game at which they play for the
sake of the blinded mother; she listens smilingly, nodding her old
head, her frail hands folded in her lap.

These pictures which I have painted are typical of some of the things
that the American Red Cross is doing. They are isolated examples,
which by no means cover all its work. There are the rolling canteens
which it has instituted, which follow the French armies. There are
the rest houses it has built on the French line of communications for
_poilus_ who are going on leave or returning. There is the farm for
the mutilated, where they are taught to be specialists in certain
branches of agriculture, despite their physical curtailments. There
is the great campaign against tuberculosis which it is waging. There
are its well-conceived warehouses, stored with medical supplies and
military and relief necessities, spreading in a great net-work of
usefulness and connected by ambulance transport throughout the whole
of the stricken part of France. There are its hospitals, both military
and civil. There is the "Lighthouse" for men wounded in battle,
founded by Miss Holt in Paris.

I visited this Lighthouse; it is a place infinitely brave and
pathetic. Most of the men were picked heroes at the war; they wear
their decorations in proof of it. They are greater heroes than ever
now. Nothing has more deeply moved me than my few hours among those
sightless eyes. In many cases the faces are hideously marred, the
eyelids being quite grown together. In several cases besides the eyes,
the arms or legs have gone. I have talked and written a good deal
about the courage which this war has inspired in ordinary men; but the
courage of these blinded men, who once were ordinary, leaves me silent
and appalled. They are happy--how and why I cannot understand. Most
of them have been taught at the Lighthouse how to overcome their
disability and are earning their living as weavers, stenographers,
potters, munition-workers. Quite a number of them have families
to support. The only complaint that is made against them by their
brother-workmen is that they are too rapid; they set too strenuous
a pace for the men with eyes. It is a fact that in all trades where
sensitiveness of touch is an asset, blindness has increased their
efficiency. This is peculiarly so at the Sevres pottery-works where I
saw them making the moulds for retorts. A soldier, who was teaching a
seeing person Braille, explained his own quickness of pe