Memorandum for General Crowder from Eugene Wambaugh - March 29, 1918
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March 29, 1918. EW/JFF Memorandum for General Crowder. Subject: Polish armies. 1. The chief importance of the discussion regarding a Polish army lies in the possibility that such an army may be the beginning of utilizing the reasonable hostility of many races to the Prussians. Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Turkey, and the whole Balkan Peninsula contain numerous races whose property, home life, and hopes would be destroyed by Prussian success. To bring those races into active co-operation with the anti-Prussian forces would be a logical way to win the war; for those races are parties in interest, have as much at stake as anybody, and out to be willing and anxious to fight. 2.
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[page 2] A Pole would say that such a force has special value in several ways. In the first place he would take the purely military ground that many Poles do not understand the English language and that Poles will be best able to help one another and the cause if they are placed together. In the second place he would take a ground partly military and partly statesmanlike, to the effect that the Poles in the United States, although already, as it is said, contributing more than three per cent. of their total population to our forces, would enlist in still greater numbers if they could be banded together. In the third place he would take the strictly statesmanlike ground that the creation of a purely Polish force tends to rouse for the allied powers the Poles still resident in Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. To appraise those several grounds properly must be left to persons who are skilled in psychology or in military history. Swiss guards, Irish brigades, and Highland regiments of the past show that some military leaders have though a racial experiment worth trying. There is, as has been said, a Polish unit in the French army of to-day. Thus the use of racial forces is not yet fully discarded by military experts. There is no folly, then, in dealing with the Polish contention seriously. 5. The question is not a new one to the War Department. Several months ago the War Department considered what attitude it should take regarding the proposition that in the United States there should be recruiting for the Polish Army in France. On October 6, 1917, The Committee on Public Information gave out the following statement, part of which appeared in the Official Bulletin of October 8, 1917:
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7. In January, 1918, a request in behalf of the Polish army in France went further than the office of the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army could approve. It was requested that Poles subject to the draft should be allowed to join the Polish army in France, that Polish soldiers already in the American army should be permitted to do the same, provided they should not be acquainted with the English language, and that the Polish army in France should be subsidized and controlled by the war Department jointly with the French and British War Offices. From the point of view of law, as this office then had to point out, the mode of attaining the ends desired would be not to release Poles from the army of the United States, but to gather them together as a unit of that army and to cause that unit to co-operate closely with other Polish units. 8. The War Department
Details
| Title | Memorandum for General Crowder from Eugene Wambaugh - March 29, 1918 |
| Creator | Wambaugh, Eugene |
| Source | Wambaugh, Eugene. Memorandum for General Crowder. 29 March 1918. Crowder, Enoch H. (1859-1932), Papers, 1884-1942. C1046. The State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, MO. |
| Description | In this memorandum to General Crowder, Eugene Wambaugh wrote about the formation of a Polish Army. This document is part of a collection compiled by Enoch Herbert Crowder, the Edinburg, Grundy County, Missouri native who served as Judge Advocate General. Crowder devised the Selective Service Act in 1917 which drafted America's forces during World War I. |
| Subject LCSH | Crowder, E. H. (Enoch Herbert), 1859-1932; Baker, Newton, 1871-1937; World War, 1914-1918--Poland. |
| Subject Local | WWI; World War I; Polish troops |
| Site Accession Number | C1046 |
| Contributing Institution | The State Historical Society of Missouri |
| Copy Request | Transmission or reproduction of items on these pages beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the State Historical Society of Missouri: 1020 Lowry Street, Columbia, Missouri, 65201-7298. (573) 882-7083. |
| Rights | The text and images contained in this collection are intended for research and educational use only. Duplication of any of these images for commercial use without express written consent is expressly prohibited. |
| Date Original | March 29, 1918 |
| Language | English |