We were all Yanks during those June days three years ago when the cables brought us thrills of triumph in almost every message from Over There. Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood burned into the consciousness of every last one of us who laid any claim to the rights and duties of Americans. A few war correspondents sought at first to popularize Sammies as a label for the A.E.F. No, it wouldn’t go down. It wasn’t inclusive enough. It didn’t rime with what we wanted a rime for. You couldn’t sing it with gusto. It was rather a word to lisp than to shout. Then happily we universally agreed on Yanks, which is pretty close to complete Americanese.
Here was a word you could paint on your banners and invite the world to take a look and see the real thing. It rimed with clanks and ranks and tanks, an up-and-going word with a lunge and heave to it, an irresistible word that every mother’s son and daughter of us could thrill to—and did. There were Yank buck privates Over There and Yank army nurses. Yanks in the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Knights of Columbus, the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A. No distinction as to sex or service. A Yank was a Yank in both genders, Over There and Over Here. Just three years ago!
And now!
Well, go to any of our hospitals for wounded soldiers and look around. See if you find there any of the women or girls who performed so heroically and capably during the war and for some little while after the Armistice. There are many of these hospitals and there re Yanks in them—heroes every one of them; but who goes to visit them and cheer them? There are capable staffs of doctors and nurses. There re fine buildings and splendid equipment, but alas! there are very few visitors, pitifully few of the women faces these boys would love to see.
A Washington mother who lost her two Yanks in the Argonne said the other day: “I am in despair about these girls of ours who were in the Motor Corps and every conceivable branch of service that provided a uniform and a chance for 16 hours’ work a day during the war. They will not go near the hospitals for wounded soldiers, they will not stir themselves to take an interest in any worth-while service any more. All they care about, it seems to me, is to ‘toddle’ and dress outlandishly and go to the ‘movies.’ They tell me they were fed up on service and patriotism during the war and now they are taking a rest. Many of them joke heartlessly about their indifference. The7 say that they are looking pretty hard for the right man for a husband to come along and they can’t afford to take any time off or they might miss him.”
It is a weeping matter, really, if this indifference is general. It is a matter that should be discussed with some heat in every family that contains a member who would call himself a Yank. We’re a pretty miserable mess of people if we don’t do every last possible thing we can for our wounded soldiers.
To sit back and say, “Let the Government do it; we’ll stand the taxes,” is cold-blooded to the verge of brutality. It means that the whole job will be turned over to a little group of bureaucrats who revel in red tape and circumlocution.
You may be able to thank God for the American Legion and what it has already done in the matter, but that doesn’t excuse any one of us for indifference and nonchalance. Any man who enrolled and fouht in Pershing’s legions will be a hero as long as he lives. Remember, thousands of these boys are without kith or kin. They are ineffably lonely. They feel outcast and abandoned. So let’s get back in focus and remember that to be a Yank is a pretty fine thing, though not quite so fine as to be a Yank who helps a Yank who is down and out and needs you.
From the editorial page of the Ladies Home Journal, June, 1921, Barton W. Currie, editor.
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