The Americanization of Edward Bok 17

was discretion a few miles farther back.
The amazing part of the "show," however, was the American doughboy. Never was there a more cheerful,
laughing, good-natured set of boys in the world; never a more homesick, lonely, and complaining set. But
good nature predominated, and the smile was always uppermost, even when the moment looked the blackest,
the privations were worst, and the longing for home the deepest.
Bok had been talking to a boy who lived near his own home, who was on his way to the front and "over the
top" in the Argonne mess. Three days afterward, at a hospital base where a hospital train was just discharging
its load of wounded, Bok walked among the boys as they lay on their stretchers on the railroad platform
waiting for bearers to carry them into the huts. As he approached one stretcher, a cheery voice called, "Hello,
Mr. Bok. Here I am again."
It was the boy he had left just seventy-two hours before hearty and well.
"Well, my boy, you weren't in it long, were you?"
"No, sir," answered the boy; "Fritzie sure got me first thing. Hadn't gone a hundred yards over the top. Got a
cigarette?" (the invariable question).
Bok handed a cigarette to the boy, who then said: "Mind sticking it in my mouth?" Bok did so and then
offered him a light; the boy continued, all with his wonderful smile: "If you don't mind, would you just light
it? You see, Fritzie kept both of my hooks as souvenirs."
With both arms amputated, the boy could still jest and smile!
It was the same boy who on his hospital cot the next day said: "Don't you think you could do something for
the chap next to me, there on my left? He's really suffering: cried like hell all last night. It would be a
Godsend if you could get Doc to do something."
A promise was given that the surgeon should be seen at once, but the boy was asked: "How about you?"
"Oh," came the cheerful answer, "I'm all right. I haven't anything to hurt. My wounded members are
gone--just plain gone. But that chap has got something--he got the real thing!"
What was the real thing according to such a boy's idea?
There were beautiful stories that one heard "over there." One of the most beautiful acts of consideration was
told, later, of a lovable boy whose throat had been practically shot away. During his convalescence he had
learned the art of making beaded bags. It kept him from talking, the main prescription. But one day he sold the
bag which he had first made to a visitor, and with his face radiant with glee he sought the nurse-mother to tell
her all about his good fortune. Of course, nothing but a series of the most horrible guttural sounds came from
the boy: not a word could be understood. It was his first venture into the world with the loss of his member,

and the nurse-mother could not find it in her heart to tell the boy that not a word which he spoke was
understandable. With eyes full of tears she placed both of her hands on the boy's shoulders and said to him: "I
am so sorry, my boy. I cannot understand a word you say to me. You evidently do not know that I am totally
deaf. Won't you write what you want to tell me?"
A look of deepest compassion swept the face of the boy. To think that one could be so afflicted, and yet so
beautifully tender and always so radiantly cheerful, he wrote her.
Pathos and humor followed rapidly one upon the other "at the front" in those gruesome days, and Bok was to
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have his spirits lightened somewhat by an incident of the next day. He found himself in one of the numerous
little towns where our doughboys were billeted, some in the homes of the peasants, others in stables, barns,
outhouses, lean-tos, and what not. These were the troops on their way to the front where the fighting in the
Argonne Forest was at that time going on. As Bok was walking with an American officer, the latter pointed to
a doughboy crossing the road, followed by as disreputable a specimen of a pig as he had ever seen. Catching
Bok's smile, the officer said: "That's Pinney and his porker. Where you see the one you see the other."
Bok caught up with the boy, and said: "Found a friend, I see, Buddy?"
"I sure have," grinned the doughboy, "and it sticks closer than a poor relation, too."
"Where did you pick it up?"
"Oh, in there," said the soldier, pointing to a dilapidated barn.
"Why in there?"
"My home," grinned the boy.
"Let me see," said Bok, and the doughboy took him in with the pig following close behind. "Billeted
here--been here six days. The pig was here when we came, and the first night I lay down and slept, it came up
to me and stuck its snout in my face and woke me up. Kind enough, all right, but not very comfortable: it
stinks so."
"Yes; it certainly does. What did you do?"
"Oh, I got some grub I had and gave it to eat: thought it might be hungry, you know. I guess that sort of settled
it, for the next night it came again and stuck its snout right in my mug. I turned around, but it just climbed
over me and there it was."
"Well, what did you do then? Chase it out?"
"Chase it out?" said the doughboy, looking into Bok's face with the most unaffected astonishment. "Why,

