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FIFTEEN MILIKM MEMBEKAHRISTM4S EVE
On every side, from now
until Christmas, tee ore go
ing to see and hear the
K slogan, "Make it a Red
Cross Christmas!" On
every side ice arc goinc, to
be asked to enlist in the
Christmas campaign drive
for 10,000,000 new mem
bers of the American lied
, Cross. And every mcm
i her is asked to •place . a
lighted candle in a win
doze of his home on Christ
mas Eve, shining through
a lied Cross Service Flag
on the icindow-pane. This
tcill be of paper, with one
large lied Cross (five
inches square), and one
small one for each member
of the household who is
also a member of the Red
Cross.
By MARIAN BONSALL DAVIS,
THE war lays its hand
upon us this Christ
mas.
The chiming carols may
seem almost lost amid the
Masting of the guns. The
candles in the windows of
our homes will shed their
little beams into a world
brilliant with liquid flame.
We will celebrate Christ's
birthday singing ".... and
on earth peace, good-will
toward men," while we urge
our sons to train their minds
and their bodies for the kill
ing of their brothers. But
the Red Cross has taught
those of us who have suf
fered, to see double: and it
will be a- Red Cross Christ
mas this year, wherever
Americans are grouped to
gether.
This is what I mean by
seeing double: there are over
.5,000,000 members of the
American Red Cross and the
campaign drive now opening
should result in over 15,000,-
> 'OO. That doesn't seem big,
i'or we have become used to
larger figures. But the
woman off in some lonely
place, far from the inspira
tion of her Chapter, making
with her work-worn hands
things to keep our soldiers
and sailors warm, the dress
ings that will help the heal
ing of some wounds—that
one woman seems great. She
is the spirit of the Red Cross.
The War Fund of SIOO,-
000,000, generous as it was,
has a way of turning round
and seeming small. Twice
that sum was spent in this
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SOOTHS LIKETH is ALL OVER THE
JNITED STATES, WILL MAKE IT EASY
4NP CONVENIENT TO JOIN THE REP
K-ROSS BEFORE CHRISTMAS EVE.
THERE WILL BE ONE WAITING
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country last year for candy.
We have learned to taik and
think in billions. But one
cent can buy enough iodine
to disinfect a wound—and
the disinfection of that
wound may save a human
life.
And, after experience with
the wounded, there comes
the time when one sees in the
horror of the shattered flesh,
the beauty of the spirit.
IT is a strange holiday for
us Americans, with our
new excitements and our new
emotions; our new soldiers
in cantonments or foreign
trenches, and our new sailors
on mined seas; reports of
our first dead, and our letters
from the front; our fears and
our elations; and the occas
ional flash of vision of hun
dreds of thousands of boys
and men in khaki in miles
upon miles of army barracks.
Many of them, too, are
aching with new tenderness.
It is the time of times, in
our new puzzlement and
need, to sing the Christmas
carols of glad prophecy. The
city chimes and village or
gans, singers going from
door to door, will chime and
peal and carol as they never
have before, the Christmas
message of good things and
great joy which shall be to
all people.
We owe it to our men to
sing it with full hearts, so
that the spirit of it will reach
their battleships and their
camps. They must never
forget the happiness of this
Christmas, the last, doubt
less, before they go across to
offer—all they have.
The Red Cross is trying,
and expects to send every
man in training a Christmas
parcel of Christmassy things
as a symbol to show him how
much we care, and the things
we cannot say in words. The
bovs in their barracks will be
celebrating, swapping pres
ents, joking and singing,
adding a Christmas song to
' the familiar round of swing
ing choruses. But before
another Christmas perhaps a
million more young soldiers
will have followed them over
seas.
SOME of them, until .the
day they put on the uni
form, knew only school fun
and home love. Their stock
ings were darned, their favor
ite things to eat were cooked,
every minute of their holi
days planned, their young
hopes regarded with yearn
ing eagerness by their fam
ilies. Some of them were
born seemingly to be knock
ed around, and have the hard
and lonely end of things.
Both are going abroad to
gether now, serving the col
ors, defending our lives with
the offer of their own.
There will be a day when
one of these boys will be hurt.
