Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 130, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 June 1918 — IT COST ONE DOLLAR TO SAVE THIS LIFE [ARTICLE]

IT COST ONE DOLLAR TO SAVE THIS LIFE

Perhaps It Was Your Red Cross Dollar That Gave This ' Broken Flier His Chance to .Live.

By BRUCE BARTON

Of the VI all antes.

From the ground they could see that there was something the matter with bls machine And even while they watched through their glasses he began to fall 1 A minute later the little Ford ambulance was puffing its way across the five miles of shell-stricken road that lay between them and him. They found him beside the machine. He w unconscious, but a tree bad broken his fail. “Just in the nick of time, said the doctor crisply. "He'll be a boy for a few weeks, but well h* ve him all right again and back with his French comrade*." ' ' So they put him into the little Ford

ambulance. anil—les* than an hour after they saw' him fall he was safe in a clean white bed. “That’s what it means to have plenty of equipment,: plenty of ambulance* and doctors And bandages and everytßitig,” said the Red Cross man who told me. “It means the difference in gutting there on time or getting there hist * mlnwte too late.” “Wonderful I" I answered. And how much did It cost you to make that trip l —to save that one French boy* life?” , He flushed a tittle. “We don’t measIn terms of money." “1 know It But what do you think I persisted—for gasoline and

the trip and the bandages and aUF “perhaps a dollar, maybe two. But why do you ask?” “A dollar I" I answered. “A dollar to save a boy’s life! To send him home again from the war to the mother and father who have scanned every headline and waited breathlessly for every visit of the letter carrier I Can a dollar do a miracle like that?” “It can," said the Red Gross man. And then the thought occurred to me that perhaps it might toavo been one of my dollars. It was somebody’s dollar that did it It might have been mine—or one of yours. ■