mister, that's a mother-pig, that is. She's going to have young ones in a few days. How could I chase her out?"
"You're quite right, Buddy," said Bok. "You couldn't do that."
"Oh, no," said the boy. "The worst of it is, what am I going to do with her when we move up within a day or
two? I can't take her along to the front, and I hate to leave her here. Some one might treat her rough."
"Captain," said Bok, hailing the officer, "you can attend to that, can't you, when the time comes?"
"I sure can, and I sure will," answered the Captain. And with a quick salute, Pinney and his porker went off
across the road!
Bok was standing talking to the commandant of one of the great French army supply depots one morning. He
was a man of forty; a colonel in the regular French army. An erect, sturdy-looking man with white hair and
mustache, and who wore the single star of a subaltern on his sleeve, came up, saluted, delivered a message,
and then asked:
"Are there any more orders, sir?"
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"No," was the reply.
He brought his heels together with a click, saluted again, and went away.
The commandant turned to Bok with a peculiar smile on his face and asked:
"Do you know who that man is?"
"No," was the reply.
"That is my father," was the answer.
The father was then exactly seventy-two years old. He was a retired business man when the war broke out.
After two years of the heroic struggle he decided that he couldn't keep out of it. He was too old to fight, but
after long insistence he secured a commission. By one of the many curious coincidences of the war he was
assigned to serve under his own son.
When under the most trying conditions, the Americans never lost their sense of fun. On the staff of a prison
hospital in Germany, where a number of captured American soldiers were being treated, a German sergeant
became quite friendly with the prisoners under his care. One day he told them that he had been ordered to
active service on the front. He felt convinced that he would be captured by the English, and asked the
Americans if they would not give him some sort of testimonial which he could show if he were taken prisoner,
so that he would not be ill-treated.
The Americans were much amused at this idea, and concocted a note of introduction, written in English. The

German sergeant knew no English and could not understand his testimonial, but he tucked it in his pocket,
well satisfied.
In due time, he was sent to the front and was captured by "the ladies from hell," as the Germans called the
Scotch kilties. He at once presented his introduction, and his captors laughed heartily when they read:
"This is L--. He is not a bad sort of chap. Don't shoot him; torture him slowly to death."
One evening as Bok was strolling out after dinner a Red Cross nurse came to him, explained that she had two
severely wounded boys in what remained of an old hut: that they were both from Pennsylvania, and had
expressed a great desire to see him as a resident of their State.
"Neither can possibly survive the night," said the nurse.
"They know that?" asked Bok.
"Oh, yes, but like all our boys they are lying there joking with each other."
Bok was taken into what remained of a room in a badly shelled farmhouse, and there, on two roughly
constructed cots, lay the two boys. Their faces had been bandaged so that nothing was visible except the eyes
of each boy. A candle in a bottle standing on a box gave out the only light. But the eyes of the boys were
smiling as Bok came in and sat down on the box on which the nurse had been sitting. He talked with the boys,
got as much of their stories from them as he could, and told them such home news as he thought might
interest them.
After half an hour he arose to leave, when the nurse said: "There is no one here, Mr. Bok, to say the last words
to these boys. Will you do it?" Bok stood transfixed. In sending men over in the service of the Y. M. C. A. he
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had several times told them to be ready for any act that they might be asked to render, even the most sacred
one. And here he stood himself before that duty. He felt as if he stood stripped before his Maker. Through the
glassless window the sky lit up constantly with the flashes of the guns, and then followed the booming of a
shell as it landed.
"Yes, won't you, sir?" asked the boy on the right cot as he held out his hand. Bok took it, and then the hand of
the other boy reached out.
What to say, he did not know. Then, to his surprise, he heard himself repeating extract after extract from a
book by Lyman Abbott called The Other Room, a message to the bereaved declaring the non-existence of
death, but that we merely move from this earth to another: from one room to another, as it were. Bok had not
read the book for years, but here was the subconscious self supplying the material for him in his moment of

