lUI Million v/tUIUWii'' ^tfWi* wvii *" '«Min DSANCFUr* a3AiNn-3\^^ ^OF-CAllFORj^ ^OFCAlIFOff^ '^ ^lUBRARYQ^ ^lllBRARYQr^ ^5MECNIVER% ^lOSANCEl ^//n4nvi.iG^ '^//OJnviJQ^ _ ^ c? '^IM •> Q I hJ .-2 C S p^ ^ O fl fii a; Pi g r T ^ WORK FOR THE SOLDIER AT HOME 47 of schools and homes and even churches. It vaccinates everybody who needs it. The Pubhc Health Department's nurses — all graduates — are promptly available for com- bating epidemics. For bacteriological purposes there are laboratories, sometimes newly established for the emergency. And to safeguard against a crying need the Red Cross has furnished at substantial cost four laboratory cars which, the English sanitarians and car builders agree, are the last word in point of convenience and equipment. These can be hooked on to fast trains and delivered on the front of an epidemic's advance, civil or military, with amazing alacrity. Thus, on every side the soldier was guarded against all that had in it any potential possibility of injury to his health, and the sanitary forces which were combined for the physical protection of the army camps built up health organizations of the highest order all over the United States. In many lines, standards were established and methods of purification set up which will outlast all wars. In our supersensitive land we have a fashion of side- stepping reference to what we term social disease. If the Army had been as squeamish there would have been a different story told in the Saint Mihiel salient. The Public Health authorities and the Red Cross Bureau of Sanitation, as well as the War Department itself, recognizing in this thing a peril greater, even, than tuberculosis, laid hold on it barehanded. There are thirty-seven states now that have made venereal ailments reportable; whereas, at the beginning of the war there were but five. The program was to stamp out this thing at its source. The arm of military law is long : It reached into far villages that sent soldiers to the Army, and the Army lever to pry the truth from men is strong. The day is here when the dis- tributors of sex poison, professional or otherwise, will be put where they can no longer foul the nation's life. In the more wholesome field of Red Cross work for the 48 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR soldier in camp, there was an activity that knew almost no rest and no limit. Keeping in close touch with the man from the time he landed within the reservation until he finished his training, it tried to make him bear in mind that it was there to help him get rid of his worries and to smooth his road. An unsung genius who saw how the thing worked out crystallized it in this stanza : — 'Don't pack your troubles in your old kit bag, Tell 'em to the Red Cross man." That is the story in a very few words. The Red Cross built houses in all the thirty-nine camps at first established. When the war closed it had nurses' houses in connection with base hospitals in more than forty-two different camps, posts, and Army hospitals; it had convalescent houses in sixty- three military and naval establishments and rooms in others furnished for convalescent purposes. There were nearly six hundred men and women in the Camp Service offices, and fifty-nine directors doing communication service at base, general, naval, and embarkation hospitals. There were no large camps, posts, or stations for the training of soldiers, sailors, or marines not covered by the Bureau of Camp Service, and when peace came the small places were being added to the list as quickly as possible. It is difficult for the person who has never seen one of the great Army camps, with its miles of barracks and hospital buildings and warehouses, the far-reaching avenues and endless company streets, the brand-new drainage system, the garages and fire houses, commissary stores and officers' quarters, rest houses, mess quarters and remount buildings and all its innumerable housings of soldiery, to form a mental picture of the setting in which the Red Cross Head- quarters was located. Through all the hours of daylight the movement never ceased. It was an endless reel of motion filled with the burly, brown figures of a man popula- tion, and the air vibrated with their clatter. There was the WORK FOR THE SOLDIER AT HOME 49 rhythmic beat of tramping recruits, going through the ever- lasting evolutions of drill, and the murmur of many voices. There were individual figures "hay footing" to and fro on a thousand errands, working detachments whose blue "rompers" were almost a foreign note in the khaki sym- phony, mule-teams, trucks, and commissary-wagons, loads of hay and loads of drain pipes, tents, and supplies — every- body going somewhere and doing some one thing. Scattered everywhere, singly or in groups, were soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. The thought that every soldier lazing down the road, every disconsolate mule browsing on the scanty herbage, every single thing, animate or inanimate, was a duly recognized and numbered item in either the personnel or the furnishing of an Army summoned up a \'ision of bookkeeping which staggered the imagination. Let no one imagine that the day of the Red Cross Field Director at any busy Army camp was a day of rest. He was the officer in command of Red Cross activities at every camp and cantonment. There was no busier man on the premises, and the fact that he worked for nothing never seemed to slow him down. Moreover, the qualification test that he had to pass to get the job was not an easy one : tact, caution, initiative, calmness, firmness, and persistency were a part of his necessary equipment — he need be many types of men all in one. There were no bankers' hours in the Camp Service. The camp turned out at six when the Red Cross man was on his job mapping out the day's work, examining and preparing to fulfill orders from the camp commandant or the chief surgeon, going through a mail that was full of Home Service problems, a hundred individual cases, official communica- tions, and "axes to grind." There might be requests for help in securing discharges, for the Red Cross — with its facilities for investigation and its standing with the War Department — could present the story of a man who had 50 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR a just claim for release as well as for the man who had no claim and had yet to learn the hopelessness of asking to be released. There were always a lot of private messes that were coming up for settlement, domestic complications, legitimate and otherwise. The draft brought to light more bigamy than the law could ever punish. It brought one soldier face to face in many a camp with two wives and often with more. There were reunions in Red Cross camp head- quarters of several families with only one head. It would take Solomon and Haroun-al-Raschid rolled into one to adjust in these cases the questions of insurance and allot- ment. The Red Cross Director was not a judge, but he was asked more than once to sentence a foolish soldier to matrimony. In forty-four of the camps throughout the country the Red Cross built big cruciform convalescent houses to give the sick or wounded soldier, who was on the mend, a lift up the hill — a cheerful place to flee to in his daytime hours to escape the sight of sick men and medicine bottles, of tem- perature charts, the paraphernalia of surgery, and the smell of ether and iodoform. It was a great thing for a man who, with the help of nurses and doctors, had won a long uphill fight against death, to be transferred into a big cheerful place with couches and steamer chairs and sunshine, with cards and checkers, with curtains and flowering things, where the Library Association furnished him with the latest best-seller, where the magazines and newspapers were handy to restore his touch with American life, where he could smoke and swap yarns, and where his mother or his sister, his wife or his best girl could have a pleasant reception when she came to see him. It cost money to build these houses, but they were worth it. Then there was the warehousing in connection with Red Cross administration in a big camp. There was all the trucking and handling and requisitioning. Sweaters? A WORK FOR THE SOLDIER AT HOME 51 big packing case held a great many. A mathematical genius at Camp Cody, away down in Texas, j&gured up in his idle moments that if the cases of sweaters that had come in were ranged in a row they would make a fine barricade nearly half a mile long. Then there were the pitiful things in the base hospital — the things that laid bare the quick of life and drew forever on the reserve fund of nerve and heart. There was the drawing of wills, the adjustment of allotments, and the constant touch that must be kept with all the teeming and changing life of that city which was called a camp. It certainly was a variegated industry, this Camp Service! A man of unsteady nerves or inflammable temper or lacking in resourcefulness would not have kept his sanity in it longer than twenty-four hours. It did not require continual searching to find the ^'gaps" ; other people found them for you ; the Red Cross mission was to fill them. To get soap, brooms, medicine-glasses, and hot water bottles for a hospital whose supplies were held up on a railroad siding somewhere ; to provide a heater for heating liquids; to get screens to give the ward patients a certain amount of necessary privacy; to rig up a building where junior officers could study nights; to provide entertainment for a delegation of Civil War veterans ; to get a Ford car for the Division Surgeon to go his rounds in when an epidemic was over- hanging the camp ; to hurry in a consignment of horse medicine out of the blue sky in time to save the whole herd of sick and dying remounts from being sent to the horse cemetery; to find laundry tubs on twenty-four hours' notice for a quarantined regiment ; to skirmish up quarters for a staff of nurses ; and, finally, to get a flag to put on the coflan of a dead soldier on his last journey home, represent a few of the requirements and not even a decimal part of the work accompUshed. CHAPTER V THE NAVY Red Cross Cooperation with the Navy — The Naval Reserve Force — Medical and Surgical Service — Hospital Ships Equipped through the Red Cross — Lack of Coast Hospitals — Personnel for Base Hospitals Supplied by Red Cross — Naval Shore Hospitals Abroad — Organization of Naval Auxiliaries — Letter of Secretary Daniels — ■ Rush Order for Surgical Dressings — Camp Service in Naval Sta- tions — Convalescent Houses at Naval Stations — Relief for Sur- vivors of the San Diego — Admiral Sims Encomiums. THE mass of the American people are wholly unaware, I am sure, of the close cooperation that existed all through the war between our organization and the Navy. Nor is it at all surprising when one considers the strictness of the departmental censorship. These strange fighting ships, the lean, trim cruisers, the lithe sea wasps that they call destroyers, the undersea boats, all are members of our family but we are permitted to have little more than a speaking acquaintance with them. They come ; they go. They swing in the river at evening and with the last somnolent note of their bugles yet echoing across the waters, they are still with the stillness of sleeping villages. When the sun comes they are gone, and the young ebb tide, which tells no secrets, silently follows on their track. Every now and then, it is true, some fortunate in- dividuals catch a glimpse of these great, gray ghosts of war moving in purposeful majesty down the harbor outward bound, and fading into the murk and mystery of the sea. But the horizon's rim is the end of their knowledge. 