other localities of battle 
 seems to know the ^nswers to the rid- 
 dles that confound ^us here at home. 
 Whether it is of the morale of the 
 French, the propaganda of the Boche^ 
 the fuel supply of Italy, the food situa- 
 tion in England, the stability of the Bol- 
 sheviki, on all of these the home- 
 coming globe-trotter speaks with a 
 discomforting amount of assurance 
 which is difficult to combat here at a 
 range of three thousand miles from 
 first hand information. A Middle 
 West sage opines that an expert is a 
 man one hundred and fifty miles from 
 home; and by the same token a person 
 who speaks with an easy familiarity of 
 things he has seen, some thousands of 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 15 
 
 miles beyond the pale for most of us, 
 has an unfair oratorical advantage. 
 Having had the disease, I recognize the 
 symptoms. 
 
 Men of the War Department, return- 
 ing from foreign assignments, pressed 
 upon the secretary of war the urgency 
 of his visiting the battle-grounds of the 
 Western Front. Men of the Ameri- 
 can Expeditionary Forces were anx- 
 ious for the understanding that would 
 come from personal contact and actual 
 observation. Those persons here who, 
 for sundry reasons, are not admirers of 
 the War Secretary were not unwilling 
 that he should go. On all sides the 
 ayes had it. In the end he went. 
 
 Secrecy as to the time of going was 
 essential. England was yet mourning 
 the passing of Earl Kitchener. Twice 
 the plans of departure had to be re- 
 made because of those leaks which have 
 
16 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 their source nowhere and which per- 
 colate everywhere. When finally the 
 start was made, this brief statement was 
 made to the fraternity of Washington 
 newspaper men, who would immediately 
 know of the secretary's mission from his 
 absence at their afternoon conference: 
 
 The secretary of war leaves Washington to- 
 day for an indefinite absence. For his personal 
 safety and the protection of military information 
 it is urgently requested that no intimation or 
 news of his movements be made public until such 
 time as an official statement can be issued. This 
 will be done at the earliest possible moment and 
 thereafter only the ordinary requests for secrecy 
 with respect to military information of value to 
 the enemy will apply. When the immediate con- 
 siderations of safety and military secrecy no 
 longer have force the Government will, of course, 
 make no request designed to limit news of or 
 comment on the Secretary's movements. 
 
 On the morning following their mid- 
 night exit, the train bearing the four 
 travelers from Washington stopped at 
 a small station on the outskirts of a cer- 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 17 
 
 tain Atlantic port (New York, by 
 name), where the four passengers 
 alighted. Disaster almost overtook the 
 expedition at the outset, because for the 
 first time since the memory of man run- 
 neth not to the contrary, the train 
 reached that station well ahead of its 
 scheduled time, and there was not a 
 semblance of other business in hand at 
 that dull morning hour except the dis- 
 charge of those four passengers. That 
 may be why the secret-service repre- 
 sentatives had diiBculty in recognizing 
 the persons whom they were to meet, 
 and who bore every evidence of late and 
 hurried arisings and of hastily made 
 toilets. 
 
 A revenue cutter was lying near by, 
 and it bore the party six miles out into 
 the harbor, where a great, gray cruiser 
 lay at anchor. Here again a tinge of 
 sorrow touched the proceedings, for 
 
18 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 upon the arrival of the secretary of 
 war the ship was "sealed," that is, no 
 members of the crew were permitted to 
 leave the vessel. None of those who 
 had previously gone ashore knew any- 
 thing of the prospective presence of a 
 distinguished visitor. The sadness lies 
 in the fact that a substantial part of the 
 ship's shopping had not been finished, 
 and the sealed ship prevented its com- 
 pletion; but none the less there was 
 never a time on the eastward journey 
 when food was not plentiful, albeit at 
 times it was far from appetizing, due to 
 certain vagaries of the passengers and 
 certain whims of the sea. 
 
 It was a far cry from those February 
 fuel-less days of landlubbers to the coal 
 piles of the navy. On every square foot 
 that would hold a lump or bag of coal, 
 a lump or bag of coal was placed. One 
 climbed over great black piles in going 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 19 
 
 to his food or his bed or his air. It is 
 a working habit of the navy to take on 
 sufficient fuel in America to last for 
 two crossings, thus avoiding the taking 
 on of coal in Europe. 
 
 It was yet relatively early in the 
 morning when our cruiser was boarded, 
 and its bow was not scheduled to swing 
 seaward until late in the day; so that 
 stretch of intervening hours, while we 
 were held incommunicado by the sealed 
 ship, seemed at the start a barren ex- 
 panse of hours stretching before us. 
 But their flight was more winged than 
 our anticipations promised. There is 
 enough and more of the unknown about 
 a great floating engine of war to satisfy 
 the amateur's primal sense of curiosity 
 for a considerable period. 
 
 First, there were our new quarters, 
 in which to settle ourselves, and thaf 
 can be made a time-consuming proc- 
 
20 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 ess. The vessel chanced to be the flag- 
 ship of an admiral, and the admiral 
 chanced to be absent, which gave us 
 more commodious quarters in which to 
 settle ourselves. Our abodes were all 
 in the stern, and one little living-room 
 we shared in common. Secretary 
 Baker had what were the admiral's 
 sleeping-quarters; beside his bed were 
 as many telephonic and bell-ringing and 
 light-flashing signals as would be found 
 in a combination switchboard and en- 
 gine-house. Opposite the secretary's, 
 and flanking the living-room on the 
 other side, was the cabin occupied by 
 Colonel Brett and me. The captain 
 had vacated his quarters farther for- 
 ward for a post close by the bridge ; his 
 cabin, therefore, was occupied by Gen- 
 eral Black. 
 
 Now I have driven and directed in 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 21 
 some of my days an automotive machine 
 of the same nature and nomenclature 
 as that which had gathered in our bag- 
 gage in Washington. Puns have issued 
 about that machine; I would not add to 
 them. But one may say with respect 
 and sobriety that such a driving ac- 
 quaintance begets a f acihty and an ex- 
 pertness in detecting and locating every 
 conceivable variation of creak and rat- 
 tle that the friction of material sub- 
 stances can produce. Perhaps it was 
 so. I may have been passing fair in 
 such pursuits among the landsmen. 
 But there I was a novice; literally and 
 figuratively I was at sea. During what 
 have been called facetiously "the silent 
 watches of the night" more squeaks, 
 groans, and rattles, more scrapings, 
 grindings, and raspings could be de- 
 veloped in the bowels of that ship — 
 
22 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 and were — than in any similar acreage 
 in which I have tried to sleep the slum- 
 ber of the relatively just. 
 
 In command of our ship was Captam 
 De Witt Blamer. Captain Blamer is 
 one of the few naval officers who look 
 as they are made to look on the stage 
 and in the books. He is big of frame, 
 gruff of manner, tender of heart. He 
 is not overgiven to speech, and his talk 
 is rarely opinions or prophecy, but 
 rather conclusions. I should n't like to 
 be tried before him for breaking into an 
 apple orchard or for failing to swab the 
 quarter-deck ; and, perhaps for the same 
 reason, I should be wholly content, in 
 searching for safe passage, to sail the 
 seas upon his ship. 
 
 When a man builds a cruiser, he 
 thinks last about the comfort of the 
 craft. And whatever luxuries inad- 
 vertently creep in, become taboo "dur- 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 23 
 
 ing the period of the emergency." 
 Never, for example, were hghts more 
 thoroughly hidden under a bushel than 
 are those of the navy. In ways that 
 are dark these men of the sea excel. 
 A few improvised lighting fixtures at- 
 tached to the "battle circuit" furnished 
 the only illumination available for the 
 secretarial party after the ordinary sup- 
 ply was cut off, which happened every 
 day just when it became dark enough to 
 need it. 
 
 Neither was ventilation as free as 
 air. Late every afternoon a person 
 equipped with a kit of tools, some sheets 
 of tin and of rubber, and a kill- joy dis- 
 position carefully sealed up all the port- 
 holes through which stray gleams might 
 escape or enter. 
 
 Cruiser-life soon settles into a rou- 
 tine that is neither rich in variation nor 
 much affected by any circumstances ex- 
 
24 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 cept the elements. Sleeping and read- 
 ing and eating and walking the decks 
 follow one another in more or less regu- 
 lar order. To every one going toward 
 France the problem of acquiring suffi- 
 cient knowledge of French to procure 
 food and shelter in an emergency be- 
 comes pertinent. The question was 
 solved on the ship of the secretary of 
 war by the organization of a language 
 class that convened every afternoon. 
 Second in command on the ship was 
 Commander Richard D. White, former 
 naval attache at Rome, traveler, scholar, 
 follower of the sea, and man of the 
 world. White knows enough French 
 even to talk to a Paris taxicab-driver, 
 and that 's the acid test. Every after- 
 noon at four he would gather his dis- 
 ciples about him in the wardroom, and 
 the instruction would proceed in the 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 25 
 
 Socratic fashion. At five, when those 
 present had absorbed their fill of tenses, 
 ehsions, idioms, and genders, a sailor 
 who should have been in the hfe-saving 
 detachment would appear bearing 
 marmalade, toast, and tea with which 
 to revive all hands. 
 
 Meals were served in the captams 
 dining-room, which, like his cabin, had 
 been deserted when the bridge and the 
 pilot-house and their immediate envi- 
 rons became the working-place and eat- 
 ing-place and sleeping-place of the 
 ship's commander. On two days the 
 seas were so heavy as to make it impossi- 
 ble to keep dishes or food sufficiently 
 stationary for use in the captain's rooms, 
 and our mess was therefore combined 
 with the mess of the junior officers in 
 the ward-room. Two officers from the 
 ward-room mess joined the secretary's 
 
26 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 party at lunch and at dinner every day, 
 and on one day the secretary was the 
 guest of the junior officers. 
 
 After beginning the journey in splen- 
 did weather, Neptune speedily began, 
 in mid-ocean, to show signs of enemy 
 affihation. On the second morning at 
 sea a stray breaker at dawn swept a 
 sailor overboard, but the luckless per- 
 son seemed thoroughly to enjoy swim- 
 ming the Atlantic waves until, twenty- 
 five minutes after his misadventure, he 
 was brought back to the ship, and his 
 request for a cigarette was complied 
 with. 
 
 Unhappily, there was more than this 
 one taken by the sea, and for the others 
 there was no returning. Theirs was 
 the last full measure of devotion. Two 
 fine young lads went to the eternal 
 camp-grounds, succumbing to the ex- 
 posure caused by long hours of outside 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 27 
 
 work in raw weather and on a rough 
 sea. 
 
 There is a dignity to a burial at sea 
 that no other ceremony possesses. The 
 decks are hned bv all of the crew not 
 
 ft/ 
 
 actually engaged in the navigation of 
 the vessel. The ship's band is present, 
 and the chaplain reads the impressive 
 burial service to the accompaniment of 
 the crashing of seemingly boundless 
 waves. Then, as a guard of honor fires 
 a final salute, the body, borne by hands 
 that in its life had been those of com- 
 rades, and draped in the flag it had 
 served to the last, is consigned to the 
 deep. There is no din of battle; there 
 are no hostile cries. But these have 
 died in line of battle no less than their 
 brothers in Picardy and Flanders and 
 Lorraine. 
 
 There is a sort of frankness and cas- 
 ualness in speaking of affairs of life and 
 
28 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 death aboard a war-ship in war-time 
 that is disconcerting at the outset. The 
 indirectness and the hesitations, the 
 reticences and the conventions that so- 
 ciety usually throws around discussions 
 of vital danger and bodily peril, are 
 swept away. Constantly one sees and 
 hears in the daylight hours the construc- 
 tion of life-rafts ; every one without ex- 
 ception in the latter part of the journey 
 wears at all times and places his life- 
 belt; one hears discussed in conversa- 
 tional tones the possibility of the life- 
 boats withstanding the fury of the sea, 
 the methods of protecting their human 
 cargo against exposure, the sufficiency 
 of food and water aboard them. When 
 one lives and moves and has his being 
 in the presence of potential death, he 
 loses his awe of it and disregards the 
 niceties of speech that ordinarily char- 
 acterize such references. 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 29 
 
 Every precaution was taken for the 
 personal safety of the secretary of 
 war. Having been assigned to a life- 
 boat, and having had allotted to it a 
 crew to see that he would promptly 
 board it and that it would be properly 
 manned, he became accustomed to the 
 emergency arrangements by repeated 
 "abandon-ship" drills. General Sher- 
 man never realized the full force of a 
 certain definition which he is sometimes 
 said to have formulated; he never went 
 through * 'abandon ship" drills. He 
 did n't have to lie awake half his nights 
 mentally picturing a procession of 
 U-boats playing like porpoises in the 
 vicinity, or to fall into a troubled sleep 
 the other half, dreaming of submarines 
 pushing their snouts through his 
 hatches, or leaving him in that state of 
 suspended animation which one awaits 
 the explosion of a torpedo just beneath 
 
30 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 him. And in ten seconds flat after 
 falling into that pseudo sleep, he was n't 
 awakened and roused and frightened by 
 a boisterous clanging that caused him 
 to catapult into a life-preserver and to 
 dash from cover. He never had then 
 to wait for weeks, it seems, beside his 
 little life boat before the exercises are 
 concluded. The bleakest experience on 
 the seven seas, next to walking a plank, 
 is to stand upon the deck of a ship at 
 the gray hour of five, with Morpheus 
 and Aurora still doing battle for the 
 possession of your senses, with no odors 
 of breakfast distinguishable, with that 
 unkempt feeling that comes from sleep- 
 ing in your clothes, with water, water 
 everywhere, but not a drop to wash in, 
 and with the immediate foreground oc- 
 cupied by all that 's to stand between 
 you and safety, a small, frail rowboat, 
 overloaded with oars, and having hidden 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 31 
 
 in one corner of it a small tin of water 
 and a modest helping of free lunch. In 
 those watery dawns I learned to sing 
 with a new gusto, "I love thy rocks and 
 rills, Thy woods and templed hills." 
 One can stand a rill ; that 's manage- 
 able : but there are times when the ocean 
 seems overdone. 
 
 In addition to the regulation life-pre- 
 servers, buoyant rubber "overall" out- 
 fits were provided for the secretarial 
 party. As a matter of fact, there would 
 have been scant use for this material 
 even in case of disaster. There is a 
 thoroughgoing tradition among the offi- 
 cers of the navy that no means of pro- 
 tection will be utilized by them that are 
 not available to their men. It is such 
 considerations that strengthen morale. 
 I could work a bit harder for an officer 
 and endure some injustice at his hands 
 if I knew that he had taken thought of 
 
32 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 the time when he and I might be in vital 
 danger, and that he had consciously re- 
 solved not to avail himself of the advan- 
 tages over me that his rank and station 
 would permit him to claim. The annals 
 of the army abound in incidents testify- 
 ing to the sacrifices of troops for offi- 
 cers who had shared their perils in com- 
 mon in the past. 
 
 But, usable or not, these contrivances 
 are interesting things to contemplate 
 when the weather is fair and the sea is 
 calm. There is a whistle to occupy one, 
 and many pockets to explore, and sim- 
 ple mechanical devices to practise util- 
 izing. But I yet have a haunting fear 
 that some evil-minded political person 
 may find those suits which were left 
 aboard, and discover the flask of brandy 
 that 's in a pocket — or was — ^in Secre- 
 tary Baker's paraphernalia. 
 
 In the middle of the trip east a part 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 33 
 
 of an afternoon was spent in examining 
 the anti-submarine defenses of our ship 
 — the lookout system, the depth charges, 
 the smoke screens, and the rest. While 
 making the rounds we stopped to hear 
 a talk on fire control given by the 
 ship's gunnery officer, Lieutenant Com- 
 mander Gill, describing the coordination 
 of the guns, the finding of ranges, the 
 communications between the different 
 stations, and many other unfathomable 
 things. That is a heartening sort of 
 procedure. It strengthens one's inner 
 morale. Unhappily, our inspection 
 ended at the chart-room, where marked 
 in red were the locations from which 
 submarine warnings had come. That 
 was decidedly less heartening and cor- 
 respondingly detrimental to one's esprit. 
 Fighting against the submarine men- 
 ace is a wearing sort of warfare. The 
 object of the search is seldom seen, if in- 
 
34 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 deed it is seen at all. If that Governor 
 of a sovereign State who remarked to a 
 fellow Governor on the duration of time 
 between drinks were now aboard a de- 
 stroyer and were considering the length 
 of time between subs, he would magnify, 
 and mayhap multiply his remarks. 
 After watching the sea for days, search- 
 ing for a spot on the waves, a landlub- 
 ber is in fit physical condition and prime 
 mental state to see dozens of imaginary 
 spots or to miss a real one. 
 
 To keep the gun crews and the guns 
 in fighting trim, a period of target prac- 
 tice was held at sea. Our ship would 
 drag a target after it in the water, while 
 a second ship blazed at it. To one un- 
 versed in such things the tow-line be- 
 tween the ship and the target it pulled 
 seemed uncomfortably short ; the former 
 seemed to constitute a much more likely 
 mark than the spot which followed it. 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 35 
 
 But all the shots hit the latter. Upon 
 the quarter-deck of our own vessel a 
 sort of parlor range was erected, and 
 pistol practice was had. The experi- 
 ment proceeded admirably until there 
 came the turn of the secretary of war 
 to shoot. His first shot hit and bisected 
 the cord upon which the bull's-eyes were 
 suspended, and the targets settled 
 gently into the sea. There is no point 
 in trying to encourage marksmanship 
 when some one insists on shooting away 
 the range. 
 
 Once on the eastward journey the 
 crew of the cruiser and its guests had all 
 the sensations that accompany a brush 
 with the wily U-boats. In the late 
 afternoon of the day before the escort 
 of destroyers from the French coast was 
 met, the ship's submarine defenses went 
 vigorously and boisterously into action. 
 The secretary of war rushed from the 
 
36 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 captain's cabin, where he had been ab- 
 sorbing French, to the quarter-deck, 
 where he was nearly embraced by a 
 young colored seaman who in the ec- 
 stasy of excitement kept shouting, 
 "There she is! There she is!" pointing 
 to a small object five hundred feet away 
 in the water. It was dark in color, 
 about the size of a piece of gas-pipe, and 
 protruded eight or ten inches above the 
 surface, a slender target, but a peri- 
 scope 's a periscope. Even as our gaze 
 followed the outstretched finger of the 
 young sailor a well-aimed shot made a 
 direct hit. The object disappeared, 
 and then bobbed up again. There were 
 some distinctly disappointed fighting 
 men aboard when it became apparent 
 that the fight was with a fioating spar; 
 but for the most of us the reconcihation 
 was easy. In fact those who would like 
 to fight another day made no pretense 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 37 
 
 of concealment in heaving a genuine 
 sigh of rehef when the dawn of morning 
 showed a sizable family of destroyers 
 plying busily about us. 
 
