to vote. So there we stood, two Kansas editors, and an Illinois
congressman, while the uniforms of the continent brushed by us,
in uniforms ourselves, after a fashion, but looking conspicuously
civilian, and incorrigibly middle western. Medill in his pea-green
hunting outfit looked more soldierly than we. For although
we wore Sam Browne belts, to indicate that we were commissioned
officers--commissioned as Red Cross Colonels--and although we wore
Parisian uniforms of correct cut, we knew in our hearts that they
humped in the back and flopped in the front, and sagged at the
shoulders. A fat man can't wear the modern American army uniform
without looking like a sack of meal. Henry fell to calling the
tunics our Mother Hubbards. We looked long and enviously at the
slim-waisted boys in khaki; but we never could get their god-like
effects. For alas, the American uniform is high-waisted, and a
fat man never was designed for a Kate Greenaway! So we paced the
platform at Modane trying to look unconcerned while the soldiers
of France, Italy, Russia, Belgium, England and Rumania walked by
us, clearly wondering what form of military freak we were. For the
American Red Cross uniform was not so familiar in those latitudes
as it was to be a month later, when Major Murphy came swinging
through Modane with forty-eight carloads of Red Cross supplies,
a young army of Red Cross nurses and workers, and half a million
dollars in ready cash to spend upon the stricken cities of Northern
Italy choked with refugees fleeing before the German invasion!
Today, the American flag floats from a hundred flag-poles in Italian
cities, from Venice to Naples. Under that flag the American Red
Cross has soup kitchens, food stations, aid bureaus for civilian
relief all along the line of the invader in Italy, and the Red Cross
uniform which made the soldiers' eyes bug out there at the border
in the early autumn, now is familiar and welcome in Italy. But we