52 THE NAVY 53 Now and again, however, there comes the inevitable leak — the human equation is always to be reckoned with — and word finds its way into the public prints of some brisk bit of business that the Navy has been doing. But that is all. The highest tribute that a loyal people can possibly pay to the Navy is that of unquestioning and abiding faith which, certainly, is the evidence of things not seen. Public interest and popular enthusiasm turned ever, perforce, to the soldier whom we had always with us. Sturdy, clean, competent, and happy, he was forever tramping up and down the thoroughfares, a welcome visitor at the Red Cross Canteens. Yet, during these anxious years, our ships together with those of our Allies held watch over the German Navy, netted the harbors, mined the runways, keeping up night and day a sleepless vigil while it safely convoyed 2,000,000 soldiers and many more millions of supplies across the Atlantic. Almost at the start the Red Cross had one of its oppor- timities to cooperate with, or better, to help the Navy. It was at a time when newly fledged naval recruits were being hurried into the great formation and four hundred of them were rushed east from the Great Lakes station to Washing- ton. They were forced to depart so hurriedly that their account books were left behind. They arrived in the capital with practically no money and there was no prospect that the governmental machine could provide them with funds. A request was made to the Red Cross to finance them over the period of delay, which was cheerfully granted. But to go back a Httle : In August, 1916, Congress had created the Naval Reserve, unlimited as to number for the duration of war; the old naval militia became Class Two of the Reserves. By this measure the Navy, later on, was able to reach out and gather in men who had seen service, as well as thousands of recruits. The regular establishment increased in numbers from 55,000 to 88,000 in a few months 54 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR and, ultimately, reached nearly 600,000 men. The Marines jumped from 10,000 to 75,000. We come now to what might be called the first move in the naval game which followed our entrance into the conflict : the spectacular arrival of the first flotilla of our destroyers in British waters long before they were expected. For many uneventful years the Navy had been waiting for a chance to make just such a dash as that and the order, needless to say, was carried out in accordance with the best traditions of the service. Within six weeks, also, after war was de- clared, the personnel of the Navy had more than doubled. Not only was the Atlantic Fleet growing in an amazing rate, but the Navy was called upon to furnish guards for American merchantmen, and it had already been suggested that the training of the new merchant crews, soon to be launched, should be under naval auspices. Meanwhile, the Medical and Surgical Service of the Navy had been organized with great care and thoroughness. In the naval training schools there was established at the open- ing of the war, as part of the general preparation for a great emergency, an elaborate system of instruction and training for pharmacists and hospital corps men. The training of these new forces was intensive and involved practice as well as theory. There was instruction in clerical work, microscopy, urinalysis, pharmacy, dentistry, pathology, bacteriology, chemical nursing, X-ray examination and development of plates, the making of splints and surgical dressings, and all the chemical laboratory and field work incident to the care of the sick and wounded. The Army, numerically so great, stripped the field of medical men and hospital attendants. The Navy, especially for sea service, — where women cannot or do not go, — was forced to rely upon itself. To realize the urgency of this need, it is necessary to consider the special character of naval service, its environment, and its difficulties. THE NAVY 55 The Army can evacuate its wounded from one hospital to another by prompt and, in the case of hospital trains, highly equipped conveyances. Aboard a warship it is different. In an engagement between modern vessels the space available for the wounded is limited, and the intensity of battle permits of little or no work with them until an engagement is over. The most that can be done for a wounded man is to apply the dressing that every one carries and to remove him, if he cannot remove himself, to the unexposed side of the ship to await attention until the battle is over. Then, if the ship stays above water and there are surgeons enough left, the wounded may be transferred to an ambulance ship, hospital ship, or other transport, if there be one nearer than the nearest land. This matter of hospital ships was one of vital moment to naval establishments and one in which the United States Navy had long labored under serious embarrassment. The lack of facilities in this service had been obvious for a long time prior to our entrance into the war, and by persistent effort Congress had been prevailed upon to make appro- priations for its extension. Two passenger vessels — sister ships of about 10,000 tons — were taken over by the Government and adapted to hospital uses. They were com- missioned under the names of Comfort and Mercy. Through the Red Cross, the Society of Colonial Dames provided money to equip them, which was done in the most thorough manner. In addition to these there was the Solace, a small ship, also converted and which, prior to the war, was the only vessel maintained for this purpose by the Navy. Mention, however, should be made of the yacht Surf whose owner offered through the Red Cross to turn her over as an am- bulance ship to attend the fleet in Atlantic waters. She was altered to meet the requirements of the service, equipped 56 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR with all the necessary appliances and placed in commission on May 27, 1917, in New England waters, thus releasing the Solace for purely hospital service. Later she was trans- ferred to Chesapeake Bay, and in August to the New York base. When the Red Cross flags and markings were re- moved, and she was turned back by the Government, she had transported in the neighborhood of a thousand sick men from ships of war. But save for the Surf there was no distinctive ambulance ship available for the naval service. In this connection the following will be of interest : — " A hospital ship," says a writer on naval matters, " does not in any sense replace a base hospital in a coast town. The hospital ship acts as a hospital transport to which ineffectives are transferred to fixed base hospitals. The hospital ship is, in a way, a fleet base hospital moving from place to place as the fleet position changes on the sea." At the beginning of the war there was a decided lack of coast hospitals, notwithstanding that the Medical Bureau of the Navy had long tried to secure them. However, there was great activity in expansion of hospital facilities based upon the nucleus of the old established naval hos- pitals, which had undergone material improvement and enlargement. Civilian hospitals in larger cities were speci- fied as collateral naval institutions, and prominent civilian physicians were enrolled in the Navy Aid. Apropos of this last statement, I have the assurance of an authority that within a year after the United States entered the war nearly five hundred medical officers were added to the present Medical Corps of the Navy, and a thousand medical officers of the Naval Reserve Corps were assigned to active duty. Every sort of specialist was listed in the Navy service. Nor was the Red Cross at all backward in the way of assistance : it supplied the personnel for five base hospitals. In itself this may not seem, perhaps, to be of much im- portance, but in the intense work which characterized the O H THE NAVY 57 naval medical service, it was distinctly an advantage to secure staffs of medical men and nm'ses who had worked together in civil practice and were familiar with each other's methods. Thus, our Red Cross system of recruiting as many as possible of its hospital units from large cities was the means of providing the peculiar teamwork that is so essential. On August 22, 1917, the Red Cross had provided eight base hospitals and thirty station units of the Navy with medical officers and nurses. Hospital corps men and expert workmen in various lines coincident to hospital operation were provided by the Navy from its trained personnel. For example, in addition to doctors and nurses, each unit included diagnosticians. X-ray specialists, pay-clerk, com- missary steward, yeomen, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, mechanics, cooks, and mess attendants. In perfecting the base hospital system, the Public Health Service collaborated with us in attending to sanitation. Moreover, at that time the Red Cross stood ready to equip more base hospital units for the Navy, but no further call was made. In addition to permanent equipment it pro- vided articles of invalid diet, which were a boon to the sailor in convalescence. After activity started in foreign waters, Red Cross efforts bore fruit in increased efficiency of naval shore hospitals abroad. There were two base hospitals in Brest, each of which accommodated 500 patients ; one in Queens- town, which held 300; one at Lieth, with an expanding capacity of 800 ; one at Strathpepper, rated at 500 ; and a small hospital of 50 beds near London, which was purely a Red Cross establishment. In the effort to organize its system of service at the beginning of hostilities, in order to supply every possible lack of sailor and soldier and to render instant aid in any direction to all branches of the service, the Red Cross 58 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR began in September, 1917, the formation of Naval Auxiliaries throughout the country. This was done in compUance with the wishes of the Secretary of the Navy, who addressed a letter to the Chairman of the War Council in which he successfully endeavored to impress upon me the necessity of centralizing all of America's war relief agencies under the Red Cross. It read : — Dear Mr. Davison : For some months a large number of patriotic women of the country, animated by a desire to add to the comfort of the fine body of youths who have enlisted in the Navy, have been sending useful gifts of their own make. Some of these good women have done this work through the Red Cross and others through different organizations. It has been suggested that it would be wise if the Red Cross, the only National relief organiza- tion ha\'ing official recognition, be asked to extend its large sphere of usefulness by taking over entirely the direction of tliis laudable work of sending tokens of good will from willing workers to the men in the Navy by creating a Naval Auxiliary of the Red Cross. I am sure the country fully approves the statement of the President, that "recent experience has made it more clear than ever that a multi- plicity of relief agencies tends to bring about confusion, duplication, delay, and waste." In every European country volunteer aid has been rendered "under a well-organized central body." The Red Cross is the body to which the whole country looks. To its appeals the people are ready to respond generously because, as President Wilson recently said: "With its catholicity and its democracy the Red Cross is broad enough to em- brace all efforts for the reUef of our soldiers and sailors, the care of their families, and for the assistance of any other non-combatants who may require aid." With this broad foundation, wath a record of efficiency, I feel sure that the workers of the country who are particularly interested in the men who wear the Naval uniform -wall be glad if the Red Cross wHl increase its benefactions by this natural and proper addition to its noble service. If your organization can do this, the Navy Department and the Navy in all its units and the one hundred million Americans who are proud of their Navy will give cordial aid and hearty cooperation. Trusting that this suggestion will meet your favorable consideration, I am, Sincerely yours, JosEPHus Daniels. THE NAVY 59 And again at a meeting on November 26, 1917, the Secre- tary said : — "The women are in the War because war cannot be conducted without them. Across the water in the early days of the War there were mobilized organizations of patriotic women and patriotic men. They organized in the cities and states to serve and help, but they largely failed of their purpose because of their division of interest. They lacked a uniform and coordinating head. "I think it time everybody in America should be a member of an organization and helping the Army and Navy. "In getting the coordination we must not lose the spontaneity and the enthusiasm and the zeal of individuals, but it must be harnessed to or- ganization. "Since the Geneva Convention the Red Cross