Page:This side the trenches, with the American Red cross (IA thissidetrenches00desc).pdf/61

 strain in any household to go without attention. No family must, for lack of help, become disorganized and less able to do its work in the world. And what families are under greater strain now than the families of the soldiers and sailors? To what families does the country owe more? What group of people, moreover, represents so large a part of the population? For the sake of the future of the nation as well as for the sake of the morale of the soldier and the sailor the Home Service of the Red Cross is of vital importance. It is not only an insurance to the men of the army and navy, it is an insurance to the whole country.

When the household is invaded by sickness, when things begin to go wrong, when loneliness and despair begin to show themselves, then, indeed, the Red Cross must be quick to act. It must be quick to act, but more than that, it must be long continuing in action; for Home Service is not something that is completed in a few moments or days as the passage of an ordinance by a town council. Home Service is not a wholesale process. It does not deal with the families of soldiers and sailors in the mass. It is not to be compared with a law enacted by Congress which affects everybody alike. Home Service does not involve the same thing for any two families. To each family it tries to mean what that family needs.

A neighbor comes to the office of the Home Service Section with word that a certain family is having a hard time of it. A mother writes to say that she is in such distress that she cannot continue struggling alone, Some member of a family applies to the Red Cross for information about the man at the front and soon shows