The deeds of mercy.”
In this mind and mood we appeal for help: for ungrudging, tenderest, quickest help!—the help that brave persons would instantly give if they saw children drowning. For every man disabled, sick, or deprived of his strength is as a struggling child in the flood of adversity, and indeed more pitiful than a child, for the child’s day may be yet to come, while his is past. Moreover, he has been snatched from all that made life pleasant and useful to himself, to fight his country’s battle, for which he, personally, is not responsible, but which he enters upon for the sake of a duty which is purely heroic self-sacrifice. Let us therefore accept this free gift of his manhood in the cause of Right and Justice and Freedom, with no less cheerful and willing gifts and self-sacrifices of our own; let us give and still give, in the all-beneficent spirit of the daily sunlight which pours itself out unasked over the fields and pastures to bless and fructify them! And let us never weary of giving! From every man and woman of the teeming population of the United States we ask a donation for our Holy Cause—our new Crusade of the Lord’s Sepulchre—for such it is, inasmuch as we seek to raise from the grave of silence and despair those who have been giving the best of their lives in suffering the horrors of this terrific War. Be the gift small or great it will add to the sum of what we hope to make the most wonderful and munificent gift and act of homage to martyred heroes that has ever been known in the world! We are a Committee of Mercy, and we make this Appeal to all the merciful, in God’s Name, and for the sweet uplifting of a Star of Hope in the darkness!
STARVING BELGIUM
AN APPEAL (Written by request for Mr. Hoover’s “Belgium Relief Fund,” and circulated through the United States Press)
“Six million of people are on the verge of starvation in Belgium!”
Such news as this writes itself across the brain in letters of fire! Great Goddess of Liberty, think of it! You, America!—you, who represent that goddess, with the light of an ever-widening glory on her brow, think of this shame to the very name of Freedom!—this blot on civilisation—this degrading result, as it were, of our long-boasted intellectual supremacy and scientific advancement! Six million people on the verge of starvation!—through no fault of their own, an industrious, peaceful, marvellously heroic little nation, deprived of its honestly-earned right to live, and dragged from its altars of prayer to weep in the dust of beggary and famine! You, America!—you, Star-crowned States of Freedom that have already done so much and are doing so much for this broken and bleeding victim of bitter circumstance—you cannot stay your hand now!—you cannot—you will not! You will do more!—and still more! You cannot see a brave nation die of sheer hunger!—it is not in your heart to look on at such a frightful thing unmoved; therefore you will listen to all unprejudiced appeal—even to mine, though I have little claim to your hearing save that of the affection freely given to me by thousands of my readers in your country—an affection gratefully accepted and as warmly reciprocated! I have naught to do with the quarrels and murderous onslaughts of men filled with blind fury and lust of world-power; all that I can see or hear is the sorrow and suffering befalling those who are innocent of any quarrel—the wives, the mothers, the young girls and boys, the little children—the helpless and bewildered old people! Cruel famine is already torturing these piteous and patiently enduring souls, on whom such a black cloud of unmerited disaster has fallen that it seems as if it would never lift! All who have power to visualise their unparalleled distress must and surely will take every possible means to soften and mitigate the horrors of their situation. Generous America!—you have done and are doing much!—you have worked and are working strenuously to relieve the burden of Belgium’s heavy affliction, but work to you is the very pulse of your large life, and bigness of conception in noble deeds is your breathing power! Therefore, no hesitation need be felt in asking you to go on Working and Doing all you can for the tortured, half dying people of a devastated country—a people whose magnificent heroism has blazoned itself in a chronicle of glory for the wonder of the future years—a nation that has faced her foes unflinchingly in the simple defence of her freedom, and whose noble King, a hero to the manner born, has not uttered one undignified word of complaint against the sudden and harsh calamities meted out to him by the cruel caprices of a cruel destiny. To America all grand things are possible—America, as yet aloof from combat, can accomplish what other nations, involved in difficulties at this juncture, can barely attempt: America can approach Germany with the ease of one at peace in the midst of strife, and can with humane forethought and certainty secure such distribution of food supplies to the Belgian civil population as may save them from the sufferings which now confront them every day. This is what America can do and with all our hearts and souls we pray that it may be quickly done! We, in Great Britain, are never weary of helping, to the best of our ability, those exiles who have lost their homes and means of livelihood—we strive to make their hard lot less bitter—and to one and all we accord a welcome as to those of our own blood and kindred. But we are at war, and though our Government is using all the means available to prevent the threatening disaster of millions of non-combatants, women, children, and the aged, being sacrificed to what is called “military necessity,” such means are not enough, being perforce obstructed by the difficulties of the situation. The grim idol of Militarism must have its burnt offerings—that pitiless god of Battle so aptly and magnificently described in Lord Byron’s Childe Harold:—
“Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands,
His blood-red tresses deep’ning in the sun,
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,