 There are some things which no per- 
 son can be expected to write into a nar- 
 rative. No general wishes to recount 
 his own reverses, as most communiques 
 bear witness. No individual cares to 
 pen the story of his demise, as many 
 obituaries prove. No rejected suitor 
 cares to spread the tale of his discom- 
 fiture, as every autobiography indicates. 
 So, there is to me no overwhelming 
 sense of joy in recalling all the details 
 of the trans-atlantic trip. I raise a 
 question of personal privilege in asking 
 to be excused from elaborating upon 
 such entries as these which stalk through 
 my diary: 
 
 March S. The secretary and General Black 
 agree that the sea is more powerful and terrible 
 
88 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 than winsome and companionable. I, too_, agree, 
 and I have reasons for feeling more deeply on 
 the subject than either of them. 
 
 March 4. We are told the ship dipped 37° 
 in the storm to-day. I think they must have 
 read the figures backward — it could not have 
 been less than 73°. At times we seemed to be 
 a very fair imitation of a U-boat. Between 
 lurches Surgeon Sparkman gave me a second 
 anti-typhoid shot in the arm. 
 
 March 5. The furniture has been lashed 
 down and the carpets have been taken up. Last 
 night all the hatches were closed, and we had 
 as much ventilation as a vacuum. My left arm, 
 charged with anti-typhoid vaccine, is a bad lia- 
 bility to carry around in these turbulent times. 
 I think I should prefer a little typhoid to this 
 antidote. 
 
 March 6. I wish they were less noisy in 
 building those life-rafts on the quarter-deck. 
 It reminds me too much of some story in which 
 the prisoner sat in his cell and heard the ham- 
 mering outside where workmen were construct- 
 ing his gallows. 
 
 March 9. Life-preservers now worn at all 
 times. 
 
 March 10, 8 A. M. Life-preservers are not 
 made for comfort. Neither is anti-typhoid vac- 
 cine, and my third shot in the arm was regis- 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 39 
 
 tered last night. There is precious little sleep- 
 ing going on to-night. As we sat at the table 
 after dinner, we tried to think of gay and jovial 
 things to talk about, but the words rattled as 
 they came out. I essayed to spin the merry tale 
 of Doc Merz who tried to buy a German dic- 
 tionary for the Military Intelligence Branch of 
 the army, and who was chased out of the book- 
 store by a super-patriotic clerk, — patrioteer. 
 Doc called him, — but I found myself veering to 
 the more funereal yarn of Red MacKinnon, who^ 
 years ago, when a sophomore, bought himself a 
 pair of white gloves and circularized the under- 
 takers of Cleveland as a professional pall-bearer. 
 I recalled vividly the time in the corridors of 
 the War Department when in passing. Dean 
 Keppel and I struck mock fistic attitudes toward 
 each other, and an excited stranger shouted 
 loudly to the effect that I was assaulting with 
 intent to kill or maim the confidential clerk of 
 the secretary of war. 
 
 I 'm sorry nobody mentioned the story of 
 Huck Finn at his own funeral ; that 's sepul- 
 chral enough to fit the occasion, and yet it has a 
 chuckle at the end. Toward midnight we 
 desisted from telling ghost-stories, and the en- 
 tire party descended to playing solitaire. The 
 secretary of war has held something from us. 
 None of us ever had seen him playing cards, but 
 
40 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 he knew several brands of solitaire that were 
 strangers to the rest of us. 
 
 There must be a defect in the mechanism of 
 the sun; it has been a day and a half since sun- 
 setj and daylight should have come along since. 
 
 It was the clear, bright Sunday morn- 
 ing of March 10 that we caught sight 
 of the shores of France and proceeded 
 toward our port of entry. There were 
 unusual signs of activity, which, we 
 afterward discovered, were occasioned 
 by late reports of submarines in the 
 neighborhood. But the channel was 
 well swept, the lanes were thoroughly 
 patrolled, the air sentries were keenly 
 vigilant, and the enemy discreetly kept 
 a safe distance. 
 
 For eleven days we had been on the 
 ocean. At times the vessels of the con- 
 voy had been so close as to make it al- 
 most possible to shout through a mega- 
 phone from one to the other. But it 
 was not until the shores of France were 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 41 
 
 in sight and the Secretary of War sent 
 a message of congratulation to the 
 senior officer of the convoy, who was 
 aboard another ship, — it was not until 
 then that the presence of a cabinet mem- 
 ber in the convoy was known. There 
 had been wonderment on the other ships 
 when, meeting the destroyers at sea, the 
 cruiser had failed to turn westward, but 
 had continued toward the French coast. 
 It may be said now that our ship had 
 left New York a day ahead of the other 
 ships in the convoy, and had sailed a 
 false course during the first part of its 
 journey, joining the rest of the convoy 
 at a rendezvous at sea. 
 
 At anchor in the harbor, there were 
 a number of ceremonies to perform. 
 From the amount of wigwagging which 
 was done, the captains seemed to be 
 writing biographies of each other. The 
 French naval commandant and the 
 
42 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 American Army and Navy command- 
 ing officers. Admiral Wilson and Gen- 
 eral McClure, were to be received. The 
 senior officer of the convoy, upon an- 
 other ship, was visited. The com- 
 manders of the escorting destroyers 
 came to pay their respects. There 
 were leave-takings upon the cruiser. 
 Then ashore — ashore in France! 
 
 A band was playing in the city 
 square, but there was not the buoyancy 
 and gaiety to its notes that was there 
 in other days. A merry-go-round of- 
 fered a feeble opportunity for amuse- 
 ment, but its little patrons were not 
 the care-free, shouting children that are 
 found at country fairs everywhere in 
 America. The populace, indeed, was 
 on promenade, but those blue-coated, 
 and often empty-sleeved, men and those 
 somber-dressed women were not the 
 promenaders of antebellum time. This 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 43 
 
 was France at war, great-hearted as of 
 old, and perhaps even more lovable, 
 albeit scarred in body and soul and reel- 
 ing a bit, but reeling forward to the hon- 
 orable conclusion of a war she never 
 willed. 
 
 Darkness was just falling on the 
 French coast when the secretary of 
 war and his party stepped aboard the 
 private car which in 1914 had carried 
 out of France the German Ambassador, 
 and which now was carrying the civilian 
 chief of the American Army through 
 the places where "the Yanks are com- 
 ing" — but that 's another story. 
 
II 
 
 THE cold gray dawn of morning 
 reaches its maximum coolness and 
 grayness about daybreak in a Parisian 
 railroad station. Depots are not par- 
 ticularly homelike or cozy places, and 
 dawn is a rather doleful time; but in 
 Paris the effect is accentuated. The 
 mental pictures of years image the folk 
 of the French Capital as retiring but a 
 little while before sun-up ; hence the soli- 
 tude of that hour; and the changes in 
 the war-time Paris heighten rather than 
 diminish the illusion. But the cheer- 
 lessness of such a place was lessened at 
 the nocturnal hour of six on the morn- 
 ing of March 11 by a group of Ameri- 
 can officers and civilians, met to greet 
 
 44 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 45 
 
 the secretary of war. Pershing was 
 there, tall, straight, and dynamic. So, 
 too, was Bliss, kindly, keen, and 
 thoughtful. There were representa- 
 tives of the State Department, also, and 
 officials of the French Government. 
 
 Informal greetings completed, the 
 cavalcade moved to the Hotel Crillon, 
 beside the Place de la Concorde. At 
 his quarters there, the Secretary of War 
 found assigned to him as orderly a 
 short and wiry sergeant whose name 
 was Patrick Walsh, and who looked the 
 part. The secretary inquired of Gen- 
 eral Pershing concerning Pat, and 
 learned the story that has often since 
 been printed. Walsh was in his dugout 
 when a hostile raid occurred and an offi- 
 cer, backed by three privates, appeared 
 at the entrance and yelled, "Come out, 
 Americans." 
 
 " Yep, I'm coming," replied Pat; but 
 
46 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 as he came through the doorway one of 
 the Boche threw at him a hand grenade 
 which struck him in the head. The 
 grenade failed to explode, but neverthe- 
 less it vexed Walsh ; so much so, that he 
 killed the officer and one private and as- 
 sisted in the capture of the other two. 
 As a reward, Pat was sent to Paris to 
 serve for a time as orderly to the sec- 
 retary of war. But there was a wist- 
 ful gleam in Pat's eyes the while, and an 
 amateur could see that his heart was still 
 in the trenches. If I should ever be in 
 No Man's Land, I hope Pat Walsh 
 won't be too far away. 
 
 Fresh water upon shipboard had been 
 a limited commodity, and salt-water 
 bathing has its limitations ; the train en 
 route from the coast had not been able 
 to supply the deficiency. It came to 
 pass, therefore, that the initial ceremo- 
 nies of the party at the Crillon consisted 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 47 
 
 in a series of business-like baths. More 
 cheerfully we assembled for breakfast, 
 our first Parisian meal. Butter was 
 not to be had, but that entails no suffer- 
 ing to those who prefer preserves. 
 There was no sugar, but saccharine is 
 an acceptable substitute. Cream was 
 off the menu, but there was enough of 
 milk. War bread is coarse, and rather 
 unyielding to the teeth, but many of us 
 are finding that it is not less palatable 
 than the wheat product of piping times. 
 Later meals were to impress further 
 upon us what French cooks, aided by a 
 few dishes, a little batter, and a prayer, 
 can achieve. It is well for those of us 
 still young enough to yearn for sweets 
 that the forte of the French chef is the 
 making of desserts. It is that end of 
 the menu that now provides the greatest 
 opportunity for the exercise of the in- 
 genuity of the food camoufleur. 
 
48 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 It was agreed while breakfast was be- 
 ing eaten that the secretary would re- 
 main in Paris only long enough to pay 
 his respects to the officials of the repub- 
 lic; that he should then proceed to the 
 coast for a study of the Base Section; 
 then inland along the line of communi- 
 cations to observe the works of the In- 
 termediate Section; then to the Ad- 
 vanced Section, and finally to the other 
 sectors on the front. He would then 
 visit the bases of war. 
 
 For France, no less than ancient 
 Gaul, is of three parts. The Base Sec- 
 tion includes the areas surrounding the 
 ports of debarkation, with their great 
 docks and machinery for unloading, 
 their stevedores' camps, and their facili- 
 ties for incoming troops awaiting trans- 
 portation toward the front. 
 
 The Intermediate Section is the place 
 of wide-spread storage facilities, the 
 
tf 3 
 
O 
 o 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 49 
 
 place where the Americans' principal 
 lines of communication converge, the 
 place of base hospitals, of laboratory 
 and outdoor experiments, of semi-ad- 
 vanced training. 
 
 The Advanced Section may best be 
 described as the goal of soldiers. One 
 knows when he reaches it by the senti- 
 nels he passes ; by the bodies of troops he 
 sees humming as they march to the 
 front or, singing still, come from it; by 
 the long lines of artillery crawling along 
 winding roads or lying incongruously 
 in once peaceful hamlets ; by the tangles 
 of barbed wire in the fields along the 
 highway; by the stark ruins of what 
 were homes; by ragged holes in the 
 ground where shells have found a futile 
 mark ; and by that distant rumble which 
 seems, as one listens to it daily, to have 
 had no beginning and to promise no 
 end. 
 
50 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 Immediately upon leaving the Cril- 
 lon breakfast-table, there was begun a 
 two-days' series of conferences with offi- 
 cials, American and French, at Paris 
 and Versailles. 
 
 The first morning's work was at the 
 chambers of the premier, where "The 
 Tiger of France" and the secretary 
 conferred in private. An hour later, 
 the American Ambassador and Mr. 
 Baker closeted themselves at the em- 
 bassy. Next we drove to the residence 
 of the Marshal of France. At an old 
 military school Marshal Joffre, who 
 now is military adviser to the French 
 Government, leads a semi-retired life 
 among the students of the art to which 
 he has devoted his life. He is enthu- 
 siastically reminiscent of his visit to 
 America, and speaks hopefully of re- 
 peating the trip. After a hurried re- 
 turn to the Crillon, we lunched with 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 51 
 
 General Pershing. At two-thirty, the 
 secretary of war had his first meeting 
 with the newspaper men. Most of 
 them spoke English and the procedure 
 was not greatly dissimilar to that of the 
 afternoon meetings at Washington. 
 Scarcely had the journalists gone when 
 the secretary was on his way to the AUied 
 War Council at Versailles. In what 
 was the beautiful Trianon Palace Hotel 
 are the Council headquarters, within a 
 stone's throw of the spot where the Third 
 Estate precipitated the Revolution of 
 1789, where England recognized the in- 
 dependence of America in 1783, and 
 where the first Prussian WiUiam made 
 his headquarters in 1870. After the 
 fashion of French structures, a richly 
 furnished salon runs the length of the 
 building. The council room, immedi- 
 ately within the main entrance on the 
 first floor, is separated from the salon 
 
52 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 only by transparent glass. There, in 
 JSTovember of 1917, with the assembling 
 of the Interallied Council, began the 
 centralizing process which culminated 
 in March of this year with the appoint- 
 ment of a Supreme Commander. Fol- 
 lowing a hasty trip back to Paris there 
 was a late afternoon conference with 
 the President of the French Republic. 
 Thereafter the rise of a brightly shin- 
 ing moon and the appearance of count- 
 less stars seemed to usher in the end of 
 a perfect day. 
 
 But there was not yet to be rest for 
 the tired travelers; for when in mid- 
 evening the alerte sounded as a warning 
 signal of an approaching air attack, all 
 Paris knew that the Boche were coming 
 by the highroad, and in that knowledge 
 discreetly sought its securest cellar. 
 
 In an air raid, especially a first air 
 raid, one's feeling of fear is not accen- 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 53 
 tuated. There is too much of novelty 
 about the proceeding: the pitch-dark 
 streets; the clatter of anti-aircraft guns; 
 the occasional explosions of falling 
 bombs; the subterranean shelters; the 
 love affairs, incipient and otherwise, be- 
 gun or developed among the groups 
 gathered by chance wherever protec- 
 tion offers ; the arrival of those who have 
 wandered long and collided much in 
 inky blackness; the lady who worries 
 orally about her husband, who, it would 
 appear, is lost in the city, speaks no 
 French and constitutes a sort of phos- 
 phorescent target for attack; the bored 
 individuals to whom each raid is merely 
 another, and who impress their experi- 
 ence by discoursing upon the probable 
 mark and possible effect of each bomb 
 whose fall is heard; the reported oc- 
 currence of fatalities; the nonsensical 
 rumors of huge and fantastic victories 
 
54 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 and defeats — all are part of the air of- 
 fense and defense. 
 
 The entertaining of official visitors 
 had long since lost its novelty for our 
 maitre dfhotel at the Crillon, but none 
 the less he felt grave responsibility for 
 the security of the newly arrived Ameri- 
 cans. With a lantern of ancient con- 
 struction and diminutive candle-power 
 he conducted his guests to a secluded 
 portion of the ground floor. But still 
 his conscience so troubled him that he 
 insisted upon sheltering them in sub- 
 terranean regions, and he led them to 
 the sub-cellar among the wine-casks. 
 There, until far into the night, the Chief 
 of Engineers, the military representa- 
 tive on the Supreme War Council, and 
 the secretary of war regaled one an- 
 other with reminiscences begot by the 
 extraordinary surroundings, and punc- 
 tuated from time to time by explosions 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 55 
 
 on the street level above. Ten days 
 later, walking into the grounds of the 
 Invalides and inspecting the hundreds 
 of captured trophies that lie in the 
 Court d'Honneur, the secretary of 
 war came upon two giant German air- 
 planes, shot down in the raid which 
 brought to a close his first day in Paris. 
 The following day sufficing to com- 
 plete the work necessary to be done at 
 the capital, it was arranged to have our 
 train leave the city late in the evening. 
 The secretary of war was to go to the 
 station from the home of Ambassador 
 Sharp ; I was to go directly from the ho- 
 tel. As I hurried from the Crillon, I 
 brushed against a mud-spattered officer 
 coming in and with difficulty recognized 
 the features of Major General Glenn, 
 commanding the National Army divi- 
 sional cantonment at Chillicothe, Ohio, 
 and who was then on the tour of inspec- 
 
56 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 tion undertaken by all the command- 
 ers of divisions training in America. 
 When I rushed into him, General Glenn 
 was finishing a long, hard automobile 
 trip from our army headquarters, but 
 on learning that the secretary of war 
 v/as in the city, he left the hotel with me 
 and had a brief visit with the secretary 
 upon the station platform. At ten 
 o'clock the train of General Pershing 
 pulled out of Paris. 
 
 That train, by the way, is a thing of 
 beauty and a joy forever. One car has 
 two bedrooms and a sizable conference- 
 room. It accommodated Mr. Baker 
 and General Pershing. Two others 
 housed the staffs of the secretary and 
 the commander-in-chief. A third car 
 comprises a dining-room and kitchen. 
 A long table running half the length of 
 this car permits fifteen men to eat and 
 to confer with ease. When the Boche 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 57 
 
 have sued for peace and the final bugle 
 blows, and the contributing factors are 
 being allocated, I hope that an annalist 
 may arise in the land, may point out the 
 chef -de-luxe of that car, and may render 
 to him the things that are his. There is 
 also a car for the representatives of the 
 press. On this occasion, there were 
 representatives of the three American 
 press associations on the trip, together 
 with an army photographer, all in 
 charge of Frederick Palmer — Major 
 Palmer for the period of the emergency. 
 Immediately behind the engine is a 
 freight car with two high-powered auto- 
 mobiles, which permit rapid excursions 
 into the adjacent country. This estab- 
 lishment gives to the American Com- 
 mander a mobility that is a by-word 
 among his troops. For the next five 
 nights and for many nights intermit- 
 tently thereafter, that train was to be 
 
58 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 our home. By sleeping aboard it, and 
 by traveling from point to point be- 
 tween darkness and dawn, we were en- 
 abled to have virtually all the daylight 
 hours for inspection purposes. 
 
 Assigned by the French to have 
 charge of the secretary's train and to act 
 generally as a liaison officer, was Cap- 
 tain de Marenchens. Some day, as a 
 mental exercise, I hope to devise a ques- 
 tion which Marenchens cannot answer 
 or to suggest a task he cannot perform. 
 But the task will not be simple. For 
 sheer resourcefulness and for volume of 
 information, he stands apart. ''It is 
 easy" is his invariable reply to a request, 
 and he seems to make it so. 
 
 The seacoast was reached on the 
 morning following the exit from Paris. 
 During that day and the following one, 
 which was spent at a second seaport 250 
 miles away, the daylight hours and parts 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 59 
 
 of the nights were completely occupied 
 with the inspection of a bewildering 
 array of military enterprises, grouped in 
 the Base Section. 
 
