The next impression we receive is the enormous moral danger to which
these men are exposed in this far-away foreign land. During the whole
war it is the Overseas Forces, the men farthest from home influences,
who have no hope of leave or furlough, who are far removed from all
good women and the steadying influence of their own reputations, that
have fared the worst in the war. The Americans not only share this
danger with the Colonials and other Overseas Forces, but they have an
additional danger in their high pay. Here are enlisted men who tell us
that they are paid from $35 to $90 a month, from the lowest private to
the best paid sergeants. When you remember that 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