Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 43, Number 30, 17 December 1917 — Page 17

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THE RICHMOND PALLADIUM -AND SUN-TELEGRAM,' MONDAY DEC. 17,-1917-'- . . .. . . . , ., - . - t . - . ' .. ,

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On every side, from n&n until Christmas, we are going to see and hear the slogan, "Make it. a Red Crocs Christmas!" On every side xce are gom, tof be 'asked to enlist in the Christmas campaign drive for 10,000,000 new members of the American Red Cross. And every member is asked to place a lighted candle in a window of his home on Christmas Eve, shining through a Red Cross Service Flag on the window-pane. This will be of paper, with one 9 large Red 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 Christmas. The chiming carols may cem almost lost amid the blasting 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 find their bodies for the killing of their brothers. But the; Red Cross has .taught those of us who have suffered, to see double: and it .will be a Red Cross Christinas this year, wherever Americans are grouped together. This is what I mean by seeing double: there are over A ,000,000 members of the American Red Cross and the campaign drive now opening should result in over 15,000,000. That doesn't seem big, for; we have become used to larger figures. But the woman off in some lonely place, far from the inspiration of her Chapter, making with her work-worn hands things to keep our soldiers end sailors warm, the dressings that will help the healing of some wounds that one woman seems great. She is the spirit of the Red Cross. The War Fund of $100.000,000, generous as it was, has a way of turning round and seeming small. Twice that sum was spent in this war v r-rj zm V .;. j-y,-v. ; w OS stalk '' mm mmmm BOOTW LIKf TH IS AL, OVER THE NITffO STATES, WU.N4KE IT EASY AKP CONVENIENT TO JC'N THE REP Cross ffttone Chwhwas Eve. THA Wc P ONE. WAITiNS PC -VOOL

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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 occasional flash of vision of hundreds, of thousands of boys and men in khaki inv 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 organs, 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 wili reach their battleships and their camps. - They must never forget the happiness of this Christmas, the last, doubtless, 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 vve care, and the things we cannot say in words. The boys in their barracks will be celebrating, swapping presents, joking and singing, adding a, Christmas song to the familiar round of swinging 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 uniform, 'knew only school fun and home love. Their stockings were darned, their favorite things to eat were cooked, every minute of their holidays planned, their young hopes regarded with yearning eagerness by their families. Some of them were born seemingly to be knocked around, and have the hard and lonely end of things. Both are going abroad together now, serving the colors, 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 voung body will be quite helpless. He will be far away in a dif-

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Prssfctent WilsonUKy CrssQiristmas

TO THE PEOPLE OF

TEN MILLION Americans are invited to join the American Red Cross during 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, administering our millions wisely and well, and awakening 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 membership 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 will see a Red Cross. -It n be on the arm of a surgeon and a nurse. It may be on the flag waving over the hospital that can save his life. To put it there to send the Red Cross to Europe that is making it a Red Cross Christmas. Onr hards will tremble when place oar Red Cross candle in the window on Chrishnas ' Eve And as we start tbe dame glowing

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THE UNITED STATES: through the cross, it will come to us anew that the Red Cross message and the C&ristmas message are the same. WHILE they flicker, while the carolers sing and the chimes peal, somewhere in lurope they will be bringing in the wounded. " A tram, with -Ae Red Cross painted on the coaches, wiil be pulling into some railroad station. Motor ambulances in long lines with the sign of the Red Cross will be ; waiting for ifaeir human burdens. Men and women with skill ful hands and the right to wear the Red Cross brassard will be ready for the stretchers 4 As re stand here the stretchers