 Later we visited the Intermediate 
 Section for three days of observation. 
 Proceeding along the lines of communi- 
 cation, we came upon vast storage areas, 
 threaded by hundreds of miles of ti^acks 
 and covered by acres of buildings, filled 
 with apparently inexhaustible supplies 
 of food and clothing and equipage to 
 protect the American forces in case of 
 their being temporarily cut off from the 
 distant home base. The inspection of 
 such places was usually made from 
 rough wooden benches built upon flat 
 cars shunted slowly through the maze 
 of tracks which feed the storage spaces. 
 There was some delay encountered in 
 entering the first city in this storage 
 area, for the band at the station rose to 
 
60 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 the acme of acclamation, and incident- 
 ally halted the entire procession by play- 
 ing all the verses of the American na- 
 tional anthem twice in the march of 
 eighty feet between the train and the 
 station gate. 
 
 While the other globe-trotters 
 boarded the train late in the afternoon, 
 I remained behind at a Regulating 
 Headquarters, securing some maps of 
 adjacent territory. When I reached 
 the station, the train had gone. In- 
 quiry revealed the uncertain informa- 
 tion that it had started east. An auto- 
 mobile was commandeered and a pursuit 
 started. A mile and a half away at a 
 freight yards we caught sight of it, but 
 now it was moving in the opposite direc- 
 tion, toward the depot we had left. A 
 hurried return to the station was made. 
 No train was visible. Further search 
 revealed that it had sought out a siding 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 61 
 
 three quarters of a mile west. A mod- 
 erately profane and excessively perspir- 
 ing scribe left the auto and the highway, 
 and proceeded along the railroad ties, 
 that he might lie across the track should 
 that train attempt to prolong its St. 
 Vitus' dance, which it did not. But for 
 sheer perversity, a raikoad train Some- 
 place in France can be almost human. 
 
 Those inspection days were strenuous 
 sessions. Usually there were a consid- 
 erable number of projects to be seen; at 
 each of them a new group of officers 
 would be met, and the combination of 
 physical freshness and mental alertness 
 in each group was depressing upon the 
 endurance, but stimulating to the souls, 
 of us whose spirit was always willing for 
 more inspection and yet more, but 
 whose flesh was sometimes weak. Be- 
 tween the portions of the task that were 
 accomplished on foot there were jour- 
 
62 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 neys by automobile, sometimes short, 
 invigorating trips, sometimes long, 
 cramping tours; always expeditions 
 through quaint French agricultural vil- 
 lages, where dwellings are not located 
 adjacent to the land that is tilled, but 
 are centralized at the cross-roads, and 
 where the questioning faces of those too 
 old or too young to be at the front 
 looked up inquiringly from their inter- 
 rupted tasks as the line of brown ma- 
 chines, marked with the same colors as 
 their own tricolor, swept by. On those 
 trips there was one thing the rest of us 
 got which never came to the secretary, 
 though he did not seem to mind. It was 
 the dust. Behind the leading machine 
 in which he rode it arose in great clouds 
 for the rest of us, to veneer us outwardly 
 and to choke us inwardly. At the end 
 of a dry day our appearance indicated 
 that an attempt had been made to 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 63 
 
 camouflage us into blending with the 
 landscape. The day-book of the trip, 
 brief though its record is, gives some 
 conception of what made up those 
 periods of sight-seeing. I select a few 
 random days : 
 
 March 12. Up at seven o'clock. Secretary 
 motors to Versailles for two-hour conference 
 with General Bliss, beginning at nine. Secre- 
 tary returns to Paris for noon conference with 
 General Foch, Chief of Staff. 
 
 1 o'clock. Secretary has as his luncheon 
 guests at Crillon: General Bliss; General 
 Pershing; General Black; Colonel Newton, 
 liaison officer with the French; Colonel Connor 
 and Colonel Tracy of General Pershing's staff; 
 Commander White, U. S. N.; Colonel Brett, the 
 secretary's aide; Captain de Marenchens, French 
 liaison officer with us; and Captain Baker, the 
 brother of the secretary. 
 
 1 :30. Conference with Mr. Kearney, Paris 
 representative of Committee on Public Infor- 
 mation. 
 
 2:00 o'clock. Secretary goes to headquarters 
 of American Red Cross. 
 
 2:45. Secretary calls upon ex-Premier 
 Viviani. 
 
64 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 4:00 o'clock. Conference with M. Reinach. 
 
 4:25. Conference with Wythe Williams and 
 Reginald Wright Kauffman. 
 
 4:30. Conference with Mr. John Clarke, 
 representative of Post-OfEce Department in 
 France. 
 
 5:00 o'clock. Conference with Arthur T. 
 Crosby of Treasury Department. 
 
 7:30. Dinner at residence of Ambassador 
 Sharp. 
 
 10:00 o'clock. Train leaves Paris. 
 
 March 14. Up at 6:45. Shortly after seven, 
 
 train reached . Greeted at station by sous- 
 
 prefet and committee of army officers. Take to 
 autos and inspect remount station; Camp No. 1, 
 which to-day has in it more than 10,000 re- 
 cently disembarked men; motor assembling- 
 shops; a base-hospital; docks No. 2, No. 10, 
 No. 1 ; locomotive assembling-plant. Buffet 
 luncheon at home of General Lewis; spent fore 
 part of afternoon in going over adjacent storage 
 project; on to , where a remarkable hos- 
 pital community is being constructed with the 
 buildings of an old French normal school as a 
 nucleus. Return to train for dinner. In eve- 
 ning secretary goes to home of General Lewis; 
 I go to naval headquarters. 
 
 March 16. Train reaches 8 a. m. 
 
 Train is cut in half to enable it to negotiate the 
 
OS fa 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front Qb 
 
 heavy grades to flying-fields of Third Aviation 
 Instruction Center; railway laid by Signal 
 Corps. Seventy-five machines in air greet the 
 secretary. Mr. Baker is interviewed for the St. 
 Patrick's day issue of "Plane News/' the camp 
 paper, which appears resplendent in green ink 
 before the secretary leaves the field. Inspect 
 living quarters and main camp, hangars, flying- 
 field, machine-gun school, aero engineering de- 
 partment, and aero supply department. Flights 
 include aerial formations of fifteen machines, 
 group evolutions, and aerial combat. 
 
 Shortly after noon our train picks us up and 
 brings us at 4 p. m. to . Inspect motor- 
 supply depot, camp hospital, railroad repair- 
 shops, fuel storage-depot, barracks, store- 
 houses, stables, and guard-houses. Left at 9:14« 
 p. M. 
 
 March 17. Sunday. Arrived at 8 a. m., 
 
 and at once start on inspection trip covering 
 the regulating headquarters and its adjacent 
 warehouses and railroad yards. This station is 
 midway between the storehouses at the coast and 
 the men at the front, and is to carry more than 
 two-weeks' supply for our first million men. 
 At 12:30 we board the train, eat lunch on it, 
 and reach at 1 :30. Here the Expedition- 
 ary Force has in operation various splendid 
 training-schools. The secretary first visits the 
 
66 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 headquarters of the army schools^ where he ad- 
 dresses the instructors; then he hurriedly looks 
 at the general staff college, the line school, the 
 engineer school, and the sanitary school. Leav- 
 ing the city, the party goes a few miles into the 
 country to view some carrier-pigeon lofts and 
 some trench-motor and anti-aircraft pieces. 
 Returning at five o'clock, find that the city offi- 
 cials have arranged a reception for the secretary. 
 Among the officers there he meets ex-Secretary 
 of War Stimson and ex-Assistant Secretary 
 Breckenridge. By taking the train again at 5 :30 
 the party reaches the American headquarters in 
 time for a late dinner, after which the secretary 
 goes into conference with General Crozier and 
 various officers of the Expeditionary Force. 
 
 In defense of that diary, I hasten to 
 add that it is not all as prosaic and as 
 plodding as those foregoing pages. 
 The long days of inspection tours and 
 the drear sight of devastated places 
 were brightened at times by a saving 
 touch of cheerfulness. There was al- 
 ways a chuckle in observing the tactics 
 of Colonel de Chambrun, whose duties 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 67 
 
 included the securing of accommoda- 
 tions at times when the train or hotels 
 were not available, and where, near the 
 front, it was not discreet to harbor the 
 secretary in centers of population that 
 are the targets for air attacks. At the 
 village where the stop was to be made, 
 wherever it might be, Chambrun would 
 inquire as to the location and the owner 
 of '*the chateau," the finest of the houses 
 in the community. Without further 
 formality, the colonel would gravely in- 
 form the worthy householder that he 
 would have as guests for the night the 
 secretary of war and his party. 
 
 Those who are of evil mind will say 
 that method smacks of Prussianism. 
 The first answer to that is the reply of 
 the aged French peasant who was taunt- 
 ingly asked how a country could claim 
 shares in the fruits of democracy which 
 had taken Napoleon back to itself and 
 
68 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 had made of him an emperor. "You 
 answer yourself," the old man replied. 
 He was our emperor; we made him 
 such. Perhaps, when all has been said, 
 the most fundamental right of a demo- 
 cratic people is the right to misgovern 
 itself. 
 
 There is a second answer to that 
 charge ; or perhaps it is only an amplifi- 
 cation of the first. It comes in the let- 
 ters which followed the secretary after 
 he had gone out of those villages, writ- 
 ten by the families whose guest he was 
 and testifying to that touch which makes 
 the whole world kin, or as much of it as 
 is of good will. Could I paint but a 
 single scene of France, it would not be 
 the once gay, now somber, boulevards of 
 Paris ; it would not show the pomp and 
 panoply of marching thousands; it 
 would not picture the young recruits 
 who even now in the fourth year of it 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 69 
 
 go out singing, and with *'Vive la Lyon" 
 chalked between the garlands on their 
 cars; it would not represent the ruins 
 where the ravages of ruthlessness have 
 taken heavy toll: it would be a bit of 
 Baccarat, an antiquated village of Lor- 
 raine, which hears unceasingly the 
 belching guns a few miles to the north, 
 but which yet lives its life. Soldiers are 
 there, not alone the blue-clad ones of 
 France, but others from afar who call 
 themselves men of the Rainbow ; and in 
 the old chateau lives M. Michot — 
 Michot the glassmaker. Over and over 
 again I like to recall the simple, homely 
 hospitality of the aged glassmaker and 
 his delightful family when his home was 
 the stopping-place of the secretary of 
 war, his touching farewells as we left, 
 and the gifts of glassware which came 
 after us. When all the world seems to 
 run red, it is good to know that M. 
 
70 Secretary Baker ^ at the Front 
 
 Michot of Baccarat lives, and others 
 like him. 
 
 The practice of billeting troops and 
 officials in the village homes of France 
 is, of course, the miiversal custom. As 
 each correspondent reports, the houses, 
 like the railroad cars, indicate by a 
 placard their maximum accommoda- 
 tions for "hommes and cheveaux." 
 These same places furnish shelters 
 sometimes in air raids, though not so 
 secure as the "abris." Nevertheless an 
 impressionable young American officer, 
 whose name is here deleted for value re- 
 ceived, in passing through a certain vil- 
 lage in Champagne, saw two young 
 ladies whom it was most easy to look 
 upon; their comeliness entranced him, 
 as did also a placard upon the house in 
 which they lived, saying: 
 
 6 hommes 
 
 2 cheveaux 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 71 
 
 As I remember it, he was somewhat 
 profane about the possibihty of having 
 cheveaux sheltered in that domicile with 
 the resultant waste of the fair loveliness 
 that dwelt there. But he made mental 
 note of all the circumstances. After 
 what, according to my Gregorian mode 
 of reckoning time, was about two 
 weeks, but to his Cupidian method was 
 some four months, had sped by or 
 dragged on (depending on how you 
 look at it), something happened to 
 prove that the gods work in mysteri- 
 ous ways. The same officer was over- 
 taken near the same village by an air- 
 raid. He was somewhat more than half 
 a mile away from the house of his 
 dreams, and there were some dozens of 
 shelters between him and it. But that 
 seemed to have no effect on him. The 
 track coach of his college days would 
 have wept for joy had he been present 
 
72 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 to witness the sprinting of that half 
 mile. The runner later admitted to me 
 that he had with him all the way a men- 
 tal pacemaker in the thought of one or 
 two dumb driven cheveaux beating him 
 to that shelter. But as some philoso- 
 pher has sagely remarked, there is 
 usually some one in the neighborhood 
 whose chief avocation is taking the joy 
 out of life. In this case the portion was 
 doubled; there were two such persons. 
 They, too, bore some signs of exhaus- 
 tion, and as our hero's hobnailed shoes 
 clattered along the cobblestones and ap- 
 proached the corner that was to start 
 him on the last lap and put him in view 
 of his goal, he ran into the other two, 
 bound in the opposite direction. And 
 one of the two made speech, saying: 
 "It's no use, buddy — ^we're just comin' 
 from there; nine fellows are in there 
 now and it ain't healthy while the Boche 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 73 
 
 are spittin' fire to form a waitin' line 
 outside behind the horse that they put 
 out. We're lookin' for a hole where 
 we can see the rest of the fellows comin' 
 up — and goin' back." Was ever a 
 more dismal end to a budding romance? 
 What reason remained to seek safety 
 after a thing like that had come into a 
 man's life? 
 
 The Commander of the American 
 Expeditionary Forces issued, some 
 months back, a general-order on opti- 
 mism, constituting an official aid to 
 cheerfulness and an authoritative denial 
 that the melancholy days are come. It 
 is well. Sometimes one needs such a 
 temperament stimulant after he has 
 spent a day dodging the output of the 
 shops that little Bertha found on her 
 hands when old man Krupp shoved off 
 in 1902 for a voyage down the Styx to 
 meet a certain ally of his imperial mas- 
 
74 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 ter. One night between explosions I 
 asked Frederick Palmer if he would n't 
 tell me, out of the goodness of his heart, 
 something cheerful and chipper, were 
 it true or false. He told me he would, 
 and I believed him. He told me that 
 the mental attitude I should cultivate 
 when each of those explosions seemed to 
 let go just under my bed was the con- 
 sciousness that statistics have shown 
 that a man is hit by only one missile in 
 80— or was it 800 or 8000? That 
 seemed like a holy and humane thought, 
 and great was the comfort I was de- 
 riving from it when he interrupted my 
 reflections. 
 
 "In the interest of the whole truth," 
 he said, "I ought to add that in the last 
 three days you 've been missed at least 
 500 times, and if the laws of averages 
 and gravitation have n't been repealed, 
 you 're due to be hit by the next six." 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 75 
 
 There would be less grief in being 
 harassed by that shell-fire if a fellow's 
 — well, say, his sweetheart, were look- 
 ing on appreciatively. There would n't 
 be many amateur theatrical entertain- 
 ments if there were only dress rehearsals 
 and no audiences of admiring parents. 
 College foot-ball would become a lost 
 art were it not for the feminine pres- 
 ences in the grand stand who view the 
 team as some one man surrounded by 
 ten assistants. In the big game Over 
 There, except for fellow-workmen of 
 the male species, one is virtually a 
 stranger in a strange land. The village 
 paper is historic when it comes. Let- 
 ters are so long in transit that one won- 
 ders if the writer feels now, as, let us 
 say, she did when months ago she wrote 
 it. And an unsentimental censor can 
 make a great shortstop. Altogether 
 one develops a far-away feeling, which 
 
76 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 is not greatly minimized by the preva- 
 lence of a strange tongue among the 
 adjacent natives. True, the cables, at 
 thirty-seven cents a word, remain, but 
 they are not always an unalloyed ad- 
 vantage. An undeciphered message 
 came to us one night with the only un- 
 coded part of it, the word *'Wilson," at 
 the bottom. All the army codes had 
 failed dismally in giving to it a mean- 
 ing. None of us have much sympathy 
 for the man who conceals his thoughts 
 with words, but it is scarcely fair to 
 the Commander-in-Chief in the White 
 House to have him dictate a message in 
 perfect diction, only to have it so 
 mesmerized by a secretive code-writer 
 that the best of professional treatment 
 cannot bring it back to rationality. A 
 last-ditch suggestion favored giving the 
 thing to the navy. Strangely enough, 
 it responded instanter to the persuasion 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 77 
 
 of a naval code. It was a simple, al- 
 most crass message, which by some 
 freak of delivery, possibly induced by 
 the signature, had been given to the 
 Secretary of War, sent to the com- 
 mander of the port where we were, 
 signed by Admiral Wilson of the naval 
 forces in France, and informing the 
 recipient that he might expect 150 tons 
 of beef to arrive any day! 
 
 During the course of a number of 
 trips abroad, Mr. Baker had used the 
 term "haircloth" by cable to indicate 
 the fact that whatever members of the 
 family were at the sending end were 
 well, and to receive the same cabled in- 
 telligence regarding the remainder of 
 the family in America. Now, the Eu- 
 ropean address of a person moving as 
 rapidly as did the secretary of war was 
 rather a complicated thing, and often 
 the superscription required as many 
 
78 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 words as the body of the cable contained. 
 Adding to the bulk of the necessary di- 
 rections was sometimes the requirement 
 of successively forwarding the same 
 cable in an attempt to catch the ad- 
 dressee. There was nothing unnatural, 
 therefore, in our receiving a cablegram 
 which had been forwarded three times 
 and had accumulated a voluminous ar- 
 ray of receipts and references. The 
 message itself consisted of one word 
 and each receiver of the cable en route 
 averred unwillingly that he was unable 
 to "crack" it. The one who finally 
 handed it to us rather sheepishly ad- 
 mitted that he could make nothing more 
 intelligible than "haircloth" out of the 
 portion of the message beneath the half 
 pages of re-addressings. 
 
 I am glad, at times, that the diary of 
 that trip does not talk. Its indiscre- 
 tions could be monstrous. But some of 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 79 
 
 its gossip it might retail without im- 
 prudence. For instance: 
 
 March 12. Paris. The secretary is the de- 
 spair of the secret service men. His goings and 
 comings are so unannounced and so informal that 
 officers of the Intelligence Service have pro- 
 tested, saying that his going through the streets 
 alone and unprotected is unwise and dangerous. 
 
 March 27. Paris. Charles W. Grasty, the 
 journalist, walked into General Pershing's house 
 and we reminisced. When in the middle of a 
 week in November of 1915 I was catapulted out 
 of law school into the City Club of Cleveland, 
 my first job was to induce a speaker to come to 
 Cleveland to talk about the war. Grasty had 
 just then come home to America, and agreed by 
 long-distance telephone to make the speech be- 
 fore the week ended. On the strength of that I 
 introduced myself to the mayor, who promised 
 to attend a private luncheon with Grasty. 
 
 (The mayor referred to was Newton D. 
 Baker.) 
 