greatest need. Then he remembered that just before leaving home he had heard sung at matins, after the prayer
for the President, a beautiful song called "Passing Souls." He had asked the rector for a copy of it; and,
wondering why, he had put it in his wallet that he carried with him. He took it out now and holding the hand
of the boy at his right, he read to them:
For the passing souls we pray, Saviour, meet them on their way; Let their trust lay hold on Thee Ere they
touch eternity.
Holy counsels long forgot Breathe again 'mid shell and shot; Through the mist of life's last pain None shall
look to Thee in vain.
To the hearts that know Thee, Lord, Thou wilt speak through flood or sword; Just beyond the cannon's roar,
Thou art on the farther shore.
For the passing souls we pray, Saviour, meet them on the way; Thou wilt hear our yearning call, Who hast
loved and died for all.
Absolute stillness reigned in the room save for the half-suppressed sob from the nurse and the distant booming
of the cannon. As Bok finished, he heard the boy at his right say slowly: "Saviour-meet-me-on-my-way": with
a little emphasis on the word "my." The hand in his relaxed slowly, and then fell on the cot; and he saw that
the soul of another brave American boy had "gone West."
Bok glanced at the other boy, reached for his hand, shook it, and looking deep into his eyes, he left the little
hut.
He little knew where and how he was to look into those eyes again!
Feeling the need of air in order to get hold of himself after one of the most solemn moments of his visit to the
front, Bok strolled out, and soon found himself on what only a few days before had been a field of carnage
where the American boys had driven back the Germans. Walking in the trenches and looking out, in the clear
moonlight, over the field of desolation and ruin, and thinking of the inferno that had been enacted there only
so recently, he suddenly felt his foot rest on what seemed to be a soft object. Taking his "ever-ready" flash
from his pocket, he shot a ray at his feet, only to realize that his foot was resting on the face of a dead
German!
Bok had had enough for one evening! In fact, he had had enough of war in all its aspects; and he felt a sigh of
relief when, a few days thereafter, he boarded The Empress of Asia for home, after a ten-weeks absence.
He hoped never again to see, at first hand, what war meant!
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XXXVI. The End of Thirty Years' Editorship
On the voyage home, Edward Bok decided that, now the war was over, he would ask his company to release
him from the editorship of The Ladies' Home Journal. His original plan had been to retire at the end of a
quarter of a century of editorship, when in his fiftieth year. He was, therefore, six years behind his schedule.
In October, 1919, he would reach his thirtieth anniversary as editor, and he fixed upon this as an appropriate
time for the relinquishment of his duties.
He felt he had carried out the conditions under which the editorship of the magazine had been transferred to
him by Mrs. Curtis, that he had brought them to fruition, and that any further carrying on of the periodical by
him would be of a supplementary character. He had, too, realized his hope of helping to create a national
institution of service to the American woman, and he felt that his part in the work was done.
He considered carefully where he would leave an institution which the public had so thoroughly associated
with his personality, and he felt that at no point in its history could he so safely transfer it to other hands. The
position of the magazine in the public estimation was unquestioned; it had never been so strong. Its circulation
not only had outstripped that of any other monthly periodical, but it was still growing so rapidly that it was
only a question of a few months when it would reach the almost incredible mark of two million copies per
month. With its advertising patronage exceeding that of any other monthly, the periodical had become,
probably, the most valuable and profitable piece of magazine property in the world.
The time might never come again when all conditions would be equally favorable to a change of editorship.
The position of the magazine was so thoroughly assured that its progress could hardly be affected by the
retirement of one editor, and the accession of another. There was a competent editorial staff, the members of
which had been with the periodical from ten to thirty years each. This staff had been a very large factor in the
success of the magazine. While Bok had furnished the initiative and supplied the directing power, a large part
of the editorial success of the magazine was due to the staff. It could carry on the magazine without his
guidance.
Moreover, Bok wished to say good-bye to his public before it decided, for some reason or other, to say
good-bye to him. He had no desire to outstay his welcome. That public had been wonderfully indulgent
toward his shortcomings, lenient with his errors, and tremendously inspiring to his best endeavor. He would
not ask too much of it. Thirty years was a long tenure of office, one of the longest, in point of consecutively
active editorship, in the history of American magazines.
He had helped to create and to put into the life of the American home a magazine of peculiar distinction. From

its beginning it had been unlike any other periodical; it had always retained its individuality as a magazine
apart from the others. It had sought to be something more than a mere assemblage of stories and articles. It
had consistently stood for ideals; and, save in one or two instances, it had carried through what it undertook to
achieve. It had a record of worthy accomplishment; a more fruitful record than many imagined. It had become
a national institution such as no other magazine had ever been. It was indisputably accepted by the public and
by business interests alike as the recognized avenue of approach to the intelligent homes of America.
Edward Bok was content to leave it at this point.
He explained all this in December, 1918, to the Board of Directors, and asked that his resignation be
considered. It was understood that he was to serve out his thirty years, thus remaining with the magazine for
the best part of another year.
In the material which The Journal now included in its contents, it began to point the way to the problems
which would face women during the reconstruction period. Bok scanned the rather crowded field of thought
very carefully, and selected for discussion in the magazine such questions as seemed to him most important
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