The Brattleboro daily reformer. (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1913-1955, 1920-11-15
YOUR RED CROSS COLLAR
Half of 1t Works in Your Community,
Half of 1t in the Nation
and Overseas

II a citizen of your city or town
joins the American Red Cross as a
S1.00 annual member in the Fourth
Roll Call, November IL to IS. what
disposition will be made of his dollar?
In the first place one-half Of it
goes to the local Red Cross Chapter
to meet local needs. 1t may help pay
the salary of a Public Health Nurse.
the preparation of emergency aid, the
cost of lessons in home hygiene and
care of the sick, the mitigation OF
distress of the unfortunate or any one
of a number of expertly conducted &C.
tiyities designed for the relief of the
individual or the welfare of the com
munity. Whatever it may be. the
work that the half-dolla does will be
Of benefit to the place from which it
came. --.... ~. .a..
No citizen can afford to preserve an
attitude of aloofness toward condi-
tions in his home town. However in
different he may be to personal risks
or however uninterested from a bust
ness point of view there must be
someone-wife, children or friends
towards whom he feels a sense of re-
sponsibility. Especially must he feel
protective impulse toward all little
children. It is not enough that we
should put our own house in order. So
health exist in any home there is al
ways the possibility of disease germs
being carried from that home to the
school the playground and the street
and to other homes.
The city or town officials will aid
the destitute where such cases are
brought to their attention, but they
cannot hunt them out The Red Cross,
through its Hime Service, can and
does. -.....
The city or town officials will do
their best to see that insanitary condi-
tions are improved wherever they be-
come aware of such conditions. The
Red Cross through it's educational
methods, aims to prevent such condi-
citizens S1.00 will help, therefore, to
bring it to pass that the people shall
actually put into practice the doctrine
hat an ounce of prevention is worth
pound of cure.
The other half of the citizens $500
goes to the National headquarters o.
the Red Cross at Washington, to be
used partly for national relief work
and partly for relief work abroad.
The Red Cross foreign activities
are being rapidly narrowed down to
relief work among the suffering chill
dren. No one--can say that those
children are to blame for the situa-
ton in which they find themselves, or
that they could have foreseen it and
made. provision for it. They are
wholly zgailtless; as guiltless as the
children in our own New England.
Eleven million Of them are war or
phans.S The parents Of millions OF.
f=others- are quite or nearly destitute.
Their own governments are too beset
with vital economic and political
problems to look after them. In other
words a whole generation of children
in Central Europe is growing up in
state OF physical and mental neglect.
Thousands os course will die. 1t is
too late now to help them. What sort
of. future citizens will the others
make? Putting aside the question of
their undeserved sufferings, what sort
Of men and women viii be formed out
of these millions of under nourished
bodies and stunted minds?