has been the chief or- ganization to which people looked for succor, for help, and for wise ad- ministration. It has demanded the best thought of the country. They are trying to coordinate all the agencies of America, and we are here this morning to work with them. I shall assure you for myself and for the Navy, we will cooperate with you in every way possible. "Some time ago, a very patriotic organization announced that unless a certain number of sweaters were sent witliin a certain time, the Marines would freeze. Now the spirit back of that was to stimulate good feeling and help, but it did more harm than good, because the men in charge of that service had not neglected their duty. The impression got out some- how or another that the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of War, and the head of the Marine Ser\'ice did not appreciate the splendid service women rendered. Of course it was a mistake. "You know that this Navy is made up of boys. The average age is twenty-one, perhaps nineteen. Sixteen year old boys rushed into the Navy and they said they were eighteen in order to get in, and I have no doubt that if they made a false statement the Recording Angel blotted it out. "So you are working for boys, and that is the appeal to mothers of this country, you are working for boys, and I come over to thank you and to join with you and with the heads of the Red Cross, who are charged with a great work." As the ships, large and small, came hurrying to the Atlantic bases and the work of final preparation went forward, many things were found lacking, among which was a supply of 60 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR surgical dressings. This was essentially a Red Cross emer- gency. Dressings were called for to supply 133 destroyers and small vessels and 56 battleships and cruisers. The Navy suppHed the gauze, but the Red Cross had the willing workers at hand for immediate action. So far as possible, the Red Cross placed the order for these dressings in the home towns of the ships, but as haste was most essential the demand, for the most part, was distributed among the ten nearest large Chapters — Chicago, Cleveland, Pitts- burgh, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and the Atlantic and New England Divisions. The Chapters turned the order out, packed and marked, in record time. It was all forwarded to the Supply Depart- ment at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for distribution to the ships wherever they might be. The making of this supply of dressings, on Navy specifi- cations, lifted a load from the Navy shoulders and enabled their surgical staff to attend to other pressing business ; and, in addition to the dressings, a large number of knitted articles were supplied to these same destroyers and battle- ships by the Red Cross knitting women, who had now begun to work for the Navy. Sweaters and socks and helmets went out in great bundles to ships and training stations. In the first outburst of excitement, however, there were a number of people who thought little of knitting needles as instruments of war, but who now sat in the revealing bright- ness of a great light as the letters began to come from the North Sea in Arctic weather telling of the comfort of Red Cross sweaters and snug woolen helmets. Indeed, many a tar blessed the Red Cross knitter long before his ship poked her nose into the Atlantic for the journey overseas. One bitter night in the early winter, a battleship came bowling into Norfolk from Guantanamo Station with several hundred very blue noses aboard. Out of the dark they picked up a tug light. The harbor boat swung alongside THE NAVY 61 and Red Cross men from the Norfolk Station swarmed aboard with bundles of Chapter knit goods. That sturdy ship crossed the Atlantic many times afterwards, taking the Army across. To its Commander the Red Cross sweater was the best thing of the war. Parallel in every respect of organization and work with that carried on in the Army camps and cantonments, the Red Cross maintained a thoroughly organized camp service in camps and training stations and hospitals in fourteen naval districts. At Pelham Bay, Newport, Portsmouth, Quantico, (Marines) Chelsea, Great Lakes, and Norfolk it estabUshed convalescent houses similar to those at Army camps ; and other similar work at Philadelphia, Paris Island, (Marines) and Balboa Park, near San Diego, California, was just begun, or partially completed, when hostihties ceased. In divers ways, some large and important, others small but still important, the Red Cross was able to assist the Navy. The consensus of opinion in the Navy, however, is that the best thing the organization did for the sailor was to provide these recreation places where the convalescent men, away from the unhappy monotony of hospital sur- roundings and the propinquity of suffering, could for a time forget their own woes and make strides toward health and a return to their homes or to duty. To facihtate the work of the Navy on shore, it has been the privilege of the Red Cross to assist by provision of motor equipment and service. A very considerable number of ambulances, motor trucks, and touring cars were provided for the use of the naval establishment. Where civilian hospitals are utilized for the accommodation of Navy patients they are often widely scattered and the naval doctor, in order to visit them, is compelled to travel long distances. Congress does not provide quick transportation for these emergencies, but this was provided by the Red Cross. 62 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR A very good example of Red Cross service for the naval stations is found in the New York or Third Naval Dis- trict : the service here was under the Atlantic Division, with headquarters at New York City. There were eighteen stations in this district in which Red Cross work for the sailor was conducted. In and out of New York thousands upon thousands of sailors passed ; and we contributed in every way possible to the comfort and content of the mul- titude. The same thing is true in other great naval centers, such as Newport News, Boston, Newport, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Charleston, New Orleans, Galveston, at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, at Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and San Diego, as well as in the navy yards where men were at work on the ships which were in process of construc- tion or tied up for repairs. Among the incidents connected with Red Cross coopera- tion with the Navy, the strangest, perhaps, was the action of a woman who, by the way, for a year and a half after- wards was the busiest person about the Hoboken Embarka- tion Station (the old North German Lloyd and Hamburg- American piers) . I am positive it will be written in personal if not official Navy records as a remarkable instance of intuition. One day there came a woman all the way from western New Jersey to the Red Cross Station who said that she had an unexplainable feeling that something was wrong. That there was something wrong was demonstrated in less than a half hour from the time of her arrival by a message from the Navy Yard which said that the survivors of the cruiser San Diego were coming in. There was fast work in Hoboken getting out warm clothing from the Red Cross stores and commandeering of trucks and tugs for its delivery. The boat to which the woman was assigned took off seventy-eight men from the incoming collier. When she went back for the next load she took the things the THE NAVY 63 men needed for their immediate comfort. And so it hap- pened that half the next day men were running around the docks in Red Cross pajamas, looking for all the world like escaped hospital patients, while they waited for the Government to find them uniforms. That woman surely left the Red Cross engraved on the memories of many sea-faring men ! The same thing happened on the other side of the Atlantic. Out of the busy life which the Navy led over there, there came through various channels thrilling narratives of rescue. It was tolerably well known, in spite of naval modesty and secretiveness, that United States vessels, both small and large, gave a very good account of themselves in the dis- position of submarines. On one occasion an American torpedo boat, having rescued crew and passengers from a steamer which had been sunk in the English Channel, brought them into a French port in cold weather almost destitute of clothing. It would have been a very serious matter for the victims of this outrage to have waited the action of the United States Congress for an appropriation for clothing and its delivery to France on contract. Appli- cation was made to the Red Cross, which furnished outfits for the entire company. In sunnning up the joint work of the Red Cross and the Navy it is not too much to say that our organization wholeheartedly indorses the sense of satisfaction that all our people have for the accomplishments of the Navy. Conversely, the Navy has ever shown itself most appre- ciative of the efforts of the Red Cross to do their part, and nowhere is this spirit of enthusiastic fairness more happily reflected than in the words of the Commander of the American Naval Forces in British waters : — "When our men are sick or wounded we need quick action," declared Admiral Sims in an address in London, "and it must be free and un- hampered. That is where the Red Cross comes to the front. Disasters 64 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR like the Otranto show how valuable is its work." And, later, in replying to a question that can easily be imagined, he said: "all government activity is governed by rules with a view to what is likely to happen, but all needs cannot be foreseen. When an emergency turns up, we some- times have not the facilities, sometimes not the legal authority to do all that we ought to do. The Red Cross man can make a law as quick as you can write a check. The Red Cross is ever present to help in time of trouble." CHAPTER VI HOME SERVICE An Inspiration — Number of Families Assisted — Home Service Worker, a Silent Agent — The Picture of the Woman Left Behind — The Range of Home Service — The Peculiar Fitness of the Red Cross for Home Service — Representatives in All Camps and Canton- ments — The Machinery for the Work — United States Government Sanctions Home Service in Camps and Naval Stations — How Home Service Is Administered — The Character of the "Cases" — Cora- plications after the Signing of the Armistice — Home Service In- stitutes and Training Courses — Number of Trained Workers — Lasting Force for the Betterment of Social Conditions. WHEN a man goes out to fight his country's battles he and all who belong to him are of paramount moment to the Government. The day has gone by wherein his de- pendents are abandoned to whatever fortune might befall them. Indeed, few things connected with the fighting man are more impressive than the increasing solicitude extended to those whose welfare is imperiled by his absence or death. Almost at the start of this new conception of duty, — an acknowledgment at last of the importance of every in- dividual, — the Red Cross recognized that here indeed was a long step forward. And since it has ever been its mission to consolidate public effort on behalf of the soldiers and sailors, to concentrate the prevalent good-will towards sufferers in other countries into an organized system of re- Uef, it, therefore, proceeded to formulate a plan for the far more deUcate and difficult work of giving to the famiUes F 65 66 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR of the American fighting men the hand and help that they needed when the need was most pressing. It is hardly necessary to say that this was an undertaking that required the exercise of tact in no small degree. When the call came for hundreds of thousands of our fighting men, many of them left behind them the tangled affairs of life, some of which it was well-nigh impossible to straighten out. To enter into these innumerable homes in the capacity of guide, counselor, and friend, to do so many diverse things for so many widely variant people was in the nicety of its requirement no less exacting than the planning of a military campaign, and amounted to far more than the simple duty of giving people a hand to help