SOLDIERS LEARNING PROBLEM OF "LA LIAISON" IN FRANCE

The following passages are taken from a letter recently received by Professor Copeland from a former member of the University who is now in France as a first lieutenant in the Expeditionary Force. This is the first letter from a University graduate or undergraduate with General Pershing that has been published in the Alumni Bulletin or the CRIMSON. "Oct. 2, 1917.

"I have one request I am going to make you. Please make every one realize that this is a long war if we want to stick to it until we have reached a victorious conclusion. And to make our sacrifices worth while, we must stay in the struggle to the bitter end. It is not we men on the firing line who will win this war. It is you who stay at home, sacrificing comforts and money to feed and clothe us. We are under your orders, and just as long as you hang on, we will fight as well as we know how. But remember, all our support, moral and physical, comes from those who remain behind in the States. Try to impress all this on the young hopefuls in whose brains you are endeavoring to plant the seeds of English literature.

"Next week there will probably be regimental manoeuvres. So you see we progress, getting larger and larger units together for each manoeuvre. This is for the purpose of solving that difficult and knotty problem known in the French Army as "la liaison." By "liaison" they mean the co-ordination of units and branches, obtained by mutual understanding of unit commanders, by runners, airplanes, telephone, wireless, etc. To win a battle in trench warfare the artillery must co-operate with the infantry, and every separate unit must co-operate with all the other units on the whole line. You can see the stupendous task this is, and the amount of practice it will take to accomplish it. Naturally our division is the chopping-block for all the other divisions. All experiments are tried on us; the failures are spared to the other divisions. But there can be no kick coming from us, for we learn both by successes and failures. . . .

"By the way, I see they are trying to plaster us with names like Sammy and Teddy. If you see any of the people who are trying to label us, please let them know that the infantry soldier of the Regular Army has always called himself the "Doughboy," and as long as there is a Regular Army he will continue to call himself that. I have no reasons why he is that, but he seems to prefer it to all others."