"I am beginning to understand, now, something of what you meant when you used to talk so enthusiastically about your confining, and, as it seemed to me, often thankless work. I never knew what real satisfaction was until I began to get mixed up with this volunteer Red Cross work. Coming from the source that it does, you will probably be surprised and amused at the statement that, when I look back on the old, superficial, utterly useless life that I formerly led, I actually thank God for the foolish whim that brought me to Paris in the fall, and the equally whimsical decision that led me to volunteer my services as an auto driver. The work has stirred something inside of me that I didn't know existed, and, if I come through this scrape (we're working in villages pretty close to the front a good deal of the time), I'll come home 'poorer, but wiser.' Yes, they've touched my pocketbook as well as my heart.
I suppose the papers give you some idea of conditions here; but no verbal description can begin to do it justice; the need is simply overwhelming and hourly growing greater. Think of it, old man, there are thousands upon thousands of babies and little kiddies of Belgium and northern France homeless, many of them orphaned, most of them sick and all helpless and with their lives—which have every right to be carefree and happy—filled with sorrow and suffering.
France has been glorious in the way she has met the staggering, almost insuperable difficulties which everywhere confront her, but how could she be expected to meet this incidental problem when she was so overburdened with the crushing pressure of the battle for her very existence. It has been a mighty lucky thing for her that the Red Cross was ready to take it off her shoulders, and she has turned to us (How does that sound? Can you imagine me doing anything useful?) with tears of appeal and gratitude. That isn't a figure of speech. I have actually seen the Prefect of this Province, who would rank with the governor of one of our states, and who is a brave, capable man, cry like a woman over the seeming hopelessness of the ghastly problem. I have heard him say that he—that France—was helpless, and beg us in the name of common humanity to do what we could.
Believe me, we're doing it, and I'm proud of my countrymen and women who have gone into this thing with the typical Yankee pep; proud of the American Red Cross and just a bit proud of myself. You used to make fun of my vaunted ability to stay up half the night, and be fresh as a daisy the next morning. It's serving me in good stead now. I can't begin to tell you about the work we have done already and are doing; it is a task to overwhelm the courage, but we are 'carrying on,' as the Tommies say.
New children, by the scores and hundreds, are brought into the hospital bases daily, and many of them have been living for weeks, and even months, filthy in cellars of Hun-shattered villages which are almost continually under fire. They are generally sick, naturally, indescribably dirty and, in fact, mere wraiths of childhood. God, Don, it gets me when I imagine my own nephews and nieces in their places!
We clean 'em up, give them help and something to live for. We have already established hospitals, schools and nurseries in —— and —— and our ambulances and 'traveling baths' go out daily to give aid to the less needy in the neighborhood. Can you picture me acting as chauffeur for a magnified bath tub for Belgian babies? That's what I'm doing, now!
Get into the game, old man. We need you over here, and the kids of the disgustingly rich at home will be the better for not having a doctor to give them a pill every time their little noses run a bit. Pack up your saws, axes and other trouble-makers in your old kit bag and climb aboard a ship bound for France."
Donald saw that there were tears in Smiles' deep eyes as she silently folded the pages, and replaced them in their envelope.
"Of course you ought to go," she said simply. "I spoke selfishly. But oh, Don, I don't know what I shall do without you; you're the only 'family' I've got. I don't see you very often; but I know that you are here in Boston, and I guess that I have got the habit of leaning on you in my thoughts. You know I called you a tree, years and years ago."
"Yes, I remember, an 'oak,' wasn't it? I thought that you meant that I was tough," he laughed. "The idea of you leaning on any one is funny, Rose." Then he added, with some hesitancy, "I've been thinking ... Would you like to go over there, too, Rose? I could take you ... that is, I am quite sure that I could arrange for you to do so, not as a Red Cross nurse, of course, for they have to be graduates; but as a volunteer helper in one of those base hospitals. It would be a wonderful experience, and you would be performing the kind of service that you like best. It would not be time wasted, by any means."