Even the children of England are helping.  The Boy Scouts, one of the most remarkable developments of this decade, has in this war scored a triumph of organization.  This is equally true of the Boy Scouts in Belgium and France.  In England military duties of the most serious nature have been intrusted to them.  On the east coast they have taken the place of the coast guards, and all over England they are patrolling railroad junctions, guarding bridges, and carrying despatches.  Even if the young men who are now drilling in the parks and the Boy Scouts never reach Berlin nor cross the Channel, the training and sense of responsibility that they are now enjoying are all for their future good.

They are coming out of this war better men, not because they have been taught the manual of arms, but in spite of that fact.  What they have learned is much more than that.  Each of them has, for an ideal, whether you call it a flag, or a king, or a geographical position on the map, offered his life, and for that ideal has trained his body and sacrificed his pleasures, and each of them is the better for it.  And when peace comes his country will be the richer and the more powerful.

Chapter VIII Our Diplomats In The War Zone

When the war broke loose those persons in Europe it concerned the least were the most upset about it.  They were our fellow countrymen.  Even to-day, above the roar of shells, the crash of falling walls, forts, forests, cathedrals, above the scream of shrapnel, the sobs of widows and orphans, the cries of the wounded and dying, all over Europe, you still can hear the shrieks of the Americans calling for their lost suit-cases.

For some of the American women caught by the war on the wrong side of the Atlantic the situation was serious and distressing.  There were thousands of them travelling alone, chaperoned only by a man from Cook’s or a letter of credit.  For years they had been saving to make this trip, and had allowed themselves only sufficient money after the trip was completed to pay the ship’s stewards.  Suddenly they found themselves facing the difficulties of existence in a foreign land without money, friends, or credit.  During the first days of mobilization they could not realize on their checks or letters.  American bank-notes and Bank of England notes were refused.  Save gold, nothing was of value, and every one who possessed a gold piece, especially if he happened to be a banker, was clinging to it with the desperation of a dope fiend clutching his last pill of cocaine.  We can imagine what it was like in Europe when we recall the conditions at home.