Now was a time for deep thought rather than compromise. And deep thought won--it always does. Deep thought moved the American Red Cross warehouse into the ancient seminary there, even though that sturdy structure had been pretty well peppered by the _boche_. When the Red Cross moved in, you still could count fifty-one distinct shell holes in it; another and a final one came while it still was in the process of adaptation to warehouse uses. In this badly battered structure lived the Red Cross warehouse man and his three assistants--all of them camion chauffeurs--after they had put forty-five panes of glass in with their own hands. Then the supply of glass ran out. In the former chapel of the seminary fourteen great window frames had to be covered with muslin, which served, after a fashion, to keep out the stress of weather. Twenty-seven of the precious panes of glass went into the office--where daylight was of the greatest necessity. The rest were used, in alternation with the muslin, for the living quarters, where the Red Cross men cooked their own meals, in the intervals between dealing out warehouse supplies. It was hard work, but the chauffeurs did not complain. Indeed it so happened that their chief did most of the complaining.
"What is the use?" he sputtered one afternoon while the war still was a day-by-day uncertainty. "Those boys will put in a big day's work, every one of them, come home and not know enough to go to bed. Like as not they will take a couple of hours and climb up some round knoll to watch the artillery fire. When the town was in the actual line of fire--not more than a fortnight ago--one of them turned up missing. He had been with us only a moment before, so we began hunting through the warehouse for him. Where do you suppose we found him? Let me tell you: he was up in the belfry, the biggest and the best target in the town. Said he wanted to see where the shells were striking. I told him to come down, the Red Cross wasn't paying him for damn foolishness. But you couldn't help liking the nerve of the boy, could you?"
How it did run hand in hand with endeavor all through the progress of this war. And it was not limited to the men of the actual fighting forces. The Red Cross had more than its even share of it. The great, appealing roll of honor in the Hotel Regina headquarters--the list of the American Red Cross men and women who gave their lives in the service of their country--was mute evidence of this. Courage in full measure, and yet never with false heroics. Full of the sturdy everyday courage, the courage of the casual things, exemplified, for instance, in this letter from the files of the Stores Section, written by the agent in charge of another of its warehouses in northern France: