Many within the Stars and Stripes ' doughboy readership, however, were confident in their view that the Stars and Stripes was always accountable to them. The sense of ownership of the paper that many doughboys felt was apparent in much of the criticism these soldiers sent in. “The paper represents us,” one soldier wrote, “It is for us to make the best possible.” How the paper responded to different kinds of criticism reveals a great deal about the limits of their promise to be for all enlisted men. On one occasion, a Jewish soldier wrote a letter to the editor expressing distress at the paper 's coverage of Jewish soldiers, taking offense to its use of the term “Jew.” Before Watson, then officer-in-charge, responded to the soldier, he consulted with the chairman of the U.S. Army 's Jewish Welfare Board, who assured Watson that the word “Jew” was “perfectly proper and dignified,” and that he nor any other Jew that he knew had any problem with
Many within the Stars and Stripes ' doughboy readership, however, were confident in their view that the Stars and Stripes was always accountable to them. The sense of ownership of the paper that many doughboys felt was apparent in much of the criticism these soldiers sent in. “The paper represents us,” one soldier wrote, “It is for us to make the best possible.” How the paper responded to different kinds of criticism reveals a great deal about the limits of their promise to be for all enlisted men. On one occasion, a Jewish soldier wrote a letter to the editor expressing distress at the paper 's coverage of Jewish soldiers, taking offense to its use of the term “Jew.” Before Watson, then officer-in-charge, responded to the soldier, he consulted with the chairman of the U.S. Army 's Jewish Welfare Board, who assured Watson that the word “Jew” was “perfectly proper and dignified,” and that he nor any other Jew that he knew had any problem with