Should Mothers of War-Dead Be Sent To France?

1920

A Suggestion

Why shouldn't the Government give the next of kin — or mothers, at least — of American boys buried in France, asks the Stars and Stripes, a soldier's newspaper, the alternative of having the bodies returned or of visiting the graves?

The Government has pledged itself to bring back all bodies asked for by the next of kin. It will cost no more — probably less — to take a mother to France than to return the body of her son.

Many mothers are not so anxious to have the bodies returned as they are to have some visual evidence that their sons are buried in proper surroundings. In recognition of this desire the Red Cross has taken pictures of graves, to be sent to the mothers.

Wouldn't it be a graceful and grateful act on the part of the Government, for whom these mothers have made the supreme sacrifice of womanhood, to take them to the spot where their boys are sleeping beneath the little white crosses?


None Too Much

Down in Connecticut, says the Boston Post, the courts seem determined to do what they can to end the pernicious activities of the automobile thieves who flourish there as everywhere else. As earnest of this intent, one Walters, the recognized leader of a gang of accomplished snatchers of motor cars who have stolen $30,000 worth of the machines within a short time, was given a sentence of twenty-three years and nine months in prison. An accomplice drew fourteen years. The first mentioned is said to be a record sentence in Connecticut for this particular offense.

It is a record that should be emulated by other courts.

—Saturday Blade, Chicago, Feb. 28, 1920, p. 6.