My friends, a great day of duty has come, and duty finds a man's soul as no kind of work can ever find it. May I say this? The duty that faces us all now is to serve one another, and no man can afford to make a fortune out of this war. There are men among us who have forgotten that, if they ever saw it. Some of you are old enough—I am old enough—to remember men who made fortunes out of the civil war, and you know how they were regarded by their fellow-citizens. That was a war to save one country—this is a war to save the world. And your relation to the Red Cross is one of the relations which will relieve you of the stigma. You can't give anything to the Government of the United States; it won't accept it. There is a law of Congress against accepting even services without pay. The only thing that the Government will accept is a loan, and duties performed; but it is a great deal better to give than to lend or to pay, and your great channel for giving is the American Red Cross.
Down in your hearts you can't take very much satisfaction in the last analysis in lending money to the Government of the United States, because the interest which you draw will burn your pockets, it is a commercial transaction, and some men have even dared to cavil at the rate of interest, not knowing the incidental commentary that constitutes upon their attitude.
But when you give, something of your something of your soul, something of yourself goes with the gift, particularly when it is given in such form that it never can come back by way of direct benefit to yourself. You know there is the old cynical definition of gratitude as "the lively expectation of favors to come." Well, there is no expectation of favors to come in this kind of giving. These things are bestowed in order that the world may be a fitter place to live in, that men may be succored, that homes may be restored, that suffering may be relieved, that the face of the earth may have the blight of destruction taken away from it, and that wherever force goes there shall go mercy and helpfulness.
And when you give, give absolutely all that you can spare, and don't consider yourself liberal in the giving. If you give with self-adulation, you are not giving at all, you are giving to your own vanity; but if you give until it hurts, then your heartblood goes with it.
INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION
And think what we have here! We call it the American Red Cross, but it is merely a branch of a great international organization, which is not only recognized by the statutes of each of the civilized Governments of the world, but it is recognized by international agreement and treaty, as the recognized and accepted instrumentality of mercy and succor. And one of the deepest stains that rests upon the reputation of the German Army is that they have not respected the Red Cross.
That goes to the root of the matter. They have not respected the instrumentality they themselves participated in setting up as the thing which no man was to touch, because it was the expression of common humanity. We are members, by being members of the American Red Cross, of a great fraternity and comradeship which extends all over the world, and this cross which these ladies bore today is an emblem of Christianity itself.
It fills my imagination, ladies and gentlemen, to think of the women all over this country who are busy tonight and are busy every night and every day doing the work of the Red Cross, busy with a great eagerness to find out the most serviceable thing to do, busy with a forgetfulness of all the old frivolities of their social relationships, ready to curtail the duties of the household in order that they may contribute to this common work that all their hearts are engaged in, and in doing which their hearts become acquainted with each other.
When you think of this, you realize how the people of the United States are being drawn together into a great intimate family whose heart is being used for the service of the soldiers not only, but for the service of civilians, where they suffer and are lost in a maze of distresses and distractions. And you have, then, this noble picture of justice and mercy as the two servants of liberty. For only where men are free do they think the thoughts of comradeship; only where they are free do they think the thoughts of sympathy; only where they are free are they mutually helpful; only where they are free do they realize their dependence upon one another and their comradeship in a common interest and common necessity.