A Jewish Chaplain in France Part 5

The Jewish Welfare Board began to take up the overseas problem as early as August, 1917, when Rabbi Voorsanger, then Sergeant in the Army Medical Corps, received a letter from Colonel Harry Cutler, asking for such information as he had at command and also how far he might be able to cooperate personally with the Jewish work. Some months later, after Voorsanger had been appointed chaplain he was again asked for information. This time he was in a position to give a great deal together with recommendations. A certain amount of supplies was furnished him at once, but no welfare workers were sent until the overseas commission had made its investigation and report.

The overseas commission of the Jewish Welfare Board, consisting of Congressman Isaac N. Siegel, chairman, Rabbi H. G. Enelow, Rabbi Jacob Kohn, and Mr. John Goldhaar, secretary, went to France in July, 1918, and were the first friends I met when I reached Paris. Their general work was to study the nature and scope of the overseas field so as to make recommendations on their return; incidentally to this, they were to establish contact with kindred organizations and with the army, open headquarters, and cooperate with the chaplains in the field in the holyday services. They made their surveys during the summer by constant traveling and numerous interviews with officers and welfare workers as well as with Jews in the service. Congressman Siegel made a trip to General Pers.h.i.+ng's headquarters and to the sector then occupied by the 77th Division, where Chaplain Voorsanger was taken into consultation regarding the problems ahead. The Congressman then returned to America, while Mr. Goldhaar was left as executive secretary pro tem of the Paris office and Rabbis Kohn and Enelow conducted holyday services at different points. Afterward Dr. Kohn also returned home, and Dr. Enelow devoted himself to field work, establis.h.i.+ng welfare centers at various points. Later on, when the army educational program was undertaken, he became the J. W. B. representative on the faculty of the Army University at Beaune. Dr. Enelow was recommended for a chaplaincy by the J. W. B.

Chaplains' Committee, but was among those prevented by the armistice from receiving the rank. Meanwhile he labored in any capacity at hand, for he was determined not to return to America while work remained to be done among the soldiers in France.

All this was entirely inadequate for the task at hand, as we all realized at the time. At that time the J. W. B. was functioning in the overseas forces, not as a separate ent.i.ty, but through the Y. M. C. A.

This naturally prevented the full expansion of its independent viewpoint or the direct contact with the army officials which alone could give it standing. The arrival of the overseas commission made some difference in this respect, but the J. W. B. was not fully recognized as one of the responsible overseas welfare organizations until Colonel Harry Cutler, its national chairman, had come to France and presented his case at General Pers.h.i.+ng's headquarters. There were more than the usual difficulties with pa.s.sports and vises, owing to the German or Austrian ancestry of some of the most desirable workers; this was finally overcome by the chairman of the Board vouching personally for the loyalty of every individual recommended. The selection was limited, as with all welfare organizations, to men not subject to draft. With these obstacles the difficulties proved for the time insuperable.

This situation made it impossible for the J. W. B. to undertake any independent work before the armistice. It could only support and a.s.sist the work already being done by chaplains and by the dozens of ready volunteers among the officers and enlisted men themselves. The early history of Jewish welfare work abroad is that of a scattered band of eager, self-sacrificing workers who gave up their own time to labor incessantly for the welfare of the Jewish men in the service. The first task was to acquaint the soldiers with the fact that there was a Jewish Welfare Board, even though its Paris staff consisted only of Mr.

Goldhaar, one stenographer and one office boy. Advertis.e.m.e.nts in the _Stars and Stripes_ and the Paris editions of American newspapers and correspondence with Jewish and non-Jewish chaplains, American, French and British, did the work. Letters began to pour in for supplies, advice, information, and a great correspondence school of welfare work began.