Suddenly his strong young
body will be quite helpless,
lie will be far away in a dif-
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Pn?sisk?nt Wilson's Rsd Cross Qiristrrws
+ Proclamation +
THE WHITE HOUSE, Washington.
TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES:
TEN MILLION Americans are invited to join the American Red Cross dur
ing the week ending with Christmas Eve. The times require that every
branch of our great national effort shall be loyally upheld and it is peculiarly
fitting that at the Christmas Season the lied Cross should be the branch through
which your willingness to help is expressed.
You should join the American Red Cross because it alone can carry the pledges
of Christmas good-will to those who are bearing for us the real burdens of the world
war both in our own Army and Navy and in the nations upon whose territory the
issues of the world are being fought out. Your evidence of faith in this work is
necessary for their heartening and cheer.
You should join the Red Cross because this arm of the National Service is
steadily and efficiently maintaining its overseas relief in every suffering land, ad
ministering our millions wisely and well, and iwakening the gratitude of every
people.
Our consciences will not let us enjoy the Christmas Season if this pledge of
support to our cause and the world's weal is left unfulfilled. Red Cross member
ship is the Christmas spirit in terms of action.
(Signed) WOODROW WILSON,
President of the American Red Cross.
ferent country, where they
do not speak his language,
and no one of home will be
around him. But if we will
have done our duty—his eyes
Avill'see a Red Cross. It may
be on the arm of a surgeon
and a nurse. It may be on
the flag waving over the hos
pital that can save his life.
To put it there —to send
the Red Cross to Europe—
that is making it a Red Cross
Christmas.
Our hards will tremble when we
place our Red Cross candle in the
window on Christmas Eve. And
as we start the flame glowing
HXRRISBURG !&&£%s< TELEGRAPH
through the cross, it -will come to
ns anew that the Red Cross mes
sage and the Christmas message
are the same.
WHILE they flicker, while the
carolers sing and the
chimes peal, soruewhere in
Europe they will be bringing in the
wounded.
A train, with the Red 'Cross
painted on the coaches, will be
pulling into some railroad station.
Motor ambulances in long lines
with tlie sign of the Red Cross will
be waiting for their human bur
dens. Men and women with skill
ful hands and the right to wear the
Red Cross brassard will be ready
for the stretchers.
As we stand here the stretchers
are carried past us in a slow pro
cession. It is just a sprinkling,
just a thimbleful of the day's
harvest of wounded—only two or
three hundred. Yet the proces
sion seems so long—it sems so un
endingly long. The faces are like
the faces of our men at home—•
here like our father —here like the
man who lives across the sjreet —
and here a slender boy whose eyes
we think we cannot stand to see.
It is all so quiet as the stretchers
file by. The French officer of high
rank with many medals, the peas
ant, the man who used to collect
the garbage, the black man from
Africa who does not know why he
is called from home to give his life,
pass by without a moan. Some are
SEE* EMBER 15, 1017.
blind. Some will die. All arc
grievously hurt.
Perhaps it is the presence of God
there where so many men are close
to death that makes the old scales
drop from our eyes. For among
these mutilated that is what hap
pens to us—the old values, the old
conventions drop away forever.
Each crushed or broken body be
comes so infinitely precious, as we
see it dominated by spirit. This
black man, this blind boy have
lifted us up. With a new sense we
know that the things which are
seen are temporal, but the things
which are not seen are eternal.
And lifting up our eyes from the
stretchers, we see the Red Cross.
We see it on the arm of the sur
geon, giving his skill. On the arm
of the nurse, giving her youth. On
the insignia of the aubulance men,
giving their careers. We know that
it was painted on the cases carry
ing these surgical supplies and
these healing drugs. We know
that it will wave above the hospital
to which these men are going to
have their chance of life.
From this minute the Red Cross
becomes a part of us, and we be
come part of the Red Cross.
WHILE we do our Christmas
shopping this year, while
we live these days, of new
exhiliration—these thrilling days
that are like draughts of the richest
wine of life—now, before we suffer,
Red Crosses will seem to be every
where. In the stores among the
gleaming fabrics and the gifts for
soldiers, among the pretty toys on
the Christmas trees, in railroad
stations, in factories, in theatres,
in markets, in churches, in settle
ments, in homes, in schools, in the
streets there will be hundreds and
hundreds of Red Crosses. Every
where there will be pictuesque
booths, with someone in uniform,
smiling and happy, asking for new
members. And it will all seem like
some wonderful, beautiful game.
