A UNIQUE COMMITTEE
forts Forwarding Room to find quickly the warm garments they so much needed. Neither creed, color nor nationality interfered, if they were wearing the uniform of the United States. This made no slight impression upon the men. To go from the freedom of one's own fireside, from the solicitous care of parents or wife, to the discipline and impersonal status of military life, was often the first battle to be won. As one boy expressed it, “One's feelings are the only thing that doesn't belong to Uncle Sam,” and those feelings were consequently the more sensitive, the more easily hurt, the more easily gladdened. To go, therefore, where a man was asked only his name and place in the service, where he was greeted as a personal friend, where he could try on garments and make his own selection; where the word of encouragement, and even of confidence, was never lacking, does one believe that one of those boys will ever forget the experience?
It was a sailor boy who stood, one Saturday morning, reading the sign, “Comforts Forwarding Committee.” At first it seemed to mean nothing to him; but surely, if slowly, its promise and appeal worked its way through the shell-shocked, gassed and horror-stricken mind, to the inner consciousness, where it met a response. He crossed the street, opened the door and walked in. The steady rays of unchanging love surrounded him. Little by little his petrified thought relaxed; little by little, stuttering, gasping, sighing, his story came forth; and when the effort to speak became too great, he finished the tale in writing. After more than a year of service in the army “over there,” after going over the top and experiencing the full import of those words, what was left of the once stalwart lad had been sent back to his Texas home. But
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