 March 28. The secretary and I, he incog- 
 nito, patronized a French village barber shop. 
 Some of our soldiers had told us that submission 
 to a French tonsorialist was comparable to a 
 major operation, but this is exaggerated. There 
 was something different about that shop, and as 
 
80 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 we waited for the rest of the village to have its 
 locks trimmed and its jowls scraped, I tried to 
 identify the characteristics that distinguished 
 it. The barber shops which I have met are 
 characterized by the mechanism of their chairs 
 and the colored liquids in many bottles. This 
 shop had neither and had to be taken to some 
 degree on faith. We read all the back issues of 
 the French magazines that correspond to our 
 barber shop periodicals, passed a vote of censure 
 on the brilliantine which illuminated the barber's 
 hair and mustache, and laughed secretly in Eng- 
 lish when a man of not less than sixty years had 
 every hair clipped off" his head and went out 
 looking nude. 
 
 March 29. American Headquarters. Gen- 
 eral Pershing told me at night that for the sake 
 of the secretary's health we had best urge him 
 to slow his schedule and to remain indoors for a 
 day. A succession of rainy days, and daily ex- 
 cursions by the secretary, have made the General 
 fearful of the radical change from more seden- 
 tary work at Washington. Of course I shall 
 urge the secretary to follow this good counsel, 
 but I know the passively bored look that will 
 greet my suggestion that he stay indoors and 
 rest. 
 
 March SO. American Headquarters. The 
 secretary listened patiently to my advice and 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 81 
 
 prescription, looked passively bored, and then 
 drove a score of miles through a driving rain to 
 the headquarters of Major General Clarence Ed- 
 wards. The commander of the Twenty-sixth has 
 his headquarters in what appears to be a feudal 
 castle, built on the brink of a huge ridge which 
 towers above the surrounding country, dominat- 
 ing the valley lands for miles around. 
 
 April 5. Paris. This day, from Captain 
 Adams (known to fame as F. P. A. of the Con- 
 ning Tower) I borrowed a bread-card to secure 
 at a public hotel an allotment of war bread for 
 myself and one — the one being a young lady I 
 had known in Washington and unexpectedly 
 found here. Adams gave me the ticket but he 
 also chanced to be at the hotel and proceeded to 
 embarrass me beyond speech by inquiring in 
 loudly pitched tones as to the source of the staff 
 of life for my party, whether the unconsumed 
 portion of his ticket would be returned to him, 
 and whether it was my custom to find subsist- 
 ence in that fashion. When he had finished in- 
 sulting me, he asked my fellow-forager, whom he 
 had not known, if she cared to go to a theatre 
 with him. Luckily she knew no French, dra- 
 matic or otherwise, and that question did n't 
 come to an issue. I think I '11 speak to Adams* 
 wife about this when we get back. 
 
 April 6. Paris. Late this afternoon the sec- 
 
82 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 retary went out with me to purchase pipes. 
 There is vast entertainment for one to whom a 
 good cigar is merely a smoke, in watching a 
 connoisseur of the weed insisting upon a straight 
 stem, a knotless bowl, a pull bit, and the other 
 qualities that constitute a smokable pipe. 
 
 April 7. We have accumulated a considerable 
 portion of queer paper money, issued locally by 
 what possibly corresponds to our chambers of 
 commerce, and passable only in the locality of 
 its issue. Fancy coming into Grand Central 
 Terminal with a bulging pocketful of worthless 
 Jersey money. 
 
 The secretary has an inordinate liking for 
 articles made of pewter. So far as I know or 
 he remembers, he has never bought any of it; 
 but any musty shop along the street with a win- 
 dow full of cobwebs and pewter will catch his 
 attention and arrest his footsteps. 
 
 The pursuit of cheese is the most pronounced 
 habit to which General Black succumbs. In 
 any form and at any place "fromage" will at- 
 tract his eye and nose. When we were at Amer- 
 ican Headquarters, the secretary lived at Gen- 
 eral Pershing's house, while the Chief of Engi- 
 neers remained at the "guest house," three blocks 
 away. The first day of our stay the secretary 
 announced his belief that General Black would 
 not be able to make the j ourney between the two 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 83 
 
 houses. A cheese-monger had set up his estab- 
 lishment midway between the two dwellings, and 
 the secretary was quite positive that the General 
 could not pass that point in going either direc- 
 tion. 
 
 By way of marking the entrance of 
 the secretary into the advanced section, 
 the army schools staged a reahstic and 
 sonorous simulation of battle opera- 
 tions. Of it the diary says: 
 
 Before the coming of zero hour the earth shook 
 with the effect of a barrage from machine-guns, 
 heavy trench mortars, light Stokes and 37's. 
 Meanwhile the attacking troops had formed into 
 assaulting platoons in waves, cleaning-up par- 
 ties, and support platoons. At zero hour the in- 
 fantry moved forward under the protection of a 
 barrage, accompanied by mortars and 37's. The 
 German defenses consisted of firing trenches, 
 support trenches, strong points, and pill-boxes. 
 The last were demolished, but enemy strong 
 points held up the advance and brought all in- 
 fantry weapons into play, with hand-bombs 
 working on the flanks. After the strong points 
 were rushed and captured by bombers, the at- 
 tacking line moved forward to the first hostile 
 
84 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 line, from which they signaled for a barrage 
 upon enemy support trenches. When the Stokes 
 mortars ceased firing and the machine-guns 
 lifted, the troops moved forward to their final 
 objective, the enemy's second line trenches, 
 where they halted, sent patrols to the front, con- 
 solidated the newly occupied trenches and 
 erected wire in front of the positions. As a 
 post-mortem measure, a so-called Chinese attack 
 was demonstrated, and hostile reconnaissance 
 airplanes were driven away. Lest there be any 
 misapprehension, coolies have no part in a Chi- 
 nese counter-attack. The only targets are life- 
 size silhouettes. 
 
 Immediately following the feigned 
 battle, the automobile of the secretary 
 of war, accompanied by one other ma- 
 chine, slipped quietly by a side road out 
 of the line that was returning to the 
 American headquarters, and turned un- 
 heralded in the direction of the real bat- 
 tles. The secretary was bound for the 
 front line. Early on the following 
 morning the party was within hailing 
 distance of No-Man's-Land, trudging 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 85 
 
 over the duck-boards of a narrow trench 
 and headed in a course bearing toward 
 the crown prince and his father. 
 
 At least, it was said to be that direc- 
 tion. But after traversing fifty yards 
 of a maze of trenches, a self-respecting 
 compass itself would hesitate to point 
 in any direction without uncertainty. 
 
 Unpopular above all things else at 
 the front stands the unofficial civilian. 
 When one gets inside the artillery arc 
 the presence of civilians possessed of 
 curiosity and in search of atmosphere 
 becomes a definite deterrent to military 
 success. We are less amenable to dis- 
 cipline than men of the army, we are 
 unacquainted with the precaution that 
 must be observed, and we require the 
 services of one or several officers to keep 
 us from getting lost. The presence 
 even of military officers of high rank 
 close to the front is not in all respects 
 
86 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 beneficial. Some months ago when va- 
 rious major-generals commanding divi- 
 sions in America made trips to the bat- 
 tle-front and were taken into the first 
 lines, together with the staffs which 
 accompany officers of that rank, there 
 was a noticeable increase of hostile fire 
 upon our lines induced by the move- 
 ments of the visiting groups. An old 
 sergeant who was also something of a 
 philosopher, remarked, "No woman 
 wants company on her wash-day." 
 
 Traveling along a trench three feet 
 in width in a borrowed pair of shoes 
 that are too small and a borrowed coat 
 that is too large, gives to the traveler 
 a brand-new set of emotions. Before 
 him is a maze of barbed wire; behind 
 him an inferno of artillery. Above 
 him are sausage balloons with searching 
 eyes ; below him sappers with busy shov- 
 els; on one side are piles of hand- 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 87 
 
 grenades, on the other a grimly waiting 
 Red Cross station. Trench psychology 
 has no parallel ; it is a thing apart. 
 
 Two days and a half were spent by 
 the secretary at the far front. Noted 
 in the annals for those days are these 
 entries : 
 
 March 18. On way to the front the secre- 
 tary stopped at the headquarters of General de 
 Castelnau, commanding the group of armies of 
 the East. The general remarked upon the ex- 
 cellent feeling between the French and Ameri- 
 can soldiers, his confidence in the American 
 troops, and his satisfaction with the work of the 
 Rainbow, which is serving with his group of 
 armies. 
 
 March 19. The secretary got under way at 
 5 :30 A. M. With him, in addition to his own 
 party, were General Menoher, Col. MacArthur 
 and Col. Hough of the 42nd Division. The 
 party stopped en route to inspect the 3rd Bat- 
 talion of the 166th Regiment, and the secretary 
 made an informal talk to the men. 
 
 The route lay to Benamenil, where an escort 
 formed to take the secretary out to the farthest 
 wires near Blemery, by way of the village of 
 
88 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 Domjevin. But Domjevin was undergoing such 
 a fierce bombardment at the time that General 
 Menoher decided the party could not go through 
 there. Returning to Benamenil, the secretary, 
 with Col. de Chambrun as guide, went first to 
 Badonvillers and thence into the front line. The 
 point where the secretary penetrated to the tip 
 of the line was northeast of Badonvillers and 
 east of the farm of le Chimais. 
 
 The first glimpse over the dead end 
 of the trench farthest to the front is a 
 rather disappointing experience. It is 
 disappointing, perhaps, in the same 
 fashion that Mammoth Cave and Ni- 
 agara Falls and the Capitol are disap- 
 pointing — our imaginations have been 
 so fed up by the prophetic promises of 
 unconservative publicity and by first 
 impressions at a plastic age from early 
 school-books, that anything would be 
 a disillusionment. Sometimes I won- 
 der if the judgment seat and the golden 
 stairs can live up to their advance no- 
 tices. Some there will be, I '11 venture. 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 89 
 
 who will be searching for paste in the 
 diamond streets and rubbing the steps 
 to see if they tarnish. The pomp and 
 circumstance of war do not obtrude 
 themselves upon an amateur at the far- 
 thest front. The landscape, during a 
 lull, seems too quiet and innocent-look- 
 ing to be loaded brim- full of hell; and 
 recurrent admonitions of your guide are 
 necessary before you keep your head 
 ducked and step briskly across the ex- 
 posed places. Enemy snipers and pa- 
 trols do not operate with band concerts 
 and parades as heralds of their ap- 
 proach. The quiet, swarthy landscape, 
 marked only by a line of wire three 
 hundred yards away, seems so passive 
 and unthreatening that it is difficult to 
 believe that latent death could lie in 
 every foot of it. You feel a disbelief in 
 the statement of the sentry that a hos- 
 tile sharp-shooter lies under that piece 
 
90 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 of tin a good stone's throw distant. 
 But you don't doubt strongly enough 
 to go out and kick it over to see. 
 
 Leaving the line of battle, the secre- 
 tary journeyed to Luneville, Nancy 
 and TouL At Luneville, after ad- 
 dressing officers of the 165th Infantry, 
 he went with General Bazeler to visit 
 a number of American wounded. One 
 of them was badly gassed, but there was 
 a light in his eyes and his smile was good 
 to see as he told the secretary "my lieu- 
 tenant was decorated yesterday for 
 bravery and it almost made me well." 
 
 Early on the next morning the secre- 
 tary joined the 2nd Division and vis- 
 ited a temporary barracks on a wooded 
 hillside, where the Marine Brigade, un- 
 der General Doyen, had its headquar- 
 ters. Thence he hastened to the vil- 
 lage of Treveray, beside which a long 
 and rugged hill leads to a lofty plateau. 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 91 
 
 With General Pershing, General Lig- 
 gett and Colonel Hines, the secretary 
 there reviewed the 1st Brigade of the 
 1st Division, the initial one sent to 
 France. It had just come out of the 
 trenches and into rest billets where the 
 secretary visited it, and already it had 
 the look and bearing and feeling of 
 veterans. 
 
 Here occurred a sad and sizable trag- 
 edy, in that a snapshot was taken which 
 purported to show three officers sa- 
 luting the flag and the secretary of war 
 not saluting. An enlargement of the 
 photograph shows his hand was raised 
 to remove his hat two seconds later; 
 and a picture taken from a point 
 squarely behind the secretary would 
 have shown that the snapshot was taken 
 at a moment when the flag was not yet 
 directly before him. But several doz- 
 ens of explanations were required to 
 
92 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 satisfy as many good citizens that the 
 snapshot was not conclusive. 
 
 In descending the hillside following 
 the review, General Black and I inad- 
 vertently set foot upon the wrong road, 
 and its tortuous windings into the val- 
 ley led us so far astray from our course 
 that we found ourselves at the foot of 
 the hill in the village of St. Amand, 3.5 
 kilometres from Treveray, into which 
 we trudged picturesquely and peniten- 
 tially, he astride a slow-going horse, I 
 mudspattered and afoot beside him. 
 
 We followed the secretary to the vil- 
 lage of Domremy, the birthplace of 
 Joan of Arc. We found there the lit- 
 tle home of the Maid of Orleans, with 
 the statue in front of it showing Joan 
 being led from her paternal roof by 
 the Genius of France, and, farther along 
 the road, the basilica upon the spot 
 where she is said to have heard the 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 93 
 
 voices which summoned her to her work. 
 A quaint old woman showed the secre- 
 tary through the house, which is on the 
 edge of the village, flanked as of old 
 by a green valley to the south and by 
 picturesque hills, but girdled also now 
 with an array of French artillery await- 
 ing its call to the front. One is glad 
 to have seen it all, despite Herr Bae- 
 deker's warning that "there is little to 
 see at Domremy, which is a village of 
 the humblest character." 
 
 Hard driving brought the party to 
 American headquarters in time for 
 dinner. The secretary spent the eve- 
 ning in conference with Postal officials 
 on the mail situation among the soldiers 
 and at ten o'clock we boarded the train 
 for another night of travel. 
 
 On the morning of Thursday, March 
 21, simultaneously with the opening 
 phase of the German offensive, the sec- 
 
94 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 retary of war was proceeding from 
 American headquarters on a curiously 
 timely and unusual trip to the head- 
 quarters of the Allies, paralleling the 
 raging battle-line. At noon he had 
 reached the headquarters of General 
 Petain, who was then quartered in an 
 ancient palace built by one of the fa- 
 mous kings of France. To the east 
 the drum-fire of the artillery constituted 
 a solid volume of sound, without any 
 interval between reports. Neverthe- 
 less, the commander of the French, 
 though prophesying accurately the 
 length and intensity of the battle, 
 seemed the calmest man at his head- 
 quarters. *'This is the day of the di- 
 vision commanders," he said as we left ; 
 "to-morrow the corps commanders will 
 have work; and on the next day there 
 will be something for me to do." Here 
 the train was left and automobiles were 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 95 
 
 substituted. Twice during the after- 
 noon's drive it was necessary to change 
 the route of the machines when roads 
 which were to have been traversed be- 
 came targets for enemy shell-fire. 
 
 Dusk was settling as the headquar- 
 ters of Sir Douglas Haig and the Brit- 
 ish Armies were reached. Several 
 miles farther into the country was the 
 residence of the field marshal. Here 
 dinner was had, and a conference last- 
 ing long into the evening, at which time 
 the train was substituted for the motors, 
 and the northward journey was again 
 taken up. The station in Belgium at 
 which it was proposed to stop was un- 
 der heavy bombardment on the morn- 
 ing of March 22, and the journey by 
 train was ended at another point. But 
 automobiles quickly carried the party 
 to the simple country home of the king. 
 
 All the stories which have been 
 
96 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 printed do not overdraw the picture of 
 Albert, the tired and careworn king, 
 weighed down by the multitude of a 
 people's woes, and burdened with the 
 greatest sorrow in history; but sus- 
 tained by the still, small voice that has 
 sounded as a clarion call to his people, 
 and glorified by a cosmopolitanism that 
 endears Albert, King of the Belgians, 
 as much to Americans as to his own peo- 
 ple. 
 
 England was next on the itinerary. 
 A fog as thick as London's own stopped 
 all cross-Channel traffic. During all 
 of an afternoon we waited for a change 
 of elements, and remained at Boulogne 
 over night. On the following morning 
 General Black, Major Palmer and I 
 were exercising ourselves through the 
 city when an excited officer rushed up 
 to us saying that the others of the party 
 were aboard a ship in the harbor and 
 
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Secretary Baker at the Front 97 
 
 were expected to sail momentarily. 
 We made a thoroughly undignified but 
 surpassingly speedy trio as we broke 
 for the train, gathered our belongings 
 with one sweep of our respective arms 
 and sprinted down the dock with that 
 entreating expression on our faces 
 which expects the gangplank to be with- 
 drawn with fifty yards yet to go. But, 
 perversely enough, it was not with- 
 drawn and we went aboard. Per- 
 versely enough, again, the ship had no 
 intention of crossing the Channel, and 
 admitted no responsibility for un- 
 founded rumors that sailings would be 
 resumed. We therefore quit the ship, 
 the dock, and the city, returning along 
 the coast to Calais, where passage to 
 Dover was secured in mid-afternoon. 
 Greeting the secretary on his arrival at 
 Dover was Admiral Keyes, later the 
 hero of the Zeebrugge and Ostend raids. 
 
98 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 We reached London in time for din- 
 ner, and the secretary took up his abode 
 at the American Embassy. 
 
 The early closing of London shops 
 and the early darkening of London 
 streets has a tendency, like a curfew, to 
 cause one to look somewhat attentively 
 after the business in hand. The way 
 of strangers in London is further made 
 more simple, if less interesting, by the 
 fact that scarcity of fuel has made sight- 
 seeing and pleasure-missions taboo. 
 So the stay of the secretary of war in 
 England's capital could be made nat- 
 urally most brief and official. Sunday 
 and Monday were spent conferring with 
 the chiefs who direct the destinies of 
 Great Britain. 
 
 Early Tuesday morning, March 26, 
 the Channel was crossed again, this time 
 in company with thousands of young 
 Englishmen returning to help stop the 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 99 
 
 drive which threatened Ypres and 
 Amiens. 
 
 The station at Boulogne had been 
 heavily bombed in the absence of the 
 party in England, and there were signs 
 of wreckage about the car of the secre- 
 tary of war when he returned to it. 
 That bit of ruin was prophetic of what 
 was to be met all the way from the Eng- 
 lish Channel to the French capital, for 
 the route lay through Abbeville and 
 Amiens, and the attack of the Germans 
 was at its height. Pitifully prolonged 
 lines of refugees dotted the dusty roads, 
 and there was added affliction in the 
 knowledge that many of these people 
 had been fugitives before from those 
 same lands, and had gone back again 
 to their little farms a year ago and had 
 tilled the soil and planted their new 
 crops, only to flee once more at the 
 approach of the Hun of hate. With 
 
100 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 them was carried every conceivable va- 
 riety of impedimenta: a bird-cage, a 
 fowl or two, a musical instrmnent, a 
 market basket, a crudely fashioned 
 pack. Most of them were limited to 
 what could be carried in their two hands 
 and on their backs. But here and there 
 was one who pushed a baby-carriage or 
 tramped beside a cart drawn by a 
 shaggy horse too poor to be comman- 
 deered for cavalry purposes by the Gov- 
 ernment. Now and then there were 
 eyes that were dimmed with tears; 
 sometimes there were those that were 
 wide with fear ; many among them that 
 were dulled with weariness. But there 
 was not a voice we heard that spoke of 
 complaint or capitulation. Force may 
 take the physical possessions of the 
 French, but it does not break the heart 
 of France. 
 
