The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-11-17


ugees is plain. Yet the Red Cross is
the only American organization which
has the scope to handle that debt.
And if it is not paid-if the men at
the front, starving, shivering and
fighting, find that their families are
starving, shivering and dying, how
long will those soldiers Highland
how we'll! And if these French sol
diers weaken, if they do not fight
well, what of our million American
boys who are to fight in France next
spring? Their work will be that
much harder and bloodier.
So in Paris the Bureau of Home Re-
lief for the r-fugees in Paris is a most
important outpost on the American
military situation. No brigadier gem
eral in the American headquarters in
France has more important work
mapped out for him than has MISS
Margaret Curtis! Her bureau is eS-
tablish1ng. confidential relations with
all relief agencies of Paris and
splendid coordination of all the re-
lief work in Paris is being accomplish
ed to prevent duplication. Food has
been bought by wholesale by the RED
Cross and the American army and dis
tributed Systematically; fuel also has
been handled the same way. Clothing
from America will be distributed un-
der this bureau, and housing condi-
nurses wearing American Red Cross
uniforms are visiting the sick, teach
ing mothers the care of children and
taking those who have infectious dis
eases to hospitals provided for them.
The hostels for the broken and infirm,
esta blished thru the efforts of Miss
Edith Wharton, have been taken over
by the American Red Cross and in
these hostels hundreds of underfed,
poorly housed, ill-clad and battered
creatures are being rebuilt and turned
into effective, self-supporting citizens.
Tact in Helping the French.
1t is a big job. And in doing the
work, tact is needed rather before
money or brains For the moment the
Frenchman feels that the smart
Americans are coming over there to
show France how to do tive don't
do it. Or the moment France gets
an idea that she is the beneficiary of
the rich Americans-she puts up the
bars. France has her pride. She will
not accept help as a fool, nor aid as a
pauper. But she will accept the hand
of friend and it must be always as
a friend that America comes to
France in the hour of need. The
American Red Cross understands the
situation. 1t is not going about
France poking it's Yankee nose into
the benevolent activities of the French
and gasping how shiftless' like
Miss Ophelia" at un-American con-
ditions disclosed. The French run
their benevolences one way-the
French way We have expressed our
emotions of fraternal aspirations quite
another way. We have our associated
charities, and we have them organized
down to the gnat's heel, eve-y BEN
eVolent energy, just as we organize
commercial and educational and re-
liglouS energies or political machines.
And we lose a certain individual hui
man expression in our super-organi-
zation-an individualism which the
French like. They know all about or
Observation-Disclosures organization if
you will, but they knowing about it,
prefer their own way of developing
their own genius, their own kind of
life
And it is to the credit of the Amer
lean Red Cross that it is working with
the French on French conditions in
France as the French tradition guides
the work. For after all that is what
we allies re fighting for: The fight for
each people to live it's lie in it's own
way The chief quarrel civilization
has with Germany is in Germany's de-
termination. through the destruction of
other CT yilizations, to impose the Teu-
tonic civilization on the world by
force; to put Germany over alp by
whatever cruelty, whatever barbar-
ism, whatever moral turpitude the job
the conscience OF
military necessity for the civic con-
science of Christendom in the process
of conquest. America even a little, is
not making the German mistake in
her neighborly relations with France.
She is doing her neighb- rly service of
neighborly benevolence in as nearly
the French way as the American Red
Cross can do it.
Thus in rebuilding the wrecked
French villages we are not making
American villages, but we are restor-
ing French villages. If the don't
care for sewers, modern plumbing,
electric lights and a telephone in
every house; if they prefer to keep
the stable next to the dining room and
the manure pile by the front window,
that's the affair of the French people
And if in the care of the refugees, the
French desire to have one society sup
ply coal, another shoes. another pock-
ct handkerchiefs, another macaroni
and dozen other societies supply
each of a dozen other things=that's
the FRENCH way. It's a way that
working thru other human energies
has made a brave. competent and low
able people. So Americans neighbour
ing with these people in Gods work
in war and peace will work their way
to get the results which they desire
Copyright. 1917, by The Wheeler
Syndicate, Inc.)
(Another article from France by
William Allen White will appear next
Saturday,