The Army on the Rhine, the Navy and the Merchant Marine in Europe (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921. Excerpt: ... THE ARMY OF OCCUPATION An Officer's Letter January 6, 1921. My dear Sprenger: When a man is doing good work it is a mighty good scheme to tell him so while he is doing it rather than to wait until the work is finished. Encouragement and boosting from the side lines while the game is in progress is of a great deal more value than praise after the game is over, although both may be welcome. In this spirit I want to tell you how the work, which the Young Men's Christian Association under your direction is performing with the American Forces in Germany, is generally regarded by all officers, enlisted men, and civilians attached to our forces. A well-known magazine reporter and magazine writer told me the other day that before coming to Coblenz he thought that our Army of Occupation consisted of officers and soldiers marching up and down keeping the Germans under a kind of autocratic martial law, but what he actually found, to his amazement, was the German people going freely about their business and with no evidence of ill-feeling or hostility towards anyone, and the American soldiers, clean-cut and manly, conducting themselves in such a way as to gain the respect and admiration of our allies and other European people who come to the American area, and also of the Germans themselves. In short, our young men, by their conduct and example, are trying to show the people over here what our country is and what it stands for, and the American Army in Germany today is working as earnestly for a reconstructed Europe and a rightthinking Germany as it did during the war to crush German militarism. It is doing this work on the principles laid down by Mr. Lincoln in his second Inaugural Address when he faced our great problem of reconstruction after the Civil War. The re...