To AMCROSS, Washington:
Report concerning confinement, Mrs. Harold W——, Rural Free Delivery Five, H——, Penn.
Washington, August 14, 1918.
To AMCROSS, Paris:
Answering Inquiry No. ——. Mother and baby son three months old well and happy.
In this instance the worried fighter was an officer—a captain of infantry. During the time which elapsed between the two cablegrams he was wounded and the answer found him in a hospital, side by side with a French blessé. A Red Cross searcher acted as interpreter for their felicitations and in her official report of the incident included this notation:
"Captain W—— was much improved as a result of the good news. He is sitting up and eating roast chicken to-day. He says the American Red Cross has cured him."
The Red Cross representatives here in America could not enter a home unless they were welcome; neither could they force their way into the hearts of men. They were compelled to wait until their help was sought. The growing mental depression of a certain major of a fighting division during those tense months of the midsummer of 1918 did not escape the attention of the American Red Cross man attached to that division. Suddenly the man, who had been marked because of his poise, became taciturn—isolated himself. A reference to the Red Cross Home Service which its division worker tactfully introduced into the table talk at the mess at which both sat, however, did elicit some trivial rejoinder from the man with the golden oakleaf upon his shoulder; while the following day that same major wrote a letter to the Red Cross man—and bared the reason for his most obvious melancholy.
It seemed that back here in the United States he had a little son, from whom he had received no word whatsoever in more than six months. The child was with the major's divorced wife, and his father was more than anxious to know if he was regularly playing out of doors, if he was receiving his father's allotment, and if he was buying the promised Thrift Stamp each week. The army man already had his second golden service stripe and greatly feared that his little son might be beginning to forget him.
Under conditions such as these, visiting the boy was a diplomatic mission indeed. Finally it was intrusted to the wife of an army officer. And because army officers' wives are usually achieved diplomats if not born ones, the ultimate result came in weekly letters from the boy, which not only greatly relieved his father's mind but greatly increased the bonds of affection between the two. The Greatest Mother in the World is never above diplomacy—which is, perhaps, just another way of expressing tact and gentleness.