The exact motivation of the ambulance drivers is elusive. The books, diaries, and letters home of the volunteers tended to describe experience at the front rather than probe introspectively into personal beliefs. That this was so was quite natural, for once the decision to join the ambulance corps had been made, the motives that had impelled the decision were subsumed in the actual experience of being at the front. Also, it is quite possible that the ideals involved in the war, democracy, religion, humanistic civilization and progress, were so largely internalized by most drivers that they usually felt no need to articulate them. Finally, there was a natural reticence on the part of the drivers in disclosing their innermost feelings. Mrs. Vanderbilt wrote of the drivers in her article, "My Trip to the Front," that "It was hard, of course, to get them to talk about anything so self-revealing as why they were doing ambulance work at the front," though she did not feel that "a sense of adventure was the impelling motive in most instances."(93) Most other observers who visited the front and talked with the gentlemen volunteers concluded that the drivers believed important ideals to be at stake in the First World War, ideals that involved themselves and America.

Richard Norton, who certainly should have known, felt that a "volunteer from another land, one who is not fighting for his own people, has to have a strong sense of the ultimate value of the work he has chosen to do."(94) For many drivers the sense of the "ultimate value" of their work came from Liberal Culture's idealistic view of the war as a war for civilization coupled with upper-class ideals of service and duty. The idealistic tenor of the ambulance service had been formed early in the war by those drivers who had first volunteered for service. Of these early drivers, the vast majority were from the bastions of Liberal Culture, the Ivy League schools. At the beginning of 1916 the Field Service counted 98 men from Harvard, 28 from Princeton, 27 from Yale, 9 from Columbia, and 8 from Dartmouth, but only "occasionally one man from a college" from the schools of the mid-west.(95) Toward the end of the war, with America's entry into the hostilities, the ambulance services did become more popular and many non-Eastern college students volunteered for duty. While these men did not necessarily come from schools strongly affected by Liberal Culture, the tone of the service had already been set by the early volunteers from the Ivy League.

The men of the ambulance services were usually the elite of their colleges. After Dartmouth sent its first full section, President Hopkins noted that among these young men are some of the finest in the college.(96) Mrs. Vanderbilt, while in Paris, went through the personnel files of the Field Service and was much impressed by what she found. "They are men who have been leaders in college, who have made a good start in business or law, or engineering, who have arranged to give six months to the cause of France and the things which she and her allies are fighting for." She concluded that: "They do not look the part of the soldier of fortune who gives his loyalty lightly."(97) Nor did they act the part of an unmotivated soldier. Acts of heroism were common and there were "many maimed and many decorated." John Masefield declared that "very nearly half the members of their company [the Field Service] have won either the Military Medal or the Cross of War."(98)

As men raised in the tradition of Liberal Culture and as leaders of their respective colleges, most viewed the war in terms of Liberal Culture as did their professors. Some felt the need to volunteer as an example to others. One driver declared that "We owe to France our existence as an independent nation...." That, in itself was reason enough to volunteer his services. The historical obligation to France when coupled with the idea of humanistic civilization attacked by the scientific barbarism of Germany proved irresistible to most drivers. The same volunteer continued that while we owed our nationhood to France, more importantly we, "along with the rest of the world," owed to France "the inspiration which she has given in every field of art and thought."(99) This latter idea that a defense of France was also a defense of civilization led many drivers to conclude that their service was of earth-shaking importance. So many new men in his section were filled with a sense of self-importance, that William Yorke Stevenson, section chief, was moved to write that the new men "all regard themselves as young Atlases, supporting France and the world through the grace of God and Ford."(100) Though Stevenson wrote this somewhat tongue-in-cheek, clearly most drivers took their duty quite seriously.

The notion that the defense of France was also the defense of humanistic western civilization led to a vilification of Germany on the part of the drivers. Germany was thought to be anti-religious, anti-democratic, and, due to its replacement of human values with scientific efficiency, coldly inhuman. Most drivers were motivated by these beliefs, although after service at the front, they found German impiety and scientific values merely to be facets of a basic German barbarism. This led most volunteers to perceive the First World War as a defense of western civilization that could only be settled by Germany's complete and utter defeat.

For the more religious volunteers, especially the Catholics, religion was an extremely important issue in the Great War. Often the volunteers were referred to in Christ-like terms. Arthur Kimber, a Stanford student who after America's entry into the war brought the first official American flag to the second Stanford A.F.S. section, was described in a Stanford student magazine as "A true soldier of the cross," who, like Christ, "grimly went forward to meet his destiny."(101) If the drivers were Christ-like then the Germans were devils. For the religious volunteer the ultimate proof of this was found in the German destruction of French churches. Edward Coyle, in his memoir, Ambulancing on the French Front, wrote that "the churches always seemed to be the first thing razed to the ground by enemy fire."(102) If the deliberate bombing of French churches was bad, even worse were the conditions of churches that had been behind the German lines. A driver was shocked by a case of German sacrilege that he discovered when he entered an abandoned church: "The figures of the Mother Mary and Joseph and that of the Christ in the center were intact with the exception that some German Hun had decapitated the figure of Christ."(103) Another driver who served on the front in Alsace Lorraine recalled that the "Germans took the statues of all the saints from the church and had put them in a graveyard for German dead. When they left they blew up the church."(104) For the religious volunteer, such German action effectively displayed the anti-Christian nature of German civilization, just as the destruction of the University of Louvain had convinced many academicians of the anti-humanistic tendencies of Germany.

While the destruction of churches was viewed by the religious as sacrilege, the non-religious volunteers felt that such destruction was simply barbarism. Those volunteers interested in the aesthetics of French civilization were extremely distressed by the destruction of French cathedrals in the war zone. Of these, the most famous was the cathedral at Rheims, which was partially destroyed by German artillery. When Reginald Sullivan, ambulance driver and author of Somewhere in France toured Paris, he observed that "Notre Dame was never lovelier...its rose window seems to have grown more beautiful...mourning for her sister in Rheims."(105) For many drivers the partial destruction of the Rheims cathedral was only one example of the many crimes against western civilization perpetrated by the Germans.(106)

Nearly every article or book by an ambulance driver contained at least one German atrocity story; indeed, such stories were almost obligatory. These stories ran the gamut from the commonplace to the highly original. One favorite topic was the German bombing of hospitals. A driver recorded in his diary that "last night a German aeroplane (sic) bombed the Valelaincourt hospital... It was a terrible deed done apparently in cold blood."(107) In that particular case most drivers were not terribly upset, since the hospital contained mostly German prisoners of war. Other volunteers described similar scenes in which clearly marked hospitals were bombed by German planes.(108)

One volunteer related the story of the slaughter o the mayor's family of a small French village. The mayor was hung, the elder son shot. When the mother protested, she was bayoneted to death. The younger son was burnt alive in the family stove and the only surviving member of the family, the teenage daughter, was shipped back to Germany, presumably to suffer a fate worse than death. The driver was told this tale by an old French woman after the Germans were driven from the village. Whether the story was true was never determined. However, it is indicative of the state of mind of the volunteers that all members of the section accepted it as fact without any doubts. The abundance of such stories in most memoirs of the ambulance service demonstrates that most drivers were convinced that the "huns" were completely devoid of any morality and were indeed barbarians.

Part and parcel with the belief that the Germans were immoral barbarians was the belief that they had replaced human values with cold science. The question of whether German immorality grew out of a devotion to science or vice-versa was never touched upon in any of the books or diaries of the volunteers, perhaps because both were thought to be part of the German nature. It was assumed, however, that the Germans were devoted to the scientific method. Philip Orcutt reported that at 5:30 every evening the German batteries would shell his sector for ten minutes. "If the Boche were sentimental, we would say it was the early twilight that made him do this," wrote Orcutt, "but as we remember Belgium we call it habit."(109) Such habit was often called method or system. "During one attack through which I worked," recalled Orcutt, "the Boche, whose hobby is getting ranges down to the inch and applying them, as all other things, in a system, put down a 150 [shell] every ten yards down the more important roads."(110) Such "method" in warfare was deplored by the drivers. It made war mechanical, thereby destroying its romance. One wonders, however, if such marksmanship would have been applauded had the artillerymen been French.

The ultimate in German scientific efficiency was described in a rumor that made the rounds of one volunteer's section and was widely believed. According to Julian Bryan, author of Ambulance 464, the Germans had found a new use for their dead. Instead of burying them, "a process which is expensive and certainly very inefficient..." the Germans were believed to take the bodies to a factory some distance behind the lines. There, the bodies were "put into a big machine like a sausage grinder and when the residue [had] been chemically treated they [were] able to extract a considerable amount of glycerine from it."(111) Again, like the atrocity stories, this rumor was apparently believed without question.

Since the Germans were scientific barbarians devoid of morality, it was clear to the volunteers that humanistic civilization could only be saved by the complete defeat of Germany. No truce with a return to the pre-war status quo would have satisfied the majority of the drivers. Drivers perceived the war as a last ditch stand to save western civilization against the invading "hun" a battle in which lives did not count. One driver declared that: "We must all join the fight for humanity and civilization whatever the outcome, and after being here and seeing graveyards with a couple thousand dead in each one, it seems that one life is a small sacrifice."(112) Another typical volunteer thought that the war "must be endured until the power of Germany is destroyed--that the world may be as peaceful as is the sea tonight."(113)

Yet one problem remained. While the vast majority of drivers agreed that Germany must be defeated, they divided over what her postwar treatment should be. Probably most believed, as did A. Piatt Andrew, that the simple German peasant was basically a good person who had been misled by autocratic rulers. The obvious solution thus lay in democracy. In one of Andrew's early letters home he described speaking to a German prisoner. Andrew explained that "we have not anything against you, except that you have a government of the Middle Ages... When you have a republic there won't be anymore [sic] war."(114) This was the moderate course, combining charity and a belief in democracy. However, it was not shared by all drivers.

