Life — May 30, 1918 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

"i \§ MAY 30, 1918 ‘* While there 1s Life there's Hope" VOL. 71 No, 1857 Published by PUBLISHI J. A. Mitenent, Pres't, GS COMPANY A, Mutter, Secty and Treas, 17 West Thirty-first Street, New York English Offices, Rolls House, Breams Bldgs., London, E. C. T was give and give be- tween the Pres- ident and this metropolis on May 18th. Each gave the other a good time. The President enjoyed the crowd, and the crowd enjoyed the President. Never such a parade, observers said, and indeed it was mighty pretty, and beat all previous women’s parades hands down, and that is almost to say it beat the record. We have had no great parades of troops on their way to war, and this Red Cross show, mainly of women, was by much the biggest exhibition of war participants so far. In the fulness of time, for those of us who are left alive, there will be days when [COWALESCENT WARD The troops come marching home again With gay and gallant tread, and no fear of submarines will deter us from greeting them, but meanwhile, we shall hardly better the great show for the Red Cross. It was a happy thought for the President to march at the head of it down Fifth Avenue. He would always rather be in the game than look on at it, and he is a good people’s man, and in these times his gifts and capacities in that way find a highly appreciative market. At the big talk in the Metro- politan Opera House on the night of the parade, Mr. Davison, the erst- while banker, now Chairman of the s War Council, and just back rope, spoke of our President as “the man recognized as the central figure of the world,” and Mr. Dodge followed up Mr. Davison by describing him as “ the spokesman of all the great spiritual forces of the world; the bea- con-light to which the eyes of millions in every land who long for freedom and peace are looking.” Mr. Wilson is an excellent spoke: man, at least, as we all know, and he spoke very well that night, putting in a word for an army without any defi- nite limit, and declaring his intention to stick by Russia, both very sound propositions. There is no use of put- ting a limit to our army. The only limit is enough soldiers to do the job, in so far as our population can furnish them. And as for Russia, it is too large a country to be spared for a wolf- nursery, even if there were no other objections to German control of it. Te. AMBLUNCE T is a wonderful war, and increasing all the time in marvellous effects. “Not a hundred years of peace,” said Mr. Wilson, “could have knitted this country together as this single year of war has knitted it together, and better even than that, if possible, it is knitting the world together.” As to this coun- try, we all see the process going on with wonderful speed; the reluctant getting in with the ardent to share the duties and back the fortunes of the United States; all sorts and conditions of men and women working in co-oper- ation for whatever special cause is be- ing pushed; the young, the old, the very children, incessant in helpful ac- tivities. At the present writing, with the Red Cross drive going on, New York is a truly remarkable spectacle. People are getting the habit of giving in a way that was never dreamed of before. They are rapidly getting the idea that the war has first call on their abiliti physical, mental and pecuni- ary, and that they must plan to get along on what is left after the war and all its supplementary needs have been supplied. Only a universal mira- cle could make all people unselfish, and though this war comes nearer to being a universal miracle than any- thing in history, it has not quite done that yet. But it has gone far in that direction, and is going strong. When we think what this country was a year and a half ago, and see what manner of land it is now, we pinch ourselves to make sure we are alive. T a hundred million people really moving—modern people, with mod- ern leaders and equipment, and the re- sources of a continent to work with— and surely they ought to count for something as helpers in a drive for world-salvation. Our hundred million are just beginning to strike their gait. The vis inertiae has been overcome, the mass begins to gather speed, and it is coming to be that not to move with it is to run increasing risk of being run over. The Overman bill is a law, and the President now has power to get bet- ter work out of the departments of the government, or, failing that, to shift the war-jobs from hands in which they lag to hands that can handle them. But they don’t all lag, as it is. One reads anew, this time from Mr. Law- rence in the Evening Post, that the Liberty motor not only a hummer, but is humming; that on May 16th a thousand were complete and ready to go into battle-planes; that the French government, that lately ordered three thousand of them, has now asked for as many as can be built. And there are aeroplanes; good ones, too. One plant (at Dayton) is making forty-eight a we They are just beginning to come in quantity, with great quantity not far ahead. And there are new ships comicbooks gm