The Madison daily leader. [volume] (Madison, S.D.) 1890-current, 1919-06-04

~ 9HHttC HFOuHU ~ NIL
Miss Sara Cunningham, daughter OF
Mrs. James C.. Cunningham, 124 East
Fifty-ffth street, New York, has come
back from France after ten months ex-
traordinary overseas experience with
the Red Cross and an abiding enthusi-
assn for the American soldier.
IL you've once seen wounded men
sometimes horribly wounded-come
into an evacuation hospital, almost
straight from the trenches, and
watched them smile and heard them
tell you 1T doesn't hurt much,' when
their faces We're gray and their mus
Giles drawn with pain-if you've seen
things like that, through one big drive
after another, you'd never quite get
your old pre-war attitude toward hui
manity again." Miss Cunningham said.
you find out that human beings
aren't just flesh and blood and mind
you find out how much Of the mystic
and the divine there are In even a com
monplace manor a man who, before
the war, you would have mistakenly
called commonplace. Nobody, / think,
who has been even remotely touched
by the last four years can ever be
quite as he was before.
$50 many silly, useless conventions,
so much insincere pose slipped away
from men and women near the front
that / don't think any of us, now that
xxratt.r rf1 80 thaua cItlx, .I4un niutItyaI
notions, will ever go back to them
again. You get to know people for
what they were over there-and saw
under their skins and you found out
the real qualities that make manhood"
Waited Patiently for Hours.
Miss Cunningham leaned forward
eagerly, with flushed, animated face.
IF | could only make you see those
boys" she said, "as they were brought
I'm on stretchers during the fury of a
to wait for attention because the
nurses and doctors were so few and
the wounded SO many. Sometimes there
would be piles, tier on tier, of stretch
ers. and the wounded would lie for
hours waiting their turn. Do you think
they complained or w~himpered? Not
they! In all the heat and confusion
of the worst rush | never once passed
a wounded man who didn't look up
and smile. Sometimes when q mans
turn for attention would come he'd
say, You better go to my buddy first,
nurse. He's worse hit than I ami
And when you'd give them a drink OF
water they'd often as not tell you to
pass It on to another chap who'd been
asking for 1t.
aNow, these things weren't isolated
instances. They are the things that
happened day after day all the time ]
was In France. / saw nothing else. ]
was at Compiegne during the bad fight.
ing around there at the hastily con.
structed Red Cross evacuation hospital,
and we had a constant stream of men
from M~ontdidier, from Scissors and
from Chateau Thierry. / tell you quite
honestly during all that awful period
l did not hear q single man complain.
They all smiled-can you picture itf
There We're those bleeding, tortured
fellows, smiling-smiling. Occasion
ally they eve told o joke. 1t was
hea~rt-breaking, you know-you felt
that you could almost go down on your
knees In acknowledgment of such man.
hood"
Tells OF Their chivaIry.
This New York girl who has been all
over the fighting front, who has nursed
In every big drive from the time she
went to France until the signing of the
armistice, who has acted as nurse,
dietitian, interpreter and entertainer,
and who has gone alone TO army posts
when she was the only woman for
miles around, has as much to say for
the chivalry of the American fighting
man as for his valor.
Sometimes" she said, 'people will
tell you about the foolhardiness of a
girl going to France among soldiers
about the dangers and insults to which
she Is being exposed. If there were
girls treated with disrespect by any
man Of any rank in our army / think
those girls must have been In some
way responsible-perhaps they didn't
realize 1t themselves, but they must
have invited that sort of thing. ever
though they did so unc~onsciously. ]
am convinced Of this, because I'm sure
that nobody could have been more Eek
posed than / was-I met all sorts and
conditions of men alone, under all
circumstances, at every hour of the day
and night, and they were-oh. simply
wonderful
II can't tell you how fine they were
Everybody acted as If he, individually
were responsible for your welfare
as IL each girl were his personal
charge. They seemed to regard it al
q sort Of honor to give us their pro
lection"
Bic Increase Noted In Enoland's Navy
More than 100000 tons Of shipping
were added to the British navy during
the war. The new vessels cost between
- ARA AAA a 80 - ~An 49, ~