Page:Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star.djvu/59



first name on the casualty list of the American army in France is that of Dr. William T. Fitzsimons, of Kansas City, killed in a German air raid on our hospitals. Dr. Fitzsimons had already served for some time in a French hospital. As soon as this Nation went to war he volunteered for service abroad.

There is sometimes a symbolic significance in the first death in a war. It is so in this case. To the mother he leaves, the personal grief must in some degree be relieved by the pride in the fine and gallant life which has been crowned by the great sacrifice. We, his fellow countrymen, share this pride and sympathize with this sorrow. But his death should cause us more than pride or sorrow; for in striking fashion it illustrates the two lessons this war should especially teach us—German brutality and American unpreparedness.

The first lesson is the horror of Germany's calculated brutality. As part of her deliberate policy of