Stars And Trenches Case Analysis

Tensions between the AEF’s Paris command office and the Stars and Stripes simmered for months before General Harts himself visited their office to clear the air. Speaking to an impromptu assembly of the paper 's personnel, Harts addressed the aforementioned distribution delay and a laundry list of other sources of hostility between the Stars and Stripes staff and his office. He admitted fault for several of those incidents, reminded the staff of how important their work was to the United States, and expressed regret that any of them might have perceived Harts to be personally prejudiced against the paper. Addressing both the enlisted men and their officer-in-charge alike, Harts took careful measures to be sure that no one in the office of this incredibly influential paper felt any …show more content…
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