SILHOUETTES OF SERVICE
A newspaper paragraph in a Paris paper said: "Dale was last seen in a village just before the Germans entered it, gathering together a crowd of little French children, trying to get them to a place of safety."
Dale has never been seen since, and that was two months ago. Whether he is dead or alive we do not know, but those who knew this manly American lad best, say unanimously: "That was just like Dale; he loved kids, and he was always talking about his own and showing us their pictures."
No monument will ever be erected to Dale, for he was just a common soldier; but I for one would rather have had the monument of that simple paragraph in the press despatches; I for one would rather have it said of me, "The last seen of Dale he was gathering together a crowd of little children"; I would rather have died in such a service than to have lived to be a part of the marching army that is one day to enter the streets of Berlin. That was a man's way to die; dying while trying to save a crowd of little children from the cowardly Hun.
[Illustration: "The last seen of Dale he was gathering together
a crowd of little children.">[
If I had died in that kind of service, in my dying moments I could have heard the words of John Masefield from "The Everlasting Mercy" singing in my heart:
"Whoever gives a child a treat
Makes joybells ring in Heaven's street;
Whoever gives a child a home,
Builds palaces in Kingdom Come;
Whoever brings a child to birth,
Brings Saviour Christ again to earth."
Or, better, I would have seen the Master blessing little children, taking them up in His arms and saying to the Hebrew mothers that stood about with wondering eyes: "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven."