Our Part in the Great War by Arthur Gleason (1878-1923) was based on two years of observing and participating in the war effort. That time included one year in the war zone and five months at the front. He visited Verdun, Nancy, and other parts of France.
Gleason's goal with the book was to change the minds of Americans who were neutral about the war. He tried to do this with heavily documented accounts of the destruction of Belgian and French villages by German soldiers. He tried to convey the tragedy, heartbreak, and poignancy of the destruction.
Diaries taken from dead and captured German soldiers helped reveal the extent of this destruction. Gleason was given special access to these diaries, which were formally required for officers and informally required for soldiers at the beginning of the war in 1914. This practice was later stopped.
This German destruction was also documented by interviews with civilians whose villages were looted and burned by German soldiers. Gleason wrote:
I want the people at home to understand this war. So I am telling of it in terms that are homely. I asked the authorities to let me wander through villages and talk with the inhabitants. What a village suffers, what a storekeeper suffers, will mean something to my friends in Iowa and Connecticut. Talk of artillery duels with big guns and bayonet charges through barbed wire falls strangely on peaceful ears. But what a druggist's wife has seen, what a school-teacher tells, will come home to Americans in Eliot, Maine and down the Mississippi Valley.Gleason wrote that the German soldiers' method of burning buildings indicated that this arson was premeditated and not spontaneous. The soldiers were armed with small tablets, which when broken started burning.
Some people challenged the truth of what Gleason wrote about his experiences in Europe in an earlier book that he wrote with his wife Helen Hayes Gleason (Golden Lads: A Thrilling Account of how the invading War Machine crushed Belgium). In an appendix of Our Part in the Great War, Gleason responded that his information was based on his personal observations; testimony from civilians; and the German war diaries.
Our Part in the Great War also describes the work of Americans who joined the war effort before 1917. These people included surgeons, nurses, ambulance drivers, stretcher-bearers and fighter pilots (who are described in detail in Flying for France).
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| From Our Part in the Great War |
Other Americans in the war effort were relief workers in France, including the famous novelist Edith Wharton (who wrote about her war experiences in Fighting France). These relief workers fed, housed, and found employment for refugees from Belgium and France. American relief workers also helped refugees from war-torn Serbia.
For example, the American Relief Clearing House in Paris worked to efficiently deliver American donations of money and goods to where they could be best used in Belgium and France.
A large section of Our Part in the Great War takes a close sociopolitical look at Americans who were neutral about the war, particularly people in the Midwest. Gleason felt that many Americans were not fully informed about the war.
He tried to help Americans better understand their historical roots, including France's aid during the Revolutionary War. He wrote:
I have told of what the American tradition of nationality has driven our men and women and our boys to do in France. They see the fight of France as our fight, just as France saw the American Revolution as her struggle. None of this work was done in vague humanitarianism. These men and women and boys are giving of their best for a definite aim. They are giving it to the American cause in France. France is defending the things that used to be dear to us, and our fellow-countrymen who are of the historic American tradition are standing at her side.Along with Golden Lads, Gleason's visits to the war zone also produced Young Hilda at the Wars, a collection of short fictional stories that were based on the Red Cross work in France of Gleason's wife Helen.
Our Part in the Great War was published around April 5, 1917, when it was reviewed in the Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Telegraph. Front page headlines in that day's Telegraph included:
- HOUSE WILL APPROVE WAR DECLARATION BY BIG VOTE; CITY TO PLEDGE LOYALTY
- APPROPRIATION OF $3,400,000,000 NEEDED FOR WAR / Big Increase Needed in Enlisted Strength of Navy and Marine Corps
- TWO VESSELS IN BELGIAN RELIEF WORK ARE SUNK / U-Boat Wounds Crew by Shelling Boats Lowered From Ship
Online versions:
Newspaper information from Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/)
Photograph from Our Part in the Great War
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