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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



To preserve people from deteriorating 

 through neglect, and at the same time 

 to preserve them from deteriorating by 

 growing dependent on the easy bounty of 

 others, this is, of course, the primary les- 

 son in all rational and responsible social 

 service, and this lesson must be learned 

 by many who would assist the families of 

 soldiers, not sentimentally and to their 

 destruction, but really and to their better- 

 ment. Hence the Home Service insti- 

 tutes which are held all over America 

 and in which those who really wish to be 

 of service can learn the difficult lesson 

 of acquiring science without losing their 

 susceptibilities to pity. 



RED CROSS EDUCATIONAL WORK 



This work is, of course, educational in 

 its most far-reaching aspect, and to this 

 work of education, Red Cross has added 

 another in its Junior Auxiliary — a plan 

 whereby the school children of the coun- 

 try are enlisted in Red Cross activity, not 

 for the sake of their membership fees, 

 because these fees are never applied to 

 the general purposes of Red Cross, but 

 are used entirely to promote the children's 

 own activities ; not primarily, either, for 

 their production of Red Cross articles, 

 knitted goods, etc., but primarily for the 

 education of the children themselves in 

 foundational principles of citizenship and 

 the application of citizenship to war con- 

 ditions. 



So far from undertaking to exploit the 

 school children of America for Red Cross 

 activity, the Junior Auxiliary seeks rather 

 to make Red Cross the coordinating agent 

 of all their war activities, and thereby to 



save the time of the school children rather 



than to add an extra burden to the al- 

 ready too many burdens of extra-curricu- 

 lum activity. 



"nothing stands alone" 



These extensive educational Venturis 

 may seem far afield from the thoughts 

 which Henri Dunant had in mind when 

 he and the women of Castiglione were 

 bearing bleeding and groaning soldiers 

 from the battle ground of Solferino, and 

 when the thought shot through his brain 

 that there should be a permanent organ- 

 ization for this sort of relief. 



Certainly the idea could not have oc- 

 curred to him then that this single thing 

 that he was planning should develop into 

 so complex a matter as the modern Red 

 Cross, with so many ramifications and so 

 many unsuspected opportunities trans- 

 lated into far-reaching duties. But this 

 is merely an example of that great fact 

 of the universe of which all philosophers 

 are conscious, that nothing stands alone, 

 but everything exists in relationship to 

 something else and each in turn is re- 

 lated to all. 



A wounded soldier is a very concrete 

 fact, but when humanity has undertaken 

 to care for that soldier it cannot stop until 

 it has done everything that will rationally 

 administer to his welfare. And so, step 

 by step, Red Cross has grown in a quite 

 logical way from physical service to a 

 wounded man into this great complex 

 machinery which touches the soldier's in- 

 terests at every point, and which, for its 

 true functioning, must invade the fields 

 of education itself. 