The center of this work was naturally the Paris club rooms, in connection with the office at 41 Boulevarde Haussman. Mr. John Goldhaar was in immediate charge of both, with a mountain of mail on his desk from every part of the A. E. F. and a constant crowd of doughboys outside in the club rooms. His indefatigable labors and his profound sympathy for the boys in the service won him thousands of friends through the length and breadth of the forces. He continued in this position, with its constantly growing duties, until Captain Voorsanger was appointed Overseas Director of the J. W. B., when Mr. Goldhaar was made Overseas Field Director and put in charge of the field work. His Medaille d'Honneur from the French government was earned by the hardest and most valuable kind of war work. Mr. Goldhaar gathered about him in the Paris club rooms a group of American Jewesses and a few of their French coreligionists as an entertainment committee to make the boys feel at home. Every afternoon they served tea--a little thing in itself, but a big one to lonesome boys without a friend nearby. It meant much effort, too, on the part of the ladies themselves, especially their leaders, Mrs. Ralph Stern, Mrs. Zacharie Eudlitz, Mrs. Engelman and Mrs.

Hertz. Some of them came from the suburbs every afternoon, rain or s.h.i.+ne, to render this devoted service. Monsieur and Madame Henri Bodenheimer opened their hearts and their homes, both in Paris and Tours, to receive the Americans; every Friday evening saw their table crowded with lonesome "buck" privates, especially the ones whom other people would overlook. With the a.s.sistance of these same people hospital visitation was begun. A registration book in the office began to fill up with the names of Jewish soldiers and officers, and letters sent home recorded the fact of their visits and often established an important connection for the welfare of the men themselves.

At the same time, among the hundreds of letter-writers and visitors eager to do something, anything, for their fellow-soldiers, a few began to stand out here and there as effective and central workers. The soldiers were always ready to cooperate; I found that out from my first service at Nevers to my last at Le Mans. So it was only natural that far more of them volunteered for this work than I can possibly mention. I shall simply have to speak of a few outstanding names, and leave it to the imagination of the reader to multiply these examples many times. In Chaumont there was Field Clerk A. S. Weisberger, formerly of Scranton, Pa. "Sandy" Weisberger mimeographed a little newspaper, the "Junior Argus," for his fellow-soldiers from Scranton; organized the Jewish soldiers at G. H. Q. for services and sociability; and referred any number of men to the Jewish Welfare Board for such advice or a.s.sistance as it could give. He was later mustered out of service to become a J. W.

B. worker and met his death most tragically by an accident in the Paris headquarters, during the festivities of Pa.s.sover week, 1919.

In Dijon there was a group, Major Jacob Jablons, Medical Corps; Miss Bessie Spanner, a regular army nurse; and Sergeant J. Howard Lichtenstein, of Baker Co. 339. They organized hospital visiting in the many hospital centers in that area, celebration of the high holydays, Simchath Torah parties, and group gatherings of all kinds. This work was spontaneous and needed only supplies of stationery, prayerbooks and the like to make it completely effective, furnis.h.i.+ng a fertile field for the welfare workers when they opened their community center there. By that time the two last were also in the service of the Welfare Board, Miss Spanner in the unique position of head of the women workers overseas. In Tours the outstanding figure was Colonel Max B. Wainer, at that time a Major. He gathered a group of active workers among the soldiers, used the local synagogue as a center, and organized a full welfare program, including Friday evening services and round table discussions, hospital visiting, and distribution of stationery and prayerbooks. I dropped in at Tours for a day to arrange for the holyday services; the local committee of soldiers saw that special meals were provided for the Jewish men; and the bills were paid by the Jewish Welfare Board.

In the Le Mans area, which before the armistice was used as a cla.s.sification camp from which soldiers were sent as replacements to units in the field, the first Jewish work was started by Sergeant Charles S. Rivitz of Army Post Office 762 through the aid and a.s.sistance of his commanding officer, Lieutenant Willing of Cleveland. Lieutenant (later Captain) Willing, though a non-Jew, had taken a deep interest in the Jewish men in his unit while still in camp in the States and continued this interest to France. With the approval of Gen. Glenn, in command of the area, Rivitz was detailed to the Jewish Welfare Board under the supervision of the senior chaplain of the area and Capt.