 On Thursday the secretary again was 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 101 
 
 at the American headquarters. Good 
 Friday he spent in the field with the 
 troops. Some of the troops of one di- 
 vision — New England men — ^had gath- 
 ered in a chapel beside a village church- 
 yard; and the secretary was speaking 
 to the men in that cold and damp little 
 roadside church when at the same hour 
 in Paris at another church, where an- 
 other group was gathered, a shell from 
 the long-range guns of the enemy 
 crashed through the roof and snuffed 
 out the lives of seventy-four among 
 those at their devotions. 
 
 The start for Italy was made on the 
 following day, and Easter Sunday was 
 spent above the snow-line of the Alps. 
 Monday brought us to the military 
 headquarters of the Italians, and there 
 were conferences with General Diaz, 
 commanding the Italian armies, with 
 the head of the American Military Mis- 
 
102 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 sion to Italy, and with the American 
 Ambassador, who had come north to 
 meet the secretary. 
 
 At the close of a dull, damp day we 
 entered the canals of Venice — Venice 
 that once had been the playhouse of 
 the world and the fairy-land of fantasy. 
 Now it is stricken. But its chastise- 
 ment has not dispelled the romance of 
 its soft-colored buildings, or of its wa- 
 tered ways, with the remnants of the 
 grand flotilla of gondolas that once 
 glided over them. 
 
 Of the two hundred thousands who 
 were once there, only a fifth remain, — 
 the last of the Venetians ; and those few 
 are hunted creatures ; for each full moon 
 brings to the City of the Doges another 
 fear of bombardment from the air. 
 The art treasures long since have been 
 taken elsewhere; the shops about the 
 Campanile are closed and vacant. St. 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 103 
 
 Mark's is muffled in sand-bags. Flocks 
 of pigeons still perch at evening in the 
 arches of the church and keep their vigil 
 by day upon the stones of Venice; but 
 tourists are no longer there to feed 
 them. The myriad lights that once 
 gave living tints to the city's watery 
 ways are gone. The regattas and the 
 serenades that were the glory, of the 
 Grand Canal have passed. But the 
 American Red Cross has mothered what 
 little of the community remains, and 
 has guided the footsteps of those who 
 have gone, preserving the cohesiveness 
 of their associations that they may re- 
 turn in happier days as homogeneous 
 gi'oups. In the meantime, Venice will 
 be the empty shell of things that were 
 and are no more. 
 
 After a day at Rome, a conference 
 with the king, the premier, the minister 
 of war, and the minister of the treasury, 
 
104 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 the return to France along the enchant- 
 ing Riviera was begun. Transporta- 
 tion has become a major problem in 
 Italy. Steep grades and sharp curves, 
 low bridges and small tunnels, depleted 
 rolling stock and exhausted coal-supply 
 — all have combined to render difficult 
 the movements of men and material. 
 All but one of the cars of General 
 Pershing's train were dispensed with to 
 save fuel on the Italian leg of the jour- 
 ney, but the poor combustion of "bri- 
 quets" compelled many stops at way- 
 side stations to accumulate steam for 
 the next stage of the trip, and delayed 
 our reaching Paris until late in the day 
 of Thursday, the fourth of April. 
 
 The reduction of our train to one car 
 necessitated economies in space which 
 played havoc with my habits of living. 
 My compartment had in it a table 
 which folded into the wall and a bed 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 105 
 which folded into an easy chair — so- 
 called. With the loss of a buffet car, 
 my room with its table became the only 
 possible eating place, and it was so 
 elected. Each night I had to await the 
 departure of the last lingering hungerer 
 before having my chair made into a bed. 
 Each morning at a cruel hour a tugging 
 at my bed clothes brought the sad tid- 
 ings that my bed would have to be re- 
 converted into a chair that the table 
 might be unfolded and the preliminaries 
 of breakfast arranged. Between meals 
 there was just time to set out a goodly 
 display of maps and papers before it 
 became necessary to pack them away 
 again in favor of food. Those few days 
 to and from Italy made me nervously 
 versatile after the fashion of a chame- 
 leon or a politician or a kaleidoscope. 
 
 In the capital was spent the first an- 
 niversary of America's declaration of 
 
106 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 war. The French essayed no formal 
 celebration, but in the informality of 
 their commemoration there was no lack 
 of evidence that the hearts of the two 
 republics beat in unison. In the Grand 
 Salle des Fetes at the handsome Hotel 
 de Ville the officials of the municipality 
 and the nation gathered, almost over- 
 looking the Church of St. Gervais 
 where, a week before, the fire of the 
 enemy had killed fourscore of worship- 
 pers. The American ambassador was 
 present, with the secretary of war and 
 representatives of the American Mili- 
 tary and Naval forces. Officials of the 
 other Allies were gi^ouped about and 
 the people of Paris were there in goodly 
 numbers. There were greetings from 
 the president of the municipal council 
 and the minister of foreign affairs, with 
 a response from Ambassador Sharp. 
 And the departing guests passed again 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 107 
 
 under the shadow of St. Gervais, the 
 place of God where the shell of the fofe 
 had found its mark and its victims on 
 the anniversary of Calvary. 
 
 So passed the last day in Paris, and 
 the next to the last in France. On the 
 evening of the first day of the second 
 year of our war, Premier Clemenceau 
 and General Pershing journeyed to the 
 station to bid farewell to the secretary 
 of war. It was found then that another 
 shell from their long-range guns had 
 struck within thirty feet from his car. 
 On the previous day, as the secretary 
 drove through Paris, another had ex- 
 ploded almost as close to him. But to 
 us who had been a month in France and 
 with its people, there was a kind of fu- 
 tility about it. For air-raiders may do 
 their work at night on hospitals and 
 elsewhere, and the far-shooting gun 
 may take its toll by day in or out of 
 
108 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 churches, and the blue line of France 
 may bend and strain, but the stout heart 
 of France does not break. The singers 
 of hymns of hate may yet learn in the 
 last hands of the long game that hearts, 
 not clubs, are trumps. 
 
Ill 
 
 WHEEE GLORY DWELLS 
 
 NO circumstance in the operations 
 of the War Department has been 
 productive of more weeping and gnash- 
 ing of teeth by military men than work 
 which keeps them in the United States 
 or which brings them back from the 
 fields of glory. So it was not a wholly 
 happy group which traveled toward the 
 French coast with the secretary of war 
 in early April. One did n't wish at that 
 time to see even the Statue of Liberty 
 and that sky-line rising out of the hori- 
 zon. But commands are commands. 
 
 Our unhappiness was mitigated by 
 the discovery on arriving at our port 
 that our cruiser quarters were sup- 
 
 109 
 
110 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 planted by a relatively luxurious home 
 aboard a returning transport. Once the 
 great ship we boarded had belonged to 
 the North German Lloyd Line. Now, 
 as the Mt. Vernon, it bears its thousands 
 over the ocean to iSght its former own- 
 ers. In the transition from its old mas- 
 ters to its new custodians, there had 
 taken place a most thoroughgoing dam- 
 aging of the ship's machinery. This 
 was understandable. But the damage 
 was done in such a consciously premedi- 
 tated and diabolical fashion that, were it 
 not for the clever foresight and close 
 scrutiny of an American engineer, every 
 seaman in the engine-room would have 
 been scalded to death in live steam the 
 first time the engines were reversed. 
 That is past understanding. It is the 
 trade-mark by which we recognize the 
 thing we fight. 
 
 What was formerly one of the pas- 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 111 
 
 senger dining-rooms on the huge craft 
 has become now by day a place of gath- 
 ering for the crew, by night a movie 
 auditorium, and by Sundays a flag- 
 draped chapel. The "Kinderzimmer," 
 once the playing place of children, has 
 become the one lighted place aboard the 
 boat at night outside the chartroom. 
 
 For the first two days of our trip 
 there was no disrobing, and life- 
 preservers were worn even when at- 
 tempts were made to sleep in curious 
 postures, U-boats were operating 
 within an uncomfortable radius, two 
 of them within thirty-five miles. If 
 at such a time one's digestion becomes 
 sufficiently deranged, he develops a 
 new-found respect for that mellowed 
 tale of the person who feared first that 
 a submarine might attack him, and later, 
 that it wouldn't. On the eastbound 
 trip a colored trooper developed such an 
 
112 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 innate, ingrained and thoroughgoing 
 case of seasickness that he was found 
 one day upon his knees praying long 
 and aloud for relief, and demanding 
 nothing less than that the Supreme Or- 
 dainer of worldly things should leave 
 His celestial throne and come down for 
 a sufficient length of time to correct the 
 internal arrangements of the defendant. 
 "But, Lord," he added, as a sort of com- 
 promising afterthought, to show that he 
 was not unreasonable, "if you can't 
 come right now in person, send your 
 speediest angel." It was on seaboard 
 that first I heard that story, and my 
 laugh, I fear, was rather hollow; for at 
 just that time I chanced to be living in 
 a house largely of glass. 
 
 In London I had picked up a copy of 
 "Our Mutual Friend," and in reading 
 it aboard the Mt, Vernon I experienced 
 a sort of sympathetic vibration, as Dick- 
 
INSPECTION PARTY ON FLYING FIELD 
 
 Watching planes flying three abreast, March 16, 1918 
 

 WATCHING SOME OF THE SIXTY PLANES 
 
 In the air at the same time, driven by U. S. Aviators, March 16, 1918 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 113 
 
 ens described the host of eorrespondents 
 who showered their attentions and ap- 
 peals on the newly enriched Noddy- 
 Boffin. For be it known that this in- 
 stitution of correspondence is the stock- 
 in-trade of any private secretary. Nay, 
 more — it is his night-mare. It is to him 
 what the awl is to the shoemaker, what 
 moonlight is to lovers, what water is 
 to fishes, what black cigars are to poli- 
 ticians. It is the mark of his trade, 
 the sine qua non of his profession. 
 Each day means to him so many bales 
 of communications; Sundays become 
 distinguished not by the worship of the 
 Lord, but by the respite from corre- 
 spondence. At times he leans toward 
 agreement with Pope's dictum that 
 "Heaven first taught letters for some 
 wretch's aid." 
 
 And what a wealth of themes they 
 seem to find! No incident seems ever 
 
114 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 to have occurred in any far-off place, 
 but some subject-seeking traveler has 
 seized the thing and pressed it to his 
 bosom, to bring it home and make of it 
 the matter for a rambling missive to a 
 public servant. I know what fancy 
 moved the Immortal Bard in "Love's 
 Labor Lost," to make Moth say : 
 "They have been at a great feast of 
 languages and have stolen the scraps," 
 and to make Costard reply: "O, they 
 have lived long in the alms-basket of 
 words." 
 
 From our experiences of the preced- 
 ing few weeks, I was prepared to ad- 
 mit that there was a geographical or 
 international similarity in the corre- 
 spondence of men who constitute a fair 
 target for the public eye, and pen. 
 But I was not prepared to admit that 
 there was a chronological similarity be- 
 tween the post receipts of other years 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 115 
 
 and of to-day. I had confidence in the 
 behef that there were at least some new 
 types of psychic phenomena in the un- 
 numbered thousands of missives that 
 come to overwhelm a war secretary, for 
 instance, in more varieties than ever a 
 pickle-packer dreamed of. But Dick- 
 ens wrote "Our Mutual Friend" in 
 1865, and in that day he knew them all 
 ■ — his description of them might have 
 been written yesterday. In that far 
 day, even as now, there were fifty-seven 
 churches to be built with half-crowns, 
 forty-two parsonages to be repaired 
 with shillings, seven-and-twenty organs 
 to be bought with half -pence. Then 
 also there were the suggestively be- 
 friended individuals who sat in the pres- 
 ence of an inkstand and a black chasm 
 of despair when a still small voice 
 (40%), or a gifted friend (60%), 
 whispered the name that would bring 
 
116 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 satisfaction to all desires. He might 
 have included, also, the distant relatives 
 who come to light from stygian dark- 
 ness; the dealers in mud and in the 
 slinging of it; the purveyors of super- 
 patriotic songs and inspirational poetry. 
 It seems that never a song is made or a 
 lay is piped but its author urges its 
 claim as a national anthem and his as 
 laureate. 
 
 I wonder if managing editors could 
 be induced to run a box at the top of 
 their Vox Populi columns, saying that 
 marked and gratuitous copies were sent 
 to all criticized individuals. It would 
 save a deal of effort and postage to Con- 
 stant Readers which they now spend in 
 sending maligned individuals clippings, 
 margin-marked by their own interpola- 
 tions and emphasized with their very 
 own underlinings. And while we are 
 engaged in considerations on conserving 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 117 
 
 ink and energy, we ought not overlook 
 those who adorn then' missives with 
 cryptic and ejaculatory warnings and 
 pleadings, designed to secure a personal 
 breaking of the seal and a private audi- 
 ence with the addressee. Notoriously 
 the most casual and trivial communica- 
 tions come bedecked with the majority 
 of these insignia of secrecy and privacy. 
 Like David's victims, these are num- 
 bered by the tens of thousands. 
 
 The fear of the submarine may be 
 ended, says one correspondent, by do- 
 mesticating great flocks of sea gulls by 
 feeding them on food fashioned to rep- 
 resent periscopes, and, when they had 
 become accustomed to this method of 
 feeding, by turning them loose to gorge 
 themselves on real periscopes. In the 
 same mail a western lady put forth her 
 plan for assisting the finances of the 
 Red Cross. She would have govern- 
 
118 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 ment officials donate shirt-tails which 
 might be made into aprons, and which 
 might have written on each of them in 
 unfading ink the functions of state at 
 which that shirt-tail had been worn in 
 its palmier and more unified days. A 
 clear headed tactician rose up to ask 
 why no one had thought of ordering an 
 Allied retreat, having carefully packed 
 in advance the vacated trenches with 
 propagandist pamphlets and other ma- 
 terial designed to lure on the enemy to 
 a hollow victory, little knowing that he 
 was falling into a trap that would per- 
 suade him of the error of his ways and 
 induce him to man the newly occupied 
 trenches in the interest of the Allies. 
 Another strategist in that same day's 
 grist recited an original plan for driv- 
 ing back the Boche. He would set up 
 a smoke screen behind the Allied lines 
 and he would confound the enemy by 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 119 
 
 throwing motion pictures upon that 
 screen, showing countless thousands of 
 troops marching out of the heavens, as 
 it were, against the foe. He added that 
 it would be necessary to accompany the 
 picture show by a discordant jangle 
 produced by the rattling of "jugs, tin 
 pans and bottles," so that in the result- 
 ant confusion the enemy would rush for 
 the Rhine, sorely confused and affright- 
 ened by the desertion of their heavenly 
 ally. 
 
 Every mail brings its quota of them. 
 In the offices of the adjutant-general of 
 the army, upwards of 200,000 pieces of 
 postal matter have been received and 
 considered in a day. A large propor- 
 tion of it comes addressed to the secre- 
 tary of war — who might be considerably 
 hurried were he himself to take the mass 
 of it to an inner chamber for a personal 
 perusal. 
 
120 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 Dickens pays a tribute of compas- 
 sion to the secretary who "daily strug- 
 gles breast-high" in what he terms the 
 Dismal Swamp. But it isn't fair to 
 leave the story there. For far more 
 numerous than those who make the dis- 
 mal swamp are those who dwell in the 
 high places. These latter set the 
 standard. The others provide the ec- 
 centric exceptions about which we may 
 laugh or write. 
 
 The Mt, Vernon had made the fast- 
 est "turnaround" in a French port of 
 any American transport since the be- 
 ginning of the war. And the first half 
 of its westward voyage gave promise of 
 breaking another war record in the 
 speed of its trans- Atlantic trip. Not 
 since the memorable days of August, 
 1914, had the boilers of the ship been 
 so pushed. It was the Kronprinzessin 
 (now the Mt, Vernon) which left New 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 121 
 
 York on the 28th of July preceding the 
 outbreak of war and was on the ocean 
 when the Imperial government warned 
 its merchantmen on August 1 to remain 
 in neutral ports. Her cargo included 
 ten millions of dollars' worth of gold 
 bullion and British naval vessels scoured 
 the sea in search of her as a prize of war 
 following the declaration of August 4. 
 But after nearly reaching the British 
 Isles the skipper of the Kronprinzessin 
 turned her prow about, darkened her 
 lights, covered her portholes and pushed 
 the 20,000-ton craft through the water 
 at twenty-three knots, finding safety on 
 August 5 in the port of Bar Harbor, 
 Maine. 
 
 Our hopes for corresponding speed 
 on this later trip were shattered when 
 on the fifth night out the wireless 
 brought word that the good ship City 
 of Wilmington was burning furiously 
 
122 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 at sea in the direction of Sable Island 
 and was in need of assistance. The last 
 message stated that the fire had driven 
 the crew to the small boats and to the 
 sea. At once the course of our ship 
 was changed and preparations were 
 made to locate and take aboard and 
 care for the survivors. But late in the 
 night another wireless came, this one 
 from a Danish passenger ship, saying 
 that it was much closer than we were to 
 the stricken ship and could attend to 
 the work of rescue. I hope that Secre- 
 tary Daniels never sees fit to cross- 
 question me about the latter stages of 
 that abortive rescue trip, for skillful ex- 
 amination could worm from me the 
 names of two strong men who, galled 
 by long droughts in the wine mess, made 
 signs and said pass-words to the ship's 
 surgeon when it was determined to re- 
 turn to our former course and to forego 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 123 
 
 the expedition of rescue. They men- 
 tioned a river of certain color which I 
 almost instantly recognized as a com- 
 mercial brand of whisky. And was any 
 of it taken out from bondage for the 
 prospective treatment of the rescued, 
 they solicitously inquired of the doctor ; 
 and would it really be necessary to pour 
 the good stuff back into the bottle or 
 jug or keg or hogshead, or whatever he 
 had taken it out of, they further queried. 
 Many a precious drop had been lost 
 in such a barren undertaking, they 
 warned; and the night was cold and 
 damp and dark, they further added, and 
 they had worked long and late, and 
 did n't he know just how it was? Evi- 
 dently he did n't. The unhealing phy- 
 sician retained a stern and rockbound 
 countenance; and the incident ended 
 sadly and with slow music. 
 
