New Shoes

This week U.S. children had toys, candy and all the trimmings that traditionally go with Christmas. But it was a safe bet that no toy on Christmas Day aroused more ecstasy than a pair of new shoes given to a little boy in the U.S. zone of far-off Vienna. The little boy was an orphan. Like most of the children he knew, he had cause to realize that mere warmth, mere survival, are incomparably precious.

The new shoes were issued to him, shortly before Christmas, by the American Red Cross. They and their radiant owner embodied, this year, the meaning of Christmas.

If that meaning remains alive in hearts enough, through days enough to come, it is even conceivable that by next Christmas (if he survives this winter), this child and millions like him will have covering, as well, for the heads which must try to restore sanity to the world; the hands with which that world must be rebuilt; the knees on which to render gratitude to God.

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