Barraged with anti-German propaganda, some volunteers felt that all Germans were guilty. William Yorke Stevenson, a Section Chief in the A.F.S. and thus in a position of responsibility, ended his second book, From "Poilu" to "Yank", with a chilling plea for genocide: "I figured out today that if we kill off about 1,000,000 Germans per annum, and they produce 600,000 new ones--like most vermin they breed very rapidly--it would take about one hundred and fifty years to exterminate them. We'll have to do better than we are doing, you see."(115) This exclamation is indicative of just how seriously many volunteers did take the First World War and its issues.

While the ideal of the First World War as a war for civilization, religion, and democracy inspired many drivers, another idealistic reason also encouraged their participation. The drivers shared Liberal Culture's conception of progress--the idea that America, with God's blessing, would inevitably spread her conception of a democratic society over the entire world. If this was to be the case, then America had to participate in the war in order to influence the peace. More importantly though, some drivers went so far as to perceive the First World War not as a struggle between European countries but rather as a fight between Europe and America for control of the world's destiny. What was really at stake in the war was America's soul, her revolutionary and democratic being. If America remained out of the war and merely profited from it, this would constitute a confession to the world that the revolutionary and democratic principles that America had fought for in the Revolutionary War were dead, replaced by the expediencies of a materialistic and pleasure-oriented society. America's special covenant with God would then be void and America's mandate to rule the world in a Pax Americana of justice and right would be invalidated. Thus the concept of progress led many drivers to volunteer their services not just for western civilization but for the good of America.

Such a concept led drivers and their supporters at home to view the gentlemen volunteers as saviors of America's past traditions and glory. The drivers believed, as had advocates of Liberal Culture, that a growing materialism in American society threatened to destroy her basic values. "Forty years of peace and commercial prosperity have created a new American tradition" wrote one driver. "Americans today are largely unaware that they are speaking and acting from different motives, impulses, and desires than those of the men who created and established the nation."(116) Piatt Andrew echoed this idea in an early letter home: "Is America no longer a country of ideals beyond success in business and accumulation of material wealth and comfort? Is America no longer capable of making sacrifice except to mammon?... As a nation do we represent nothing which makes us worthy of an enduring future?"(117)

Theodore Roosevelt answered this question. For Roosevelt, the volunteer ambulance drivers, acting within the old American tradition of service and sacrifice, had proved that America did have an enduring future. Roosevelt believed that the drivers had "been helping the nation save its soul" and that there as not "an American worth calling such who [wasn't] under a heavy debt of obligation" to them.(118) Other Americans agreed. "All over our country," wrote one professional writer, "individual Americans are breaking free from the tame herd and taking the old trail again, the trail of hardships and sacrifice." He concluded that "the race of Wendell Phillips and Whittier has representatives above ground."(119) Such beliefs were not confined to middle-aged Americans. Some drivers also entertained them, albeit sparingly and modestly. One fellow thought that with the arrival of the Field Service in France that "The Stars and Stripes again means what it meant in '76 and '12 and '61--it stands for honor and peace and humanity."(120)

Young men worried by an increasingly materialistic America were prime targets for men like Roosevelt, who preached the ideals of duty and service. Roosevelt thought that a college education was a privilege that "must be paid for in performance of duty."(121) Believing that an upper-class justified its existence through service, Roosevelt wrote that "every young man just leaving college ought to feel it incumbent upon him...to try to render some assistance to those who are battling for the right on behalf of Belgium."(122) This theme of duty undoubtedly moved many college men reared in the tradition of Liberal Culture. The most obvious case was that of the men who composed the first camion section of the American Field Service.

In May 1917 the French Government requested that some of the ambulance drivers in the Field Service switch to driving munitions trucks in preparation for a forthcoming French offensive. At the same time a group of drivers from Cornell University arrived in Paris eager for ambulance duty. Since there were no ambulances currently ready for them, the Field Service informed them of the French request. This presented the volunteers with a hard decision, since all had "gone over animated by zeal to perform humane services" rather than to drive munition trucks.(123) Most, in a spirit of service and duty, chose to drive the trucks, though many were upset by the choice. "Had I followed my personal desires I would have refused to leave the ambulance service," wrote one driver, "but I feel that any sacrifice I make is trivial."(124) Another volunteer felt the same way: "Personally, I would rather drive a Ford [ambulance] than a truck, but I think it is up to us to go where we can help most."(125) A third stated the matter more simply. "It was our duty to join where needed" he wrote home, "and this we did."(126) Such conceptions of duty were probably typical of most drivers within the services.

Since the war was conceived of as a testing of America, most drivers were exuberant when on April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany. Arthur Kimber thought that with America's declaration of war: "The greater battle has been fought. The victory is won. The soul of America is triumphant."(127) Philip Orcutt believed that America's participation marked her coming of age and that "when Germany transgressed, America stepped across the bridge from youth to manhood and picking up the iron gauntlet proceeded to settle the question by force of arms--the one indisputable argument."(128)

In coming into manhood, America also accepted her destiny of world leadership. This caused some drivers to change their perception of the war from a fight against German barbarism to a more cosmic conception of successive civilizations. Orcutt declared that this war is to make Democracy secure only in that it is the continual struggle between the new and the old, a struggle whose issue is certain before the start--civilization moves to the west. America is the vanguard of European civilization moving westward."(129) Other drivers also saw a new dawn of civilization rising in the west. One volunteer wrote that America "in her unselfish dedication" would be "the noblest, the most unselfish, the most glamorous of all" the nations on earth. Waxing poetic, he wrote, "America! the splendid daylight flooding the New World of Humanity and the Humanities."(130) Thus, through her entry into the war, America affirmed her rightful place as the leader of nations and mankind.

Though most drivers believed that important ideals were involved in the First World War and were motivated by them, many volunteers also desired to experience war at first hand. Dos Passos wrote in his introduction to One Man's Initiation, a semi-autobiographical novel of ambulance driving on the Western front, that his generation had spent its boyhood "in the afterglow of the peaceful nineteenth century. There was a war on. What was war like? We wanted to see with our own eyes."(131) This natural curiosity when combined with a desire to be of service strongly motivated many drivers to join the ambulance services. Even A. Piatt Andrew revealed mixed motives. In a letter to his parents he enthusiastically wrote: "Isn't it a great chance? Isn't it a piece of good fortune that I happen to be free in this great moment of history? And isn't it worth while to make some sacrifices in order to have one's little share in the great events that are going on."(132)

Many volunteers went to war actively searching for adventure and experience that would normally have been denied them. Reginald Sullivan remembered "wanting to taste of the hardship prisoners and soldiers endure..." and Edward Coyle, when asked why he had enlisted, replied: "Well, I guess I wanted to see some action."(133) Another driver, William Yorke Stevenson, related that he was given a choice between joining a section that was "en repos" (resting) or joining a newly formed section that as yet had not seen any action. Eager for the war experience he "took a chance" on the new section and Andrew, who understood his desire for action, told him that he "had chosen wisely."(134) Soon Stevenson was in the thick of it at Verdun, where his desire for action was presumably sated. Though there were individual differences in degree, obviously most drivers were at least partially motivated by a desire to experience the adventure of war.

The war experience proved a fascinating and hypnotic one to any of the volunteers. Though disgusted with the carnage, some found a peculiar delight in the spectacle of war. A driver described: "The flashing cars and bright winged aeroplanes, the immense concourse of horses, the vast orderly tumult, thousands of mixed items, separate things and men, all shaped by one will to a common purpose, all of it clothed in wonder, full of speed and color."(135) Another driver wrote that "it is an extraordinary and exhilarating feeling to be actually taking in the greatest battle of history from a front row seat." He eventually concluded that "those who declare that there is nothing picturesque about modern warfare are all off, it is gorgeous."(136) He was echoed in this by yet another gentleman volunteer who thought Verdun "a wonderful experience" that he "would not have missed for the world."(137) Even Richard Norton fell under the spell of war, though he was still appalled by it. In a letter to his brother Charles that was later published in the New York Times, Norton wrote that: "Taken all in all, this is the most tremendous and interesting and horrible spectacle one could imagine."(138) Though clearly not finding it a "wonderful experience" even Norton was affected by the sheer impact of the war as an experience.