them over a rough spot. Home Service was an inspiration. Organized for the purpose just mentioned, there was a human note as well as an assurance of sincerity in it which were keys to confidence. It had no echo of condescension or patronage ; on the con- trary, it took people back to the time when the scattered and imperiled colonists were all things to one another; in other words, it brought into the foreground of thought the picture of friendliness, of neighborhness, and it won prompt and grateful recognition. As the work developed the scope of its possibiHties became more and more patent. Home Service did not go about its business preceded by a brass band, so to speak ; to have done so would have ended its usefulness automatically. It had its very root in the sanctity of confidence, and the people whom it was privileged to serve knew that if it gave assistance it would also keep the faith. Who of you know of the things that Home Service has done in your community — perhaps even next door ? Not many, probably. And yet within a little more than a year it took into its keeping approximately 300,000 families. If one will consider the number of perplexing problems the affairs of one family can present, it is not difficult to imder- HOME SERVICE 67 stand what it signified in service rendered to straighten out the tangled affairs of a large number of famihes scattered all over the United States ; nor must we forget that it is that very confidence which has made of Home Service the big brother of many a troubled household, the lawyer for counsel in times of stress, the banker in a pinch of cir- cumstances, the doctor in sickness, the nurse, the teacher, the bearer of burdens, and the friend in need that is responsible for its being relatively unknown. The things it did were not on the surface. Every one knows that the canteens were a picturesque and hvely addition to any railway station. That there was glory in hurhng a Red Cross motor-ambulance through the lanes of traffic on a crowded city street, and that Red Cross service in France had a glamour and a thrill all its own are, also, well-known truths. But the Home Service worker was a silent agent who, in a way, did good by stealth ; so that if by any chance one of his countless deeds did creep into print it was by the very nature of the case utterly depersonahzed. As for the glory of the service, it was ever unhonored and unsung. It follows, therefore, that the narrative of what Home Service did since it entered upon its mission consists in the main of a bhnd succession of ''cases." They are told in skeleton with a studious lack of detail. But it is certain that in these reports, flowing from every corner of the country, from homes and camps, from the embarkation piers, and from the turbulent zones of soldier fife behind the lines, that there was more of melodrama, more of the plain, plaintive comedy of human hfe and of tragedy, even, than would suffice to fill the endless reels of half the world. No one who has traveled country roads, either by foot or by motor, could have missed the home side of the war. In all the thinly populated places, in the little white cottages of the New England hills, in the farmhouses of the Dakotas, 68 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR far scattered over their rolling expanses of wheat fields, one saw the war symbolized by strangely muted homes. There was a hush over things, a sense of finaUty about it all. The smoke rose only from a necessary chimney, the barn was shut up tight, even the "stock " stood around in a solemn sort of expectancy. Rural industry, simple as it was, had lost in such places its emphasis. The fading service flag and Mr. Hoover's mark in the parlor window told the passing stranger what had happened. For the old farm, battUng against pests and bad seasons, taxes, and the hungry and long-hved mortgage, was not like a mercantile or manufactur- ing business in which diversified labor is distributed through many channels ; and, besides, war and the munition factories had stripped the farm. More than hkely, too, the next- door neighbor was a lone woman whose mainstay was some- where between the farmstead gates and Vladivostok. And, to make matters harder, even if a woman could manage a farm — and there are some who could — there was not a farmhand to be had for love or money. In nine cases out of ten the farm woman took over as much of the farm work as she could handle single handed. Such a situation, of course, was a trouble-breeder. All that anybody on earth could do in such cases was to be a good neighbor. It does not require much imagination, therefore, to surmise what the war did to country homes, how still the nights were, or how far the bare fields stretched to the horizon ! The monotony in the cities may not have been so intense, but in cities a family on the floor above might as well be in Manchuria for all they know of you or all the heed they give you. It is an old saying that there is no place so lonely as the city street. And the war brought pathetic changes here. Behind the same old service flag and the food pledge, which in so many cases was a superfluity in the face of soaring prices, the same old misery was doing its HOME SERVICE 69 work. From the proud habitation uptown to the crowded tenements downtown, where Enghsh, Greek, Itahan, Yiddish, and even German made the fire escape a babel on hot sum- mer nights, men of the A. E. F. had gone forth, leaving behind them lonely women and still homes. !;• As will be easily seen, therefore, all the variation of town and country hfe came within the range of Home Service. In planning the work it was to do it enUsted a wide and a detailed knowledge of hfe as it is hved everyi;vhere. It was essential to have shrewd consciousness of how people's minds work as well as an almost inspired intuition of things that were apt to happen. It had all been measured in terms of morale to begin with, and the threads of this mul- titudinous hfe traced on a chart of inference and theory, which proved phenomenally accurate from first to last in the great drama of war. It has been said of certain important tasks in this war that there was no agency that could handle them except the Red Cross. This is, of course, an overstatement. It is, nevertheless, doubtful if any other existing instrument could have fulfilled the pecuhar purpose of Home Service, for there was no other agency which had ready and equipped an organization so far-reaching, so instantly and so in- cessantly active and available, and so closely in touch with the homes and the needs they were apt to have. Moreover, in the thousands of Chapters dri\dng away night and day for the soldiers and sailors, there was a perfect hne of com- munication to every home which had sent a man to war. Ever since the war began the outstanding thing in all Red Cross work was the alacrity with which its wide-branch- ing plan of organization enabled it to meet demands on the minute. The actual accomplishment was noteworthy, but the sentimental unity of the machine enabled it to perform many more dehcate functions — functions which in their nature required a high pressure of personal tact and 70 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR sane judgment, not to speak of the necessity of a business- like faculty of execution. Foremost among these was Home Service. The framers of Red Cross plans knew the American man. They knew — what a great many narrow-gauge people had never suspected — that he was domestic to a degree never imagined, and that while he was perfectly willing to throw up his job and put his life to the hazard, if his country asked it, the only virtually important thing was that his family should be free from trouble. '' My time in the service/' wrote a Texan, early in the war, ''is the happiest time of my life. It is great! But you pack up your home affairs when you go in, and you can't help wondering all the time about the folks at home." Home Service proved the most effective possible agent for establishing in numberless homes a new view of life and a new schedule of values, which was seed for future growth and betterment ; it created new ideals where they would do the most good ; it was, without doubt, the most effectual kind of shock absorber for the Government, and by its good offices a silencer of the note of resentment and dis- content which echoed far in war time. There are women, as we all know, who are natural-born dependents and whose training has added to their native tendency; on the other hand, there are those who have inherent resources of courage and self-help and will fight their way through any obstacle. So, naturally, it was the former class who needed the ministrations, for the most part, of Home Service. A man who left a strictly dependent wife at home with a few little dependents looking to her as acting manager could do very well for about three days. Then he began to realize, as he never did before, how helpless she was. One wailing letter has made all the wondrous new life of the training camp a gray and dismal thing. The mental picture of an empty pocket-book, with a weasel-faced land- lord in the background insisting that ''leases are leases," HOME SERVICE 71 summoned in its train visions of misery that made a man deaf to the brisk accents of a drill sergeant and replaced martial ardor with a longing to be back home for just half an hour. It is a corollary of modern war that you can't manufacture a first-class soldier out of a man who is thinking all the time that his personal responsibilities are going to the dogs, and whose barrack pillow is hardened by nightmares of trouble in the home. I have been told that there were practically only two kinds of desertion from the American Army : one of men who deserted in France from their regiments in the rear in order to join regiments at the front ; the other of men who deserted because of unhappy letters from home. When we went into war it was estabhshed beyond any shadow of doubt that there must be intimate and direct connection between the family and the trenches, that the home fires as well as the flames of patriotism were essential to proper military temper- ature. There had to be a way to send soldiers and sailors 3000 miles or more across the sea and yet assure them that their families alike deservedand would enjoy the good faith and watchful kindness of the nation. The roots of the thing struck deep. The easiest way to keep the service man from being worried by unhappy letters was to make the letters happy. The only way to accomplish this in so many homes was to establish a neighborhood feeling that would embrace all. And the chapter organization, — a growth whose roots ran into millions of homes in every section of the country, — was there for the spreading of the Home Service gospel and the doing of the Home Service work. Three months after the declaration of war, Home Service had already begim to send representatives to all the camps and cantonments in order that Home Service workers in the Chapters might always be sure of a good attorney, whose duty it was to locate the soldier in camp when his family 72 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR wanted news of him, and vice versa. There were camps, notably in the vicinity of New York, with its strangely diversified population, where for three weeks the major part of the Red Cross field director's time was taken up with the home problems of men in the new levies. All the Red Cross machinery, all its resources were called into use in the prosecution of Home Service business : it enlisted trained men and women of every sort, some skilled in the care of the sick, others whose trade was to unravel legal and business tangles and who knew the resources of a community. These could minister to people caught in war's complications far better than an untrained individual, no matter how well meaning, could ever hope to do. To solve properly any problem, even the failure of an allotment check to arrive, required a system, with agents both in the Chapters at home and in Washington; it required some means of access to the War Department where the mystery of soldiers' money could be elucidated. True, the troubles of some lonely woman could be settled, but it required machinery, brains, telephone, telegraph, cable, letters, railway journeys, and professional