I Am an American

army and superintended the work of nursing and relief.

In 1881, the American Red Cross Society was formed by her efforts, and she became its President.

Before her death Miss Barton superintended the work of relief in three more great disasters. She took care of the Armenians in 1896, she took care of the Spanish and American soldiers in 1898, and later of the English soldiers in Africa.

What is this association that Clara Barton founded?

It is the great association that makes a business of helping those who need help. It is the mother of lonely children, the nurse of sick soldiers, the kind sister of the poor, the big brother of the weak and helpless. The American Red Cross is the greatest single business organization in the world, and its whole business is helpfulness.

When we take our dimes and dollars to the Red Cross, we send them straight to some one who needs help, some one who is suffering.

Perhaps my dollar went to a little town near the Swiss border, sometime in the year 1918.

A train from Germany pulls into the station. A crowd of women and children stumble off. They are French women and children who have been kept pris

oners in Germany, and are being sent back to France. They are in rags, they are faint with long hunger, they are pinched and yellow with sickness.

One poor little girl falls on the platform. She is too weak to walk. Quickly a man with a cross on his sleeve lifts her in his arms. He carries her gently to a big motor ambulance with a red cross on its side. The little girl opens her eyes a short time later and finds herself in a soft bed, in a cool, clean room, near other little children in other comfortable beds. A gentle nurse is holding a cup of broth to the hungry little mouth.

Then the little girl is bathed, fed, and comforted. The nurse brings her a dolly to keep for her own. When she is well enough to get up she finds a nice dress and fresh clothes to put on.

My dollar was one of the dollars that paid for the ambulance, the hospital, the broth, and the clothes. Maybe it was the very dollar that paid for the dolly. Perhaps my dollar went to Paris sometime in the year 1918.

Out in the mud and smoke sixty miles away, one of my American brothers in khaki brown flings up his arms and falls in a crooked heap. He has been shot in the leg. His comrades rush by him. It is their duty to

go forward, to take the German trench. He lies there, in pain, in fear. Will they find him, or must he die slowly alone? He thinks, "Even if they find me, I shall never walk again. I shall be a cripple."

Dusk comes. The American boy is faint, almost unconscious. Suddenly he hears a low voice, an American voice. Strong American arms with a cross on the sleeves lift him to a stretcher. Sturdy American comrades carry him back to the First Aid Station.

A kind American hand gives him food, and medicine to dull the pain, and a Red Cross doctor bandages his wounds.

Presently he is in a motor ambulance with a red cross on the side. By and by he is in a hospital train with a red cross on every car. At last he lies in bed in a hospital in Paris, over which the Red Cross flag flies.

He thinks, "I am alive, but I shall never walk again. My mother will cry."

A great surgeon comes in, a man famous on both sides of the ocean. He says, "It can be done." And he performs a delicate operation that makes the American boy able to walk again. It is an operation that would have cost a thousand dollars in times of peace.

My American brother in khaki brown sits happily on the balcony and looks at beautiful Paris, and he thinks, "I am well! I can walk again. How glad my mother will be!"

My dollar helped to pay for the stretcher, the food and the medicine, the ambulance, the train and the hospital. My dollar helped train the nurse, and all the people who helped. The great surgeon gave his services for love of humanity, but he could not have performed the operation without the things my dollar helped to buy.

Perhaps my dollar went to Italy.

There was a time in the Great War when the armies of Italy gave way before treachery and might together, and the Germans poured into the country, killing and burning as they came. Later the Italians drove them out again with magnificent bravery. But there were terrible weeks when all the people who had lived in the border towns were wanderers on the roads. Mothers with babies in their arms, boys and girls of eight or nine, grandmothers and grandfathers, were tramping the roads like beggars. They had nowhere to sleep, nothing to eat, and no home to go to anywhere.

In less than a week the American Red Cross was