Photograph from Brown Brothers 



COXVOY OF TRUCKS PASSING THROUGH A WRECKED VILLAGE NEAR VERDUN 



"Within a few months we should and will have in service an army of 1,000,000 and a 

 navy of 150,000 men. These men must have our best. To prepare against their needs in 

 advance will be a stupendous task which the Red Cross must undertake." 



AMERICA'S DUTY 



By Newton- D. Baker, Secretary of War 



1 SHALL not attempt to describe the 

 size of our American duty beyond 

 saying that the human race is a waif 

 left to die unless we, as trustees, accept 

 the task of rescuing it. 



I suppose there has not been, since the 

 very early times in human history, a war 

 in which slaughter was so casual as it is 

 in this. Of course, there has not been in 

 recorded human history a war in which 

 slaughter was so tremendous in its pro- 

 portions as in this war. 



I speak of its casual character because 

 for a great many hundred years we have 

 been progressing in the direction of lim- 

 iting the horrors of war to the combat- 

 ants, and that in this twentieth century 

 we should revert to the casual slaughter 

 of children, to the improvident slaughter 



of women, to the theory of warfare by 

 the extermination of peoples, and to the 

 use of weapons of war like starvation 

 and disease — for both of them have be- 

 come weapons of war — is an unthinkable 

 reversion to a barbarous type which it 

 was the hope of the intelligent that the 

 world had outgrown. 



TRAGIC FIGURES IN HISTORY 



But, whatever the cause, the fact re- 

 mains that the suffering of the people in 

 these warring countries is more wide- 

 spread, the desolation and devastation 

 more complete, than ever before within 

 the knowledge of living persons : and as 

 this mode of warfare has not spared 

 little persons, so it has not spared little 

 nations. 



453 



