Little Falls herald. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1889-1950, 1917-12-14

y Christmas there may be q
100000 of them, and two
years from now, so far as anyone can
see, it may be nearer 5,OOO,OOO. For
America has taken oath that not until
- kaiserism has been blotted from the
earth will the war end.
Those boys Of ours who are over
there, and the others who are going,
need all the, help and encouragement
and aid the folks at home can posi-
bly, give them. That is why the Red
Cross, instead of combining itself to CIV
ling them hospital treatment after they
have been hurt or are sick, is giving
them Christmas trees and comfort kits
and doing everything possible to make
Christmas enjoyable for them. Not a
man in all "Black Jack" Pershing's
Of the people at home for whom he is
fighting. Not man in any one Of all
the army and navy environments scat
tered all over the United States will
be without genuine Christmas-even
to Christmas tree. The Red Cross
has gone into the Santa Claus business
wholesale. as it goes into everything
It undertakes.
And that is why every man, every
woman, every child, owes it to him
self and to the soldiers and sailors to
become n member Of the Red Cross. A
campaign is being carried on to enlist
100000 new members of the Amer
"a lean Red Cross. which will make It five
times as large and ten times as rich
and powerful as any other Red Cross
in the world.
It is because of the millions and mill
z lions of American boys who are going
over to France that the whole Amer
lean people has got to join the Red
Cross in helping care for them. A few
hundred thousand can be looked after
by the present membership; but multi
ply them by ten or twenty or twenty
five, and it takes nation to back them
properly.
1t has been great sport this year to
fix up the Christmas packets, and write
the little personal! note that goes with
each one, and picture to ones self the
pleasure with which the unknown SOL
der in France will hail the gift from
the home land. For there has been no
real f!"hting-only trench raid or so,
in\which only few lives were lost
tewe.. N all likelihood, than would
have '"'"t1rrod in the natural course Of
events If they had remained in civil
life. Sn, While there was sorrow for
the brave fellows who went down fight
ing, and for those others who were
3 slain in the submarine brushes with
: the Germans, there was not the over
whelming grief that comes after every
great battle.
IS. Next year it will be different-so
different. In the spring-and earlier
II the French line should break at any
point-Pershing will hIrl his boys into
the gap, and everybody knows what
that means. There will be fighting
of the kind that made a whole world
admire the men of Bull Run, and An
tietam, and Charlottesville, and
Chickamauga, and Gettysburg, and
wherever Americans have fought.
They will be pitted against q foe who,
whatever we may say of his arrogance
and cruelty, his disregard Of the laws
Of humanity and the ordinary decen-
cies of civilized life, is hard fighter.
That means that the hospital will be
full Of American boys whose lives de-
pend on the work the Red Cross must
lio-for there is no other agency that
can wait on them. It means bandages