Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1917-11-09

VIZ ASHINGTON, D. c., Nov. 6.-Who is
wv telling tales about the Red Cross? Who
is responsible for starting the half dozen
stock fables afloat all the country, whose sole
object is to convey damaging insinuation
about the Red Cross organization? Is he pro-
German, a pacfist or a malicious practical joker?
Or are the stories started by a hidden but extern
sive organization of sort? Nobody knows
The stories in circulation though, and they pre-
sent curious problem.
There is no truth in any of them. They
all designed to hamper and bring into disrepute
the Red Cross knitting campaign, which is move
ment deserving all the support any American can
give it. A knitting campaign is rather a curious
object for any hostile power to select the OBJ
ject of underhand attack. The stories themselves
equally curious, in their mingling of able and
artistic lying with absurd details that stamp them
instantly not only false, but impossible, to
who has any knowledge of the Red Cross work.
typical tale, and one of the most widely
circulated, might be entitled "A Pair of Socks
for Sammy How the Lumberman Got Stung."
According to this tale, young lady has knitted
beautiful pair of socks for soldier, and en-
trusted them to the Red Cross for delivery TO any
lad in khaki Moreover, the young lady, being of
romantic temperament, has put note with her
name and address in the toe of one of the socks.
A few weeks later she always gets answering
note from man in a lumber camp. The answer
assures her that the socks fine job and the
lumberman appreciates them. 1t closes by saying,
They are the best socks ever bought for $3.50 in
my life
From this tale intelligent public is supposed
to deduce that the Red Cross is taking the socks
young ladies knit for soldiers and selling them for
$3.50 a pair. The most striking fact about the
yarn, and all its brethren, is that 1t crops up in
exactly the form in every section of the
try The national headquarters of the Red Cross
have received literally thousands of letters each
reporting that this tale is abroad east and west,
north and south, with hardly detail changed The
lumberman who was mulcted of $3.50 sometimes
works in Maine, sometimes he works in Louisiana
or Michigan or Colorado Washington. But the
rest of the tale doesn't vary. This in itself is
enough to throw it out of court with those who
weigh evidence 1t bears a family resem-
blance to the thousands of identical kilograms that
flooded congress when the question Of declaring
war was pending. But who started it?
Another tale is that of the devoted mother who
knitted a sweater for her soldier boy. She gave
it to Red Cross chapter to forward but her boy
never got it. She went to the chapter again to
report and the lady in charge told her the sweater
had been sent But the keen-eyed mother in ques-
herself A second glance and she recognized the
sweater as the she had made for her son.
"That is my sons sweater" she accuses "And to
prove it to you, will show you the $40 bill that
sewed in the collar Which she trumphantly does.
There are several holes in this tale The larg-
est one is the fact that no Red Cross sweater has
a collar They aren't made that way. Another
is that the policy of the Red Cross is not to accept
gifts for individual soldiers but to reserve the
right to give them where they will do the most
good. Anyone who wants to send present any
thing else to a particular soldier has only to adj
dress the package, affix postage stamp, and make
of the well-known parcel post
And yet this 1O-bill-in-the-colar story is going
up and down in the land, and thousands of women
are hearing that it happened to friend of friend
of theirs, and are writing to the Red Cross about It,
1t does not encourage the knitting campaign. Who
started it?