“Red Cross Work, again.  There are hundreds of Americans driving ambulances in the Allied lines to-day, and hundreds of American women working in Allied hospitals.  There are complete hospital units over there, equipped and maintained by American money and American service.  Have you ever heard of the Harvard Unit, for instance?”

“Vaguely.  Tell me about it.”

“Well, I mention the Harvard Unit because it was about the first; but others are doing nobly too.  Let Harvard serve as a sample.  At the outbreak of the War, Harvard put down ten thousand dollars to equip and staff the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris.  Then, in June, 1915, Harvard took over one of your British Base Hospitals, with thirty-two surgeons and seventy-five nurses.  That hospital has been maintained by Harvard folk ever since; they go out and serve for three months at a time.  Harvard also sent an expedition to fight typhus in Serbia.  Harvard’s casualty list, in consequence, has grown pretty long.  Not a bad record for one neutral University, eh?  I don’t seem to remember your Oxford or Cambridge sending out a medical unit to help us, when we were fighting for a moral issue too, away back in the ’sixties under Lincoln.”

“I knew nothing of all this.  People at home must be told,” says the Briton, earnestly.

“Or,” continues the American, we can take the work of the American Ambulance Field service.  The American Ambulance Field Service with the Armies of France has carried over seven hundred thousand wounded since the beginning of the war; their sections and section leaders have been sixteen times cited for valuable and efficient work; fifty-four of their men have been given the Croix de Guerre for bravery, and two the Medaille Militaire.  Three have been killed.  The Society has at present over two hundred ambulances at the front, besides staff and other cars attached to different sections.  This Service, which, at the beginning of the war, was a subsidiary part of the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly has for the past year been self-supporting, and although still co-operative with the Hospital, has its own administration and headquarters, and its own maintenance fund.  If you require any further information on the subject, read ’Friends of France,’[1] or ’Ambulance No. 10,’[2] both of which books will stir you not a little.

“Talking of books, if you want to read a genuine American’s opinion of the Allies and their cause, read ’Their Spirit,’[3] by Judge Robert Grant.  And if you want to know what another prominent American, who formerly admired and reverenced Germany, thinks of Germany now, read Owen Wister’s ’Pentecost of Calamity.’[4] Or, if you want a complete exposure of German aims and methods in this war, read James M. Beck’s ’The Evidence in the Case’.[5]