Willing. Sergeant Rivitz was not a social worker at all, but had one source of strength which made his good will effective. He was a soldier, had attained his sergeancy through force of personality; he knew what the soldiers wanted and insisted on giving it to them. He rented a chateau as a club house largely on his own responsibility, and the Jewish Welfare Board soon found that both the structure and his method of conducting it were excellent. His chief a.s.sistant was Corporal George Rooby, who after his discharge from the service volunteered for the first unit of the Joint Distribution Committee in Poland, and continued serving Jewry there.

In fighting units also the Jewish officers and enlisted men were early active in welfare work. Two officers occur to me whose work I saw personally; undoubtedly there were many others with the same sort of interest. Captain Leon Schwartz of the 123rd Infantry, 31st Division, was active from the outset in his own division and the Le Mans area.

Later, during the time when the army was trying every means to keep up the morale of the troops, and the temporary organization of "Comrades in Service" was being pushed through the G. H. Q. Chaplains' Office, Captain Schwartz was a.s.signed to this work as the Jewish representative, and addressed hundreds of gatherings of soldiers, together with the Catholic and Protestant spokesmen for morale and comrades.h.i.+p. In the 26th Division, the "Yankee Division," Captain Bernard I. Gorfinkle of the Judge Advocate's office was one of the first and most effective Jewish workers in France. Captain Gorfinkle organized an overseas branch of the New England Y. M. H. A., deriving his first funds from the Young Men's Hebrew a.s.sociations of New England. Later, when the Jewish Welfare Board arrived, he joined forces with its Paris office for the benefit of his men. Mr. Goldhaar tells how surprised he was after the battle of Chateau Thierry to be highly complimented for the work of the J. W. B.

in marking the Jewish graves. Of course, at that time no such work had yet been undertaken. On investigation he found that the graves of Jews of the 26th Division who fell in action had been marked with a crude Magen David by their comrades under the initiative of Captain Gorfinkle.

Wherever a Jewish chaplain existed the Welfare Board had a means of contact with the men. And here and there throughout the A. E. F., volunteers sprang up, establis.h.i.+ng their little groups and doing their own work, large or small. In the 42nd Division, to cite only one more example, some of the boys came together and held holyday services during the actual campaign, and afterward inst.i.tuted their own hospital visiting. But then came the armistice, and at the same time the pa.s.sport difficulty was disposed of. Workers began to come; new plans were being issued daily by the army authorities; the whole viewpoint of the work was revolutionized and the facilities suddenly enlarged.

The determining factor was that troops were no longer being scattered for training and fighting but concentrated for their return home. Hence the J. W. B. centered its work on the American Embarkation Center and the base ports, established a line of centers in the chief points of the Service of Supply, and went with the Army of Occupation to Germany. The last to be supplied with workers were some of the combat divisions not in the organized areas. Thus the work grew. The club-house at Le Mans was dedicated on November 28, 1918, in the presence of Major General Glenn, with speeches by Dr. Enelow and the prefect of the Department of the Sarthe, and a vaudeville show and refreshments to wind up the evening. Buildings were rented in the ports of Brest, St. Nazaire, Bordeaux and Ma.r.s.eilles, and a line of centers established across France, from Le Mans on through Tours, St. Aignan, Gievres, Bourges, Beaune, Is-sur-Tille, Dijon and Chaumont. The headquarters for the Army of Occupation were at Coblenz, where the B'nai B'rith Building was employed and seven huts established through the area. Finally as workers continued coming, they were a.s.signed to seven of the combat divisions, staying with them in their movements through France and saying farewell only after the troops were embarked for home. These divisions were the 5th, 6th, 7th, 29th, 33rd, 79th, and 81st. When Antwerp became an important port for army supplies a center was established there as well.