 So the transport returned to its for- 
 
124 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 mer course; but a long-continued fog 
 added to the delay caused by the be- 
 ginning of the rescue journey, and de- 
 stroyed the prospect of a record-break- 
 ing crossing. Nevertheless the trip did 
 not lack for incidents that tend to linger 
 in memory. For instance, reverting 
 again to the book of truth: 
 
 April 10. Wednesday. For first time since 
 boarding ship, early Monday, I had my clothes 
 off today. My views on the institution of bath- 
 ing have undergone a gradual but complete revo- 
 lution — in childhood I thought it an atrocity, 
 later it was a habit; this trip has made it a 
 festival. 
 
 April 11. Thursday. General Black in- 
 jured his back during a strenuous automobile 
 journey two days before leaving France and has 
 been in bed much of the trip so far. A huge 
 and funereal wire stretcher has been placed be- 
 side his bed that his exit may be hastened if it 
 should become necessary to abandon the ship. 
 I should think it would wrinkle a man's morale — 
 lying that way in the plain, grim view of a 
 stretcher, but the General does n't seem to mind 
 it. He inquired whimsically today if it would 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 125 
 
 seem ungrateful if he did n't use the thing after 
 putting his orderly to the trouble of getting it. 
 I did n't think the orderly would mind it. 
 
 April 12. Friday. General Black has re- 
 covered. The only remaining symptom of his 
 indisposition is a thorough-going aversion to a 
 particular phonograph record, played betvreen 
 each tvro courses at meal-time and consisting 
 largely of semi-alliterative and mealy-mouthed 
 references to Honolulu Lou. 
 
 April 13. Saturday. Lou's praises will be 
 sung no longer in the dining room. The third 
 consecutive outburst of this record in the course 
 of as many meals proved to be its swan song; it 
 has disappeared. General Black is not impli- 
 cated in the disappearance — he says so, and the 
 General, no less than Brutus, is an honorable 
 man. 
 
 A sentiment arises in favor of a new leader 
 for the phonograph. "America" was played to- 
 day in the middle of a rapidly cooling soup 
 course. 
 
 Every night we have a picture show aboard. 
 The attendance is about 100% of those with 
 seaworthy legs and stomachs, because the rest of 
 the ship is dark, in addition to the pictures being 
 first class. On the eastbound trip there is room 
 for only the army men to see the films, and the 
 same scenes are shown on the westward trip to 
 
126 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 the navy men. The secretary of war has be- 
 come most vulgarly enamored of the j ovial Fatty 
 Arbuckle. 
 
 April 14. Sunday. The secretary preached 
 at the service held on board this morning and 
 Col. Brett, who claims to have heard other ser- 
 mons, says this was a good one. He talked of 
 the spirit underlying the westward voyages 
 across this ocean — the trip of Columbus, the 
 trip of the Mayflower and the trips of the 
 Transports. 
 
 This afternoon. Lieutenant Leyders, the lova- 
 ble Danish navigating officer of the ship, took 
 the secretary and me to his stateroom, where are 
 kept the remnants of a little French-English 
 library of the Kronprinzessin. As a memento 
 of the homeward trip, he gave us each a volume 
 from out the collection of the Norddeutscher 
 Lloyd liner. What I drew describes in great 
 and delectable detail a journey "De San Fran- 
 cisco au Canada." But my custody constitutes 
 only nine points of the law and I fully expect 
 some square headed individual with an up- 
 twirled mustache to arise at the peace conference 
 and announce in Teutonic accents that there can 
 be no peace till that book is back with its right- 
 ful owners. I sha'n't like to return it; and I 
 think perhaps he may prefer to have in exchange 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 127 
 
 a stiff bound copy of Niccolo Machiavelli's, 
 *'The Prince." 
 
 April 15. Monday. At S o'clock this morn- 
 ing in my stateroom I lit my blued flashlight to 
 see what time it was. In its faint gleam I could 
 scarcely see the dial of my watch. But someone 
 on the deck outside saw the light and instantly 
 set up a vigorous pounding in the place my win- 
 dow would occupy were the porthole not closed. 
 I wonder if that fellow had been spending his 
 nights out there since we left Europe, waiting 
 for me to kindle a kindly light. 
 
 For a long while tonight we paced the quarter 
 deck, the secretary and I. Living in one cabin 
 with him I have learned to know him anew. I 
 knew him at home, as a simple man who often 
 drove his own automobile, who wore no jewelry, 
 who used no perfumes, who had his own work- 
 shop in the basement and his own garden in the 
 back yard, whose chief preoccupations were a 
 trio of lovable children and a score of much-used 
 pipes. But tonight we talked of many things. 
 
 I mentioned postbellum reconstruction. 
 "Some day this ship will be bringing back those 
 boys," he said, "and one of our jobs at home is 
 to see that the fruits of victory are made sweet 
 for the fellows who have won them." 
 
 We spoke of censorship. "Personally," he 
 
128 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 said, **I 'm convinced that nobody need fear to 
 trust the English-speaking race with an idea; it 
 won't explode with them." 
 
 I wondered if I ought to belong to the federal 
 employees' union. "Be mightily sure you 're 
 working for the hig union," he advised, "and it 
 won't make so much difference about the other 
 ones." 
 
 He is a bit more sanguine than I about the 
 reward of integrity. "If nobody had ever 
 known honesty," he thinks, "it would have been 
 worth some fellow's time to invent it, for it 
 pays; I have never yet made an honest decision 
 which has n't at some time come back to shake 
 hands with me." 
 
 What method of working did he advise, I 
 presently inquired. "When any job of big pro- 
 portions is afoot," he suggested, "there will be 
 a myriad of temptations to wander from the 
 main trail, to chase alluring but inconsequential 
 butterflies. Your time for reading and reflec- 
 tion will tend to become cluttered by the con- 
 sideration of noisily proclaimed minutiae, whose 
 cycle of life is a loud-lived day. Your time for 
 activity will be harassed by many a picayunish 
 proposal that will be to the proponent of it one 
 of the final verities. When a man has wheels 
 in his head, he usually shows it by the spokes 
 coming out of his mouth," he laughed. "There 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 129 
 
 will be less trouble in finding men for the de- 
 tails than in getting those who will see things 
 whole and unobscured by non-essentials. Have 
 you ever taken up the first page of the morning 
 paper and marked out the things that really 
 don't mater?" 
 
 I sought to urge him to continue in Washing- 
 ton the periods of exercise which an abundance 
 of time permitted him to have on shipboard. 
 **I 'm afraid it can't be done/' he answered; 
 "I Ve been a stationary engine too long to be- 
 come a locomotive now." 
 
 I complained over our inability to make him 
 prepare his addresses, to give advance copy to 
 the press, and to utilize the universally employed 
 mechanics of proper publicity. "I guess I 
 was n't meant for a vender of patent medicines," 
 was his reply. 
 
 I asked him to become pedagogical and to 
 tell me what habit had been of greatest value to 
 him. "I think the cultivation of the *fence- 
 corners' of time," he answered, "has done more 
 for me than any other consciously formed cus- 
 tom. There are untold possibilities in the min- 
 utes we casually waste." College mates of his 
 have told me of a tent-like arrangement of mos- 
 quito-netting which he had suspended from the 
 center light in his room and under which, pro- 
 tected from the insects attracted by the light, 
 
130 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 he stole an extra hour of study from each night. 
 People of Cleveland who knew him there in the 
 days before he owned an automobile say that 
 he habitually carried pocket editions of standard 
 literary works, with which to keep occupied 
 while on trolley cars. 
 
 It seems easier to work or fight with and 
 imder men who are as essentially democratic 
 when they are alone and when they are bosses 
 as when they are accepting a nomination or 
 orating on the Fourth of July. 
 
 April 1 6. Tuesday. We met today a rather 
 dilapidated little craft whose name and nation- 
 ality were not readily recognizable. Evidently 
 neither were ours to it. Mounted on its stern 
 was one 3 inch gun. I sha'n't wreck any naval 
 secrets by recording the number of our guns, but 
 they were bigger than S's and more numerous 
 than one. But each of the ships, not recogniz- 
 ing the other, solemnly and respectively trained 
 its armament on the other and kept it so trained 
 as they passed. Later we learned it was a 
 Hawaiian fruit carrier. It is proper to hope, 
 therefore, that its confidence in that 3 inch gun 
 may not be misplaced. 
 
 Early morning of April 16th brought 
 the first sight of land and precisely 
 seven weeks after its beginning the 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 131 
 
 journey ended at an Atlantic port. 
 Again it was New York; but don't tell 
 the censor I Ve written the name. He 
 must never know. 
 
 Seven weeks with the soul of Amer- 
 ica! Seven weeks at the cutting edge 
 of a great machine builded by the young 
 giant among the republics! Seven 
 weeks at the outposts of democracy! 
 There is a spiritual exhilaration in 
 watching the missionaries of a country 
 and of a world. To watch them on 
 those frontiers where glory dwells, 
 brings back our school-day stories of 
 history. Not in all time has there been 
 moved over seas an army equal in size 
 to that which America has placed across 
 the Atlantic. Even those who consti- 
 tute the elements of those far-flung 
 forces, each busy at his own localized 
 specialty, do not realize the magnitude 
 and the multitude of the enterprises be- 
 
132 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 ing carried on along a line of communi- 
 cation hundreds of miles long. 
 
 Add the value of all the iron and all 
 the steel products produced in the 
 United States in the last pre-war year; 
 add the value of all the lumber and all 
 the timber products ; all the cotton goods 
 and all the year's automobiles — add 
 them all, and you have a total less by 
 millions than a year's appropriation for 
 the quartermaster-general of the army. 
 Double the amount you have calculated, 
 and you will have added less to the sum 
 than the chief of ordnance adds to the 
 yearly bill of the War Department. 
 The largest single communication office 
 in the world is that of the adjutant- 
 general of the United States Army. 
 The biggest building in the world is 
 an army storehouse. In the summer of 
 1917, at points scattered throughout the 
 country, sufficient cantonments were 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 133 
 
 built to house the combined populations 
 of Arizona, Nevada, Delaware, and 
 Alaska. The doing of that job necessi- 
 tated lumber sufficient to build a side- 
 walk four times around the world and 
 consumed in twelve weeks the amount 
 of physical energy which went into the 
 building of the Panama Canal. In 
 France the storage areas now built or 
 building, if placed end to end, would 
 constitute a building fifty feet in width 
 and stretching in length from Wash- 
 ington to New York. Behind the far- 
 flung battle lines of the Americans in 
 France are six hundred miles of rail- 
 road to the French coast. Beyond the 
 coast is three thousand miles of ocean, 
 infested by sub-sea ships and by the con- 
 stant threat of a hostile navy. And 
 extending from the American ports of 
 embarkation is another journey of 1,200 
 miles, the average haul of troops in the 
 
134 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 United States before reaching the sea- 
 board. 
 
 It was natural, therefore, that the sec- 
 retary of war should say to the en- 
 gineers of the American Expeditionary 
 Force : 
 
 *'I find that written reports have given me an 
 inadequate idea of the difficulties which the 
 enemy said we could not overcome and which 
 we are overcoming. After her long and stout- 
 hearted defense, France could spare us little ma- 
 terial or labor for our purposes except by ill- 
 advised diversions from her own organization. 
 She could only offer us land on which to raise 
 our structures and the right of way for our 
 communications. ... I only wish that every 
 American could see this work as I saw it. I 
 ceased to be an official while I thrilled as a citi- 
 zen with pride and satisfaction over the ever- 
 increasing force which we shall bring to the aid 
 of the allied armies in France." 
 
 No statement I have seen attempts 
 comprehensively to describe the works 
 of the Americans in France. None 
 could well be written. The English 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 135 
 Burke once said he knew no way of 
 indicting a nation. It is scarcely more 
 easy to describe a nation's business 
 which ramifies without end and which 
 recognizes no boundary but the double 
 line of battle. 
 
 More than that, any description 
 which might carry the picture of to- 
 day's operations would be antiquated 
 to-morrow. The officers, accompany- 
 ing the secretary of war to projects 
 which they had seen two months pre- 
 viously, rubbed their eyes in amazement 
 at the transformation. Ten weeks 
 after the secretary's tour of the rear 
 areas, the London "Times," in a de- 
 tailed report, concluded: 
 
 The Americans in France are rapidly push- 
 ing to completion the longest and in many re- 
 spects the greatest scheme of communications 
 ever used in warfare. A trip over these lines 
 today is a deeply impressive experience. Since 
 Mr. Newton D. Baker, the United States Sec- 
 
136 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 retary of War, inspected them less than three 
 months ago, enormous progress has been made. 
 Today the work is fairly leaping forward; the 
 very landscape changes overnight. 
 
 I have seen no account which packs 
 more of a picture into a few printed 
 pages than does that story in "The 
 Times." Its conclusions are these: 
 
 After two solid weeks of travel, inspecting 
 every main phase and much of the detail of this 
 vast project, I return convinced that what the 
 Americans have accomplished since their first 
 detachment of troops landed in France will 
 stand out in history as one of the greatest 
 achievements of the war. . . . 
 
 The French had all their sources of supply 
 near at hand, and the establishment of their 
 lines of communication was a comparatively 
 simple affair. The British, with all their 
 sources much farther away from the fighting 
 areas, and with water transport entering as an 
 important factor into their scheme, had a much 
 more difficult task in planning and perfecting 
 their supply service. 
 
 But great as was the British problem, that 
 which confronted the Americans when they en- 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 137 
 
 tered the war was immeasurably greater. 
 Their armies and all their war materials had 
 to be brought thousands of miles from their 
 sources of supply; the submarine campaign was 
 at its highest point of efficiency ; the adoption of 
 the convoy system considerably reduced the 
 capacity of shipping facilites^ which, even in the 
 most favorable circumstances, would have been 
 totally inadequate to the demands made upon 
 them; there were no large modern ports on the 
 coast of France; nor was there anything like 
 sufficient railway facilities to accommodate the 
 vast stream of men and materials which must 
 flow steadily in, with constantly increasing vol- 
 ume, from the date when the first detachment 
 of United States soldiers landed on French 
 soil. . . . 
 
 The pressure toward France increased with 
 startling rapidity; indeed, it was measured only 
 by the utmost limit of available shipping space. 
 ... To take care of this steadily growing vol- 
 ume of men, horses, guns, food, and supplies, to 
 resolve the modest existing facilities into a per- 
 manent line of communications hundreds of 
 miles in length, adequate to care for an army 
 of the future numbering millions, at the same 
 time meeting all the transport requirements of 
 the civil population scattered over the great 
 stretch of France through which these lines ex- 
 
138 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 tended — that was the task which confronted 
 the first detachment of American engineers. . . . 
 
 What the American forces in France have ac- 
 complished thus far is almost incredible. For 
 instance, out of the waste lands adjacent to an 
 old French port they have constructed a splen- 
 did line of modern docks, where every day now 
 ships are pouring forth their cargoes of men 
 and war materials, cars and machinery. This 
 dock system is finished. It supplements the old 
 French dock system in the town, where still 
 more ships are constantly discharging American 
 cargoes. A huge new warehouse system at this 
 point is also nearing completion; even now it is 
 able to take care of the great flood of supplies 
 which is constantly pouring in. 
 
 In the old part of this same coast town the 
 Americans have installed motor operation and 
 cold-storage plants, a motor reception park, and 
 quarters for storing supplies for ordnance and 
 aviation forces. These are more or less tempo- 
 rary quarters and will be merged in the near 
 future in the general scheme which is now being 
 completed in the outskirts of the town. 
 
 In addition to the new docks, warehouses and 
 extensive railway yards (these latter have a 
 trackage of nearly 200 miles), work is well ad- 
 vanced on the new car assembly shop, where al- 
 ready, when I saw it in its incompleted state. 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 139 
 
 twenty-odd freight cars a day, of three differ- 
 ent designs, were being turned out and put into 
 immediate service. Another assembly plant has 
 been constructed — at a different point — to han- 
 dle all-steel cars, which are transported here 
 from America "knocked down" — that is, in sec- 
 tions, in order to economize shipping space. 
 At this plant these steel cars are now being 
 assembled at the rate of a complete train a day, 
 and plans are rapidly culminating for a large 
 extension of the work. Here, too, a large camp 
 has been built for the negro stevedores, also a 
 remount camp, and two big rest camps, each pro- 
 viding for many thousands of American soldiers, 
 who march thence from the boats, to be sifted 
 and rearranged for dispatch to the various train- 
 ing camps farther inland. Not far from here, 
 work on a new 20,000-bed hospital is forging 
 ahead, and thirty days from now it will be vir- 
 tually completed. This is the largest hospital 
 center yet constructed. It is composed entirely 
 of small, one-story, light, airy, and attractive 
 structures, divided into small squares, laid out on 
 a great open stretch of sand, surrounded by pine 
 trees, and altogether promises to be an ideal in- 
 stitution of its kind. 
 
 In this same section is an immense new artil' 
 lery camp all ready for the several brigades of 
 artillery which were expected when I was there. 
 
140 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 and^ like the hospital enterprise, it is in strong 
 hands and promises well. It includes a large 
 remount camp, in which were several thousand 
 horses at the time of my visit. The work in this 
 section, which is typical of that at all the other 
 base ports I visited, is being vigorously and in- 
 telligently directed. Strong executives are in 
 charge and the spirit of the workers is excellent 
 throughout. Everywhere the Americans are 
 realizing that they have "caught up with them- 
 selves,'* and now that they can visualize the 
 completion of what a few months ago looked so 
 much like an impossible undertaking, they are 
 buoyed up, happy, and inspired by their suc- 
 cess; they have conquered obstacles and over- 
 come conditions which only great ability and 
 indomitable spirit could possibly surmount. 
 
 One realizes, after inspecting the character 
 and extent of the work at the several base ports 
 which the Americans have taken over, that here 
 lies the strength of their future scheme of opera- 
 tions. These port schemes are great affairs to- 
 day ; but they are so worked out as to be capable 
 of almost unlimited expansion. . . . The war 
 developments of the past two months have 
 clearly pointed the way toward greater unity of 
 effort by the Allies, and greater mobility of ac- 
 tion hj the French, British and American fight- 
 ing forces. The tendency is toward a pooling 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 14!l 
 
 both of effort and supplies, the natural outcome 
 of centralization under a single command. . . . 
 
 As at the sea ports, so I found conditions all 
 along the hundreds of miles of the American 
 lines of communication; everywhere the same 
 kind of capable men in command, the same 
 splendid spirit and energy, the same steady 
 progress toward the ends in view, the same op- 
 timism aa to the quick and successful working 
 out of the plans as a whole. . . . 
 
