"It worked, it really worked," she said. "I found a group of colored men, and upon that group used all the scientific new thought that I might possibly bring to my aid, and with real success. The men were mollified and a bit contented, so that one of them--I think that back in the Middle West he had been a Pullman porter--finally came to me and said: "'Missy, I's a-found our hoodoo. Sure what could we expect when we've got a cross-eyed nigger preacher in our squad?'" CHAPTER X "PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES IN YOUR OLD KIT BAG" "Wounded yesterday; feeling fine to-day." How many times that message--varying sometimes in its exact phrasing, but never in its intent--was flashed from France to the United States during the progress of the war never will be known. It was a lie--of course. Would any sane mother believe it, even for a minute? But it was the lie glorified--the lie idealized, if you will permit me to use such an expression. And it was the only lie that I have ever known to be not only sanctioned, but officially urged, by a great humanitarian organization. For the Red Cross searchers in the American hospitals in France were not allowed to write to the folks at home in any other tenor. Little scraps of messages muttered, perhaps, between groans and prayers, were hastily taken down by the Red Cross women in the hospitals, and by them quickly translated into a message of good cheer for the cable overseas. Any other sort was unthinkable. Here was a typical one of these: "Wounded yesterday in stomach--feeling fine. Tell mother will be up in a day or two." Would you like to look behind the scenes in the case of this particular message? Then come with me. We are "behind the scenes" now--in the dressing room which closely adjoins the operating room in a big American evacuation hospital not far from Verdun. They had done with him on the operating table--for the moment. One operation had been performed, but another was to follow quickly. In the meantime, the soldier boy--he really was not much more than a boy--sat straight upward on his cot and watched them as they pulled the tight, clinging gauze from his raw and tender flesh. All he said during the process was: "Do you think that I could rest a minute, doc, before you do the second one?" He got his momentary rest. And as he got it, sat, with a cigarette between his tightly clinched teeth, and dictated the letter home which you have just read. * * * * * Another Red Cross girl walking through one of the wards of that same hospital near Verdun stopped at the signal of a wounded man who lay abed. He was a very sick-looking man; his face had the very pallor of death. And his voice was very low and weak as he told the Red Cross woman that he wanted her to write a letter for him to his wife back in a little Indiana town.