the Russian private is allowed only one cent a day, that the Belgian soldier receives only four cents a day, the French private five cents, the German six cents, and the English soldier twenty-five cents a day, most of which has to go for supplementary food to make up for the scantiness of the rations supplied, you realize what it means for the American soldier to be paid from one to three dollars a day, in addition to clothing, expenses, and the best rations of any army in Europe.[1]

Some of these men tell us that they have just received from two to three months’ back pay in cash.  Here they are with several hundred francs in their hands, buried in a French village, with absolutely no attraction or amusement save drink and immorality.  In this little village the only prosperous trade in evidence is that in wines and liquors.  The only large wholesale house is the center of the liquor trade and the only freight piled up on the platform of the station consists of wines and champagnes, pouring in to meet the demand of the American soldiers.  There are a score of drinking places in this little hamlet.  Our boys are unaccustomed to the simple and moderate drinking of the French peasants, and they are plunged into these estaminets with their pockets full of money.  Others under the influence of drink have torn up the money or tossed it recklessly away.  Prices have doubled and trebled in the village in a few weeks, and the peasants have come to the conclusion that every American soldier must be a millionaire; as the boys have sometimes told them that the pile of notes, which represents several mouths’ pay, is the amount they receive every month.  Compare this with the $1.80 a month, in addition to a small allowance for his family, which the French private gets, and you will readily see how this false impression is formed.

Temptation and solicitation in Europe have been in almost exact proportion to the pay that the soldier receives.  The harpies flock around the men who have the most money.  As our American boys are the best paid, and perhaps the most generous and open-hearted and reckless of all the troops, they have proved an easy mark in Paris and the port cities.  As soon as they were paid several months’ back salary, some of them took “French leave,” went on a spree, and did not come back until they were penniless.  The officers, fully alive to the danger, are now doing their utmost to cope with the situation; they are seeking to reduce the cash payments to the men and are endeavoring to persuade them to send more of their money home.  Court martial and strict punishment have been imposed for drunkenness, in the effort to grapple with this evil.

Will the friends of our American boys away in France try to realize just the situation that confronts them?  Imagine a thousand healthy, happy, reckless, irrepressible American youths put down in a French village, without a single place of amusement but a drinking hall, and no social life save such as they can find with the French girls standing in the doorways and on the street corners.  Think of all these men shut up, month after month, through the long winter, with nothing to do to occupy their evenings.  Then you will begin to realize the seriousness of the situation which the Young Men’s Christian Association is trying to meet.