Letter from Harry S. Truman to the Editor of the Kansas City Star

Kanaas City, Missouri, June 4, 1919. Editor, Kangas City Star, ARCHIVES ReCORDS SERVICE NATIONAL AND Kansas City, Mo. Dear Sir: Your continued effort to bolittle the work of the 35th Division in Europe and to make that Division appear as a poorly managed bellyaching outfit gots on the nerves of the mon who mado up that Divimion. It soams to us that you would try to help uphold the honorable name and record of your own home boys rather than to justify a Kansas politician whose sole reason for stirring up a controversy over the 35th is to keap hinsolf before the public. If you but kmaw the hard knocks, the night marches and the soul try- ing times the boys of the 35th endurad in order to accomplish what they did, you, I am suro, would give than a boost instead of a knock. You make us feel as if our effort had been in vain and was of no value torard winning the final victory. You maice us ashaned that we ever went to Europe. You make us wish that wo had waited to be kicked into fighting for our glorious country. You have juat about succeeded in making the public believe that wa would have done better had we retreated rather than advanced on September 26. If your charges were honest and justified by the facts, it would be bad anough; but when you are morely using us for the political aggrandizement of an ex-secretary of the Y. M. C. A. and to discredit a presidential adminis- tration, it is almost unbearable. Suprose the 35th was short of horses; suppose the 35th did got a large number of mon and officers killed; the 35th attained its object and moro. Every Division in the A. E. F. was ahort n fow horses. But if Porshing had waited for horses, the war might be going yet. For my part I can't ase what good it's going