No more matter of fact conclusive demonstration of the implacable splendid brutal power of vision, of the power of vision to precipitate across three thousand miles a body for the souls and the prayers of a people, could be imagined than the Red Cross during its great days in the war.
The Red Cross became capable of doing what it did because it touched the imagination of the average humdrum man rich or poor and made him think of somebody besides himself. The Red Cross did this by what was practically an advertising campaign, the advertising of different sets of people, to all of the others.
The result was what looked and felt like a miracle—a kind of apocalypse of people who have outdone themselves.
Naturally the people liked it. And naturally people who have watched themselves and one another outdoing themselves, can do anything.
My own experience is that when I set out to find the real truth about people whether it pets me in my feeling about them or not, people turn out to be incredibly alike. They are all more full of good than they seem to want me to believe. The only difference is that some of them are more successful in keeping me from believing in them than others.
I have taken some satisfaction in seeing in the Red Cross, a nation backing me up in this experience with human nature in America.
III
THE CALL OF A HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE
The nearest the American people have come to getting their way in other nations—to having a vision and a body with which to do it and deserve to do it—is in the Red Cross, and in our Food Distribution. In both of these organizations we succeeded in getting the attention of others to what we could do for them—and with them—by getting our own attention first and by making our own sacrifice at home first.