Page:Fred Arthur McKenzie - Americans at the Front (1917).djvu/9

 Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops;

Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours."

The Americans in the fighting ranks have only been representatives of a vastly greater mass of their countrymen supporting us in their own land. The women of the United States have banded themselves into five thousand groups and circles to raise money or prepare comforts for the Allies, mainly for the destitute in France and Belgium. A noted organization on the Rocky Mountains raised a fund of a million dollars for a new club house. It was to be the finest of its kind in the world. Then an eyewitness told the members what was happening in Belgium. They resolved to make their old club house do, and donated the million dollars as a gift for King Albert's needy subjects. There is a systematised movement throughout the elementary schools of America by which the boys and girls of each district adopt a certain number of Belgian children, and make themselves responsible for finding three cents a day for the feeding of each child.

As the Allied Armies move ahead on the Western front there come on behind a group of Californian women, who are working out plans for re-building ruined French towns and