and uneventful course. The Red Cross of the first three
years of the Great War may, likewise, be told briefly. All
the effort of the organization at that time -- and there was
earnest effort, however stereotyped, in many directions --
may be said to have centered around the conscription of
funds, the enlistment of personnel, and the gathering of
supplies to meet an infinitely greater demand for help than
ever before. Factories were driven to top speed in the
production of materials. Warehouses were filled to burst-
ing with incoming gifts. Yet, in the face of so great a
necessity, the leaders of the Red Cross were hampered
by the laggard movement of monetary contributions. The
psychology of this unwillingness to loosen the purse-strings
is clear now. The truth was that America was still cased
in its shell; it resented a war that it did not under-
stand.

None the less, a month after the German troops crossed
the Belgium border, a Red Cross ship sailed away, -- a
German keel, painted with the authorized red strake which,
by agreement of the nations, marked the mercy ship, -- and
distributed her hospital units and medical supplies, her
gauze and anæsthetics, her hospital garments, cigarettes,
and camp comforts for the fighting men of countries whose
prayers had not availed to save them from this stroke of
manifest destiny. Into France and England, into Russia
and Serbia, into every place where the blight of war had
fallen, even into Germany, these well-chosen benefactions
found their way. To be sure it was a very small incident,
this sailing of that stout little ship, and in the shadow of a
year or more of vast accomplishment no wonder that it
seems indistinct and ineffably far away.

But it is all an old story now --even that pregnant time
when surely, if slowly, the picture on our moral retina was
changing; when one after another the studied German
insults, the revelation of guile, the wanton destruction of

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