Adventures and Letters [149]
for the Secours National:
"You are invited to help women, children and old people in Paris and in France, wherever the war has brought desolation and distress. To France you owe a debt. It is not alone the debt you incurred when your great grandfathers fought for liberty, and to help them, France sent soldiers, ships and two great generals, Rochambeau and La Fayette. You owe France for that, but since then you have incurred other debts.
"Though you may never have visited France, her art, literature, her discoveries in Science, her sense of what is beautiful, whether in a bonnet, a boulevard or a triumphal arch, have visited you. For them you are the happier; and for them also, to France you are in debt.
"If you have visited Paris, then your debt is increased a hundred fold. For to whatever part of France you journeyed, there you found courtesy, kindness, your visit became a holiday, you departed with a sense of renunciation; you were determined to return. And when after the war, you do revisit France, if your debt is unpaid, can you without embarrassment sink into debt still deeper? What you sought Paris gave you freely. Was it to study art or to learn history, for the history of France is the history of the world; was it to dine under the trees or to rob the Rue de la Paix of a new model; was it for weeks to motor on the white roads or at a cafe table watch the world pass? Whatever you sought, you found. Now, as in 1776 we fought, to-day France fights for freedom, and in behalf of all the world, against militarism that is `made in Germany.'
"Her men are in the trenches; her women are working in the fields, sweeping the Paris boulevards, lighting the street lamps. They are undaunted, independent, magnificently capable. They ask no charity. But from those districts the war has wrecked, there are hundreds of thousands of women and little children without work, shelter or food. To them throughout the war zone the Secours National gives instant relief. In one day in Paris alone it provides 80,000 free meals. Six cents pays for one of these meals. One dollar from you will for a week keep a woman or child alive.
"The story is that one man said, `In this war the women and children suffer most. I'm awfully sorry for them!' and the other man said, `Yes I'm five dollars sorry. How sorry are you?'
"If ever you intend paying that debt you owe to France do not wait until the war is ended. Now, while you still owe it, do not again impose yourself upon her hospitality, her courtesy, her friendship.
"But, pay the debt now.
"And then, when next in Paris you sit at your favorite table and your favorite waiter hands you the menu, will you not the more enjoy your dinner if you know that while he was fighting on the Aisne, it was your privilege to help a little in keeping his wife and child alive."
The winter of 1914-15 Richard and his wife spent in New York, and on January 4, 1915, their baby, Hope, was born. No event in my brother's life had ever brought him such infinite happiness, and during the short fifteen months that remained to him she was seldom, if ever, from his thoughts, and no father ever planned more carefully for a child's future than Richard did for his little daughter.
On April 11 my brother and his wife took Hope to Crossroads for the first time. In his diary of this time he writes, "Only home in the world is the one I own. Everything belongs. It is so comfortable and the lake and the streams in the woods where you can get your feet wet. The thrill of thinking a stump is a trespasser! You can't do that on ten acres."
A cause in which Richard was enormously interested at this time was that of the preparedness of his own country, and for it he worked unremittingly. In August, 1915, he went to Plattsburg, where he took a month of military training.
PLATTSBTTRG, N. Y.
August, 1915. DEAR OLD MAN:
This is a very real thing, and STRENUOUS. I know now why God invented Sunday. The first two days were mighty hard, and I had to work extra to catch up. I don't
"You are invited to help women, children and old people in Paris and in France, wherever the war has brought desolation and distress. To France you owe a debt. It is not alone the debt you incurred when your great grandfathers fought for liberty, and to help them, France sent soldiers, ships and two great generals, Rochambeau and La Fayette. You owe France for that, but since then you have incurred other debts.
"Though you may never have visited France, her art, literature, her discoveries in Science, her sense of what is beautiful, whether in a bonnet, a boulevard or a triumphal arch, have visited you. For them you are the happier; and for them also, to France you are in debt.
"If you have visited Paris, then your debt is increased a hundred fold. For to whatever part of France you journeyed, there you found courtesy, kindness, your visit became a holiday, you departed with a sense of renunciation; you were determined to return. And when after the war, you do revisit France, if your debt is unpaid, can you without embarrassment sink into debt still deeper? What you sought Paris gave you freely. Was it to study art or to learn history, for the history of France is the history of the world; was it to dine under the trees or to rob the Rue de la Paix of a new model; was it for weeks to motor on the white roads or at a cafe table watch the world pass? Whatever you sought, you found. Now, as in 1776 we fought, to-day France fights for freedom, and in behalf of all the world, against militarism that is `made in Germany.'
"Her men are in the trenches; her women are working in the fields, sweeping the Paris boulevards, lighting the street lamps. They are undaunted, independent, magnificently capable. They ask no charity. But from those districts the war has wrecked, there are hundreds of thousands of women and little children without work, shelter or food. To them throughout the war zone the Secours National gives instant relief. In one day in Paris alone it provides 80,000 free meals. Six cents pays for one of these meals. One dollar from you will for a week keep a woman or child alive.
"The story is that one man said, `In this war the women and children suffer most. I'm awfully sorry for them!' and the other man said, `Yes I'm five dollars sorry. How sorry are you?'
"If ever you intend paying that debt you owe to France do not wait until the war is ended. Now, while you still owe it, do not again impose yourself upon her hospitality, her courtesy, her friendship.
"But, pay the debt now.
"And then, when next in Paris you sit at your favorite table and your favorite waiter hands you the menu, will you not the more enjoy your dinner if you know that while he was fighting on the Aisne, it was your privilege to help a little in keeping his wife and child alive."
The winter of 1914-15 Richard and his wife spent in New York, and on January 4, 1915, their baby, Hope, was born. No event in my brother's life had ever brought him such infinite happiness, and during the short fifteen months that remained to him she was seldom, if ever, from his thoughts, and no father ever planned more carefully for a child's future than Richard did for his little daughter.
On April 11 my brother and his wife took Hope to Crossroads for the first time. In his diary of this time he writes, "Only home in the world is the one I own. Everything belongs. It is so comfortable and the lake and the streams in the woods where you can get your feet wet. The thrill of thinking a stump is a trespasser! You can't do that on ten acres."
A cause in which Richard was enormously interested at this time was that of the preparedness of his own country, and for it he worked unremittingly. In August, 1915, he went to Plattsburg, where he took a month of military training.
PLATTSBTTRG, N. Y.
August, 1915. DEAR OLD MAN:
This is a very real thing, and STRENUOUS. I know now why God invented Sunday. The first two days were mighty hard, and I had to work extra to catch up. I don't