In turn I spoke before two significant groups
of men and women. One was a group of women meeting each day to make
Red Cross bandages, and knowing the scarcity of such in France, and
knowing how at times nurses have had to tear up their skirts to bandage
wounds of dying boys, I said: "Surely this is it!"
Then I spoke before the artists of New York, with Mr. Charles Dana
Gibson heading them, and as I had seen their stirring posters
everywhere arousing the nation to action, and knew what an important
part the artists and writers in France had played in "The Services of
Supplies," I said: "Surely these are the most important!"
But I have found at last that none of these are the most important of
all. There is another section to "The Services of Supplies," and that
is more important than the mechanic behind the pilot, more important
than the man who assembles the motor trucks and the ambulances in
France, more important than the ship-builders, more important than the
lawmakers themselves, more important even than the President, more
important than that great army of laborers which I saw in Pittsburgh,
more important than the artists and the Red Cross workers, and that
supreme and important part of the great "Services of Supplies" is the
father and mother, the wife, the child, the home, the church, the great
mass of the common thinking, feeling, suffering, praying, hoping people
of America.
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