And this successful multi-millionaire replied quietly, “Stocks are going up because I am buying them and every other intelligent capitalist is buying them.  Look out of the window there.  That sweeper at the crossing has straightened up and is sweeping that crossing better and with more energy because the flags are flying, and the bells are ringing, and the guns will soon be booming.  War is the greatest energizer of a people.  There is now profit in industry and enterprise, and financial equities have increased value.”  And for nearly ten years the stock market booms followed in the wake of that war boom, while construction and upbuilding went steadily forward despite agitation and restricting laws.

It would astonish Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan to know how many patriotic Americans are helping France and what they are doing in Red Cross and other work.  I was surprised to meet a former member of the New York Stock Exchange in a khaki uniform.  I said, “Are you still an American citizen?” He responded promptly, “Certainly I am, but would not the boys on the floor of the Exchange be astonished to see me in this uniform?”

I said, “Were there not men enough here to do this work?”

He responded, “Possibly, but quick organization was wanted, and I volunteered and have held the job.”  And he was off in his high-powered automobile for a run down behind the firing line to one of the Channel ports.

As the casualties of the French have been ten times those of the English, American and English sympathizers have turned to France to see if they might “do something.”  An English lady with small feet and delicate hands responded to the spirit of the hour, left her English home and her servants, and went to the hospital front in France.  She wrote home:  “I am helping not only to dress the wounds, but to wash dishes.  My soft hands are parboiled but hardening; my feet are sore; and my legs are swollen.  I lie down thoroughly exhausted every night, but I am doing something and am happy.”

Mrs. W. L. Wyllie, wife of the famous marine etcher on the south English coast, looked out upon the Channel war-scenes, and took ship for France.  She found the center and south of the country one vast hospital.  At Limoges alone she found more than 12,000 wounded, and 32,000 wounded had passed through that city.  She found the hospital in need of special bandages and cross-bandages for multiple wounds, and back she flew to England for bales of bandages.  For weeks she was crossing and recrossing the English Channel.  Soldiers have recovered from as many as twenty and thirty bullet-wounds in the flesh.

An American lady assisting in the English Red Cross work told me that she saw 2000 wounded every day for eleven days arriving at Boulogne.  About the middle of December I learned that orders had been given to clear the Boulogne hospital base and prepare for a large number of wounded.  Relief days for the troops at the front were shortened, and it was intimated to me in good quarters that the Germans would enjoy no Christmas in their trenches.  The Allies advanced, counted their dead and wounded, and ceased in the attack.