During the stress of this time, when often the inhabitants left their villages from one side while the opposing forces were entering from the other, she was deeply impressed by the pluck and helpfulness of the French children. A year later, while she was with the Red Cross Commission in Czecho-Slovakia, the same spirit among the Czech children, coupled with an active sympathy on their part for others in distress, revealed to her the latent power for peace in the children of the world, needing only the threads of contact to bring about widespread understanding.
No wonder, then, that when, in 1920, she was asked to enter the service of the American Junior Red Cross, she accepted. She was commissioned first to portray child life in those European countries which had been beneficiaries of the service of the children of America. She has since remained continuously with this organization, traveling widely, indeed encircling the globe, in behalf of world-wide understanding among children. The work of her pen and brush has been an important factor in the development of that children’s ‘league of friendship’ which now includes in its membership ten million boys and girls in the schools of forty nations.
The stories in this book do not tell of children’s sufferings. They bring before our eyes the children of many nations in their everyday surroundings, everywhere bravely and hopefully living and learning. Some of the stories are quite true; and all of them have a kernel of truth around which the artist-author, with the help of very real children, has built them.
Wherever it was known that the drawings were to take some message or story to the children of America, there was a scramble to get into the picture. Often a poor child would refuse to take payment for posing: ‘No, no, I want to do it for Them!’ Perhaps a boy had received a Christmas box or a letter; perhaps a girl had known the unfamiliar comfort of hot food or warm shoes during the pinched days of the war; or perhaps they had simply heard that other children of their country, poorer than themselves, had been helped.
‘It was a stirring thing to find,’ said Miss Upjohn, ‘that even in remote spots of the Balkans there existed an image of American school-children as something bright, kind, and companionable. In the heart of many a growing boy and girl in Albania or France or Czecho-Slovakia the sympathy of American children is being repaid a thousandfold in the golden gift of Friendship.’
Arthur W. Dunn
National Director
American Junior Red Cross
Friends in Strange Garments
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IN THE WILDERNESS
Rahmeh’s mother brought the smoking dish of mutton and cauliflower from the clay brazier where it had been cooking over a fire of thorns, and placed it in the middle of the rug, on a large round straw tray. Then she laid a little flat loaf of bread at each place and clapped her hands to call the family to their meal.