Let us take all the strength and
inspiration that it goves us. Truly
it is beautiful and it is wonderful —
so much of these things that it will
make may men and wopien see
double; see with the eyes of the
spirit the Red Cross on the battle
front, on a brasard that is stained
with precious blood.
The campaign drive for 10,000,-
000 members will be on! But it
won't seem large. Yet one new
member has potentialities of serv
ice beyond any computation.
THEATRES will be crowded,
and the gaiety, when it is not
cruel, will help to make the
world go round; so many men in
uniform and beautifully dressed
women, the orchestra playing "The
Star Spangled Banner," patriotism
beating high!
But we know it is a changed
world. There is something sinister
in the war-tax at the box-office.
Underneath the laughing there is
choking. In France, boys are go
ing over the top; and through the
strains of "The Star Spangled
Banner" there seem to eclijo the
words of the French officer spoken
over the graves of ths soldiers
killed ill the first American en
gagement in France, in November
of this year:
We will, therefore, ask that
the mortal remains of these
young men be left here, left
with us forever. We will in
scribe on their tombs: "Here
lie the first soldiers of the Re
public of the United Suites to
fall on the soil of France in the
cause of Liberty and Justice."
The passer-by will stop and
uncover his head; travders and
men of heart will go out of their
way to come here, and pay their
respective tributes.
Private Enright!
Private Gresham! ,
' •—< Private Hayl
IN THE NAME OF FRANCE
I THANK YOU.
God receive your Souls!
Farewell!
There is a mother who works !n
her home and her church for the
Red Cross who said that the high
est points of her life, and her deep
est happiness were the times her
son, a new young second lieutenant
home on a furlough, talked with her
as they washed the dishes together
at the kitchen sink.
How it is these humble things,
and not the dramatic ones, that
bind us together and thrill ns no\y!
How to those whom the war has
touched, people are not so much
Generals or Colonels, or Presidents
or servants or ice-men or tailors or
scrubwomen or Kings, as fellow
human-bcings; and how the hope of
radiant youths have died and are
to die for. centers upon the little
children.
THIS is thinking in Red Cross
ways. For the ideal of the
Red Cross Treaty signed in
Geneva by the delegates of nations,
is merely this: that every suffering
human being in war, whether be
longing to friend or enemy, shall be
acred to the Red Cross. Yet the
symbol of the treaty is so great,
that it is the meeting-ground of the
most conflicting races and the most
conflicting creeds; of men and wom
en and children ; of black and white
and yellow and red; of rich and
poor; of Jew and Gentile; of Catho
lic and Protestant; of Buddhist and
Confucian; of rtist and artisan;
of materialist and idealist; of sol
dier and civilian; of general and
private; of Foe and Adversay—•
the Red Cross!
So we put candles in our win
dows this Christmas Eve, that the
flickering point of light shining
through the Red Cross on the win
dow-pane may say to the way
farer and the soldier and the
sailor, things too great for words.
They will understand. For in this
overwhelming trouble we have be
gun to be simple of heart together.
The poor and the rich have begun
to understand the other's saori
fices.
And so we can sing Christmas
carols and not be hypocrites; for
the guns that are killing men so
anguishingly dear to us are blast
ing out old wrongs and old hypoc
ricies.
The Red Cross is our home way
to help. The need is too great for
us to compass even in our minds.
The organization of the American
Red Cross can do the things we
cannot do ourselves—it can ar
range the shipping, and carry our
gifts, it can get them to our men,
it can, if we let it, look after our
men's little children left at home.
If you are not a member of the
Red Cross you are needed beyond
your imagining.
Please help—because you are so
nrcded.
To get the Red Cross to our boys
and our men 1 —
This is a Red Cross Christmas!
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MILLIONS OF WINDOWS, ON CHRIST
MAS EVE, WILL DISPLAY THIS
symbol OF LOYALTY TO THE RET?
CROSS IDEA. EVERY MEMBER IS
ASHED TO SHOW IT, WITH A LIGHT
ED CANDLE SHINING THROUGH.
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