 At present the immense "Intermediate Sec- 
 tion" looms large in the general American plan. 
 ... It comprises a wide variety of enterprises, 
 all on a huge scale, scattered at various points 
 over a large section of country, but skilfully 
 linked up by rail, one branch dovetailed into an- 
 other, and all combining for the quick handling 
 of stores for an army of millions. 
 
 An ''organization chart" showing the activi- 
 ties centered under the commanding general of 
 this great Intermediate Section, though not quite 
 so formidable, perhaps, reminds one of a chart 
 of the Whitehall district of London. This com- 
 manding officer is responsible primarily for the 
 main reserve stores for the American Expedi- 
 tionary Forces, and the constant sending for- 
 ward of their daily supplies; but in addition to 
 that he has a large measure of responsibility for 
 the organization and control of great camps, 
 
142 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 schools, base hospitals, rest areas, engineering 
 and repair shops, tank assembling plants, loco- 
 motive shops, ordnance dumps and ordnance re- 
 pair shops, the principal repository for "spare 
 parts" of all machinery used in the Army, cold 
 storage plants, oil and petrol depots, forestry 
 work, and control of a good-sized labor army, 
 which includes many thousands of negroes. Chi- 
 namen, and German prisoners of war. 
 
 A round of this huge field of operations is 
 both instructive and inspiring. At one point I 
 went through an enormous locomotive assem- 
 bling and repair works (housed in a great mod- 
 em factory building now nearing completion) 
 built for the Americans, under French super- 
 vision, by a Spanish firm; a huge oil and petrol 
 supply station, a 10,000-bed hospital, and a num- 
 ber of other highly important branches of a cen- 
 tral organization which constitutes one of the 
 real backbone sections of the service of supply. 
 At another point I went over great railroad 
 yards to see the rows upon rows of steel struc- 
 ture warehouses which are being built to hold 
 supplies for an army of a million men for thirty 
 days, an immense refrigerating plant, a gas 
 plant, an oil storage plant, and countless other 
 features, all on the same prodigious scale. 
 
 Calm, quiet men are supervising it all, watch- 
 ing it grow before their eyes. When the tele- 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 143 
 
 phones jingle (and they are never long in re- 
 pose), there is no shouting, no excitement; just 
 quiet, firm replies to the questions put. There is 
 everywhere an air of suppressed energy rather 
 than exuberance or "bustle." It is orderly 
 progress, firmly guided by strong minds, by 
 capable men. America has put her best execu- 
 tives into this work, and they are rapidly "mak- 
 ing good," as events of the very near future are 
 certain to prove. 
 
 Farther along the line I saw much the same 
 evidence of orderliness combined with strength 
 in the army bakeries, in the big central camou- 
 flage plant, at the various advanced centers from 
 which the army supplies are rearranged for 
 shifting to various railroads and thence to the 
 soldiers at the front. It all spells a complete 
 knowledge, on the part of every principal en- 
 gaged, of what America set out to do when she 
 entered this war, and a full determination to see 
 that job through to the finish. This foundation 
 work is sound and thorough. So, also, will be 
 the work of the Americans when they emerge in 
 strength into the larger field of operations. . . . 
 
 From every point of view the results of the 
 first year's work may be set down as a glorious 
 achievement, of which Americans have every 
 right to be proud; the year's record is a monu- 
 ment to their zeal and their wonderful ability. 
 
144 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 It is a record which promises still greater things 
 for the near future. It spells the beginning of 
 the end, and points clearly to an overwhelming 
 victory for the Allies. 
 
 It is difficult to generalize concern- 
 ing the American Army. There is too 
 much of it, and there are too many- 
 chances for exceptions to any rule. 
 Generalities, therefore, are expressions 
 of approximations and tendencies. 
 
 Thus delimited, it is safe to say that 
 ours is a sober army. Drunkenness has 
 not disappeared ; that would be miracu- 
 lous. But one may live among our 
 troops three weeks and see scarcely an 
 intoxicated man. I was not willing to 
 trust my judgment on this point. I 
 might not have looked in the right 
 places. But neither had the secretary 
 seen any drunken man. General Per- 
 shing stated the problem was well un- 
 der control. A newspaper man during 
 
GENERAL PERSHING TALKING TO MISS PAT MOORE 
 
 Miss Moore is matron at U. S. Base Hospital No. 8, Colonel Boyd, aide, in center; March 
 
 14, 1918 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 145 
 
 four weeks among the troops had found 
 two of them intoxicated. The army is 
 sober. 
 
 It is cheerful, too. Many there are 
 who are not satisfied, but few who are 
 not contented. It is a well clothed, well 
 fed, well paid army that has gone to 
 Europe. Indeed the French have 
 feared at times that the liberality in 
 payment of American troops and their 
 freedom with their money might not 
 have a fortunate after-effect upon the 
 frugal natives. The aggregate in- 
 crease in weight of the army men who 
 were in the Mexican expedition or on 
 the border was just less than a million 
 pounds. It is not possible yet to apply 
 the comparison to the army in France, 
 but there is literal truth in the words of 
 the president: "I do not believe it an 
 exaggeration to say that no army ever 
 before assembled has had more consci- 
 
146 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 entious and painstaking thought given 
 to the protection and stimulation of its 
 mental, moral and physical manhood." 
 They are a brave lot, too, that army. 
 The country Over There teems with 
 tales of their valor, and the letters cap- 
 tured on prisoners bring abundant evi- 
 dence from the other side of the line. 
 In all our journey we met not a soldier 
 who was n't anxious to get closer to the 
 front, whose face was n't turned toward 
 the East. Some time ago the secretary 
 of war stated that he had seen strong 
 and grizzled men of the army turn away 
 from his desk to hide tears when they 
 were asked to stay in this country and 
 do organization work instead of going 
 to France, where the glory of their pro- 
 fession lay. On the ocean, in the midst 
 of the submarine area, seamen came to 
 him to plead for transfers to the army, 
 that they might see, as they said, active 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 147 
 
 service at the front. The area behind 
 the battle-line in France formerly was 
 named the Service of the Rear; but the 
 high-spirited men of the American 
 forces so objected to the shell-proof 
 connotation of "Rear" that the name of 
 that area had to be changed to Service 
 of Supply. 
 
 At American headquarters one after- 
 noon in the early days of the present 
 drive, a long distance telephone message 
 went out to an engineer detachment, 
 telling it to move to the aid of the Brit- 
 ish in the North ; and before the receiver 
 could be hung up we heard over the wire 
 the wild, frenzied cheering that greeted 
 the announcement that made those en- 
 gineers part of the vanguard instead of 
 the rearguard. Even at the actual 
 front one does not find the satisfaction 
 of inertia; for so aggressive has been 
 the patrol by the Americans of the area 
 
148 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 in front of their wire that more than 
 once we found that territory had lost its 
 classic name of No-Man's-Land and 
 now was simply Yankeeland. 
 
 To those who love America greatly, 
 but who love the world quite as much, 
 there is no cause for sorrow in the les- 
 sening of what was once a "splendid 
 isolation" and our coming each day into 
 a closer-knit relationship with the free 
 peoples of the earth. 
 
 There was a time, I suppose, when 
 the main interests in a score of isolated 
 settlements along the Atlantic coast 
 were local and community concerns. 
 At that time a person probably de- 
 scribed himself as from Plymouth or 
 Williamstown. 
 
 Later, during and after the Revolu- 
 tion and in the days of the Confedera- 
 tion, the Colonies as entities were dom- 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 149 
 
 inant. Then a man was a Virginian or 
 a Carolinian. 
 
 In the middle of the last century the 
 principal cleavage in the sympathies 
 and adherences of citizens was between 
 groups of states. The primary descrip- 
 tion of a person at that time was as a 
 Northerner or a Southerner. 
 
 But now in this day one may stand 
 on a far continent where men of this 
 nation are streaming in by hundreds of 
 thousands and he may hear them hailed, 
 not as settlers of Plymouth, not as citi- 
 zens of Virginia, not as adherents of the 
 North, but simply as Americans — come 
 back to the Old World to vindicate the 
 ideals of the New. 
 
 More than that, I still hear the secre- 
 tary of war saying: "Now and then 
 somebody tells me he has heard some- 
 body say that America is fighting some- 
 body else's war — that we are fighting 
 
150 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 for England or France ; and my instant 
 reflection is, 'suppose that were true.' 
 It is not; but suppose it were. I am 
 not very sure that I would not be per- 
 fectly willing to fight for them and them 
 only. To whom do we build monu- 
 ments, for whom do we cast heroes' 
 medals — for those who save their own 
 lives or for those who save the lives of 
 others ? What is the quality of heroism 
 if it be not unselfish self-sacrifice? I 
 am not even ambitious that the glory of 
 the final conquest should come to us 
 alone. I should far rather have the tri- 
 umph of democracy the reward of the 
 associated effort of democratic peoples 
 everywhere, so that neither we nor they 
 might have any monopoly of that virtue 
 but might be partners in its glory and 
 associates in the further progress to be 
 made." 
 
 I like to think, however fancifully, of 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 151 
 
 the incidents in these pages as expres- 
 sive of a people who once were colonists, 
 and then were sectionalists and later 
 were nationalists and who now, in this 
 springtime of the world, are become hu- 
 manists. 
 
 Driving through Picardy on an after- 
 noon in the opening stage of the March 
 offensive, the automobiles of the secre- 
 tary of war were stopped at a country 
 railroad crossing while a freight-train 
 passed. Stopped also, and for the 
 same reason, was a motor-ambulance 
 driven by two young women, who 
 seemed to be Americans. The secre- 
 tary of war approached the ambulance, 
 introducing himself to the drivers, say- 
 ing he assumed they were American 
 girls. 
 
 **We don't happen to be from the 
 States," one of them replied; and the 
 way she smiled as she cranked her ma- 
 
152 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 chine made us unmarried young men 
 in the party very attentive. "We 're 
 Enghsh girls," she said; and then she 
 added, "I guess, though, it comes to 
 about the same thing now." 
 
 So, too, the French and ourselves 
 come closer "to about the same thing 
 now." In the city of Paris is a mili- 
 tary and scientific college, L'Ecole 
 Polytechnique, ancient and renowned 
 among the French, and numbering as 
 its graduates many of the foremost citi- 
 zens of the republic. 
 
 Among the students at the Ecole 
 Polytechnique in 1830, was one J. Bos- 
 quet, afterwards made a marshal of 
 France by the third Napoleon. In the 
 family papers of Marshal Bosquet has 
 been found a letter written December 
 15th, 1830, to his mother while he was a 
 student at the Polytechnique. In it 
 was this passage: 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 153 
 
 Last Monday General Lafayette came to the 
 school with his two aides-de-camp. We received 
 him in the lecture room of the Department of 
 Chemistry. There^ having laid aside his cane, 
 which he can no longer do without, and having 
 greeted us with his habitual cordiality, he said: 
 
 "As an old friend and as one of your com- 
 rades in the Great Week,^ I wish I could have 
 been with you for the exercises at the opening of 
 the term, but my infirmities have kept me away 
 until today. Now, however, I come to you as an 
 ambassador — an ambassador from a far off land. 
 You know that across the seas, on a shore where, 
 as here. Liberty flies her flag, there exists an- 
 other Poly technique, a school founded on the 
 model of our own. Its students have heard, and 
 not without a family-feeling, of your happy ef- 
 forts in behalf of the independence of our coun- 
 try, and they have been good enough to ask me to 
 present to you their fraternal congratulations." 
 
 After this S23eech, he read us, in English and 
 in French, the original and the translation, of a 
 letter which the American cadets had addressed 
 to the "Twenty-Ninth of July" students. We 
 are going to answer it, and later I will send you 
 our reply, and also a copy of the letter from the 
 United States. 
 
 1 The week of July, 1830, when Charles X was de- 
 posed by the "Revolution of July." 
 
154 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 The "Moniteur," the official govern- 
 ment paper of the period, in its issue 
 of January 8th, 1831, published the text 
 of the greetings sent by the Americans 
 through Lafayette, and the reply it 
 evoked from the young Frenchmen. 
 
 The lapse of time has seemed only to 
 increase the warmth of the words con- 
 veyed eighty-eight years ago by the 
 French nobleman, scholar, warrior, 
 from the boy-soldiers on the Hudson : 
 
 West Point, 1st October, 1830. 
 To the Twenty-Ninth of July Students of 
 L'Ecole Poly technique : 
 We have been directed by our Corps to offer 
 you our hearty congratulations upon your recent 
 happy efforts for the independence of France. 
 We have long looked upon you as associated in 
 our scientific studies; we have always felt for 
 you the sympathy which the similarity of our 
 work and of our institutions inspires, and it has 
 been a great happiness for us to read the sue-' 
 cessive accounts of the courage and patriotism 
 which you have displayed during the fighting in 
 Paris. 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 155 
 
 Although citizens of different countries^ the 
 same spirit animates us both, and it is with 
 pleasure that we call you our brothers-in-arms 
 and our co-partners in the defense of that sacred 
 Liberty which guarantees to the human race the 
 exercise of its rights, and assures the mainte- 
 nance of constitutional order. 
 
 As individuals and as a Corps, we beg you to 
 accept the assurance of our high esteem. 
 
 RoswELL Park S. O. Ridgley 
 
 Henry Clay, Jr. James Ablen 
 
 Llewellyn Jones 
 
 Written more for this day than for 
 that, was the reply of the youthful re- 
 publicans of France "To the Cadets of 
 the United States Military Academy." 
 Young Bosquet himself was one of the 
 co-authors of the answer, which read: 
 
 In the name of all our comrades we beg leave 
 to reply to your congratulations. In our efforts 
 to reestablish the sacred rights of mankind we 
 knew that generous hearts on the other side of 
 the world would beat in unison with ours. The 
 friends of Liberty belong to one great family. 
 Above all, those whose work and aspirations 
 should have for their object to secure from so- 
 
156 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 ciety the recognition of the true needs and rights 
 of all^ must reach out friendly hands across their 
 countries' boundaries and join them in the same 
 common cause. 
 
 More fortunate than we^ you are not called 
 upon to fight a tyrant, for your fathers have se- 
 cured for you that full and complete liberty for 
 which our hearts have ever longed. 
 
 We are happy to have given occasion for 
 strengthening the bonds of friendship which nat- 
 urally unite us; and we beg you to believe that 
 here across the seas there will always be hearts, 
 young like yours, which beat with joy at every 
 new success which comes to you. 
 
 Please accept. Gentlemen, the assurance of 
 our esteem and of our cordial affection. 
 
 For the students of L'Ecole Poly technique: 
 J. RoGuiN A. Tabuteau 
 
 J. Bosquet Fabre 
 
 SOLIGNAC 
 
 Three quarters of a century passed. 
 In 1914, there was unveiled in front of 
 the main sally port of the Ecole a strik- 
 ing statue, symbolic of the spirit which 
 long ago had carried these children of 
 Paris out of their schoolrooms to the de- 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 157 
 
 fense of the city, and which won for 
 them from an enemy officer the appella- 
 tion of "a furious battahon of Poly tech- 
 nicians." It is the bronze figure of a 
 lad, full of vigor and beauty, rushing to 
 the charge with sword uplifted and 
 shouting — ^what else could he be shout- 
 ing ? — ^Vive la France ! The uniform he 
 wears is that of the School in 1814, 
 which curiously resembles the full dress 
 uniform of the West Point cadets. 
 
 Now again the men of those schools 
 are students in arms. So it came to 
 pass that on the anniversary of Amer- 
 ica's declaration of war, there gathered 
 in the American Embassy to meet the 
 secretary of war, a notable company of 
 the illustrious graduates of the French 
 School — Les Amis de TEcole Poly- 
 technique — headed by Monsieur Jules 
 Cambon, late ambassador to Germany, 
 Senator Cuvinot and General Floren- 
 
158 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 tin, Grand Chancellor of the Legion of 
 Honor. They had come with a fur- 
 ther reply to the message of Lafayette. 
 The distinguished gentlemen compris- 
 ing the Society of the Friends of the 
 Polytechnique had met and had re- 
 solved to present to the Military Acad- 
 emy a life-size copy of the inspiring 
 statue which stands in the courtyard of 
 the School. It is to be cast from the 
 bronze of cannons captured at the 
 Marne, and mounted upon stones taken 
 from the field of Verdun. At about the 
 same time, but quite independently, the 
 students of the Polytechnique had met 
 and subscribed from their own funds 
 the money necessary to have the same 
 statue reproduced in miniature to be 
 given to their comrades at West Point. 
 In a moving address during the meet- 
 ing at the embassy, Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Bourguignon described the sentiments 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 159 
 
 of the French boys which went with the 
 token of their esteem. It was not oc- 
 casioned solely by the entrance of the 
 United States into war, he said; but it 
 was the perpetuation of a tradition 
 which has asserted itself each time that 
 free institutions have been threatened. 
 The secretary himself bore back the 
 statuette to the United States, and to 
 West Point. The miniature stands 
 now in the library of the Academy 
 where, upon its receipt, the cadets of 
 the school chose a coramittee of their 
 fellows to dispatch these words of grati- 
 tude and devotion to the givers of the 
 gift: 
 
 Eighty-eight years ago our forefathers, in 
 pledging themselves friends and comrades, es- 
 tablished a bond which time has only strength- 
 ened. It is with profound joy that we of West 
 Point today send our comrades to confirm this 
 pledge. Fighting side by side, with the sons of 
 L'Ecole Poly technique, confident and assured 
 
160 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 under the leadership of one of the greatest of 
 your graduates, we shall become truly your 
 brothers in arms and your associates in defense 
 of those ideals to which our united efforts are 
 dedicated. The beautiful symbol of the spirit 
 of L'Ecole Poly technique which we have re- 
 ceived through our Secretary of War, will ever 
 serve as a source of inspiration, as a constant 
 reminder of the high ideals and the perfect spirit 
 which are the foundations of our institutions. 
 It will stand as a permanent monument to the 
 enduring fraternity of L'Ecole Polytechnique 
 and the United States Military Academy, of the 
 French Army and the American Army, of France 
 and America. We men of the Corps salute you. 
 
 The full size statue, when it reaches 
 the Point, probably will be placed in the 
 area of barracks. There, more than 
 any place else, it will be in a sense at 
 the domestic firesides of the cadets, and 
 will form a part of their daily experi- 
 ences, the mute but eloquent symbol of 
 a centuiy-old attachment between the 
 students of the two schools, a sentiment 
 first consecrated by the separate enter- 
 
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Secretary Baker at the Front 161 
 
 prises of the respective corps on behalf 
 of their own nations, and now rededi- 
 cated by their common struggles in a 
 mutual enterprise. 
 
