Hammond Times, Volume 12, Number 154, Hammond, Lake County, 20 December 1917 — Page 8

THE TIMES

Thursdav, Dec.

This space patriotically contributed by First National Bank aLake County Savings & Trust Co., Hammond, Ind.

To the Merchants Association of New York After a Tour of Investigation in France (Reprinted from The Cleveland News)

"I have seen the widows of France, I have seen the blind boys of England, I have seen England's navy guarding the North Sea. All that the correspondents send over about the atrocities that have been committed, all the inhumanities, all the beastialities that no paper can possibly receive in ink they are not only true, but the worst of them cannot be told. "You have been told that our women and our girls have been protected by the British navy from the fate that befell the women of France and of Belgium. Men, believe it; it is absolutely true. It is more than true. I have been in the hospital in the Department of Lamerk, of France, where there are nearly a thousand girls; npt one is eighteen years of age, and all will be mothers. And 61 per cent are in addition afflicted with the most filthy, unspeakable malady that we know of, and 1 1 per cent in addition are stark mad. I have seen the boys that will never be men; I have seen tlie boys who have been cruelly mutilated. You don't know anything about this war. You don't know.

"We don't know we are at war, and some of you think that because you have bought a hundred dollars' worth or a million dollars'

worth of liberty bonds, you have done your share. Some of you think that because you have given $10 or $100 to the Red Cross you have done your share. You have not, and you will not have done your share until it hurts. And men and women, when next February or March you take up your daily papers and on the front page you read that casualty list, and when you read the columns and columns of names of dead, the wounded, the missing, then and then only will you realize what England, what Australia, what Canada, what New Zealand, what France has gone through for three years.

"This war is not won. This war will' begin for us next spring. . Don't you get the idea that because you see our boys in khaki on our streets this thing isnowgoingtobe attended to, this thing is going to be won, and that shortly. Oh, no! There will be more thousands, will be moise millions, and they have ot to be transported, and they have got to be fed, and they have got to have munitions to fight your battles and save your women and protect your girls, and to protect the grandmother, because the Beast makes no difference between the girl who has not reached womanhood and the venerable mother or grandmother with white hair'

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By becoming a Member of the American Red Cross you will be doing something. You will bs enrolling yourself on the fids of decency, and against the hellish atrocities that PIGHT NOW are being perpeirs-ted over ihcis. The cost of membership is only a dollar. And that dollar will help our soldiers when they lie wounded in France. It will provide a cup of cold water for their burning throats. It will help provide Red Cross hospitals and hospital ships and hospital trains. We need your help. We need your influence. We need your active co-operation and support. Will you give it?

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ammond' Chapter, American Red Cross