Altogether the Jewish Welfare Board employed 102 men and 76 women in 57 different centers in the American Expeditionary Forces. Of this personnel, 24 men and one woman, Miss Spanner, were mustered out of the service for this purpose, while the others were transported from the States. Of the buildings, 23 were located in towns and were rented; the other 34 were provided by cooperation of other organizations, 28 by the U. S. Army, two by the Knights of Columbus, two by the Red Cross, one by the Y. M. C. A. and one by the Belgian Government. In camps rough barracks or tents were usually the thing; in cities the equipment varied, and in some places was complete with kitchen, dance hall, writing room, and offices.

I can speak of the large work in the Le Mans area through personal acquaintance. There the personality of Mr. Rivitz was the decisive factor. With his unerring knowledge of the soldier, he established at once the policy of everything free, which was soon adopted by the J. W.

B. throughout its overseas work. Religious services were provided, hot chocolate and cigarettes served, contact established with thousands of soldiers for the personal needs which they brought to the welfare worker. As the needs of the area grew, other centers were established.

When the 77th Division, with its thousands of Jews, was in the area, five huts were established in its various regiments and the men provided with everything possible right at home. In other units where the Jews were more scattered, the centers were at the Division Headquarters. In cases where units stopped in our area for only a few days or a week, an automobile load of supplies with two workers was sent out on an extensive trip, meeting the boys and giving them as much personal cheer and physical sustenance as possible under the circ.u.mstances.

I have described this type of activity several times in connection with my own personal story. Here and there, however, special personalities or incidents stand out in the constant, exhausting labor to which the workers subjected themselves in the terrific rush of the morale agencies during that period of waiting to go home. In Germany at the head of the work was Mr. Leo Mielziner, son of the late Professor Moses Mielziner of the Hebrew Union College, a man of high reputation as an artist and of commanding personality. Mr. Mielziner, who had two sons in the service, conducted the work in the Army of Occupation with the finest spirit of fellow-feeling for the enlisted man. Under his direction the Jewish Welfare Board maintained such a high standard that when the Red Cross closed its railroad canteens in the occupied territory the J. W. B. was requested by the army to take them over.

At Gievres, where the great bakeries of the A. E. F. were located, the J. W. B. was the center for the bakery units. So when Purim came both Jews and non-Jews cooperated in baking a gigantic cake for the celebration. The cake, which had to be baked in sections, occupied not only the stage but also an addition made for the purpose. It was cut into 10,000 portions and every man in that camp received a slice. As the crowning achievement of the A. E. F. bakeries, that Purim cake received a reputation of its own.

The Paris office, and still later the club rooms on Rue Clement Marot, were the entertainment center for the Paris district and all its many visitors. After its formal opening on Simchath Torah, every Sunday afternoon an entertainment was provided, with vaudeville, speeches or dancing, concluding with the famous chocolate layer cake made by volunteer workers among the American women living in Paris. The wounded were visited in the nearby hospitals and usually a group of convalescents was present in the front seats at the entertainment. The registrations in the big book served to unite many friends and brothers who had lost track of each other in the constantly moving wilderness of the A. E. F. A family wrote in from Kansas City that their son was complaining at not hearing from home; when the J. W. B. wrote him, it was his first news from home in his six months as a "casual" in France.

Through the Paris office and the workers in the field the whole immense field of personal service and entertainment had to be covered, including much of the same work which was being done by the chaplains and in addition the furnis.h.i.+ng of immense amounts of supplies which we and others could use up but could not provide.

During the high holydays the Paris clubrooms presented a remarkable mingling of Jewish soldiers of all the allied armies. Mixed with the olive drab and the navy blue of the United States were the Australians with their hats rakishly turned up on the side, the gray capes of the Italian, the French troops from Morocco, the Russian in Cossack uniform, and a few Belgians. During Chanuka, which coincided with Thanksgiving in 1918, special services were held at the synagogue in the Rue de la Victoire, the largest in France. The synagogue was crowded with French men and women, all at a high pitch of enthusiasm, and with 350 American soldiers, the heroes of the occasion. The impressive service of the French rabbi was followed by a brilliant Thanksgiving sermon by Chaplain Voorsanger, who had been invited to come to Paris for the occasion. After services turkey and pumpkin pie were served at the club rooms, and while I was not there that day, I can testify that the pumpkin pie served at the Jewish Welfare Board on New Year's day, 1919, was one of the most poignant reminders of the United States during my stay abroad.