HOUSE, Washington. '! are carried past us in a slow procession. It is just a sprinkling, just a thimbleful of the day's harvest of wounded only two or three hundred. Yet the procession seems no long it sems so unendingly long. The faces are like the faces of our men at homehere like oar father here like the man who lives across the street and here a slender boy whose eyes we think we cannot stand to seeIt is all so quiet as the stretchers file by. The trench officer 0f high : rank with many medals, the peasant, 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 bv without a moan. Some are

blind. Some will die. All are grievously hurt. " Perhaps it is the presence of Cod there where so many men are dose to death that makes the old scales drop from our eyes. For among these mutilated that is what- happens to ns the old values, the eld 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 ns 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 surgeon, giving his skill. On the arm of the nurse, giving her youth. On the insignia of the ambulance men, giving their careers. We know that it was painted on the cases carrying these surgical supplies and these healing drugs. We know that it will wave above tbe 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 become part of the Red Cross. we - do- onr Christmas shopping this year; while .v we Jive .these days, of new exhfliration-these thrilling "days that are like draughts of the richest wine of hfe 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 settlements, in homes, in schools;-in -the streets there will be hundreds and hundreds of Red Crosses. Everywhere there . will be ' pktoesque booths, with someone in uniform, smiling and happy, asking for new members. And it will all seem like some wonderful, beautiful game. Let ns take all the strength and inspiration that it goves ns. Truly it is beautiful, and it is wonderful so much of these things that it will make niay men and women 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. f The campaign drive for 10,000,000 members will be on! But it won't seem large. Yet one new member has potentialities of service beyond any computation. THEATRES will be crowded, and tbe 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 echo the words of the French officer spoken over the graves of the soldiers killed in the first American engagement 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 inscribe on their tombs: "Here lie the first soldiers of the Republic' of the United . States to fall on the soil of France in the cause of Liberty and - Justice." The passer-by.- will stop- and uncover his ' head ; , travelers and men of heart will go out cf their way to come here, and. pay their respective tributes. Private Enright! Private Gresham! - Private Hayf

IN THE NAME OF FRANCE I THANK YOU. - God receive your Souls! Farewell! There is a mother who works in her home and her church for the Red Cross who said that the highest points of her life, and her deepest happiness were the times her son, a new young second lieutenant borne 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 ns together and thrill as now! How to those whom the war has touched, people sae not so ssaeh Generals or Colonels, or Presidents or servants or iee-men or tailors or scrubwomen or Kings, as feflow-hnman-beings ; and how tbe hope of radiant youths have died and are to die for. centers upon tbe little children. rIS is thinking in Bed Cross ways. Far the ideal of tbe Red Cross Treaty signed in Geneva by the delegates of nations, is merely this: that every suffering human being in war, whether belonging to friend or enemy, shall be sacred to tbe Red Cross. Yet tbe 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 women and children ; of black and white end yellow and red; of rich and poor; of Jew and Gentile; of Catholic and Protestant; of Buddhist and Confucian ; of artist and artisan; of materialist and idealist; of soldier and civilian; of general and private; of Foe and Adversay the Red Crossl So we pet candles in our windows this Christmas Eve, that the 'flickering point of light shining through the Red Cross oa the window-pane may say to .the wayfarer -and the soldier and the sailor, things too great for words. They will understand. For in this overwhelming trouble we have bopun to be simple of heart together. The poor and the rich have began to . understand tbe other's sacrir flees. ; And -so we can sing Christinas carols and not be hypocrites; for the guns that are kfDing men re angoishingly dear to ns are blasting out eld wrongs and old bypoericies. The Red Cross is ear borne way to help. . Tbe need is toe greet for ns t compass even fry eor adnds. The organization of ue American Red, Cross can do the things we cannot do, ourselvesit can arrange the shipping, and carry ear gifts, it can get them to our men, it can;; if we let it, look after onr men's little children left at home. If you are .not a member of tbe Red Cross you are needed beyond onr imagining. Please help because yon are so needed. To get the Red Cross to our boys and our men This is a Red Cross Christmas!

X MftVLtONS OF W?NPOY5,0M CHRISTMAS EVE.WILU PtSPUIV THIS SVMBOL OF LOYALTY TO TMC ftS Cross ipsa. Every mcmccr is ASKB.P TO SrCWlT.Wrrw A UGHTEP CAHQLZ SHiNINO 7WROyOM.