The nightly rocket bombardments were one of the most impressive aspects of the war. Almost every book on the ambulance service mentions the beauty of such shelling. Stevenson described climbing a hill after dinner to get a better view of a heavy bombardment. He felt it a "wonderful sight--a mixture of a thunderstorm and Fourth of July; the incessant rumble of the guns with the great flashes lighting up the sky for miles coupled with the beautiful blue and white flares which hung in the heavens for half a minute or more at a time."(139) Philip Orcutt was equally impressed. "All merge together," he wrote "first one, then another standing forth to catch the eye for a brief second, the kaleidoscopic brilliancy lifting one up out of the depths of the mire...and one sees only the wonderful beauty of the scene: a picture impressed on the memory which makes all seem worthwhile."(140) Others felt that the bombs made a really superb display making "one's blood sing with the sheer beauty and thrill of it all."(141) Finally, Reginald Sullivan wrote that for sheer spectacular magnificence, I cannot imagine anything more wonderful. Compared with it the volcano on Hawaii is almost commonplace."(142)

Of course, to fully appreciate the night bombardments it was necessary to separate the image from the reality. While a volunteer might watch the shells in fascination, a victim of one of the shells might be brought into the dressing station to await evacuation. Most drivers realized this. One called the lights "treacherous will o' the wisps leading men to death, yet still he found it possible to enjoy the spectacle.(143) It was also dangerous to watch the shells. The only safe place during a bombardment was in a dugout, but still the volunteers persisted in gazing at the shells, mesmerized. "That's the funny part of it all" wrote one driver, "the shelling fascinates you, and you stand out in the open liable to be hit at any minute, but perfectly happy as long as you can watch what is going on."(144)

Undoubtedly one of the reasons why the volunteers were able to separate the image from the reality of the shells was that their odds of being hit, since they were only on a six month tour of duty, were much less than those of the poilus, for whom the visual impact of the nightly bombardment had long ago grown stale. For some drivers this tempting of the odds was another reason why they exposed themselves while viewing the shelling. For these men, the act of exposing oneself to shellfire was a test of courage. In a sense, a man was gambling with his life for a thrill. The danger of death would make an individual come completely and immediately alive, all senses tingling. One driver described an evening of German shelling as invigorating. "If I should be killed," he wrote, "I would want to be killed at a time like this, when your heart is full to the overflowing, your nerves keyed up to the limit. . ."(145) Nor was gambling with death confined to the night observations of star shells. Another driver recounted that once his convoy was pinned down for an hour by a boche attack. "Each time one exploded [a boche shell]" he recalled, "a few red-hot fragments would fall into the road in front of us. Then would ensue a wild scramble for souvenirs... A minute later everybody would rush back under the bank to wait for the next shell."(146)

When shells were not falling, the volunteers had other ways to test their courage. The souvenir craze, earlier described, had its darker side. In order to make souvenirs, drivers would attempt to open German shells that had not exploded on impact. The process of unloading a live shell was of course dangerous. If one exploded, the best that a volunteer could hope for was to be seriously maimed. Despite the fact that the drivers would occasionally be called upon to evacuate a poilu who had been wounded in the process of unloading a shall (from which he would make a cigarette lighter that he would then sell to the drivers), the habit of collecting shells persisted among some of the drivers. Such souvenirs were viewed by their owners as tangible evidence of personal courage, though more experienced drivers thought them to be more revealing of personal stupidity.

It should not be thought that flirting with death was either a common or approved practice among Field Service members. It was usually indulged in by new volunteers who had not had an opportunity to experience the worst that the First World War had to offer. Although most drivers did engage in such activities at least once, a very few paying with their lives, after a month's service at the front most drivers had seen enough of death and had enough experience to last them a lifetime. As Julian Bryan put it: "I have finally seen what I cams over for, and a lot more besides--war, real war, stripped of glory."(147)

For most drivers "real war stripped of glory revolved around the casualties of war that it was their business to carry. A dead man is never a pretty sight and wounds caused by high explosive shells quickly impressed the newcomer with the macabre side of war. Leslie Buswell, author of Ambulance No. 10, described his first experience with death and mutilated bodies. "I had never seen a dead body until that moment," he wrote, "It was a horrible awakening--eight stiff, semi-detached, armless, trunkless, headless bodies--all men like ourselves...I felt like being sick."(148) This was the initial reaction of most drivers. It was the experience with death that most impressed the volunteers. "It is a side of the front which has not touched us deeply before," wrote Philip Orcutt, "a side which in the first few days...impresses itself more and more on the novice, until he learns to temper the realization with philosophy and the so-called humor of the front."(149)

Most drivers did learn the "humor of the front" and it was grim humor indeed. They learned to mask their initial feelings of revulsion for a dead body and would instead laugh and continue their work. An anonymous driver was shocked to find the quality of callousness developing in himself. In a letter home he wrote, "I am quite surprised that I can look at all these bloody and dying men almost unmoved."(150) Yet such a feeling was necessary for survival at the front. Obsessed with the living, the volunteers did not have time for the dead or the dying. The hardening to death and suffering was natural, surrounded as they were by it. John Masefield graphically described the conditions in which the drivers worked in his article "The Harvest of the Night." The tired drivers sat "on a bench beside the buckets of legs and [fell] asleep there, and [woke] up from time to time to see men bending over the table, and great shadows falling and shifting on the ceiling, and limbs turning yellow from iodine."(151) Under such conditions a man either learned to accept death and suffering or he cracked under the pressure.(152) Even A. Piatt Andrew admitted that he had grown callous while driving in Dunkirk early in the war. "By the time I left," he recalled, "after seeing thousands of mutilated bodies and broken human beings, I ceased almost to realize that they were human...and if they groaned with pain one felt almost annoyed rather than sympathetic."(153) The first aid posts and the hospitals, with their pile of discarded and now ownerless equipment, became one of the favorite haunts of the souvenir collectors, who often wandered by to see "if anything interested had been added to the pile during the night."(154) Interested in souvenirs of the "Great" war they were, after a few months at the front, oblivious to the dead.

Although many gentlemen volunteers joined the ambulance services in search of war experience, most did so not for the experience per se but rather for what war experience had traditionally brought in Liberal Culture: Manhood. A very few drivers were like Dos Passos, who noted in his diary that: "The stream of sensation flows by--I suck it up like a sponge,"(155) but for most volunteers such a position was much too passive. Rather, most drivers conceived of the war experience as a vast testing ground of a man's personal character and qualities. The war, with its ever-present chance of death, would bring out hidden qualities in a man, qualities that otherwise would never be tested and known. The war was divine fire that would burn out a man's impurities, leaving only the good behind, if a man were of good character to start with. In the words of Philip Orcutt: "Whatever sort of creature he is on the surface, the fire test, if a man passes it and is not shrivelled in its all-consuming flame, must develop in him certain latent and hitherto buried attributes which are fit to see the light of day."(156) It was this experience that most drivers were actively seeking in the war.

The war experience tested and molded a driver in many ways. Much of the testing occurred on a purely physical plane. Liberal Culture had always placed a premium on the physical aspects of manliness. George M. Fredrickson has remarked that, for Oliver Wendell Holmes and men like him who were to become models of manhood within Liberal Culture, "strenuousness and courage were not means to an end but ends in themselves."(157) Advocates of Liberal Culture, through football and their general concept of "character," had tried to maintain such ideals and pass them on to their charges. In the main, they had succeeded in this. Many drivers carried such ideals with them to the First World War and attempted to measure themselves against Liberal Culture's standard of manliness. Attempts to prove one's courage led to the collection of dangerous souvenirs or the sticking of one's head above the trench, thus exposing oneself to German fire. Courage and endurance were held to be two prime manly virtues and, since they were also taught in football, they were sometimes referred to in sporting terms. Thus the American Field Service Bulletin , a small monthly magazine-report sent to the sections from the Field Service headquarters in Paris, noted that a driver named Morse, a former Princeton football player, had been cited by the French government for displaying heroism under fire. In the words of the Bulletin, Morse had shown himself to be "the true type of American athlete when he refused to quit under fire."(158) "Under fire" were the key words, for the most important aspect of the front was the chance of death; understandably then, when a man had proved himself equal to the physical dangers of the front, he took a certain amount of pleasure in knowing that he was able to confront hardships and bullets without flinching. Arthur Kimber was probably typical of most drivers who had successfully tested their manhood. In a letter home he commented that it was a relief to know that he didn't "wither under gunfire" or "lose (his) head in an unequal battle."(159)

The war experience had more valuable lessons to offer, however, than merely testing a man's physical courage or endurance. Though the war experience taught discipline, obedience, courage, and endurance, such things could be taught almost as well on the playing field as on the battle ground. The most important lessons of the war were abstract and metaphysical. Because of the proximity of death, the war experience tended to reinforce certain values or beliefs that most volunteers had never really thought about or had taken for granted. Many drivers gained from the war a belief in the ideal of service and self-sacrifice and from this a sense of purpose in life. This was the most important facet of the war experience, for it meant that the drivers had internalized not just Liberal Culture's ideal of courage and strenuousness but also the more abstract ideals of patriotism and service to which the more physical aspects of manhood were to be applied. In a sense the war experience caused the drivers to become mentally as well as physically "men". A. Piatt Andrew was thus entirely correct when he described the war experience as having been a "strengthening, a refining, a democratizing, a spiritualizing process" for the volunteers.(160)

In their letters and diaries, the drivers agreed that the war experience had been extremely valuable in changing their values and their corresponding outlook on the world. Participation in the war had forced them to think of others, and not to dwell on their own personal problems. As one driver put it, "one can never allow even a shadow of one's personal problems to appear. The personal equation practically doesn't exist here."(161) The curbing of individual desires allowed most drivers to find an entirely new world in service and self-sacrifice. A driver who was described as "a young millionaire" typified this change. "I never used to do anything of value" he admitted, "but I won't be able to live like that after the war."(162) In this he was similar to Reginald Sullivan who wrote his parents that the war had given him a perspective from which to analyze his "chaotic life of the past three years and to make a number of resolutions" as to the type of life he would lead in the future.(163) Many drivers became so imbued with the ideals of self-sacrifice and service that they found all civilian life to be banal and pointless. Edward Coyle related that when he had visited a French town while on leave, he found that the usual civilian life there "seemed so artificial, so futile, and aimless" when compared with life at the front.(164) Coyle expressed an impression common to many drivers. Believing that they had learned the ultimate values of life and death, most drivers would have agreed with the volunteer who wrote that "to spend one's youth in this great war is a privilege not a sacrifice... There is nothing more to life then these things if you measure values correctly."(165) The important values were, of course, service and self-sacrifice for cause.