 Amid all the sadness and darkness 
 that the great tragedy has visited upon 
 the world there is a quality of sweet- 
 ness and light in the relations between 
 the men of America and the people on 
 whose soil they gather for battle. A 
 railway train stops five minutes at a 
 village station, and before it leaves, the 
 soldiers and the townsfolk are gathered 
 in a half dozen groups on the depot plat- 
 form. The old people in a billeting 
 area gather about their doorsteps with 
 the troops from across the Atlantic and 
 strive in the evenings to pass the bar- 
 rier of language. The children of 
 France cry out after these new guests, 
 "Nos Amis" and, Yankee-fashion, the 
 expression is contracted into "Sam- 
 
162 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 mies." The love of little people is pro- 
 verbial with the fighting men of the 
 western republic. At the end of a hard 
 afternoon in early April, I was riding 
 back to American headquarters with 
 General Pershing when suddenly he 
 called to the driver to stop the car and 
 quickly drew down one of the limou- 
 sine's side windows. He had spied a 
 wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked tot playing on 
 the curbstone where a crowd had gath- 
 ered even while the conmiander of the 
 Americans was passing through the vil- 
 lage. The youngster was too busily en- 
 gaged to note the beckonings of the call 
 of "Le petit enfant," but other hands 
 led him to the big brown car where he 
 capitulated to the advances of the man 
 inside and his awe gave way to dehght. 
 'T can't go by all of 'em," the gen- 
 eral said as his car started on, and his 
 thoughts, I think, were back with a 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 163 
 young lad of his own. Somewhere in 
 America. 
 
 The ancients practised a. ceremony 
 through which those whose blood had 
 mingled became brothers. Whether by 
 this or other means, that relationship is 
 somewhere sanctified each day by the 
 men of our armies in France and Italy. 
 When returning from his visit to the 
 front trenches, the secretary of war 
 asked to be driven to a spot in the vi- 
 cinity of which are situated the graves of 
 some Americans. As he stood beside 
 the little mounds of earth, another fun- 
 eral procession slowly approached along 
 the country road. They were laying to 
 rest the body of a private of the Ameri- 
 can Army. In the group which fol- 
 lowed to the grave the remains of him 
 who had been Private Wilkinson, 117th 
 Signal Battalion, was the band of his 
 organization, the French padre and 
 
164 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 Protestant chaplain arm in arm, two 
 choir boys, a throng of soldiers, and> 
 heartening to tell, a company of the 
 motherly women of France. Around 
 the newly -made grave were other simple 
 peasant people, and beside the mound 
 of fresh earth were two large wreaths 
 of flowers fashioned by the loving hands 
 of those great-hearted villagers who 
 had never seen that soldier in the flesh ; 
 but he was of the Americans — nos amis 
 — and he had died at the front in 
 France. That was enough. 
 
 At the close of the ceremonies a young 
 French officer stepped toward the plain 
 coffin, and with a few brief words laid 
 upon it the greatest gift which France 
 may give — the Croix de Guerre. High 
 in the heavens there droned as he spoke 
 an airplane with the black crossed mark 
 of the enemy. Perhaps it, too, saw. 
 
 Many times in private speech and 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 165 
 
 public utterance that scene of burial has 
 come back to the mind of Secretary 
 Baker. Speaking to a group of news- 
 paper publishers after his return to 
 America he said : 
 
 "I know what that casualty list 
 means. I stood on a hillside in France 
 where were marked the graves of Amer- 
 ican soldiers. I had gone there to pay 
 the respect of this nation to that sacred 
 investment of America in the soil of 
 France. As I stood there I saw an- 
 other procession coming up the road 
 and I knew that another American sol- 
 dier was to be added to those who were 
 there. But the little procession which 
 brought him was not all Americans. 
 God bless those women and children of 
 France for their sympathy and under- 
 standing! The little cavalcade headed 
 by a French village priest walking arm 
 in arm with a Protestant army chaplain. 
 
166 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 was followed by French peasant women 
 and little children who knew that the 
 mother or wife or sister of that soldier 
 would want tears shed at his funeral, 
 and they had come to shed them as he 
 was laid to rest." 
 
 Listening to the secretary of war as 
 he spoke, was the poet-lecturer, Ed- 
 mund Vance Cooke. The poet soul in 
 him saw the scene and reconstructed it 
 in his verses, "Mothers of France": 
 
 These women of France he came to save 
 Had never known his face or heard his name, 
 But when they saw the funeral file, they came, 
 Dropping their daily tasks, to take the place 
 Of his own womankind. His mother's face 
 Shone out from theirs. Almost it seemed that 
 
 she 
 Had spirited across the wind-washed sea 
 And wept thru these sad eyes of Picardy. 
 Great heart of France ! which hath withstood so 
 
 well 
 The blast of battles and the hates of hell. 
 Which yet hath grace to spare thy prayers and 
 
 flowers 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 167 
 
 From thy unnumbered dead to one of ours, 
 Our love is thine ! By heart, by hand, by head, 
 By whatsoever pledge it may be said ! 
 By these — ^thy women mothering our dead! 
 
 Someone presented a copy of the 
 poem to Jusserand, Ambassador of the 
 French Republic, who sent word to the 
 secretary of war: "Next to being a 
 poet, there is no greater gift than inspir- 
 ing one ; and I compliment you, thank- 
 ing you moreover, on behalf of my coun- 
 try, which you have caused to be so no- 
 bly praised." 
 
 Two months later General Douglas 
 MacArthur, Chief of Staff of the 42nd 
 Division, sent to the secretary of war 
 a beautifully colored sketch with a dam- 
 aged church spire in the background and 
 an empty ship in the foreground — de- 
 signed by the division to mark the graves 
 of those of their number who come to 
 the end of the Rainbow and who, like 
 
168 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 Private Wilkinson, spread their silent 
 tents on fame's eternal camping 
 ground. 
 
 So the story of those French peas- 
 ants on that secluded hillside has crossed 
 the Atlantic and circled America and 
 gone back again in prose and verse to 
 bind in broader brotherhood two great 
 free peoples. 
 
 These things do not constitute the 
 fighting of battles ; but they are the stuff 
 that wars are made of — and for. 
 
 The struggle against the supremacy 
 of uncontrolled military; the strife for 
 the sanctity of contract; the crusade 
 against the crass philosophy of force; 
 the abhorrence of a state deified but 
 with mere pretensions to power as the 
 supreme attribute of deity; the revolt 
 at the laudation of war as a prime agent 
 of Kultur, and promoter of progress — 
 these are things men die for. 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 169 
 
 Such is the quahty of these things of 
 the spirit that, out of the welter of things 
 material, they will loom larger with the 
 going of the years. When the scraps 
 of paper that could not save the sanc- 
 tity of Belgium have yellowed with 
 years; when the bones of the victims of 
 ruthlessness have whitened and pow- 
 dered; when the pages of the Hymn 
 of Hate have seared and withered with 
 age; when the hulls of vessels sunk 
 traceless have rotted to ooze in the 
 ocean — yet in that far day will genera- 
 tions of men proclaim the spiritual 
 values for which the friends of freedom 
 now contend. These are the things 
 men live for. 
 
 Two headquarters serve the Ameri- 
 can Commander-in-Chief in France. 
 General Pershing's military headquar- 
 ters are located of course in the rear of 
 
170 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 the principal and more permanent front 
 of our troops. The main offices there 
 are housed in huge plain stone barracks, 
 built about a square area of clay. His 
 residence, too, is a large stone structure, 
 two blocks away from the headquarters. 
 Living with General Pershing are the 
 Chief-of-Staff, the Adjutant General, 
 two aides and a junior officer as a gen- 
 eral assistant. If I were compelled to 
 write a brief against French domiciles, 
 I think I should take exception to their 
 heating facilities and their plumbing ar- 
 rangements. If I were constructing a 
 brief in defense, I should wax almost 
 enthusiastic over their roominess and 
 their back yards. 
 
 So far as transportation is concerned, 
 France has been likened to a bowl with 
 Paris in the middle of it. In getting 
 from any one place to another, one tends 
 to gravitate toward and through the 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 171 
 
 capital. So a second headquarters is 
 maintained there. The handsome resi- 
 dence of Ogden Mills at 73 Rue Va- 
 renne has been placed at the disposal 
 of the General. Like many French 
 mansions, the house has no frontage 
 upon the street. A narrow arcade be- 
 tween two buildings facing the Rue 
 Varenne leads to a graveled courtyard, 
 beyond which is the Parisian home of 
 the American commander. On enter- 
 ing it, one has a feeling as of going into 
 many mansions. In the house are 
 forty-odd rooms, all of them with a spa- 
 ciousness that bespeaks a free-handed 
 architect. A hospitable veranda ex- 
 tends along the entire width of the 
 house in the rear and overlooks a green 
 vista of garden where, thanks to the skill 
 of a landscape artist, one may walk long 
 without crossing his tracks, in shaded 
 paths and rocky grottoes. 
 
172 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 I am beginning to have a somewhat 
 domesticated and acclimated feeling in 
 the successive headquarters of the field 
 commander of the Americans. Early 
 in the month of May, following our dec- 
 laration of war, the strong- jawed suc- 
 cessor of Fighting Fred Funston came 
 up from the Mexican border with an 
 Indian-like coating of tan, found in the 
 Southern Department — and points 
 south. With the few members of his 
 hastily gathered staff, he ensconced 
 himself in one small room directly 
 across from mine at the War Depart- 
 ment — the initial headquarters of the 
 prospective Expeditionary Force. For 
 two weeks the little group of officers 
 was there behind closed doors, poring 
 over maps and lists of equipment and 
 compilations of names. Early one 
 Sunday morning General Pershing 
 
 % 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 173 
 
 came to bid farewell to the secretary 
 of war — he was ready to pitch his camp 
 on the other side of the ocean. 
 
 On the thirteenth of June, the day 
 before his first division sailed from the 
 United States, he reached Paris. In 
 the Capital, within sight of the old rid- 
 ing school adjoining the garden of the 
 Tuilleries where the French Republic 
 was founded a century and a quarter 
 previously, the new headquarters of the 
 Americans were set up. These were at 
 the Crillon, and it happened that our 
 own quarters at that hotel were the same 
 as had been occupied by the vanguard 
 of the Yanks nearly a year before. 
 
 Later, of course, the headquarters at 
 the front became the scene of our main 
 activity, but the business to be trans- 
 acted and the conferences to be held at 
 Paris constantly increased, and caused 
 
174 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 the establishment of a more permanent 
 base of operations than could be had as 
 transients in a city hotel. 
 
IV 
 
 AFTEETHOUGHTS 
 
 My son, be admonished: of making many books 
 there is no end. 
 
 ECCLESIASTES 12, 12. 
 
 WHATEVER else may be said 
 of these pages, know this: 
 They were written without fanciful illu- 
 sions by their author as to their military 
 significance. They purport to be 
 neither a weighing of the causes of the 
 Great War, nor a treatise on its objects, 
 nor an exposition of its operations. 
 The publication of them is founded 
 on two motives. First, after a few 
 years at the present rate of output, the 
 man who hasn't written a booklet on 
 some phase of It, will have fingers 
 pointed at him. Secondly, this seems 
 
 175 
 
176 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 to be the only source from which some- 
 thing of a story of the journey of the 
 secretary of war may issue. He him- 
 self has not the leisure to pen it and the 
 two other persons who accompanied him 
 would write, if at all, under the re- 
 straints imposed by their status as of- 
 ficers in the military service. So, 
 chosen by process of elimination, I 
 proffered myself and accepted the 
 nomination. But I blush to think of 
 what these chapters owe to Doctor Kep- 
 pel and Walter Lippmann and Miss 
 Belle Cooney. 
 
 Some day when the master historian 
 seeks to fashion the red fabric of these 
 times, the facts of this journey may be 
 to him a single thread in a long and 
 tangled skein. The experience of it has 
 brought to me some smattering of the 
 feeling which Wordsworth voiced in his 
 lines to the celandine: 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 177 
 
 Often I have sighed to measure 
 By myself a lonely pleasure. 
 Sighed to think I read a book 
 Only read perhaps by me. 
 
 I have read this book. I had to cor- 
 rect the proof of it. And I shall indeed 
 sigh (and be joined mayhap by a cer- 
 tain publisher in doing so) , if it is "only 
 read perhaps by me." But it is not 
 without some reservations that I can 
 recommend its perusal by others. 
 There is a superficiality about it, sug- 
 gestive of authorship by one who runs 
 more wide than deep. There is at 
 times, too, a flippancy which is not diffi- 
 cult to overdo. But this latter must be 
 charged to the ardor of youthful enthu- 
 siasm. Perhaps there is wisdom in that 
 snatch of verse which comes back to me 
 from an old issue of "Harper's": 
 
 When I have ceased to break my wings 
 Against the faultiness of things 
 And learned that compromises wait 
 
178 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 Behind each hardly opened gate — 
 When I can look life in the eyes, 
 Grown calm and very coldly wise, 
 Life will have given me the truth 
 And taken in exchange — ^my youth. 
 
 Perhaps, therefore, I need not yet re- 
 cant. 
 
 In his speech proposing war on April 
 2, the President said to the Congress, 
 *'It is a fearful thing to lead this great, 
 peaceful people into war." None who 
 has not seen the process can know the 
 extent of its fearfulness. Not before 
 in history has a similar task been at- 
 tempted, and I have wondered often if 
 the doing of it would not crush the per- 
 son who was responsible for the War 
 Department's portion of it. It is not 
 that counsel has been lacking; rather 
 the plethora of it has been overwhelm- 
 ing. 
 
 Two thousand years ago Lucius 
 uEmilius Paulus, chosen by the Romans 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 179 
 
 to conduct a war against the Macedo- 
 nians, is described by Livy as going out 
 from the Senate into the assembly of the 
 people and as saying to them : 
 
 In every circle, and truly at every table, there 
 are people who lead armies into Macedonia ; who 
 know where the camp ought to be placed; what 
 posts ought to be occupied by troops; when and 
 through what pass Macedonia should be entered ; 
 where magazines should be formed; how provi- 
 sions should be conveyed by land and sea; and 
 when it is proper to engage the enemy, when to 
 lie quiet. And they not only determine what is 
 best to be done, but if anything is done in any 
 other manner than what they have pointed out, 
 they arraign the consul, as if he were on his trial. 
 
 Time has not simplified the conduct 
 of martial operations. In 1809 Jeffer- 
 son's secretary of war, Henry Dear- 
 born (described in the Congressional 
 Record as "a man of vigorous mind, of 
 extensive knowledge of detail, and of 
 indefatigable industry"), left office de- 
 claring that the business of the depart- 
 
180 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 merit had increased beyond what the 
 capacity of any one man could perform. 
 The army at that time consisted of 2765 
 officers and men. ■ 
 
 Again, in the Civil War, Mr. Lincoln 
 said of his secretary of war : 
 
 I cannot add to Mr. Stanton's troubles. His 
 position is one of the most difficult in the world. 
 The pressure on him is immeasurable and un- 
 ending. He is the rock on the beach of our 
 national ocean against which the breakers dash 
 and roar without ceasing. He fights back the 
 angry waters and prevents them from under- 
 mining and overwhelming the land. I do not 
 see how he survives — why he is not crushed and 
 torn to pieces. 
 
 The operations of Mr. Stanton's old 
 department proceed today on a scale be- 
 side which all comparisons fail. All the 
 wars of all the nations from 1793 to 
 1914, including the Napoleonic wars, 
 the American Civil War, the Franco- 
 Prussian War, and the Russo-Japanese 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 181 
 
 War, caused the expenditure of less 
 treasure than has the Great War since 
 1914. Perhaps, therefore, any ray of 
 light, however dim, that is shed upon 
 the mobilizing mechanism of our nation 
 may gain for it a httle more of sympa- 
 thetic understanding. 
 
 For more than a year I have been 
 privileged to see, sometimes from be- 
 hind the scenes, the gathering and 
 equipping of a great army. By and 
 large, I like to think the job has not 
 been an uncreditable one. For a long 
 time, too, I have heard outside my win- 
 dow the tramp of marching feet. And 
 some of them will not march back. 
 
 Within these few months I have tra- 
 versed the far-flung lines of battle from 
 the midst of every-man's-land to the 
 borders of what was no-man's-land; 
 from where the home fires burn to where 
 the star-shells burst. 
 
182 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 From Over There a man brings back 
 this thought : No one can support that 
 undertaking moderately. No man can 
 be for it somewhat. There is here no 
 golden mean, no middle ground of half- 
 conviction. For them in France the 
 issues are stark naked : they are life and 
 death. We support them whole-heart- 
 edly or we do not support them at all. 
 Generally applied, what can moderate 
 backing or partial support mean but 
 soldiers half equipped with rifles and 
 gas-masks, half defended by barbed- 
 wire and earthworks, half fed? Should 
 that day come, the day which follows it 
 would find no army at all to supply. 
 There are no alternatives but vigorous 
 support or total non-support. Indif- 
 ference is synonymous with disaster. 
 Our countrymen overseas face enemies 
 who have made a life profession of the 
 bearing of arms. The men of our 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 183 
 
 country have been put there by the 
 operation of the most responsive ma- 
 chinery which a democratic people has 
 been able to devise to record its own will. 
 Once having put them there, half- 
 hearted support on our part is deser- 
 tion. 
 
 They know that. No terror can be 
 so haunting as the fear that the line in 
 the rear may be wavering or doubtful. 
 
 So it is that the jingle of our coins 
 given here, and the hum of our factories 
 speeding forward with redoubled effort, 
 sounds to them in France as "The Bat- 
 tle Hj^mn of the Republic." It is 
 borne across the ocean as a benediction 
 for those who must pay the last full 
 measure of devotion ; and it carries, too, 
 across the banks of the Rhine — there as 
 a knell to those who hope that we may 
 grant in grudging measure to our sol- 
 diers. 
 
184 Secretary Baker at the Front 
 
 I wish that he who is of faint heart 
 might go up and down the length and 
 breadth of France where the hand of 
 America has touched it; that he might 
 see his country's people streaming in at 
 the western seaports by hundreds of 
 thousands with a spring in their step, 
 a swing in their stride, a light in their 
 eyes. I wish that he who feared this 
 nation had grown fat and flabby and 
 afraid might see its sons Over There. 
 I wish that he might see the revival of 
 the heroic age in our history, the renais- 
 sance from which the unborn years will 
 number. 
 
 Once he has seen those things, he will 
 not be happy elsewhere. 
 
 To-morrow, when the writing of these 
 pages is completed, I shall take my 
 place in the National Army, that I may 
 get back to the growing point of the 
 world organism. 
 
Secretary Baker at the Front 185 
 
 For those whose place is here, the 
 short way out hes straight ahead and 
 through. 
 
 For all of us alike, if there be any- 
 thing in this land worth having and 
 keeping, it will be saved most surely 
 and speedily only when each of us 
 throws upon the scales every particle of 
 his strength and energy and resource 
 and devotion. 
 
 This America is worth it. 
 
 THE END 
 

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