assistance, all working together. Home Service could set a thousand forces at work, thousands of miles apart, to find the right answer to any question. At first it was hard to make this purpose clear. The Red Cross pursued no one. It did not intrude into people's business. This would have been the first step to failure. But wherever its lantern shone on the darkness of a camp street, wherever the chapter centered its war activities, the latchstring was always out for the man and his kinsfolk to enter. Now, like every one else, the American soldier, or sailor, has his traits, and it required thorough knowledge of his mental processes to introduce the business to him and tell him that he was entitled and welcome to all that the Red Cross could do for him. So in the training camps, in the HOME SERVICE 73 railway terminals, and in every place where sailors and sol- diers congregated big signs were displayed at points where no eye could miss them. Some of these signs asked pointed questions — they were never impertinent, however direct, for a question is pertinent or impertinent according to what is behind it. Here are some examples : — ''Have your allowance and allotment failed to come through satisfactorily ? ' ' ''Are you worried about the home folks? If so tell your troubles to the Red Cross man." "We keep your home safe while you fight to keep the world safe." All this was reassuring news to the fighting man who had just learned from a letter that everything was going wrong. It is eloquent of the sagacity with which the Army was constructed and managed that these placards, in curious contrast with the purely military atmosphere of the camp, where every conceivable thing has been bent to martial pur- pose, were placed at the request of the United States Govern- ment in the interest of military efficiencies, a governmental recognition of the fact that a worried fighter is a poor fighter. At most of the stations the men in trouble — and there were a multitude of them — had the same everlasting problem of the bread-winner. But where a civilian, if he had any gumption, could get out and administer ''Civilian Relief" to himself, the service man was tied hand and foot. He knew that if his checks did not come through there would be no groceries in the house, and he was plainly between the devil and the deep sea. It was just because Home Service was equipped to step in and save this situation that it found its greatest field of endeavor in the camps. But all the promotion work was not done by the signboards ; there were other ways by which the Home Service representative found out who needed his assistance. He got it from the chaplains, from 74 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR patriotic and relief organizations, from camp paymasters, and in other ways known only to these earnest practitioners. What Home Service did when the much needed moneys lagged was to file the claims again for preferred consideration at the Bureau of War Risk Insurance or the War and Navy Department, as the case might be. It got into immediate touch with the Red Cross Chapter in the man's home town, which sent some one around to see the family, advance the necessary money, adjust their legal tangles, get the doctor, get the nurse, and reconstruct the housekeeping schedules so as to lessen the anxiety incidental to the high cost of living. When the mother was able and of a mind to work and help out the family income, the Home Service — through its wide connection — got her a job. If she was about to do foolish things to banish loneliness, well, there were cures for loneliness, too. These are things that do not go by formula and never can be standardized. It may be said, therefore, that Home Service was pretty nearly all things to all men and wo len. But it is an interesting human fact that much of the work that it did for service men's families has been in response to demand from the service man himself. Many of the applications were made by men in camp who, in desperation, had been driven into seeking a way out of the dreary letters and who leaned on the Red Cross as it was meant to be leaned on. As for the women, some of them — perhaps because of their pride — did not go to the Red Cross to tell their trouble but wrote instead to their husband or son about it ; and he, not knowing how simple a matter this was for the machine to handle, immediately hated the sight of a rifle and began to think in the back of his head that the Kaiser might just as well have the earth since it was no longer fit to live in, — which was a perilous state of mind for a man who was headed for France with the country's fate in his hands. ^^^'i. ') i 8\ HOME SERVICE 75 Confronted with a situation like this, Home Service stepped in and checked it ; and when it had once taken a family mider its protective and advisory wing, it "carried on" with them, kept tab on them, and mothered them prop- erly. After that the letters that went to camp or overseas had a new color and Uncle Sam had a new soldier. If Home Service in Italy was reflected in the victory at the Piave, Home Service in America gave an account of itself at Chateau-Thierry and along the stubbornly contested reaches of the Meuse. The "cases" which constitute the Home Service record were multi-colored. In the main they pivoted on money, and the tough olc question of subsistence, but their details varied as people dj. There was every conceivable sort of plot. It was to the credit of the system that most of these had a happy ending. Where it was merely money or business complication that caused the trouble, it was easy of adjust- ment. Still further complications arose after the signing of the armistice, oecause then began the real test of the fighting man's morale. The fighting was over and the fighters wanted to return home. Their families were insistent that their boj should be returned to them. Home Service workers now had the additional task of explaining why their boys could not be returned immediately and of dissuad- ing them from sending their boys morale-destroying letters, of investigating family conditions of men who applied for discharge and, at the same time, not allow their sympathies to warp their judgment. Instead of decreasing, the work of Home Service kept increasing for many months after Novem- ber, 19' 8. Who can estimate, therefore, the effect of Home Service, before and after the signing of the armistice, on the mental attitude of the millions of people who either fought or gave fighters in the Great War ? There was hardly a department in the work of the Red 76 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Cross in which Home Service aid was not invoked or in which the home principle was not involved. The prompt acceptance of this service and this principle by the people whom it was meant to aid, and the realization of its meaning in the new life of America, demanded an extension of its scope, which meant a greatly increased number of workers. In order that there might be at hand a force to meet the growing need, the Red Cross established Home Service institutes, — a six weeks' training course planned to fit students not only for war work among soldiers' and sailors' families, but to serve in equally specific ways returned fighters themselves, who have been crippled in action and for whom definite programs of reeducation and industrial adjustment will be necessary. The syllabus of instruction prepared for these institutes, which were started in the fall of 1917, was wide and compre- hensive. It included not only the fundamental principles and procedure of Home Service, — health, employment of women and children in reeducation, — but went into all these departments with thoroughness in order that certifi- cates of the institute should imply a knowledge of the ethics of family and community living. Manuals of instruction were carefully prepared, covering the whole ground of Home Service activity. In this way the emergency was soon met. In the end it took 30,000 mature and tactful people to carry it on and at a cost approximately of three million dollars. But it did more than help win the war ; it raised the standards of health, efficiency, and happiness in the homes that had sent men to France, so that the man returning should find small reason to reproach his country for the way his family had been treated in his absence. At the time that this is written we are about to enter upon wider fields of international activity and these, obviously, necessitate new development in industry and thrift. But it has been part of the work of Home Service to teach these HOME SERVICE 77 lessons with everyday application. It has shown in a practical fashion the effect of intensified effort, intelligent management, the worthlessness of outworn formulas. And precisely as the Red Cross labor in France was directed to the conservation of child life as insurance for the imperiled future of the republic, so in America we have made an effort to improve living conditions for soldiers' and sailors' families, always aiming at a steadily progressive and wider better- ment for the time that is ahead. The work that Home Service has done is merely a sowing of good seed ; future generations will reap the harvest. In spite of what was ostensibly an emergency origin, the whole undertaking was constructive in its inward purpose for the long future of our national life. Throughout the war Home Service taught English to women of foreign birth who had husbands in the war. Every instance of this kind meant one more family on the road to Ameri- canization. Again, a multitude of soldiers' and sailors' wives found it hard to resist the temptation to set their children at wage earning in order to increase the family in- come. But Home Service, mindful of the future and recognizing in this recourse a net loss in which the whole country shares, set itself persistently against it. Not only did it labor by every possible means to keep the children in the schools, but in many cases it contributed money outright to tide the family over. In others, expert assist- ance in the adjustment of household expenditure averted the necessity of turning soldiers' children into the factory. Lastly, it was in such things as solving imperative prob- lems and performing, at the same time, an educational office which looks to future widening of horizons, improve- ment of living conditions, maintenance of higher ambitions in the young, that Home Service assumed its highest position and that through it the Red Cross attained to a greater plane of usefulness. CHAPTER VII SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS The Nurse, a Crusader — The Red Cross Stands Sponsor for Her — Enrollment of Nurses — Called for Disaster — Relief Ship Red Cross — In Many Lands and Climes — Typhus in Serbia — Mo- bilized for Immediate Action in April, 1917 — Base Hospital Units — Reserve for the Army and Navy Nurse Corps — Unit System Later Abandoned — Changes in Character of Base Hospitals — Emergency Detachments for Cantonments and Camps — Conditions in Camps and Stations — Cooperation with Public Health Service in Sanitary Zones — Duties of Nurses in France — American Nurses for Ameri- can Men — Nursing Service of Red Cross in France — Call of the Italian Government — Honor Roll of the Red Cross — Expenditure for Equipment and Uniforms — Provisions for Comfort of Nurses — Work for Health of the World a Post-War Duty. THE Soldier of the Cross is a very human crusader. Where civihzations have crashed in disaster she makes Uving clean and possible ; with the modern magic of medi- cine, food, and cleanliness she banishes hunger and dirt; with infinite patience she builds up the lives of broken men and, seemingly, at times, is the only stronghold of sanity in their reeling world. To render such service worthily demands more than pity and a white cap ! It requires years of hard mental and physical training and the self-control that makes good discipline possible ; for she must stand ready to tax herself to the utmost at need and, at the same time, not indulge herself in the hysteria of overwork. Moreover, it requires the physical strength to endure long journeys and hardship ; more than all it requires high endurance of the soul — 78 SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 79 courage to bear vicarious suffering. The Red