Valuing as they did the ideals of personal sacrifice, it is not surprising that most drivers, even those who had volunteered strictly from a desire for adventure, fell in love with wartime France. In France, the volunteers were confronted with an entire nation operating on the ideals of patriotism, sacrifice, and service. For young men reared in the tradition of Liberal Culture, such ideals and the very idea of a nation working together for a common cause were enticing. Most found France to be extremely inspirational. "No one can go to France without coming back filled with admiration for the way the nation is behaving during these tragic days," wrote one driver.(166) Another volunteer was especially impressed by the "willingness [of the French] to sacrifice everything for the great cause."(167) Such willingness was important, for Germany too was a nation working for a cause. However, Germany was believed to be doing so in a cold and scientific way with professional soldiers, while the French were thought to be individualists who willingly gave to their country "all that they have or can hope for," while "smiling in the midst of suffering and unmindful of death."(168) For many drivers, wartime France, with its heroic people, became a model for a nobler America.

Thus many drivers were profoundly moved by the French people. Even those men who had been motivated solely by a desire for adventure became idealistic and identified with the French struggle. One volunteer remarked that after being in France for a while, his adventurous band of friends' "point of view was altered and we were ashamed by our primary object in offering our services."(169) In the words of another driver, "France gets sort of a grip on you that is hard to explain and one begins to want to stay to 'see it through'."(170) Many did stay, renewing their six month contract, but even those who could not, due to school or job, returned to the United States with a love for France and an increased belief in the ideals of patriotism, service, and sacrifice.

For many drivers then, the war was a profound psychological experience that reinforced Liberal Culture's ideal of service and self-sacrifice and generally engendered a high moral and intellectual tone. In seeking experience and a physical test of manhood within the war experience, the volunteers tapped a moral and spiritual dimension that had lain dormant within themselves. The example of France amplified this feeling, with the result that many drivers came away from the war with reinforced ideals and values- Ironically, these values were to make their eventual return and assimilation into an increasingly materialistic America a painful and disillusioning process.

The volunteer American ambulance services each possessed a small minority of men who can only be termed outsiders. For various reasons, these drivers viewed the war in terms altogether different from the mass of their fellow drivers. Some drivers, such as Malcolm Cowley or E. E. Cummings, volunteered their services only because they wished to experience war. The First World War did not involve principles important to them. As a result they struck the pose of non-participant observer. Other drivers, though initially highly motivated by humanitarian impulses, were shocked by the seemingly pointless carnage of war and became embittered cynics and/or revolutionaries who found the abstract values of the war pointless and the French people themselves selfish. A third, and perhaps the largest group of dissenters were men who, though believing in the abstract value of their fellow drivers, simply could not stand the strain of the war. By failing to prove their manhood, they placed themselves outside the ranks of their comrades.

The largest and most easily understood group were those men who simply could not bear the strain of the war. Some of these men were cowards, but most were probably brave enough initially, and were just worn down by the war. The process leading to a breakdown is easy enough to understand. The initial shelling, though frightening, was relatively easy to bear since it was "a new and interesting experience...." However, after a driver had carried his share of mutilated bodies, had a comrade or two wounded, or perhaps had a close call with a shell himself, the shelling became "more of a nervous strain."(171) The long hours and lack of sleep added to such strain, causing some drivers to brood upon the horrors of war which the majority of the drivers simply sloughed off. One sensitive driver exclaimed: "The horror of the whole war is growing on me day to day, and sometimes when I have got into my bed...the horrors of blood--broken arms, mutilated trunks, and ripped open faces, etc.--haunt me."(172) Another driver commented that though the "terrible sights" should not bother him, as he had seen so many, "each one seems worse than the others."(173) Quite naturally, this dwelling on the horrors of war by the more sensitive drivers sometimes resulted in nervous breakdowns. William Yorke Stevenson remarked that two of the drivers in his section "ware unable to stand the strain" and were "returned to Paris."(174) Other drivers who did not have break-downs but feared the ever-present chance of death simply refused to drive their cars. Reginald Sullivan found that within his section there were "some pathological cowards...who simply refused to run any risks at all and when they [were] asked to, [went] to work and put their cars out of commission in the most obvious way possible."(175) While such cowardice was not common, it was really only to be expected. After all, if the war was a test of a man's character, not all the candidates could be expected to pass.

The horrors of war could lead equally to a nervous breakdown or to a complete rejection of the war in the mind of an ambulance driver. "The horror goes on and on," wrote one driver. "Even though I give my life I am powerless to save those men who will follow me. This is surely a generation of madmen."(176) Such a realization could lead to a complete rejection of both the values and the presumed character building qualities of the war. "Patriotism will some day be a thing of the past," wrote Stanley Kimmel, whose "Crucifixion, the Experience of a Red Cross Ambulance Driver in France" stands as the most bitter memoir of any driver. "As it stands now," he wrote, "it means nothing more than the suicide of a nation which contains the most patriots."(177)

Kimmel did not believe that the war purified an individual or a nation. Unlike other drivers who found the French soldier to be generous and thoughtful of others, Kimmel wrote that "if the American does not have the money he is an outcast in the eyes of the French. As long as he can pay three or four times as much for what he buys...then he is welcome to stay in France and get the best they have to offer."(178) Kimmel found the French to be an egotistical and selfish people who would barter for any and everything, including honor. Perhaps his most disillusioning disclosure was that the French Croix de guerre was meaningless as he had "seen them given to men far back of the lines for no reason whatever...."(179) For Kimmel, the war was pure carnage fought for no abstract values and exerting no redeeming influence on its participants. The war was a business in which men tried to survive and the highest military medals were up for sale to the highest bidders.

Several other drivers went through the same disillusioning process that Kimmel experienced. John Dos Passos described Martin Howe, the hero of First Encounter who is probably an accurate portrait of Dos Passos at the time, as viewing the chaos and destruction of the war and thinking to himself "And this was what all the centuries of civilisation had struggled for."(180) For Dos Passos, the war was simply not worth fighting. Both he and Kimmel believed that the average French soldier did not want to continue the war but was forced to by his Allied government. Kimmel wrote that before he left America he had been told that the poilus were joyous to be of service to their country and went gladly to the front. "I was fooled" he commented. "These men have all the sadness and suffering of Christ in their eyes."(181) Dos Passos, in a letter home, concurred: "The whole performance is a ridiculous farce. Everyone wants to go home; to get away at any costs from the hell of the front."(182) Such disillusionment led to cynicism over the real cause of the war. Dos Passos felt it was "only the greed and stubbornness and sheer stupidity of the allied [sic] governments and, if you will of the German government, that keeps it going."(183)

In Dos Passos' First Encounter, Martin Howe describes the war as "a gigantic battle fought over the plunder of the world by pirates who have grown fat to the point of madness on the work of the people."(184) Such a feeling led to a hope on the part of a few of the drivers that the war would lead to a final revolution. Without such a revolution, Kimmel feared, the eventual settlement of the war would be a "settlement of those who remained in the rear out of danger and who will have the power at any future time to again plunge the world into a misery of which they themselves know nothing."(185)

The belief in the possibility of revolution, which by the end of the war had received a boost by the revolution in Russia, served as avoiding complete disillusionment. A belief in revolution held hope that the war would not have been fought in vain. It gave the sensitive and humanitarian inclined volunteers something to believe in, and allowed them to endure the war experience without a nervous breakdown. Since the vast majority of drivers were not disillusioned by the war, however, the revolutionary outlook was never wide spread.

A third group of outsiders was, if possible, even more divorced from the mass of ambulance drivers than were the revolutionaries. Most of the more revolutionary drivers had been originally motivated by the same abstract ideals that had moved their fellow drivers. But in the process of experiencing the war they had become disillusioned, cynical, and eventually revolutionary. The third group of outsiders was not motivated by abstract ideals and thus had no faith to lose. Rather, this group was moved by a simple desire to experience the First World War, not for any abstract belief that the war would develop their character, but simply because the war experience was something new which they did not want to miss.