Due to the intense pressure of the situation, the actual volume of work done by the J. W. B. was surprisingly large. The entertainments and dances conducted at every center numbered fully 5,000, with an aggregate attendance of 2,750,000. Among the conspicuous units which toured the A.

E. F. under Welfare Board auspices, was "Who Can Tell?" the Second Army show, which was underwritten by request of the Welfare Officer and was one of the most elaborate of the army musical comedies, with a full complement of chorus girls acted by husky doughboys; this production toured for five weeks and while in Paris was seen by President and Mrs.

Wilson. There was the "Dovetail Troupe," a vaudeville unit which likewise went on tour. And there was the "Tuneful Trio," led by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Gideon of Boston, which came to France under the Y. M. C.

A., and gave many excellent concerts under J. W. B. auspices; I heard one of their programs in Le Mans and felt not only the musical excellence of their work, but also the special appeal of their program of Yiddish folk songs to the Jewish men; this troupe delivered 81 concerts to fully 60,000 men. The army educational work received much support in the various huts, and two of the best equipped men in the J.

W. B. service were a.s.signed to it, Dr. H. G. Enelow for the University of Beaune, and Professor David Blondheim of Johns Hopkins, for a time executive director of the overseas work, for the Sorbonne in Paris. The bulk of the daily work in the huts throughout France appears from the fact that 2,500,000 letterheads were distributed and refreshments served without charge to a total of 3,000,000 men.

The records of religious work are equally imposing, as 1,740 services were held, with a total attendance of 180,000 men. The constant cooperation with the chaplains meant that far more than these were indirectly influenced and aided. Eighteen thousand prayer books were distributed and ten thousand Bibles. On Pa.s.sover of 1919 the J. W. B.

provided unleavened bread (matzoth), which had been furnished through the Quartermaster Corps, for the Jewish soldiers in the American forces, as well as for French and Russian soldiers. The J. W. B. even provided matzoth for six thousand Russian prisoners in Germany during Pa.s.sover of 1919. At the request of the military officials, the Jewish Welfare Board took charge of welfare work for the sixty thousand Russian troops in France, who had come originally as fighting units, but after the withdrawal of Russia from the war had been transferred to agricultural labor. No other welfare agency had provided for them and so they were a.s.signed to the J. W. B. which had a few workers who could speak Russian. It was rather ironical that these men in Cossack uniform, most of whom were non-Jews, received their only friendly service in France at the hands of the despised Jew.

The whole work of the J. W. B. abroad culminated in the Pa.s.sover of 1919. The most intense moment for us chaplains had come during the high holydays when feeling was most profound and suspense at its deepest and when, in addition, we had to carry the burden almost unaided. By Pa.s.sover the feeling had changed, the war was safely over, the men were rejoicing at their imminent return home, and we had the Jewish Welfare Board to arrange our celebration for us. Fully 30,000 of the Jews in the A. E. F. ate the Seder dinners furnished by the Welfare Board. I have already described our celebration at Le Mans, with its many features in which the J. W. B. and I worked together. A similar program was carried out everywhere. At Dijon Rabbi Schumacher of the local French synagogue, who had been most active throughout in the interest of the American soldiers, led a great congregation of 2,000 men through the rain to the synagogue for wors.h.i.+p and afterward to the Seder tables. In Germany, the city of Coblenz became the leave area for soldiers of Jewish faith and was closed for all other furloughs during the three days. The Y. M. C.