Cross nurse looks on mortal agony day and night, yet she holds fast to sanity and cheerfulness that she may rekindle spirits snuffed out by too much horror. She denies herself the luxury of emotion because lives depend on the steadiness of her hand. The stuff of her days is woven of the two great reahties — life and death ; yet those she tends must not suspect that she is a woman of many sorrows and acquainted with grief. Such is the nurse. For her the Red Cross stands sponsor. She has carried its symbol into the plague spots of every continent where disaster has left its mark — whether in San Francisco or in the far islands of the sea ; she has carried it to within a few short miles of the European trenches. Everywhere, the Red Cross has backed her up with money, with equipment, with supplies, with uniforms and recreation rooms and words of cheer. It has increased her value by giving her her tools and sending her where she is most needed. Around the work it has opened up the path of mercy for her to tread. That is the great mission of the Red Cross — to take the funded money, strength, and skill of the world and send it to fight against disease and ignorance wherever they may be found. That is the democracy of humanity. Five years before the European war brought a supreme duty and a supreme opportunity to nurses, the Red Cross began preparation to meet the unheralded need. In the fall of 1909 it affihated itself with the American Nurses' Association and began to enroll nurses as a reserve for the Army and Navy. These young women were required to have had at least two years' training in a hospital that averaged fifty patients a day of both sexes, to be registered in their states, and to submit satisfactory evidences of fitness, and to be between the ages of 25 and 40. Enrollments increased year by year. Although no war clouds gathered, the Red 80 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Cross called again and again on its nurses to save the victims of fire and flood, conspicuous among which are Dayton, Salem, Luzon, the Titanic, and the Eastland. Each name recalls havoc wrought by fire or flood, by earthquake or ship- wreck, and it recalls, too, the heroic work of Red Cross nurses. In August, 1914, when the World War broke over Europe, the American Red Cross, true to its watchword, offered its trained personnel and hospital supplies to every belligerent country; acceptance was unanimous. On September 13, 1914, the relief ship Red Cross carried surgeons, suppUes, and 120 nurses for England, Russia, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Four days before, the Serbian unit had gone on a slow steamer, crowded with several thousand Serbian reservists, to meet what proved to be the most heroic task of all. It was, indeed, in many strange and unique shelters that the tiny American units set up the outposts of their country's generosity : for instance, there was an estate at Paignton, the Palais d'Hiver at Pau, a Lyceum at Kief, hastily erected pavilions on the sands of La Panne, a modern schoolhouse in Vienna, the Victoria Kabaret theater at Gleichwitz, a tobacco factory at Ghevgheli, a tent on the desert sands of Wadi-el-Arish ; other detachments were at Yvetot, France ; Nish, Serbia; Kosel, Germany; Budapest and Belgrade; and Constantinople and Hafi, Turkey. Part of the German unit went in September, 1915, to work among the German and Austrian prisoners in Russia. Wlien, however, in the spring of 1915, typhus broke out in Serbia and men, women, and children died like flies, two Red Cross surgeons fell victims to the fever, and the ranks of the fit grew daily thinner. The Rockefeller Foundation and the Red Cross cooperated to rush volunteers and huge quantities of supplies into the infected country. Serbia SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 81 was, literally, drenched in disinfectants and smoked in sulphur, and only after a bitter battle was the scourge conquered. The tale of suffering that the pioneers sent back to America in 1914-1915 is famiUar now to our ears, but in those early days its horror was unbeUevably strange. In this, their first contact with modern warfare, American nurses won a place of honor on the medical rolls of all Europe. Their experience was to prove valuable in later days. The units were recalled in October, 1915, after the promised year of service, but many members remained as volunteers. When America went into the war, Red Cross nurses were still serving in all of the Allied countries. Thus, the stirring and troubled days of April, 1917, found the Red Cross nurses mobilized for immediate action. Eight thousand and fifteen names stood on the Red Cross rolls. Of these the Red Cross could mobilize 2970 im- mediately, enough to care for an army of a million, accord- ing to the calculations of that early day. (The first military assignment was with the United States Marines at Vera Cruz in 1914. During the year ending in July, 1917, there had been assigned to the Army Nurse Corps 817 Red Cross nurses. Of these, several hundred were sent to take care of the 113,135 troops guarding the Mexican border.) For a year before the storm broke along om* shores pre- paredness had been trumpeted down every wind. Active official preparation in a neutral country, however, is apt to verge on mobilization and let slip the dogs of war too soon. The Surgeon General, therefore, requested the Red Cross to organize Base Hospital Units, and allowed it the privilege of building up a hospital system that was to be the backbone of the Medical Corps during the first trying months of war. In the Base Hospital Units the doctors and nurses of 82 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR each group were accustomed to work together. When they moved they carried with them the personnel (from phar- macist to sculhon) and the equipment (from scalpel to laundry plant) to set up a complete five hundred bed hospital wherever needed. The value of this close formation had been tragically proved by the countries already in the war and by the experience of the Red Cross rehef units abroad. The great civil hospitals of America were called on to organize teams from their staffs, and soon a score of units were established. Twenty-two doctors, two dentists, sixty- five Red Cross nurses, one hundred and fifty-three corps- men, six civilian employees, a chaplain — the complete per- sonnel signed the muster roll of each and pledged to report for duty whenever called within two years. The personnel of each Ust called for careful study : the staff of the parent hospital must not be unduly weakened, yet every man and woman must be of the best, and they must ''pull together." Personal knowledge was the basis of choice. Together with the Medical Director of the unit and the Director of the Bureau of Red Cross Nursing Service a Chief Nurse was selected whose duty it was, subject to the approval of the Director, to select the nurses, the dietitian, and the nurses' aids. Naturally, she chose those whose value she had proved, preferably graduates of the parent school, while the nurses' aids were prepared under her direction. It was the only possible method where compatibility was an essential, and it resulted in a team that ''played up" with mutual knowl- edge and confidence. Beds, bedding, ward furniture, drugs, surgical instruments, laboratory supplies and equipment, mess-gear, sterilizers, ambulances, touring-cars, motor-trucks, a motor-cycle, complete X-ray plant, kitchen, disinfectors, surgical dress- ings, and hospital garments, some refrigerating and laundry equipment, telephone system, and machine shop — all the supplies that would not deteriorate in storage were collected SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 83 at a convenient point. It was at first estimated that the total cost of equipping a Base Hospital Unit would be $25,000. In the end each unit averaged $75,000. The Red Cross has spent $1,500,000 first and last on its fifty Base Hospitals, and all but $54,000 was contributed locally by patriotic citizens. The names of the nurses were submitted to the Bureau of Nursing Service at Red Cross Headquarters, checked up with the enrollment files, duly carded, and held for final assignment to the Army Nurse Corps ; the personnel was inoculated for typhoid, paratyphoid, and smallpox ; corps- men were enhsted in the United States Army Medical Corps Reserve ; doctors and dentists were commissioned as Army officers ; a commanding officer from the Army Medical Corps and a member of the Quartermaster Reserve Corps were assigned to the unit ; the two carloads or more of equip- ment were stored ; the completed unit was turned over to the United States Army Medical Corps — and Ufe went on much as before. The personnel scattered to their daily jobs, the Director put the key to the warehouse in his pocket, and the storage bill and the muster roll were the only outward signs of the powerful machine that could be as- sembled on such short notice. A Base Hospital Unit was mobihzed for the first time in October, 1916, at Philadelphia. Base Hospital No. 4 (from Lakeside, Cleveland) came together on record time and with the precision of clockwork. The tentage covered a space 1000 feet long and 500 feet wide. The trial mo- bihzation cost $5035.75, and proved beyond doubt the practicability of the ''canned" hospital. When America recognized the existence of a state of war with Germany, twenty-five Base Hospital Units were well under way. The first call for specific aid came to America through the British Commission for doctors and nurses. Six of the waiting Base Hospital Units were 84 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR assigned to duty with the British Expeditionary Force. The Surgeon General decided, however, not to use the nurses' aids mobihzed with the Base Hospital Units. Num- ber 4 (Lakeside Hospital) was the first to leave New York in May, 1917 ; No. 5 followed two days later ; and then Nos. 2, 12, 21, and 10. It was over the hospital unit in Rouen that the Stars and Stripes first floated as the flag of an ally on the soil of France. In this first summons, war sent a clarion call to all Red Cross nurses. The members of the six units were scattered over the face of the land in the pursuit of their personal destinies. Hard on the heels of our entrance into the war came their summons to report in New York for overseas duty. The Base Hospital Unit was suddenly a living thing instead of a paper chart. Thousands of others in clinic, hospital, and home watched their going, knowing that their time would come ; while others quietly entered their names on the Red Cross rolls, that they too might have a share in the great work. In the first seven months after America went in, seventeen Base Hospital Units were rushed to France, and the others were held in readiness for immediate departure. Meantime, a serious outbreak of contagious disease in the mushroom- grown cantonments and camps in the United States de- manded new quotas to battle within our very gates. Our first winter in the war was a severe one and thousands of boys, just drafted and unhardened to the rough hfe, suc- cumbed to pneumonia and meningitis. It was hard to make it understood why the waiting units could not be used for this duty but must be kept free to go abroad. The Red Cross worked desperately to recruit enough emergency detachments to fill the terrible needs of the camps. No attempt was made at unit organization ; the nurses were assigned as fast as they could be recruited, singly or in little groups. Later the nursing personnel of the Base Hospital SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 85 Units was sent to the cantonments. This was an advan- tageous move, as it gave the nurses prehminary training in a miUtary hospital and also gave the hospitals an adequate nursing staff. Throughout that winter and spring they worked gallantly in the face of appalhng, though unavoid- able physical hardships, while not a few gave their lives on one of the first American battlefields of the war. The Red Cross turned with a will to meet its responsi- bilities as "the chief reserve for the Army and Navy Nurse Corps." During the summer months enrollment was speeded up to the hmit. On October 1, 1918, over 30,000 names stood on the card index at Headquarters. Of these, 14,368 had been assigned