Two prime examples of this group are Malcolm Cowley and E. E. Cummings, both of whom were to become famous literary figures in the Twenties. Both Cowley and Cummings were primarily moved by a sense of adventure and experience instead of by any idealistic belief in the cause of the Allies. The cause of the French was simply not their cause. Although Cowley admired the French and found the sheer spectacle of the war extremely interesting, he wrote that "it did not seem that we could ever be a part of all this."(186) Neither could Cummings become part of the war effort. When asked by French authorities if he despised the Germans he simply replied: "Non. J'aime beaucoup les Français."(187) The desire for experience was more pronounced in Cummings' The Enormous Room than in Cowley's later Exile's Return. The bulk of The Enormous Room describes life in the concentration camp in which Cummings and his friend "B" were interned, rather than life in the Norton-Harjes sections. So intense was Cummings desire for experience that instead of becoming morose in prison he was delighted by the new experience. In The Enormous Room Cummings lovingly and engagingly described the personages that inhabited the vast holding cell and his experiences there. Cummings found the entire experience so fascinating that he exclaimed to "B": "By God this is the finest place I've ever been in my life... Thank heaven we're out of the ----Section Sanitaire."(188)

Cummings had reason to be thankful that he was no longer in the Norton Section for he and "B" had had frequent disputes with their sous- chief over their lack of cleanliness, motivation, and general military demeanor.(189) Their love of adventure and experience was essentially individualistic and thus had not been at all compatible with the ideas of service and self-sacrifice maintained by most drivers. Though Cowley felt that the war made the drivers "more irresponsible than before," this was only true in the case of those drivers like Cowley and Cummings who had not come to France for idealistic reasons. Men motivated only by a desire for adventure quickly became bored with the dirty but necessary tasks of the service and started to shirk their share of the work. Basically the problem was one of a lack of dedication. Although not widespread, other examples besides that of Cummings existed. William Stevenson, sous-chief, wrote that during his term of duty he fired three men because of undisciplined conduct. One man was fired for getting drunk, another for possessing a surly disposition, and a third because he never cleaned his car and generally refused his driving duties. As Stevenson explained: "We only want men up here who are both able and willing to work and he seemed to be neither."(190) Such was the attitude of the services. For the most part, it did not coincide with a motivation based upon a desire for either experience or adventure.

Thus, within the American volunteer ambulance services there were three groups of drivers who stood outside the mainstream of volunteers because they viewed the war in terms other than those of their comrades. The group probably closest to the mass of the volunteers was composed of men who believed in the values of the war, but who were unable to pass the dire test of personal character, thus placing themselves outside the mainstream of volunteers. A second group was made up of men who originally had believed in the values of the war but who, upon viewing the seemingly senseless carnage of the First World War became either cynical or revolutionary. Finally, a third group was composed of men who entered the services not on moral grounds, but out of a desire for experience. From a literary viewpoint it is this last group that is the most important. It was, in a sense, a precursor to the "lost generation" of the Twenties and was to produce several of that era's major writers. However, the influence of these groups should be carefully weighed, for though perhaps important in later social or intellectual history, all three groups were minuscule in comparison with the bulk of the drivers who perceived the war in the moral terms of a previous generation.

On April 6, 1917, the United States formally put aside its neutrality and declared war on Germany. The volunteer drivers of the ambulance services received the news with elation. But as their first flush of enthusiasm receded, disquieting questions remained, for America's participation in the war threatened the existence of the volunteer ambulance services. Were the services to be disbanded or were they to continue their operations? If the latter, were they to remain under French control or were they to be brought under American jurisdiction? Would they continue to serve French divisions or would they be expected to join the new American-Expeditionary Forces (A. E. F.)? Such questions of an uncertain future succeeded in taking the edge off what many drivers might have considered a personal triumph. In a sense, they had led the way or American participation in the war only to have their own small universe of voluntary service shattered. Although the volunteers strongly supported American participation in the war, some drivers could not help thinking that it marked the end of an era.

For five long months, from early April to late August, the gentlemen volunteers existed in a state of limbo while Pershing and the Allied command wrangled over points of authority. The ambulance services were of course only a minor point. Pershing was committed to maintaining an American force separate from that of the Allies. For the volunteer ambulance services, the implication of this policy was clear. The services would not be allowed to continue functioning under French auspices once the A. E. F. was capable of absorbing the volunteer service. Though the Allied command made no formal statement the more astute volunteers had little trouble reading the handwriting on the wall. The takeover of the American Hospital at Neuilly on July 23, 1917 by the United States Army forecast the probable future of the ambulance services. Barely a month later, on August 29, 1917, the United States Army began the process of militarizing the ambulance services. Drivers were given the option of enlisting for the duration of the war or quitting the service. Within two weeks the militarization was complete. The days of the volunteer ambulance services were gone.

The majority of volunteers had been opposed to the Army's militarization of the ambulance services. Many had hoped, right up to the end of August, that some way would be found to save the services from absorption into the Army. One driver wrote that "it seemed the consensus of opinion that we had earned the right to be a free body and not to lose our identity in the vastness of enlistment."(191) While various reasons for such an opinion existed, most seem to have revolved around a fear of loss of identity within the "vastness of enlistment."

In many ways the ambulance service resembled a select and private club. Most drivers were college educated and possessed the same basic standards and beliefs. Many had met each other, either at school or socially, previous to joining the services. Thus the service was a small world. Almost everywhere a driver turned he found an acquaintance. William Yorke Stevenson, in a letter home to his parents, wrote that an old friend, "Fred Dawson turned up from the Vosges today..." and that he had met "Miss Townsend, of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania today. She is a nurse here."(192) The clubby atmosphere of the service was more pronounced at the start of the war, when most drivers were from eastern Ivy League schools. Small groups bound together by old school ties formed in most sections, and often it was socially difficult for newcomers to enter a new section. Julian Bryan was thus happy when he heard that he would be assigned to a newly created section. "It will be far better to go out with fellows whom we know," he related, "than to break into the cliques of an old crowd."(193)

By the time of America's entry into the war, the atmosphere of the services, though still select, was not as clubby as it had been a year previously. In 1917 the services had been flooded by new drivers, many of whom were not from Ivy-League schools. The influx of new men changed the ambulance services. Stevenson wrote that "the old men [experienced ambulance drivers] 'kick' when they come back from the Front [sic], where everything goes! They say the place no longer feels like the club it formerly was."(194) If new college men could partially change the old atmosphere of the services, the take-over by the Army threatened to totally destroy the elitist air of the services. For this reason, many drivers were against the militarization of the services by the A. E. F.

In a somewhat similar vein, some volunteers opposed the Army take over because it forced them to change their perception of the war. Such drivers viewed the ambulance service as a personal and romantic form of war service. They pictured themselves as gentlemen who had individually come together to serve the Allies. The militarization of the services threatened to make their personal sacrifice a mere cog in a massive, modern, and methodical type o warfare. Thus, Stevenson noted that "when it became likely that the American Army would take us over, many of the old men went into other branches of the American service--Engineer's Corps, Aviation, Artillery, and Camouflage--the more interesting branches."(195) Another writer quoted a former ambulance driver as saying, "flying is the only old-fashioned thing left...."(196) For some drivers then, the ambulance service had offered a type of personal war experience that was more in keeping with their gentlemanly self-concept than was life in the trenches. When the services were militarized, such drivers left the service in search of a more personal and romantic form of war service.

A final reason why some drivers opposed the militarization of the services was a fear of loss of status. Driving an ambulance in a volunteer service surrounded by others of one's social class was one matter; driving an ambulance as a private in the United States Army was quite another. Many drivers decided that they would only stay in the service if they were promised officer ranking. Stevenson remarked that "the American Army is arriving and we are, all of us, wondering whether we are to be given officers' jobs with it...many of us have put in an application for the Officers' Training School for Americans."(197) Other drivers worried that all the officerships were full. One volunteer bemoaned his fate in a letter printed in the New York Times. He and his comrades wished to enlist, but they feared that they "would probably find that [they had] arrived in America too late to get in for the officers' training corps and would have to be satisfied with positions in the ranks."(198) The Army recognized this fear and, according to one driver, "assured [them] that it is but a matter of a few months before we will be promoted."(199) Even with such reassurance, many drivers chose other branches of the Army when confronted by the recruiting sergeant.

The American Field Service realized that many of its drivers were unsure whether to enlist in the Army Ambulance Corps. A. Piatt Andrew desired the Field Service to continue, and he tried to influence his drivers to enlist. In a Bulletin of the American Field Service printed September 8, 1917, Andrew wrote that "we hope that a vast majority of the men will enlist so that the sections can go on without interruption and with the same traditions and esprit de corps."(200) For a time it seemed that Andrew would have his wish. The New York-Times reported that eighty percent of the Field Service's Section One "volunteered immediately on the opportunity given them to enlist."(201) However, such a high rate of enlistment did not continue. Although Malcolm Cowley overstated the case when he claimed that, "they [the drivers] scattered a few months later...not many of them re-enlisted,"(202) certainly not enough men did enlist for Andrew's dream to be realized. A later Report of the American Field Service in France noted that "the changed circumstances made many hundreds of our men feel that having fulfilled the original spirit of their intention they were now free to enlist as they chose."(203) The report estimated that roughly sixty percent of the drivers did enlist in the Army Ambulance Corps. However, most sections were increased in size and flooded with Army recruits from the Army's training camp in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Thus Andrew's hope that the service would remain a cohesive unit within the Army Ambulance Corps was dashed.