A. and the K. of C. a.s.sisted in giving proper honor to the Jewish festival and proper pleasures to the Jewish men, and with their aid boat rides on the Rhine, entertainments in the Festhalle, and all the features of a full amus.e.m.e.nt program were provided.

Most striking of all was the great Seder at Paris, with its crowd of American, Australian, English, French and Italian soldiers, some of them former prisoners in Germany, all of them united in the great occasion of their faith. Among the speakers and the guests of honor were some of the great leaders of Jewry, as well as personal representatives of Marshall Foch and General Pers.h.i.+ng. Colonel Harry Cutler, Mr. Louis Marshall, Judge Julian Mack, Dr. Cyrus Adler, and Dr. Chaim Weitzmann were there, as well as many other celebrities. At that time and in that place the highest honor for any man was to wors.h.i.+p and eat side by side with the soldiers, who had carried love of their country and loyalty to their faith to the last extreme of service and of sacrifice.

Decoration Day of 1919, which was observed by all France together with its American visitors, was another important ceremony for the Jewish Welfare Board, together with its French hosts at the great synagogue on the Rue de la Victoire. The sermon was delivered by Rabbi Voorsanger, the service read by Rabbi Levy of Paris; and again the great throng of Americans in uniform and their French friends joined in the common wors.h.i.+p of their faith and the common exaltation of their patriotism.

In addition to the overseas commission and the men in the field, several of the prominent officers of the Jewish Welfare Board went to France at various times and took personal part in the work. The first was Mr.

Mortimer L. Schiff, who spent the months of December 1918 and January 1919 in France as a member of the commission of eleven of the United War Work Organization, which had just completed its great financial drive.

In that capacity Mr. Schiff was equally interested in all the welfare agencies; naturally, he gave the full benefit of his advice to the J. W.

B. In February 1919 Colonel Harry Cutler, chairman of the Jewish Welfare Board, came to France. Although burdened with duties for other organizations as well, he accomplished wonders for the work of the J. W.

B. during his four months in France. His enthusiasm and vigor showed at once, as in any matter he ever undertook. He traveled throughout the A.

E. F., observed conditions for himself, and then accomplished two important pieces of work. First he obtained an order from the General Headquarters releasing the J. W. B. from its former dependence on the Y.

M. C. A. and allowing it to work directly in cooperation with the military authorities; this was certainly advisable under post-armistice conditions, and many others felt with me that it would have been the preferable system at all times. Second, he persuaded Chaplain Elkan C.

Voorsanger, then completing his second year overseas, to allow his division to return home without him, while he stayed on from April to September as Overseas Director of the J. W. B. Together with Chaplain Voorsanger, Colonel Cutler administered the J. W. B. during the period of growth, and then left him to carry it on successfully during the time of retrenchment, until finally he also returned home with the Paris Staff, and the only representatives left in France were those working in cooperation with the Graves Registration Service.

Another important worker for the J. W. B. was Dr. Cyrus Adler, vice-chairman of the national organization, who reached France in March, 1919 as a representative of the American Jewish Committee. On Colonel Cutler's return in May, Dr. Adler took over his duties for the Welfare Board, and worked with Chaplain Voorsanger until the end of his mission, in July 1919.

One necessary part of the work of the Jewish Welfare Board, after all its efforts on behalf of the men in the service had been accomplished, was to care for the graves of those Jews who gave their all in the service of America. The Graves Registration Service, later called the Cemeterial Division of the War Department, had a great and necessary work. The Jewish Welfare Board obtained in February, 1918 a War Department order that all graves of Jews should be marked with the Magen David, the double triangle.

This order was confirmed by a response from General Pers.h.i.+ng on July 29, 1918. Temporary Jewish headboards were supplied overseas, together with the temporary crosses, and whenever we knew definitely that a particular soldier had been a Jew they were used. Unfortunately, that information was not always available. Most units had no religious census, certainly none was up to date including the replacements. The order for marking the identification tag with an additional letter--"P" for Protestant, "C" for Catholic, and "H" for Hebrew--was issued after most of us were overseas, and hardly any of the tags had it; I know I never had the "H"

put on mine. Often a man would carry a prayerbook in his pocket, but if the bodies were searched by one detail and buried by another that did not help. I know that it took me three months to verify my list of Jewish dead in the 27th Division, so that one can imagine the task for the entire A. E. F.

