Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1919 — Government Should Handle Army Social Work Through a Single Agency [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Government Should Handle Army Social Work Through a Single Agency

By RAYMOND B. FOSDICK,

Training Camp Commission

Social work in the army in any future emergency should be handled by the government itself through a single honsectarian agency. It seems to me that the lesson of the war in social work involves perhaps three points: The elimination of sectarian auspices; reduction in the number of agencies employed, and the transfer to the government itself of much of the activity hitherto left to private initiative. After eight months with the troops in France I am convinced that the average woman worker attached to a hut is worth four or five men workers. Certainly

her effect on the morale and spirit of the troops is extraordinary. An ■“Honest to God American Girl,” as the soldiers call her, can do more to keep the men cheerful and create an atmosphere of home than any other factor; and the work of our women in France —Y. M. C. A. girls, Salvation Army girls, Red Cross girls, and the representatives of other agencies—has been in no small degree responsible for the unflagging devotion •and inexhaustible patience with which our troops carried forward their high enterprise. Our men have been glad to receive what the societies had for them in the shape of service or supplies, and they have not cared two straws whether it came from Protestant, Catholic or Jewish hands. Our boys fought at Chateau Thierry and in the Argonne as Americans. They did not fight as Protestants, Catholics or Jews. - As a matter of fact there is no reason for sectarianism. The religious interests of the army are wisely confined to the chaplains.