Inventive Liars

The completely made-up story about Mary Bruce and her Red Cross sweater was the fruit of a prolific vine. So many similar tales were circulating in the region that a Chicago spokesman for the Red Cross, Marquis Eaton,* felt the need to publicly contradict them.

According to Mr. Eaton, these stories usually involved some item of apparel, often a sweater. In one such tale, a sweater sent to a soldier through the Red Cross was later seen being worn by a Red Cross employee or by someone who claimed to have bought it from the Red Cross. Another typical story told of how a dear old gray-haired mother who had sent a hand-knit sweater to her soldier son got a letter from him telling her that the Red Cross made him pay for it. "Very often the tale is adorned by a five dollar bill or a ten dollar bill sewn into the sweater" — the sort of little detail that gives a story the air of truth.

Mr. Eaton denounced all such story-tellers as liars and "anti-patriotic propagandists." The Red Cross was cooperating with the Department of Justice in an investigation, he said, and if the originators of these stories could be found, they would be brought to justice.

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The Hobart Red Cross was pleased to report that no matter what gossip might be circulating, the local community was still donating generously. Volunteers were hard at work assembling Christmas boxes to send to training camps and overseas. Among the articles the boys would receive were bed shirts, pajamas, socks, "nightengales" (per Webster's, "a kind of flannel scarf with sleeves, for persons confined to bed"), sweaters, mufflers, wristlets and helmets. Some of these items, I suspect, were less valuable to soldiers as wearing apparel than as reminders that they were loved.

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*I believe Marquis Eaton was a Chicago attorney, a partner in a prominent law firm who also sat on the board of directors of the Chicago Savings Bank & Trust Co. and several other businesses.


Sources:
♦ "'Liars!' Is Red Cross Reply." Hobart Gazette 26 Oct. 1917.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 9 Nov. 1917.
♦ "Make Second Shipment." Hobart Gazette 9 Nov. 1917.
♦ Marquis, Albert Nelson (ed.). The Book of Chicagoans: A Biographical Dictionary of Living Leading Men of the City of Chicago. Chicago: A.N. Marquis and Company, 1911. http://books.google.com/books?id=xlQDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq (accessed 19 Dec. 2010).