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

with them. It brought whole freight trains full of food and clothes, and things for those who were ill. It brought money, and best of all, friends. The sad desolate people were taken care of and helped to make new homes.

1. One day an American Red Cross surgeon in a hospital near the trenches looked at the wounded men who were lying on stretchers, and saw a German prisoner badly hurt amongst them.

The surgeon said, "This man is the worst wounded. I will take him first."

One of the other men said, "He is a German, doctor. Will you put him before us?"

The Red Cross surgeon said, "It is my duty to help first those who need help most. The rest of you are not so seriously wounded."

"That's right," the other men spoke up. "Take the poor chap first."

That was the spirit in which Clara Barton founded the Red Cross. It has always taken care of friend and enemy alike. To the Red Cross a wounded man is not an enemy, but only a suffering human being. The Red Cross stands for human brotherhood. Its shining red and white is a symbol of mercy as wide as the world.

1

This spirit was one of the hopes of the world when the nations met at The Hague. They all promised to respect the International Red Cross.

joined the others in this promise.

Germany

But again Germany broke her word. Again and again the German Army fired on stretcher-bearers, and on hospital ambulances, and on hospitals. The Red Cross was plain to see, but it gave no protection against the hatred of Germany.

President Wilson said, speaking about the American Red Cross in New York, in May, 1918, "One of the deepest stains that rests upon the reputation of the Germany Army is that they have not respected the Red Cross. That goes to the root of the matter."

When Germany broke the law of the Red Cross she broke a greater law than any International Law, she violated the principle of human brotherhood.

Human brotherhood is the real meaning of democracy. When we are citizens of the American Republic we belong to an American brotherhood, a democracy which gives equal rights to all its members. As members of the Red Cross, we belong to a universal brotherhood, a greater democracy which gives equal rights to all men.

The Red Cross is the flag of a world-wide democracy, ruled by the spirit of Jesus.

As American children let us all belong to this democracy and reverence its flag with our own, the Red Cross with the Stars and Stripes.

WE

in the world. She is richest of all in her children. Her mines of gold and iron and coal are not so valuable as the wise and brave men who have carried our country to safety from the time of the colonists to this day. Her fields of cotton, wheat, and fruit are not worth so much as the wise and brave women who have done their part side by side with the men.

Her glorious beauty of the land from east to west