The Clio messenger. (Clio, Mich.) 1907-current, 1917-12-14
THE RED CROSS goal IN MICHIGAN
! 100000 MEMBERS BY CHRISTMAS DAY

' mas time Is yedTuiu6 to"oiu wv
and valleys and mud fats Of France
for thousands and tens OF thousands
and, for all we know, hundreds OF
thousands OF our finest boys are over
there with Pershing And by another
Christmas there may be 100000 CT
them, and two years from now, so far
as anyone can see, it may be nearer
100000. 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 Rec
Cross, instead OF combining itself to CIV
ing 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
man in all BLACK Jack" Pershings
army, will be without some reminder
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 a genuine Christmas-even
to Christmas tree. The Red Cross
has gone into the Santa Claus bust
ness wholesale, as it goes into every
thing it undertakes.
And that is why every man, every
woman, every child owe it to them
selves and to the soldiers and sailors TO
become a member of the Red Cross. A
campaign is being carried on to enlist
250, 900 new members of the American
Red Cross in Michigan. making total
of 100000. Every family in the state
ought be represented.
1t is because of the millions and mil
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. few
hundred thousand can be looked after
by the present membership; but multi
ply them by ten or twenty or twenty
five, and 1t takes a nation to back
them properly.
1t has been great sport this year t"
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 fighting-only a trench raid or so,
in which only few lives were lost
fewer, in all likelihood, than would
have occurred in the natural course Of
events If they had remained in civil
life. So, while there was sorrow for
the brave fellows who went down fight.
ing, and for those others who were
slain In the submarine brushes with
the Germans, there was not the over
whelming grief that comes after every
great battle.
Next year It will be different-so
different. In the spring-and earlier
II the French line should break at any
point-Pershing will hurl his boys into
the gap, and everybody knows what
that means. There will be fighting
of the kind that made whole world
admire the men OF Bull Run, and An
tietam,, and Charlottesville, and
Chickamauga, and Gettysburg. and
wherever Americans have fought
That means that the hospital will be
full of American boys whose lives de-
pend on the work the Red Cross must
do-for there is no other agency that
can wait on them. 1t means bandages
literally by the million for their
wounds. 1t means spints and wound
pads and pillows and all manner OF
surgical dressings without stint. 1t
means pajamas and bed shirts and
surgical shirts-the kind that surg
cons can open and reach wounds with
out handling buttons. 1t means bed
socks and bath robes and convalescent
robes and all the things that invalids
need.
1t means drugs and medicines and
operating instruments, and all the
appliances with which modern surg
cons are daily performing miracles in
saving lives and restoring to useful
ness legs and arms which under other
methods would have been cut off at
once.
American soldiers must not be for
a single day without all of these
things they need. The French have
been. In the early days Of the war
and it has been said in some later
days-word went out that the French
surgeons were operating without anes-
thetics because they had none. 1t is
bad enough to lose an arm or leg,
but no one likes TO think OF being tied
fast TO q table and the leg or arm
cut off with no chloroform or either
10 give the sufferer unconsciousnesS
while the knife is welded
Also, within the last year. word has
come from the battlefields of France
that the little Poilus had to use old
newspapers to stanch the blood from
their wounds. That was because their
supply Of gauze had run out and no
-SS@oo>~~-~~-~s~
SCHOOL CHILDREN TO AID