In extreme contrast with the Field Service was the Norton-Harjes Section. Not only did Norton not attempt to influence his drivers to enlist, he actively encouraged them to all resign. On August 29, 1917, he sent a terse wire to his brother, Charles, who had acted as Norton's recruiting agent. "Colonel Kean has arrived with orders to take over Red Cross Ambulance and Field Service and militarize them. I and all my staff have resigned. We shall do our best to help Colonel Kean during the period of reorganization. Send no more volunteers."(204) Norton's decision puzzled members of the Field Service. Stevenson, whose section served beside Norton's, questioned Norton about his decision. Stevenson recounted that Norton "considers that his work has been done. The old club volunteer spirit must now be eliminated."(205) Rather than fight the new and impersonal method of warfare that would characterize the Army Ambulance Corps, Norton bowed gracefully and surrendered his ground.(206) In a touching ceremony immediately before his sections resigned en masse, Norton made a short speech, thanking his men for their service. The very picture of a patrician gentleman, Norton, complete with monocle, concluded by saying: "As gentlemen volunteers you enlisted in this service and as gentlemen volunteers I bid you farewell."(207) After this speech, the drivers of the Norton sections all resigned, leaving only the ambulances for the Army.

By the end of August 1917, then, the volunteer ambulance services were dead. Though the majority of the Field Service members, in marked contrast to men of the Norton-Harjes Sections, did enlist in the Army Ambulance Corps, the atmosphere of the volunteer services could not be preserved. The coming of the A. E. F. brought with it a new, impersonal, style of warfare. No longer were the drivers volunteers. Instead they were common soldiers, cogs in a vast war machine. Some drivers fled to other, more personal or romantic, branches of the armed services. Most however, perhaps out of a sense of duty, remained. For them enlistment "was a sad affair and [they] didn't relish it a bit."(208) The militarization of the ambulance services spelled the end of the services, and the former drivers soon viewed the services as past history. "The old volunteer Ambulance Service is dead," wrote Philip Orcutt, "but the days we have lived with it are golden, and nothing can ever take them away from us, or bring them back again."(209)

With the days of the volunteer services firmly committed to memory, memories that included examples of individual sacrifice, service, and courage, the drivers settled into their new forms of war service and awaited the war's end. Turning their thoughts toward home, many drivers eagerly anticipated the triumphal homecoming that would be theirs. None could have foreseen the changed America they would return to, nor fully realized the changes they had already undergone in the ambulance services. Their homecoming, far from a triumph, was to prove a rude and painful experience.

.

While still abroad, many of the former ambulance drivers eagerly anticipated their homecoming. Confident that they had fought a war for civilization, they expected to be treated as conquering heroes on their return. Such expectations were quickly dashed by the cold reality of postwar America. The drivers reentry into American society was a disillusioning experience that caused them to question their own values and those of their society. Eventually the drivers adjusted to the America of the Twenties, but for many, it was a long and painful process.

In an early issue of the American Field Service Bulletin, one writer evoked both the sense of expectation and disillusionment of the former volunteers.

A little over a year ago. many of us were looking forward with considerable zest, if often uncertainty of means, to re-establishing ourselves in our own country... Even the least sentimental of us remembered the sum of goodwill and God-speed which had been his on leaving America, and so, with perhaps more confidence than analysis, believed that in returning as atoms of la victoire, there would be many things waiting and worth while to do. A welcome we did find here, but that once spent there was little else we had anticipated. Swift and utter readjustment has been our lot.(210)

The drivers possessed several reasons for feeling dissatisfied with America. The readjustment from a strenuous life at the front to existence in a mundane peacetime society was obviously a major problem. More important than this, though, was a belief that America had turned her back on the very values for which the war had been fought. The drivers found proof of this belief in America's failure to support French war claims at Versailles. Finally, the former Field Service members sense of alienation from American society was enhanced by a belief that the war experience had transformed them, thus isolating them from other Americans. Such a sense of isolation, fueled by a concern for France, led to the formation of the American Field Service Association in 1920.

For many drivers, readjustment to civilian life was difficult. Although such readjustment normally is a problem for servicemen after a war, the process was especially painful for the former ambulance drivers. Most volunteers had joined the services directly after college and thus had not experienced the mildly shocking transition from college to the business world. The services reinforced the values that the drivers had learned in college by exposing them to a wartime society of sacrifice and service. To their dismay, wartime France contrasted sharply with the society that the volunteers discovered on their return to America.

Once back in America, most drivers faced the problem of daily sustenance and the realization that the problem of choosing a job after graduation had only been postponed by their participation in the war. "A choice of work had to be made," declared one writer, "not because it was desirable, but when delay could no longer be afforded."(211) Although the volunteers had expected that there would be "many things waiting and worthwhile to do" they found only routine and insignificant jobs. After the thrill of serving the grand cause of civilization, many drivers found their new jobs simply boring. As one driver put it: "To work without inspiration and perhaps among strangers, is not stimulating at best, but to have to do so after the purpose and friendship of the past three years takes a more subtle courage than war called for."(212)

Job boredom was symptomatic of the volunteers' general dissatisfaction with American society. If their jobs seemed to have no purpose, it was because a changed America no longer had a purpose. The drivers believed that America no longer honored the ideals for which the First World War had been fought. Proof of this was seen in America's failure to back French war claims. The average Field Service member had "returned from over there an ardent champion of France, quick to defend her from any ignorant complaint and keen to expatiate upon her manifold virtues."(213) While many Americans castigated the French for excessive claims against Germany, the Field Service Bulletin despaired of "expressions that in wartime would not have been tolerated." The Bulletin went on to declare that Field Servicemen "may sometimes be justified in giving articulation to the disappointment most of us feel in our country's present attitude toward its European responsibilities and in the general state of being in America."(214) In the same issue of the Bulletin, another writer bemoaned the loss of "International generosity and co-operation" in the United States and claimed that there "were many forces willing to destroy such values as still exist."(215) This train of thought culminated in the words of a speaker at the first Field Service reunion. "The war," he declared, "has left our country different in many respects from what it was when we sailed from its shores three, four, or five years ago."(216)

If the country was different, so were the ex-drivers. Many drivers looked upon themselves as a group apart within American society. The experience of serving in the volunteer ambulance services had separated them from those of their college friends who had not volunteered. Many volunteers thought that they had been tested by the war, had passed through its soul-destroying fire unscathed, and were now on a different plane than the men who had stayed home, including those who later had enlisted in the A.E.F. "Old friends are no longer such a solace as they were," lamented a driver. "We have reaped something they have not. We may feel this without conceit... The truth is we have had something of the best that life can offer."(217) Such a belief was bitter consolation to men cut off from former close friends. The Field Servicemen's despair with America, their desire to help France achieve her war aims, and their perception that they were a group apart from society led to a conservative reaction. Rather than accept new American society, they retreated within themselves and created the American Field Service Association as a continuation of the old Field Service. A. Piatt Andrew, speaking at the First Field Service reunion, reflected an understood sentiment when he declared:

It is probably in part on account of such considerations as these [the general attitude] in America which have brought disillusionment and disappointment to many of us since our return, that we of the old Field Service find ourselves today more than ever glad to come together.(218)

The first reunion was a success, attracting over 600 former drivers, or roughly one quarter of all former ambulance men. The major outcome of the reunion was the official creation of the Field Service Association on May 9, 1920, the last day of the reunion.

The avowed purpose of the association was clearly spelled out in the preamble to its constitution. It was "to perpetuate the memory of our life and work as volunteers...to keep alive the friendships of those years and to promote in the future mutual understanding and fraternal feeling between France and the United States."(219) Thus the association served two purposes. One purpose was contemporary, to help France. Most of the activity designed to help France centered around support for French war aims, though a system of University fellowships was also created. The other purpose was more conservative. The association served to keep the old feeling of the Field Service alive in a hostile America. The association was to be, in a sense, a spiritual oasis in a materialistic America, a social club where the past was maintained and the old values honored.

Most Field Service members were dismayed by America's lack of support for French war aims during the Versailles Conference. Through its monthly Bulletin, the association called on all of its members to support the French claims. "France needs us desperately," claimed one Bulletin. "She needs us today perhaps more than She ever has before."(220) Having lost the war, Germany was trying to win the peace through sly propaganda within America. Appalled by Germany's attempt to win with words what she had lost by arms, the Bulletin declared: "France stands today in front of a beaten foe who knows not the slightest element of sportsmanship."(221) The problem then was to defeat Germany's propaganda. But how? "With advantages of education and years of close contact under many conditions and in many parts of France, we should surely be able to turn our energy to some practical effort," declared the Bulletin.(222) Obviously, the solution lay in a concerted public speaking effort by the drivers. Words had to be met with words.

Myron Herrick delivered a model speech in defense of France at the association's second reunion. Herrick reiterated that the war had been waged as a defense of democratic, humanistic, civilization against the German threat. Admiration of France was part of "an instinctive love for the nations that stood between us and disaster," claimed Herrick, "because that red line was the frontier of civilization. It was the battle of human rights that was fought there."(223) With the peace in doubt, America once again had to intervene in European affairs. "We have an obligation here in this nation, an obligation to restore again, because it cannot be restored without us, the balance of the universe, of the world, of civilization as we know and care for it."(224) The same values and beliefs that had originally led the drivers to volunteer were now to cause them to speak out in defense not just of France but of all western civilization. The Field Service Association's counter offensive against German propaganda opened in the west. The Far-Western branch of the association scheduled a mass meeting at Berkeley's Greek Theatre in March, 1920. Berkeley and Stanford had each contributed two Field Service sections, and the California Friends of France, led by Charles Mills Gayley, was still active. Five thousand students turned out to hear three former ambulance drivers speak on "The Truth About Our Allies."(225) The volunteers probably spoke in words similar to Herrick's. They reported that the meeting was a huge success. The plea for understanding, sympathy, and friendship for France was repeated by various association members throughout the country.

