Page:This side the trenches, with the American Red cross (IA thissidetrenches00desc).pdf/10

 therefore, is thousands of miles from the submarine zone or the trenches. It is in the homes of our soldiers and sailors.

Only if all is well with the mother, the wife, the children, the sisters, and brothers, can the man in the service go forward with the fullest assurance. "I can soldier better now," said the recruit whose letter is quoted at the beginning of this chapter. With his family under the care of the Red Cross he could devote undivided energy to the task before him.

This also, was the thought of the man who while on his way to camp stopped at the office of the Red Cross in an eastern city. "I want to tell you," he said, "what it means to me to know that if my mother should be lonely, or sick, or if anything should happen to her you will be there to stand by her and set things right." Again, it was the desire to have this same assurance that caused a soldier whose wife was to be operated upon the day after he left for the front to ask the Red Cross to visit her in the hospital and to do for her the many things that he would have liked to do himself.

Relief from anxiety was what was wanted by the private on whose behalf an officer in charge of a camp in the southwest sent a message not long ago to a town in Pennsylvania. The officer asked the Red Cross to reassure the man who, the telegram said, was "worried about the folks at home."

What's happening to the folks at home is indeed the most important thing in the world to the member of the family who is in the army or navy. And things do happen to the folks at home. Things happen to everybody. It is one of the ways by which life is measured