Page:This side the trenches, with the American Red cross (IA thissidetrenches00desc).pdf/8

 Red Cross a medal struck off by the Germans in anticipation of their triumphal entry into Paris? He had procured it upon one of his voyages and presented it as the best means of showing how much the friendship and help supplied by the Red Cross to his family had meant to him.

Most vivid of all was the way one of the United States engineers, who subsequently was captured by the Germans in the battle of Cambrai, expressed it:

"Be sure to buy a Red Cross badge for me, yourself, and one for each of the children," he wrote to his wife. "Wear them all the time." The Red Cross had helped his family through legal and financial difficulties and had made it possible for his oldest daughter to extend her education.

Surely this message from the soldiers and sailors of the United States to the people on this side the trenches must be plain to everybody. Certainly he who has followed the history of the great world struggle need not be told it.

This message is that, despite the huge quantities of machinery and munitions, despite the billions of dollars, despite the millions of tons of ships that are being poured into this terrible venture, the real factor in deciding the war will be something that cannot be manufactured, something that cannot be measured, something that cannot even be seen. More vital than aeroplanes, more important than machine guns, tanks, submarine chasers, or high explosives is the quality of the spirit of the men in the trenches and on the ocean. When the French and British were retreating to the Marne in the first weeks of the war, when the French