In May, 1919, the J. W. B. undertook this duty of identifying the Jewish graves, so that the War Department could mark them all properly. They have thus identified 1,500 altogether and where a cross had already been put up the headboard was changed. In this connection, a peculiar situation arose through the efforts of the Red Cross to photograph all graves in France for the benefit of the families at home. Such graves as had not been identified as Jewish still had the cross, and some families had their religious sensibilities shocked by the photographs. Hence the photographs in all such cases were detained until the changes had been carried out, and the Jewish Welfare Board had the graves photographed for the benefit of the families. Naturally, this work is being continued in the funerals of such soldiers as are being returned and in the care of such graves as shall remain permanently where our heroes fought and fell.

The sad death of Colonel Cutler occurred in England during the summer of 1920, on a trip which he undertook in the interest of the Graves Registration work, against the advice of his physicians and solely through his profound interest in the cause. His life was a sacrifice to his duty, to the tremendous efforts he had made for the Jewish Welfare Board and the other great national movements of Jewry. He gave, as so many others gave, another sacrifice for Judaism and America.

On the whole, the field workers of the Jewish Welfare Board made an enviable record in France. In this respect a minor organization had the advantage in being able to choose its representatives so much more carefully than in the enormous machine of the Y. M. C. A. The women workers were especially conspicuous for their steady, uncomplaining service. Their work was anything but romantic; it was driving, wearing labor. They tended canteen all day and danced almost every evening, a regime that was hard physically and exhausting mentally. Only those in the larger cities could enjoy the luxuries which are so commonplace in America--electric lights, a bath tub, and the other conveniences of civilization. I have marveled to see them living for months in tiny French villages or in army camps, giving devoted service to the men in uniform, without distinction of rank or creed.

Through these workers the Jewish Welfare Board was able to render the personal touch which was missing in much of the war work overseas. This applied especially to the Jewish man, who felt overjoyed to meet a Jewish girl from America, to attend a Seder, to write home on the J. W.

B. letterhead. He had found a touch of home in a foreign land; his personal needs could be understood and satisfied so much more easily and directly now. But many men of many creeds found themselves at home in the J. W. B. huts. Men learned to know Jews, to respect Judaism in the army who had been ignorant of both at home. They often attended a Jewish service, met a Jewish chaplain, or simply preferred the home-like atmosphere to that of other welfare organizations. For one thing, the J.

W. B. was run according to the tastes of the soldiers; there was no charge for anything, even a nominal one; there was no condescension and no dictation, none of the things which the soldiers hated. In the Le Mans area, which was typical, from 56 to 60 per cent of the men patronizing the J. W. B. building were non-Jews. This const.i.tuted a return for the thousands of Jews who patronized Y. M. C. A. and K. of C.

huts, as well as our contribution to the morale of the forces.

In some areas the Jewish Welfare Board was the most popular of all the welfare agencies; in all, it was very popular with the men of all faiths. The high caliber of the women workers, the personal touch and home-like spirit of the work, gave it a hold on the affections of the men. For a long time the Jewish soldiers had felt neglected by their own, not knowing the obstacles which had to be overcome. Then they found their own huts, suddenly springing up in all the central points, crowded and popular with all the groups of soldiers in America's composite army.

The Jewish soldier became proud and the Christian soldier became appreciative. The excellence of the work brought forgiveness for everything, even though the soldier was not used to listening to reasons but formed his opinions quickly from the facts nearest at hand. The contribution through happiness and unity to the morale of the American Expeditionary Forces was one that did full justice to the eagerness and good will of the Jews of America.

CHAPTER VIII

THE JEW AS A SOLDIER