al and visionary-looking idea somehow in the Red Cross, was
not only the thing that started the Red Cross, but it was the daily
momentum, the daily mounting up in the hearts of the people that made it
go.

The leaders of the Red Cross--Mr. Davison and the men he gathered about
him had a vision of what could be done which other people did not dare to
have.

The secret of the Red Cross was that it was a vision-machine, a machine
for multiplying one man's vision a millionfold, working out in the sight
of the people three thousand miles a vision greater than the people would
have thought they could have.

This vision which the Red Cross had, which it advertised to people and
made other people have, is what the people liked about it. The people
threw down their jewels for it--for something to believe about themselves
and do with themselves greater than they had believed before. They threw
down their creeds for it. They threw down their class prejudices for
it--a huge buoyant serious daily vision of action in which all classes
and all creeds of people could live and dream and work together every
day.

No more matter of fact conclusive demonstration of the implacable
splendid brutal power of vision, of the power of vision to precipitate
across three thousand miles a body for the souls and the prayers of a
people, could be imagined than the Red Cross during its great days in the
war.

The Red Cross became capable of doing what it did because it touched the
imagination of the average humdrum man rich or poor and made him think of
somebody besides himself. The Red Cross did this by what was practically
an advertising campaign, the advertising of different sets of people, to
all of the others.

The result was what looked and felt like a miracle--a kind of apocalypse
of people who have outdone themselves.

Naturally the people liked it. And naturally people who have watched
themselves and one another outdoing themselves, can do anything.

My own experience is that when I set out to find the real truth about
people whether it pets me in my feeling about them or not, people turn
out to be incredibly alike. They are all more full of good than they seem
to want me to believe. The only difference is that some of them are more
successful in keeping me from believing in them than others.

I have taken some satisfaction in seeing in the Red Cross, a nation
backing me up in this experience with human nature in America.

I