Impression and Belief

There are only two kinds of men. Those who fight with their faces to the enemy--who are the victors--and those who fight with their tails to the enemy --who are the vanquished. From time immemorial, the victors have laughed at the vanquished; and so the desire to avoid the imputation of cowardice is a primitive complex. Every man resents it.

Hence the storm that arose last week. Major General Robert Lee Bullard, who commanded the First Division, then the Third Corps, later the Second Army of the A. E. F., has written his memoirs of the War, which have appeared serially in the New York Herald-Tribune and the Chicago Tribune. With each installment, he printed an apology for possible error. ". . . I am not offering these memoirs as absolute fact, but as my impression and belief at the time." Nevertheless, critics swarmed last week when one installment was printed, describing General Bullard's experiences with the 92nd (Negro, draft) Division which formed part of his (Second) Army during the last few weeks of the War:

The Cry.

I . . . found that in the battle of the Meuse-Argonne, a part of the 92d Division, beside the French in battle, had twice run away from in front of the enemy, causing the

French, for their own safety, to request the relief of the Negro division from the fighting line. Some 30 Negro officers were involved in this running away. Five--the clearest cases and supposed leaders of the movements--only five, had been selected for trial by the law officers of the Second Army. A court martial, composed of officers from another, a white division, had been ordered for this purpose.

(General Bullard told how all five were sentenced to death but how he, knowing that ". . . even the most exact justice meted out to Negroes, if meted out by white men alone, becomes to Negroes injustice . . ." had recommended that President Wilson pardon them. This was done.)

He quoted from his diary (Nov. 5) :

I saw especially the Negroes, the 92 Division, which, after more than a month in the trenches, cannot yet make a raid. It failed again on one today. Poor Negroes! They are hopelessly inferior.

From about Oct. 25, then, until a few days before Armistice, I put forth every effort to have this division execute some offensive operation, as a raid, against the enemy. The division was large and composed of exceptionally husky, vigorous looking soldiers, well equipped. The enemy troops against them were of second or third class, not by any means the best. I provided the most skilled French and American advisers and instructors for them in an effort to have them execute a successful raid. I never succeeded even to a slight degree. As I remember, in those three weeks this division of some 27,000 men captured one German!

The Negro is a more sensual man than the white man and at the same time he is far more offensive to white women than a white man is. The little acts of familiarity that would pass unnoticed in a white man, becomes with white women the cause of complaint against the Negro. This special Negro division was already charged with 15 cases of rape.

For these reasons, immediately after the Armistice, I recommended in effect that this division be sent home first of all American troops, that they be sent home in all honor, but, above all, that they be sent quick. The answer came that Marshal Foch would not, pending peace, approve the transfer of any division back to the United States. In answer, I told the American headquarters to say to Marshal Foch that no man could be respon sible for the acts of these Negroes toward French women, and that he had better send this division home at once. This brought the order.

The Outcry. Following the appearance of these statements, the Herald-Tribune began to publish letters of protest.

Wrote James Weldon Johnson, Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People:

It may contribute to an understanding of this extraordinary article of General Bullard to know that he was born in Alabama, one of the Southern states with the worst reputation for its treatment of colored people.

In reference to the A. E. F., I may cite General Sherrill, Colonel William Hayward, Colonel Arthur Little and Major Hamilton Fish, all of whom repeatedly and in public have spoken and written in the warmest term's of the devoted loyalty, the unflagging cheerfulness and the unexceled bravery of the Negro troops under their command. Moreover, two of the officers I have named expressed amazement that any troops could bear up under the continual insult, calumny and indignities visited upon the colored men in their command by white men and officers presumably harboring just such an attitude as is revealed in the article of General Bullard.

Wrote Congressman (onetime Major) Hamilton Fish:

I do not know whether General Bullard comes from the far South as his name indicates, but I do know that his indictment of the Negro soldiers is absolutely unfair and unwarranted.

Fortunately, we have much better regular army authority than General Bullard on the conduct of American Negro troops in war. Colonel James A. Moss, a graduate of West Point, who served 18 years with Negro troops and commanded the 372d Infantry in France, says: "If properly trained and instructed, the Negro makes as good a soldier as the world has ever seen. The history of the Negro in all of our wars, including our Indian campaigns, shows this. He is by nature of a happy disposition, he is responsive and tractable, he is very amenable to discipline, he has faith and confidence in his leader, and he possesses physical courage, all of which are valuable military assets. . . .

If any one questions the bravery of the American Negro soldier, let me relate the story of Sergeant Butler, of Company L, 369th Infantry, who pursued a German raiding party into No Man's Land after it had captured a white American officer and four or five Negro soldiers, and who alone and unaided, except by the small machine gun he carried, freed the white officer and the Negro soldiers and killed a half dozen of the German raiding party and seriously wounded the German officer, who later died in our trenches.