The association strengthened friendship for France in another way. During the early Twenties, the association provided roughly twenty fellowships per year for study at French Universities. Immediately after the war, Myron Herrick, the ex-American Ambassador to France, created an organization entitled American Fellowships for French Universities. The purpose of the organization was to encourage graduate study at French, rather than German, universities. Herrick gladly changed the name of his organization to the American Field Service Fellowships for French Universities when he was approached by the association. The association set as its goal 127 fellowships, one for each Field Serviceman who had died during the war. Though they never got beyond twenty fellowships, this aspect of the association was perhaps the most successful. The fellowships eventually grew into the current American Field Service exchange program that operates at the high school level.(226)

Although most of the association's activities wars directed either to supporting French war aims or the fellowships, there was another side to the association. The returning ambulance drivers were shocked by the America that awaited them. The association served as a psychological refuge for its members. The conservative, preservationist, side of the association appeared in such activities and undertakings as the publication of a History of the American Field Service, the association's negative response to the bonus bill for ex-soldiers, the "pilgrimages" to France, the Bulletin itself, and the reunions. In a changing world with new values and a new morality, the association members could always find a staunch defender of the old order in the association.

The first and, in the sense of perpetuating the memory of the service, the most successful activity of the association was the mammoth three volume History of the American Field Service. According to the Bulletin, "the idea of it began with the first intimations of the coming of an American army to France there being the fear, that under the conditions the volunteer days might be lost sight of---forgotten."(227) The History ran to over 1500 pages and was largely composed of excerpts from diaries or letters written by the drivers. It was not a day to day account of the growth of the Field Service, but it did allow men to recapture their experiences as ambulance drivers. Three thousand copies of the History were printed. Since the History was advertised in the Bulletin, probably the majority of the copies were bought by association members, rather than by the general public.

While the History preserved the past glories of the Field Service, the association through the Bulletin and the reunions, tried to recapture the past in the present. The association held four reunions--one each year from 1920 through 1923. The main purpose of the reunions was, of course, to reunite old friends- However, the after-dinner speeches often infused a special moral quality into the reunions. Herrick, whose fate had been intertwined with that of the Field Service, was often an after-dinner speaker and just as often bemoaned America's role at the Versailles Conference. This theme was echoed by other speakers.

To most drivers, the old upper-class ideals of service and duty seemed to be dead in America. This view was reflected in the association's position on the bonus bill. In the years immediately following the First World War, America suffered a recession caused largely by the curtailment of war-related production. At the same time that the nation's industries were retooling for peace, American soldiers returned from Europe and flooded the job market. To help ease the transition into civilian life, a cash bonus for soldiers on their separation from the army was proposed. The bonus became a major issue within the country in 1920 and 1921. Although the association's members stood to gain from the passage of the bill, since most had joined the army in some branch of war service, the association flatly rejected the idea of a bonus. The editors of the Bulletin "firmly opposed" the bonus bill and called for the association, as "a nation-wide organization of ex-servicemen," to go on record against "any such attempt on the part of able-bodied ex-soldiers to extort ransom from the country."(228) Believing in the ideals of service and duty, the directors of the association voted against supporting the bonus bill, a measure which seemed to put a materialistic price tag on the concept of service.

Later, when it appeared that the bill would become law, the Bulletin urged that each member donate his share of the tainted money to the association for its scholarship fund. Though passed in late May, 1923, over Coolidge's veto, the bonus bill provided for payment in the form of twenty-year endowment policies. Cash payments did not begin until 1936 and it is thus doubtful if the association received any money from the bill.

Another example of the association's preoccupation with the upper-class ideals of service and duty in the face of a changing America was seen in the Bulletin's reaction to John Dos Passos's Three Soldiers. Three Soldiers, a story of three drunken and demoralized ambulance drivers and their response to the war, was published concurrently with a memorial volume about the Field Service dead. In a review of the memorial volume published in the Bulletin, the association took the opportunity to lash out at Dos Passos and his novel. The reviewer wrote that:

John Dos Passos' Three Soldiers in its skillful depiction of three apparently abnormal types subjected to the soul destroying side of war and forgetful of their opportunities to turn hardship and contact with sordid realities into material for character and growth, could have no better answer than such a book as this.(229)

The prewar upper-class ideal of the noble gentleman still characterized the association during the Twenties as did the belief that war was character building. In 1923, two years after the review of the first memorial volume, a reviewer of a new memorial volume reworked the theme of the "noble living and the noble dead." "One envies them their glorious death," he wrote of the volunteers who had died in action, "and asks God for a chance to die with faith such as theirs, in a cause as noble as that for which they fought."(230) Even in 1935, the Bulletin reiterated its belief that war was character building. Noting that a driver's wife had written an anti-war novel, and "while agreeing that we should not have to go on having wars in order to bring out those fine older human virtues," the Bulletin remarked that it was those virtues that had been "called forth to a marked degree" by volunteer service in France.(231) In order for character to be built, an ideal of character must exist. For the association during the 1920's, the ideal remained that of the gentleman.

As the years progressed, the drivers settled into American society. Although the length of the period of readjustment varied from driver to driver, as the volunteers gradually adjusted to their society, their interest in the association naturally began to decline. Although the association declared that the association would "mean more and more to you" as the years passed, and claimed that it would be the "one tie to the good old days,"(232) this does not seem to have been the case. Instead, the association began to mean less and less to the average member. Declining attendance at the annual reunions and decreasing membership in the association brought home this fact. The first reunion had drawn over a quarter of the association, but three years later not even a tenth bothered to attend. By September 1922 the Bulletin announced that the association, after paying the deficit of the ill-attended Plymouth reunion of the same year, was near bankruptcy. Only twenty-one percent of the Field Service alumni were paid up members of the association. The Bulletin was no longer self-sufficient but had to be underwritten by generous members.(233)

The association tried various ways to bolster its declining membership. After 1922 the Bulletin was sent with a new motto across its front: "No Dues, No Bulletin." Neither subtle nor effective, the motto proved incapable of reviving interest in the Bulletin. Continually the Bulletin had to urge its readers to write, sometimes offering prizes. "If you are in la belle France and seeing any of the old Secteurs,...the obligation to write is imperative" implored the editors.(234) Such pleading apparently fell on deaf ears.

The association tried to revive interest in itself by sponsoring group trips to France. These so called "pilgrimages" were popular in 1921 and 1922, but by 1925 the association experienced problems in filling its tour. The France that association members remembered, the France of the war years filled with sacrifice, duty, and comradeship, simply no longer existed. A letter to the Bulletin put it succinctly: "You might as well put on the Eton jacket you wore when you were eight years old and expect to find a train at the Grand Central Station to take you back to childhood."(235) By 1925, most association members realized the wisdom of that letter.

The author of this cruelly perceptive letter was one of a small group of members who realized why the association was dying. He was in favor of trying to change the association and make it responsive to the America of the twenties. Yet this was next to impossible. Most members who still cared about the association wished to retain its old purpose, keeping it as a bastion of older values and world views, while association members whose interest had lagged had already become assimilated into American society and no longer needed the association. With the realization that the association was moribund, one last attempt was made at communication. In January, 1925, a directory of the last known address of each driver was sent to all former association members, "in order to prevent the final end of the Service and of all possibility of future correspondence."(236) This was the last official act of the association, although former editors occasionally took it upon themselves to put out a Bulletin at their own expense throughout the thirties.

The association died because it had played its part in helping the drivers adjust to a new America. As members assimilated into the postwar America, they no longer needed to band together. The association membership waned until the association was no longer financially practical to continue. The ideological bonds that had held the association together gradually stretched and were replaced by a system of friendships, which, while not articulated, were perhaps stronger than the common beliefs that had originally motivated the drivers. For most members the Field Service became a memory, one to be cherished certainly, but only one set of memories among many and not a memory to hold to the exclusion of the present.

In an after-dinner speech made at the first reunion banquet, Dr. Hugh Birckhead had characterized the ambulance services as "the answer of the best, instinctively feeling its obligation of 'noblesse oblige' and finding new and undiscovered joy in the completeness of the renunciation that was asked."(237) His characterization still stands as a terse and accurate estimate of the nature of the ambulance services. The drivers were of the upper-class and they were moved by the concept of 'noblesse oblige.' The concept of the gentleman as articulated by Liberal Culture necessarily implied duty and service. These values, combined with a cultural belief that the First World War was a war for western humanistic civilization, motivated young men to enlist in the ambulance services. Once in France, most drivers found the experience of living and working in a nation imbued with a sense of cause and personal sacrifice to be extremely moving. Ironically, the belief in sacrifice and ideals was to make their return to America a difficult and personally painful experience.

The "answer of the best," the concept of gentlemanly character, did not fail on the battlefields of World War I. On the contrary, it proved itself there. Rather, it failed at home, where the drivers became disillusioned. It failed because "the answer" was no longer applicable to the industrializing, urbanizing, consumer-oriented, materialistic, mass society of postwar America. Noblesse oblige, the idea of service, and the concept of the gentleman, were simply no longer functional. Though the idea of culture and character inherent in Liberal Culture was revived by Irving Babbit and other academics in the guise of the New Humanism of the Twenties, it never became popular with the undergraduates. The college students of the Twenties more closely resembled the characters from Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise than they did Dink Stover. Unlike the gentlemen volunteers, college students of the Twenties probably would have agreed with Hemingway's Frederick Henry, who "always was embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice, and the expression 'in vain.'"(238) While strains of Liberal Culture continued to appear in academic life, perhaps even to this day, the gentlemen volunteers and the ambulance services they were part of can best be understood as the logical and final expression of Liberal Culture's concept of the gentleman. Ironically, that concept found its fruition within the First World War, a war that pointed the way to an increasingly complex and bureaucratized society that would have no room within it for gentlemen volunteers.