to the Army and 903 to the Navy, while 2454 were awaiting orders. The greater number of the nurses were assigned as part of complete organizations. Fifty-one complete Base Hospital Units were turned over to the Army with a personnel of 3734 nurses. The Navy- mustered in five Base Hospital Units of 250 beds apiece. Nineteen Hospital Units, each manned by 21 Red Cross nurses, were organized at a cost of from S3000 to $7000 apiece. Various groups of specialists in mental and nervous diseases, in fracture cases, and orthopedics, were gathered together at the request of the Surgeon General. The unit system of organization was under the circum- stances a splendid plan. It gave the Army Medical Corps a running start in the war, which its official limitations prevented its making for itself. In the stress of later events this system was abandoned. The great civil institutions from which Base Hospital Units could be organized had for the time being given all the personnel they could spare without dangerously weakening home defense. Moreover, the War Department was now in a position to organize units for foreign service from nurses already serving in camp hospitals, who had learned to pull together under the peculiar circumstances of military life. So the Red Cross bent all 86 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR its efforts to the task of recruiting nurses, equipping them for active service, and turning them over to the Surgeon General, singly or in little groups. These nurses, sent fully equipped by the Red Cross into the military establishment, have passed through the Red Cross clearing-house in a continual quiet stream. After the war began, 65 or more were assigned to duty with the Army or Navy every day. In August and September, 1918, this reached its highest daily average of 100 assignments. Most of them reported in New York, where there were several Army mobilization centers. They received their uniforms, their blankets, and the "extras" that oiled the machiner}^ of living in strange places, from the Red Cross Equipment Station. They met co-workers and leaders of their profession while waiting at the center for weeks, often- times, for a ship to take them ''across" ; but sooner or later they left for their posts — perhaps to Europe, to Siberia, or even to Porto Rico. The ''military" took them; even the beloved Red Cross insignia they resigned in the interest of discipline, and thereafter their story became one with the Army or Navy Corps of which they became a part. But, although they laid away her symbol until the war was over, the Red Cross did not forget its nurses. By September 30, 1918, in forty-five camps and cantonments she had ex- pended $1,586,563.75 for uniforms and equipment for nurses, for recreation houses and their furnishings of bright hangings, easy chairs, long reading tables, and electric irons, all spell- ing home and a release from narrow barrack quarters. In France the Red Cross meant something beside the label on a package of surgical dressings or the protective insignia of the long lines of incoming ambulances ; it meant friendly club-houses, convalescent and rest homes, and a special hospital if they fell ill. Always and everywhere it meant a strong friend to whom the welfare and honor of the nurse was near at heart. THE GREATEST RED CROSS PARADE EVER HELD IN AMERICA. 15,000 women, many of whom at that time either had served on the battlefields of Europe or were waiting orders for overseas service, marched down Fifth Ave- nue through lines of cheering spectators. SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 87 The military map of the United States indicates the location of the camps, cantonments, aero and naval training stations, and marines' barracks. Here the nurses did no less valiant work than overseas. They took up arms against the epidemics of our first war winter. During the autumn months of 1918, while the Allied forces swept victoriously across Belgium, they fought stubbornly against the ravages of Spanish influenza — the dread disease that swept from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Conditions in America were sometimes as rough as those in France, as the following letter from an Army nurse in one of the camps will show : — "To begin wath, when we seven arrived here we found ourselves the first group of nurses that ever crossed these grounds. It seems we were not expected so soon and nothing was ready for us. The place which was to be our home was an empty barrack •ndth nothing but a coal stove in every room. But let me tell you that no department store in dear old New York ever delivered things more rapidly than they were brought in here. It seemed to us that our arrival set the camp a-stirring and everybody seemed to be busy in our behalf. Within a few hours we had our beds complete, the most welcome thing to us just then, we were all so tired. Meanwhile we were showai through the hospital, and then through the camp proper, and we were just amazed at the enormity of it all. The camp grounds occupy some 17,000 acres and the Base Hos- pital takes up about 62 acres and so far has 32 wards and more in process of construction. A few months ago tliis region was a stretch of wilder- ness and the first di^'ision of men worked this place through to what it is at present." Another, a Navy nurse this time, wrote : — "After the preliminary business of arrival I was taken over to a barrack- Uke builduig and found a bed allotted to me in a dormitory with about 50 other nurses. I must admit that tliis for the first impression was rather daunting. The place was littered from end to end with clothes, trunks, and grips, to say nothing of the beds themselves ; some occupied by night- nurses trying to sleep, some by day-nurses reading, writing, sewing, or resting. I could see no possibility of the faintest trace of privacy, neither was there any, and later I learned that there was no water for any purpose 88 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR nearer than the main building. We had rough wooden shelves to put our things on and a few nails to hang our clothes. To get a bath we had to walk outside of the main building two blocks away. When it stormed the rain came in upon us from the roof, and when it blew the sand came in and almost buried us, and the flies were a veritable plague — but all this, I am glad to say, was only a temporary discomfort, for now we have a very nice quarters, brand new and clean. I often look back and laugh and think of my chagrin, and realize that it wasn't so bad as it seemed after all, and that it was a good experience for me, for now I appreciate the good things as they come along." The work of safeguarding our men in training could not all be done within camp bounds. It might begin in every city within range of a soldier's leave. To this end, the Red Cross joined hands with the Federal Public Health Service, which held watch and ward over sanitary zones and marine hospitals. Red Cross nurses helped in the everyday work of keeping the extra cantonment zones cleaned up and healthy ; their prompt aid stamped out incipient epidemics of many contagious diseases. In Muscle Shoals, Louisiana, they were called in to inoculate interminable lines of munition workers for typhoid fever. At Newport News, Fort Riley, Hattiesburg, and Camp Beauregard they isolated threaten- ing cases of meningitis. At Nitro, West Virginia — a munition town stretching twelve miles along the Ohio River — the 96 nurses at the Base Hospital insured an open line of communication between the powder plants and the big guns on the Western Front, "We have had great changes at the hospital," wrote a nurse from France; "all the regular Army nurses were transferred, also our com- manding officer, and instead of having 500 beds we have 2000. Doctors, nurses, and corpsmen were all put out of their quarters and these were made into wards at the beginning of the big rush. We received the wounded from the battlefields about twelve hours after they were hurt, all in need of operation. This kept up for days ; it just made my heart ache to see them coming in in such terrible condition, — officers as well as privates, — lay on the floor or on stretchers in the corridors for hours awaiting their turn to be operated on. They were so tired, hungry. SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 89 sleepy, or suffering, that they didn't care what happened to them. The first week of the big rush we worked eighteen or twenty hours a day. I would be in bed about three hours before I would be called again. I never felt tired, nor did I want to go to bed, for when I did go I could not sleep, the excitement was much too great. "It was wonderful how the nurses kept up. Each one was on duty from eight in the morning until ten o'clock at night, taking only five or ten minutes for her meals. We had at that time only about eighty nurses, twenty were in the operating rooms, we were running ten tables both day and night, and stopped only on the top floor during an air raid. We had an air raid every night while we were so busy and two nights they were right over oiu- heads ; the shrapnel fell all around us, and hit on the tin roofs like big hail. The boys rushed out and picked up big pieces of it." ''American nurses for American men," was a famous recruiting slogan for the Red Cross, but only those can appreciate its poignancy who have seen the eager welcome that leapt to meet the nurse who "talked American." Especially was this true of the nurses sent by the Red Cross Commission to take care of American wounded in French Army hospitals. Despite the close bonds of friend- ship between France and America, these little groups could not help feeling lost — strangers in a strange land. They were suffering and immeasurably weary, and they ''didn't get the Ungo." No wonder they were pathetically grate- ful for the xlmerican nurse ; no wonder the nurse's aid who went along to speak French for her was kept on the jump by day and by night. It is said of one American boy, and there were many such cases, who had undergone an operation as soon as he reached the French hospital, that, on hearing an American nurse speaking to him when coming out of ether, he became almost hysterical with the rehef and excitement that followed his surprise at not find- ing himself among Germans. These nurses were among the 604 that served directly under the Red Cross. Of these some 250 formed the nursing service of the Red Cross in France. They manned the 90 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR great hospitals run by the Red Cross for the French and American soldiers and Red Cross personnel ; they stood ready to go on call to the French or American Army Hospitals near the front or to the convalescent hospitals in the interior ; they were the sword arm of the Red Cross in its fight against tuberculosis and of its work for children and refugees. Work with the Red Cross was essentially emergency work. A Chief Nurse writing casually of the Children's Biu-eau states that ''The hospitals have a way of doubling over- night." A shift in the offensive, a sudden flood of repatriSs into Evian, evacuation of a strip of bombarded territory, and the hospitals were swamped and personnel comman- deered wherever they could be found. Red tape tripped no one on field service for the Red Cross. Later in May when the stream of wounded ebbed slowly back into France, the Red Cross Department of Civil Affairs turned sixty of its nurses over to the nursing service. They were all experts in baby welfare, tubercular, or other social welfare work. One afternoon found them peacefully at their work in the interior, washing babies, dieting old men, lending a kindly ear to neighborhood gossip ; the next night they were miles away, gone by motor truck to the rescue of six American nurses, a few doctors, and twenty wounded at Beauvais, and were assisting major operations with the aid of flashlights in pitch-black wards during an air raid. France was the battleground of nations. In France beat the heart of the Red Cross work in Europe, but to each of the principal Allied countries there went Red Cross Com- missions, the flying squadrons of mercy. Milan was the clearing-house for the nursing service in Italy. Here, new recruits from America learned Italian ways before they scattered to centers of relief