"A month or so ago we had a pay-day here and twenty thousand dollars was collected the first day and sent to relatives and banks in the United States. Every day our mail sergeant sends from one hundred to one thousand dollars per day to the United States for the men in our regiment,--savings of the small salary they received as soldiers. As a whole they are and have learned many things by having had this great war experience."
NEGRO OFFICERS
All this was expected. America knows the value of Negro labor. Negroes knew that in this war as in every other war, they would have the drudgery and the dirt, but they determined that this should not be the end and limit of their services. They did not make the mistake of seeking to escape labor, for they knew that modern war is mostly ordinary toil; they even took without protest the lion's share of the common labor, but they insisted from the first that black men must serve as soldiers and officers.
The White Negro-hating oligarchy was willing to grant some Negro soldiers the privilege of being shot in real war. Also, Whites were easily persuaded to share, provided these black men did not get too much notoriety out of it. But against Negro officers, White soldiers were set against their color.
Whites fougnt the racial battle which was eventually overturned by the unexpected decision of Secretary Baker. Baker encompassed the first defeat of this oligarchy and nearly one thousand colored officers were commissioned.
Immediately, a persistent campaign began: First, was the effort to get rid of Negro officers; second, the effort to discredit Negro soldiers; third, the effort to spread race prejudice in France; and fourth, the effort to keep Negroes out of the Regular Army.
HISTORY OF THE BLACK MAN
First and foremost, war is hell. Military organization is, and must be a tyranny. This is, perhaps, the greatest and most barbarous cost of war and the most pressing reason for it's abolition from civilization. As war means tyranny, the company officer is largely at the mercy of his superior officers.
J.Linzy-8