Books

Starred entries are from the Hoover Institute of War Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University.

Abrams, Ray Hamilton. Preachers Present Arms. Scottsdale, Pennsylvania, 1969
Adams, J. Donald. Copey of Harvard, A Biography of Charles Townsend Copeland. Boston, 1960.
Aldridge, John W. After the Lost Generation, A Critical Study of the Writers of Two Wars. New York 1951
*The American Field Service. The American Field Service in France. Publishing location unknown, 1918.
*------ Report of the American Field Service in France. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1918.
The American Field Service Association. The American Field Service Memorial San Francisco, 1923.
*------ Directory of the American Field Service Association. New York,
*------ Volunteers of the American Field Service. Publishing location unknown, Date unknown.
*American Field Service Fellowships for French Universities Inc. Ninth Annual Report. New York, 1928.
Andrew, A. Piatt, ed. History of the American Field Service. 3 vols. Boston and New York, 1920.
*------ Letters Written from Europe in the First Half of 1915. New York, 1920.
Babbit, Irvin. Democracy and Leadership. Boston, 1924.
------ Literature and the American College, Essays in Defense of the Humanities. Boston, 1908.
Berman, Milton. John Fiske, The Evolution of a Popularizer. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1961.
Blodgett, Geoffrey. The Gentle Reformers: Massachusetts Democrats in the Cleveland Era. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1966.
Bradley, Amy Owen. Back of the Front in France. Boston, 1918.
Briggs, LaBaron Russell. School, College, and Character. Boston, 1901.
Brown, Rollo Walter. Harvard Yard in the Golden Age. New York, 1948.
Bryan, Julian. Ambulance 464. New York, 1916.
Buswell, Leslie. Ambulance No. 10. Boston, 1916.
Cowley, Malcolm. Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the Twenties. New York, 1951.
Coyle, Edward. Ambulancing on the French Front. New York, 1918.
Cummings, Edward Estlin. The Enormous Room. New York, 1922.
Dent, Olive Louise. A. V. A. D. in France. London, 1917.
Dos Passos, John. The Best Times: An Informal Memoir. New York, 1966.
------ 1919. New York 1932.
------ One Man's Initiation: 1917; A Novel. Ithaca, New York, 1969. .
Fredrickson, George M. The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union. New York, 1968.
Gaines, Ruth. Ladies of Grecourt. New York, 1920.
Genthe, Charles V. American War Narratives 1917-1918, A Study and Bibliography. New York, 1969.
Gibson, Preston. Battering the Boche. New York, 1918.
Gleason, Arthur. Our Part in the Great War. New York, 1917.
------ With the First War Ambulance in Belgium. New York, 1915.
Graves, Robert. Goodbye to All That, An Autobiography by Robert Graves. New York, 1929.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. New York, 1969.
Howe, Mark DeWolfe. Barrett Wendell and His Letters. Boston, 1924.
------ Memoirs of the Harvard Dead in the War Against Germany. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1920
Imbrie, Robert W. Behind the Wheel of a War Ambulance. New York, 1918.
Institute of International Education. Directory of Former Fellows of the American Field Service Fellowships for French Universities Inc. 1919-1942. New York, 1942.
*James, Henry. The American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in France. London, 1914.
James, William. Pragmatism and Other Essays. New York, 1963.
Johnson, Owen. Stover at Yale. New York, 1912.
Kimber, Arthur. The Story of the First Flag. San Francisco, 1920.
Kurtz, Benjiman P. Charles Mills Gayley. Berkeley, 1943.
May, Henry F. The End of American Innocence, A Study of the First Years of Our Own Time 1912-1917. New York, 1959.
Milne, Gordon. George William Curtis and the Genteel Tradition. Bloomington, Indiana, 1956.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. Three Centuries of Harvard 1636-1936. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1936.
Morse, Edward. The Vanguard of American Volunteers. New York, 1918.
Neilson, William Allan. Charles W. Eliot: The Man and His Beliefs. 2 vols. New York, 1926.
Norton, Charles Eliot; Hadley, Arthur T.; Sloane, William M.; Matthews, Brander. Four American Universities: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia. New York, 1895.
Orcutt, Philip Dean. The White Road of Mystery. New York, 1918.
Perry, Bliss. The Amateur Spirit. Boston, 1904.
.------ And Gladly Teach. Boston, 1935.
Phelps, William Lyon. Adventures and Confessions. New York, 1926.
.------ Autobiography and Letters. New York, 1939.
Roosevelt, Theodore. The Strenuous Life, Essays and Addresses by Theodore Roosevelt. New York, 1901.
Sampson, Martin, ed., Camion Letters from Men in the American Field Service. New York, 1918.
*San Francisco Friends of France. Moving Pictures of the American Ambulance Field Service. Burlingame, California, 1917.
Santayana, George. The Genteel Tradition at Bay. New York, 1931.
------ The Last Puritan, A Memoir in the Form of a Novel. New York, 1936.
S. S. U. 585 "Yale Ambulance Unit in France 1917-1919". New Haven, 1920.
S. S. U. 503. Publishing location unknown, 1920.
Stevenson, William Yorke. At the Front in a Flivver- New York, 1917.
------ From "Poilu" to "Yank". New York, 1918.
*Sullivan, Reginald. Somewhere in France, Letters Home from Reginald Sullivan. San Francisco, 1918.
Thwing, Charles. The American Colleges and Universities in the Great War. New York, 1920.
U. S., Office of Education- Biennial Survey of Education, 1916-1918. Washington, 1921.
Vanderbilt, Kermit. Charles Eliot Norton, Apostle of Culture in a Democracy. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1959.
Van Vorst, Marie. War Letters of an American Woman. New York, 1916.
Veysey, Laurence R. The Emergence of the American University. Chicago, 1965.
Warren, Lansing. En Repos and Elsewhere. Boston, 1918.
Wendell. Barrett. The Privileged Classes. New York. 1908.

Newspapers and Periodicals.

*American Field Service Association Bulletin (series 1), issues 6, 7, 9-12, 14, 19, 21, (printed in 1917), issues 30, 41, 43, 45, 47, 50, 52, 54, (printed in 1918).
*American Field Service Association Bulletin (series 2), issues 1-13 (1920- 1923), issue 16, March, 1935.
"America's Men" The Bookman, 44 (October, 1916) 163.
Andrew, A. Piatt. "The Genesis of the American Ambulance Service with the French Army, 1915-1917." Military Surgeon, LVII (October, 1925), 363-377.
------ "For Love of France." The Outlook, 114 (December 27, 1916), 923-931.
Dos Passos, John. "A Letter from the Front." New York Review of Books, (June 28, 1973), 24. Fenton, Charles. "Ambulance Drivers in France and Italy 1914-1917." American Quarterly, III (Winter, 1951), 326-344.
Fletcher, J. B. "In the Ambulance Service." Harvard Graduate's Magazine, 26 (Spring, 1919) 25-34.
Gailor, Frank Hoyt. "An American Ambulance in the Verdun Attack." Cornhill Magazine 41 (July 1916), 54-64.
Gemmeil, W. "In the American Field Service." University of Chicago Magazine, 10 (December, 1917) 59-60.
"Harvard Men and the War." Harvard Graduate's Magazine, 24 (Spring, 1915) 216-232.
Herrick, Robert. "Telling the Truth about War." The Nation, X (June 26, 1920), 850-851.
------ "War and American Literature." Dial, LVI (January 3, 1917) 7-8.
Imbrie R. W. "Ambulancing in the Vortex." Travel, 31 (August, 1918), 22-26.
Irvin, Will. "Letters from the War." Saturday Evening Post, 190 (July 28, 1917), 16-18, 50-57. Kimmel, Stanley Preston. "Crucifixion the Experience of a Red Cross Ambulance Driver in France." Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine LXXV (January, March, April. May. 1920). 36-40. 58-62. 236-240. LXXV (January, March, April, May, 1920), 36-40, 58-62 236-240 277-282.
Masefield, John. "The Harvest of the Night." Harper's Magazine, 134 (May, 1917) 801-810.
------ "In the Vosges." Saturday Evening Post, 190 (July 21, 1917), 8-9, 58-59.
McConnell, J. R. "With the American Ambulance in France." The Outlook, 113 (September 15 1915), 125-144.
The New York Times, various dates 1914-1918
Perry, Ralph Barton. "Charles William Eliot." New England Quarterly, IV (January, 1931), 5-29.
Rainsford, W. Kerr. "An American Ambulance at Verdun." The World's Work 33 (December, 1916), 183-194.
"The Stanford Ambulance Corps." Stanford Alumnus, 18 (April, 1917), 257.
Vanderbilt, W. K. "My Trip to the Front." Harper's Magazine, 134 (January, 1917), 175-186.

Manuscript Collections

Stanford University. Archives, History of Stanford Participation in World War I (Registrar List).

Table of Contents