Bring war orphans here

The New York Times

November 7, 1914

CHICAGO, Saturday. Nov. 7.- The Chicago Tribune prints the following:

" In this war and world crisis what is the most helpful thing that can be done? This is the question which The Tribune has been carefully considering for weeks. The obvious answer is to stop the war. When the time is opportune for the President of the United States to act, The Tribune and its friends will lend him their heartiest support.

" What is the most helpful thing that can be done now? An answer to this question is the movement which we launch today.

" The war orphans are in need. Some are without mothers. Some are on the shoulders of poor. overburdened women. Left to themselves, hundreds will starve, other hundreds will freeze when penury, want, privation, suffering, and disease will visit hundreds of thousands.

"On the other hand ours is a blessed land. God has been good to us. Our poor are rich compared with the orphans of Europe. A little of our waste would relieve the worst portion of the European situation. Thousands 'of American families want children. Their hearts are hungry; their firesides are vacant.

"The Tribune. after deliberate consideration, has come to the conclusion that the best service which can be rendered now is to bring together the wants of the war orphans of Europe and the wish of American homes for children.

"The service will be one that will give permanent, abiding, substantial help. It permanently removes a burden from the shoulders of the borne-down mothers. It saves from suffering the women and children of the war-stricken land. At the same time it contributes to our country what will prove in time a substantial resource.

"The plan is to give the people of the United States an opportunity to ask for these children. We prefer, and it is best, that the children be adopted. To this end we will send to Europe a corps of physicians and nurses who will see that no children are accepted except those free from taint of every sort, strong. sturdy, bright-eyed, clean-limbed children. such as can be Welcomed in The Tribune homes with safety.

"This is no ordinary time. Never in the worlds history has disaster been so appalling as at the present time. Our response must not be ordinary. Every man must square his conscience , with the extraordinary need."