The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1918-05-26
A RED CROSS
REVERE
BY
SAMUEL. MERWIN
OF the vIsIIantes.


town. oh, we took twice our allot-
ment of the second Liberty loan. And
a good many OF the boys have slipped
away (the mothers know about that
The stores are finding IT pretty hard
to make ends meet. We get little
sugar or coal. But we still have plen-
ty of gasoline. Some Of US are looking
UP summer cottages, just as in other
years.
Sometimes / think that our only
point of contact with the truth is in
the Red Cross rooms on Main street
The women crowd the place, very neat
and trim in their white working uni.
forms. / often wonder how many OF
them think-see clearly, l mean with
the flashing inner eye of imagi. alton
that every one of the pads. tampons.
applicators and ''four-by-fours they
make there by the thousand is 10 touch
a wound in the body, head or face OF
one of our American boys.
A Garden In France.
The difficulty is we cant think IT.
Not quite. We still, any evening Ia
the post office or Richardson's drug
store, speak casually of this world
crash as "a" or 1.-The" war. As II II
were just war We can't thiuk
that we are lighting not merely
a concept that has colored and con.
quered the mind of u people and tlai
is deliberately designed 10 co.or ana
conquer the mind of the world.
l think often of a garden III France.
Outside our easement was round
fountain with a stone coping. The
girls from the little school next door
i,.ayed their singing games Vut tlTere--sssf
Sur lie pont d'Avisnon's anti .'Ahts<
mon beau Chateau" The tennis cour
beyond the hedge was gravel. with
lines marked by red tiles sunk edge
wise into the ground. Sometimes n
ball fell against one OF the tiles an
bounced backward. The Faith that Ill.
vided the court from the vegetable
patch was shaded by apple trees train.
ed like vines over long trelis. The
other fruit trees were Grained fiaf
against the north wall. so tia each
apple and pear caught tie sun full and
REDEEMED there.
From our easement. too. we lookel
out over fountain and hedge to the
gray old city spread beneath us like
u relief map, the huge buff-Sray cathe-
dral with It's incredibly beautiful rose
window and it's twin towers dominat-
ing city and countryside. There was
always a scaffoIding about one tower.
a reminder perhaps that you can hard
~ expect such a structure 10 be com.
pleted within mere 700 years. II is
an age old growth. that cathedral.
Towering of the spirit of a race that
lives, tolls and worships beauty.
The Cathedral Still Stands.
The Germans haven't reached my
garden yet. Not. that is, in this war.
They were there in II. Nor have they
reached the cathedral Not yet. The
way lies through Paris and Orleans.
close my eyes and try to i'm !.
agine 1.-THE old city down there a
smoking ruin, the cathedral gone, the
souls and bodies of those little singing
girls used to know destroyed by Ger
man soldiers. That will mean,
If 1t happens, that France has fallen.
1t will not happen. / think. Our boys
will be standing directly in the way.
They are going to try to stop the Ger
mans with their bodies.
And SO I think again of the Red
Cross rooms on Main street. where
the nag flies that I see every day.
We must fight to the death either
over there or here. I, who am too old
for the front line. must at least help
to protect that old cathedral or 1 shall
find myself fighting to protect our
Main street.
But what little I can do must be
done through the Red Cross. must
think of those wounds. of somebody
from home lying out there In No Mans
Land. It is something that the Red
Cross will be there, everywhere, with
stretchers and first aid and ambu-
lances and evacuation hospitals and
base hospitals. must think, too, that
the Red Cross Is trying to reconstruct.
now, a broken people
I must think Of the cost of all this.
the heavy, interminable cost of It And
then, as love the old cathedral and
the Ginging little girls. who are young
women now. and my own town here,
whence our lot Of the fighting boys are
slipping quietly away, must do what
[ can for the Red Cross.