Page:This side the trenches, with the American Red cross (IA thissidetrenches00desc).pdf/22

 When a man becomes blind his sense of touch and his sense of hearing are said to develop abnormally as if to compensate for his lost sight. The cripple usually is exceptionally dexterous in the use of his other limbs. Precisely this sort of adaptation must take place in the family of the man who has gone to war. Each member must do his or her best to make up to the others the loss that they have all sustained.

Each member by reason of the absence of the man has, therefore, a more difficult rôle to play. It is the work of the Red Cross through its Home Service to try to understand the peculiar difficulties which this involves for each person in the household, and to help that person to meet them.

The heaviest burdens fall almost invariably upon the mother or the wife.

"It is not merely the work that I have to do, it is not merely that I have to be alone responsible for the care of the children, but there is no one who comes home at night." A woman whose husband had recently died thus expressed what perhaps is the hardest of all that the wives and mothers of the men in the service must undergo. Again and again the Home Service worker is called upon to help some lonely woman struggle against her home-sickness for the absent man.

The only son of a widow was drafted. Until then every act of the mother's life had centered about the boy. His health and well-being had been her one concern, while he, giving up all recreation outside the home, had devoted himself to her. His absence seemed to take all purpose from the mother and leave