render aid so swiftly, and the military authorities do not move them,
not only because they wish to pay tribute to their valor but because
they are so valuable.

Most of all, "Blighty" goes to the soldier in his letters and there
is nothing so dear to the soldier as his letters, and nothing is worse
than to have "no mail." The woman who does not write, and the woman
who writes the wrong things, are equally poor things. The woman who
wants to help her man sends him bright cheerful letters, not letters
about difficulties he can't help, and that will only worry him, but
letters with all the news he would like to have, and the messages that
count for so much. Every woman who writes to a soldier has in that an
influence and a power worthy of all her best. Not only our letters but
our thoughts and our prayers are a wall of strength to, and behind our
men.

In this war some have talked of spiritual manifestations that
saved disaster in our great retreat. In that people may believe or
disbelieve, but no person of intelligence fails to realize the power
of thought, and love, and hope, and the spirit of women can be a
great power to their men in arms. There are so many ways of giving and
sending that none of us need to fail.

Then he is in it--in the trenches--over the top--and he may be safe
or he may be wounded--a "Blighty one," as our men say, and we get him
home to nurse and care for--or he may make the supreme sacrifice and
only the message goes home.

To everyone it must go with something of the consolation of the poem
written by Rifleman S. Donald Cox of the London Rifle Brigade.

"To My Mother--1916

"If I should fall, grieve not that one so weak
And poor as I
Should die.
Nay, though thy heart should break,
Think only this: that when at dusk they speak
Of sons and brothers of another one,
Then thou canst say, 'I, too, had a son,
He died for England's sake,'"

He may be a prisoner and then we follow him again. There are over
40,000 of our men prisoners and we have over 200,000 of the enemy. The
treatment and conditions of our prisoners in Germany were sometimes
terrible--the horrors of Wittenberg we can never forget, and we are
deeply indebted to the American Red Cross, for all it did before
America's entry into the war, for our prisoners.

From the beginning of the war we have had to feed our prisoners, and
for the first two years parcels of food went from mothers, sisters a