100 years ago in The Saratogian
Sunday, Sept. 22, 1918. English actress Beatrice ForbesRobertson Hale tells a patriotic audience at Saratoga Springs Methodist Church tonight that “There is one thing without which no army can fight more than three days, and that thing is food.”
Hale is the president of the British War Relief Association, which raises funds in the U.S. for military hospitals. In England, she’s been active in organizing actresses in support of women’s right to vote.
The U.S. owes a debt to those nations that stood against Germany when the world war began in 1914, Hale says. “For four long years they have held the western battle line with a courage never equaled before and America has profited by their sacrifice.
“What would have happened if they had not held that line? Supposing Germany had been able to eliminate the allies as she planned to do?” Hale claims that the Germans had planned to “land two armies in America and force the Americans to pay [their] war debt.” If not for the Allies, she insists, German troops would be committing atrocities on American soil today.
“I want to say, especially to the women here, that you need not think that these stories [of atrocities] are exaggerated. They are not,” Hale says, “In fact, many of them are underestimated because people cannot tell these horrible things in public.”
Americans owe the Allies “the most intimate debt” because “they have saved the American people these horrible scenes.” The most honorable way to pay the debt is to send more food to Belgium, Britain, France and Italy.
“An army can fight without adequate equipment, even as those brave Frenchmen did in 1914; even if you do not buy the Liberty Bonds, the war will not stop for the government will borrow the money, or do as it has done before, issue paper money; but the war will go on,” Hale explains.
“There is only one thing which our men and the brave men of our allies, who have saved democracy and the American people from horrors, one thing without which they cannot fight. That thing is food. There is only one place from which they can get food and that is America.
“If you want to be patriotic and help our allies, if you want to end this war so that our splendid men will come back, then conserve on food.”
The program at the church includes a performance of the French national anthem, the “Marsellaise,” by Herman Schlaack and a number of choral selections. “Members of the motor corps in uniform acted as ushers,” The Saratogian reports.