Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 214, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1918 — HIGHER MORALE FOR YANKS’ KIN [ARTICLE]

HIGHER MORALE FOR YANKS’ KIN

Red Cross Home Service Section Will Look After Folks at Home. TAKE BURDEN FROM SOLDIERS Men in Service Are Often Disheartened by Distressing News From Home—Cheerful Letters From Folks IsGreatest Need. Washington.—The American Red Cross has Issued the Red Cross Handbook. The book which is intended, among other things, to strengthen the morale of the people at home was written by W. Frapk Persons, the director general of civilian relief of the American Red Cross. “Again and’ again word comes from overseas of men disheartened by bad news from home, making a brave effort to go on with their work but with no zest to It,” Mr. Persons says. “It is the task of the home service sections of the Red Cross to see to it that there are in the families of these soldiers no anxieties or problems which are likely to get into inters and bring distress to the soldiers overseas and no loneliness which we could help meet here. Want Letters From Home. “Not comfort kits, nor even smokes will so warm the hearts of our boys as the letter from home saying that all is well and that the home service of the Red Cross is standing by.” Mr. Persons recently returned from France where he organized the bureau of home service in the American Red Cross organization In that country. He Asserted that his observations in France 'made him more firmly convinced than ever that proper conditions in the homes of soldiers and sailors and the maintenance of close contact between the men and their families was necessary to preserve the morale of the soldiers.

“The fighting man wants to know all about what is going on at home,” Mr. Persons continues. “He wants to know all the details about his family and then about his friends and his community generally. He wants to be kept in touch with focal civil affairs and.what is going on In his town and state. We are coming to see that this interest is a powerful support to a ontn’s stamina. It keeps him sane and healthy. It braces him up to know (that those with whom he has lived and who mean so much to him appreciate the sacrifice h& is making. “Any worry about the condition of his dependents or relatives tends to put a soldier into a condition where he is subject to shell shock. I have this on the authority of eminent specialists who are dealing with such cases in the military hospitals. A soldier who is untouched by bullet or shell may, from shell shock, return to his trench in such nervous condition as to require hospital treatment and a long rest. * The best insurance against this serious by-product of modern warfare, the physicians say, is for the man to go over the top or meet a charge In a buoyant, untroubled frame of mind ln which his sole concern is the grim business at hand.

Cheerful letters from home help to produce the proper mental attitude, but confidence that the home folks lack for nothing is an essential foundation. Red Cross Will Help. “Soldiers become concerned when letters fall to come regularly, anxious and uneasy when disquieting rumors arrive, and worried and distraught when they learn of troubles at home. An American commander at the front and a leading military surgeon In Paris both stated that the Red Cross could do nothing more Important from a military point of view than to maintain the welfare of’the homes of our fighting men. “There can be no more certain means of steadying his morale than to give him the assurance that, whatever may happen to- his folks at home the home service section of the Red Cross chapter In his own town may be depended upon to act promptly, sympathetically and adequately to maintain the comfort and peace of mind of those he has left behind. “Home service must be as reliable and as considerable, as capable and as effective In helping soldiers’ and sailors’ families as is the trust company that looks after their worldly goods. That is just what home service should be —a huge trust company on which the soldier may rely.”