or instruction ; in England, Russia, Greece, Palestine, Rumania, Serbia, and Siberia, SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 91 the soldiers of the cross to-day are laying foundations of knowledge and affection for greater work to come. Many French surgeons who have witnessed the work of American nurses say that they stand preeminently high in the practice of their profession. Their work during the war will be supplemented by equally valuable reconstruction service. Already foreign countries are beginning to look toward the American training schools for nurses for guidance in developing schools of nursing. The Italian Government has recently asked the advice of the Red Cross Commission in the organization of a national association of nurses. The little groups of American nurses in French military hospitals consider the eagerness of the French women to learn their methods a high and touching tribute, while the elementary courses given in baby saving at Paris, Marseilles, Lyons, and Bordeaux, where French women received theoretical instruction from American public health nurses and had practical work in the civilian hospitals, have served to interest French women in developing better public health standards of their own. The immediate desperate needs of war have appalled the world. The nurse must still hold her battle line long after the guns are stilled. To-day she must help defend the health of the world. The fight has already been begun by the growing ranks of public health nurses now keeping watch and ward over congested city districts, industrial conamunities, and scattered mountain farms. A great field of health education also awaits her, so that every wife and mother may know the elementary principles of keeping her family well by the knowledge of proper food and san- itation, and of nursing them through minor illnesses by her familiarity with simple nursing procedures. The Red Cross looks even beyond this long reconstruction. War has taught the world the tremendous possibilities of applied humanity, and the spirit of the crusaders is still abroad. 92 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR On the honor rolls of the Red Cross stand the names of 197 nurses who, since 1917, have given up their lives. From overseas come reports of American nurses decorated for valor : several received special military mention, while others received Royal orders or the croix de guerre ; here, in this country, a number were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Those nurses, however, who now rest quietly in France and England, have received the highest honors which war can give to the soldier. Among the ranks of these heroic dead looms the figure of one nurse to whose vision and tireless work the Red Cross Nursing Service owes its development. Born in a Uttle town in New York, educated at the Bellevue Hospital Training School for Nurses, — from which so many famous pioneer American nurses have been graduated, — and serv- ing a long apprenticeship in the practice of her profession in its various branches, she came to Washington in 1909, as the Second Superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps. In 1912, she resigned this appointment to devote all her time to the development of the Red Cross Nursing Service. Slowly she built up this reserve corps until it was recognized as the foremost medium through which the nurses of America might respond to patriotic and humanitarian service in time of national crises. She saw this organization, to which she had given the best years of her life, meet the gigantic burdens of war; she saw the nurses holding up the hands of the Medical Department of the Army; she saw them turning with equal success to the tremendous problems of peace ; and then, when at the height of her power and achievement, death calmly, almost unexpectedly, claimed her for its own. Among the American dead in the little Army cemetery on the hill above the great American Base lies Jane A. Delano, First Chairman of the National Committee and Director of the Department of Nursing of the American Red Cross. "After Life's fitful fever, she sleeps well." CHAPTER VIII MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN Creation of Junior Red Cross — Reasons for Organizing the Children — The Plan Evolved — Means of Replenishing the School Fund — Financial Activities Had an Educational Value — Raising Money- Only the Beginning — Cooperation with the Chapter — Correlation of the Red Cross and American Schools — Reaction on the Home — Reaching Foreigners — Thirty-five Minutes a Day — Notes from Reports — Awakening for the Country Child — Definite and Per- manent Beneficial Results. PRIOR to September, 1917, the Red Cross had only grown- up people in its membership. It started out with every intention of doing good work, but was seriously handi- capped by the loss of men taken for service and for the ten thousand or more other things that a nation at war had for them to do. This, of course, meant that not only the grown- up women but the young women who expected to be grown- up very soon would have to knit and sew ; and, by and by, when more men went away and the demand for supplies and shipments increased, they would have to step in and do men's work. Up to this time, at any rate, nobody had given much thought to the children. As the months followed each other, however, there were more and more Httle girls knitting wristlets, helmets, and sweaters, and doing it about as well as their wonderful mothers did. There were little girls marching to the Chapter rooms and working there like troopers as long as anybody. And then some one saw them and what they were doing, and just for a kind of curious men- 93 94 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR tal exercise multiplied it by a million. The result was past dispute. Now all the time that the Red Cross was trying to do for the soldiers the things the Army could not do ; while it was trying to do for the stricken civilians of other lands what their own overburdened governments could not do, — what in fact nobody else could do, — the Red Cross needed some- body to do what its own organization and all its army of adult Chapter members had not time or fingers for. So the War Council created a Junior Red Cross, by which process ''the Greatest Mother" adopted all the school children in the United States, and many more besides in Tokio, Shanghai, London, and the Cape of Good Hope. In other words, the children of America became active partners of the Red Cross. It was to be a family affair, and it meant an immense amount of organizing in the field and at Head- quarters, as well as an added bureau to the Department of Development and a new committee in every Chapter. As can well be imagined we did not attempt to select work that could be done in the schoolroom and at the same time be eligible for ''service in France" until after we had made a careful study of Red Cross supplies. Obviously, this in- volved a delicate adjustment of the established educational system ; it necessitated a great many more things besides ; in short, the Red Cross had cut out for itself another big section of hard work. And, although this was brought to pass sometime ago, people even now, and not infrequently, have asked us "why did you do it? Why did you bring into the or- ganization millions of new untrained members, children at that?" At this distance, and in view of what has been carried into effect, it seems almost unnecessary to give the reason : but we did it because we believed that no greater opportunity could be presented to the children of our country. MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 95 "Let us give the children of to-day a share in the nation's business," reasoned the War Council. "We will let them see democracy at work so that they may know what to do to- morrow. What better way to train a generation for service than to give it a share in the active application of Red Cross principles? Would it not catch the child in a moment of enthusiasm and organize all this uncentered force in such a manner as to insure perpetuity of effort in the right direc- tion?" As for the children themselves, there was never a doubt of their eagerness to serve. From the day that that brother got into khaki and mother started her daily pilgrimages to the Red Cross workroom their question had been, ''What can I do to help win the war?" That the school was the existing nucleus, the machine through which all this force flowing everywhere could be most promptly and systematically concentrated, was made clear to us from the very beginning. Our primary appeal was to the idealism which fills the child's mind and colors its view of all things ; to its bubbling patriotism, which knew no bounds. But to make it a factor in promoting the world's well-being it was necessary that it should be reduced to practical terms and placed upon a working basis. Through the school the child might be brought at the earliest age into an understanding of national life and participation in the world's big things. He might learn intelligent care and preservation of health through teaching of first aid, dietetics, and nursing, all objectively useful ; the understanding and care of animals as a source of human supply, and a knowledge of growing things. Over all was necessary the inculcation of thrift. It required a new course in school — a teaching of the first truth that service, the essence of patriotism, is the keynote of all real accomplishment. The idea of course was not wholly a new one. Some of the greatest minds in the world had been trjdng for years to 96 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR formulate such an idea in practical shape, and had been en- deavoring with a discouragingly small measure of success to translate it into action. The task before us was to develop some workable plan which should give the new purpose its proportionate place in the school life and procedure, so that the spirit it represented might permeate all school work and radiate through that work and its attendant industries into the daily life of every community. In this way there could be impressed upon the children the understanding that they were an active and responsible part of the whole world's life ; that they were brothers and sisters of the race ; and that the human family would be happier and better when unselfishness and cleanliness were the rule the world around. The plan we evolved was as follows : — The Junior membership was a group membership. The children joined the Junior Red Cross as a school. They raised a sum of money, equal to twenty-five cents per member for the school fund and which went to finance their own Red Cross work, though under unusual cir- cumstances a school could earn its membership by proving its value to the Chapter as a working unit. The School Auxiliary was a part of the local Red Cross Chapter. In all Red Cross matters it was guided by a special group, the Chapter School Committee, which represented the school interests of the locality. In the quantity, variety, and management of its productive work, the School Aux- iliary, officered by its own teachers and principal, was practically autonomous, which usually resulted in the Chapter being endlessly besieged for larger quotas and more work. This was the simple plan by which the School Auxiliary — a powerful motor of Red Cross energy and enthusiasm — was organized. It was the same story from Battle Creek to San Francisco and back to New York. One morning when "Red Cross" had been in the air for several days, a MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 97 poster appeared on the wall of the schoolroom. The teacher explained that every time a quarter was added to the school fund another little cross could be added to the poster. What a scramble there was for odd jobs after school ! Everyone wanted to paste at least one cross. Father, mother, and the neighbors never had so many offers of assistance — for pay ; and for a while the quarters rolled in steadily. After membership was assured, the school fund needed constant replenishment to meet the demands of the ''supply service." But since the school fund could not be kept up by odd jobs alone, there being a limit to the [woodboxes to be filled, the heads to be shampooed, the leaves to be raked, and the babies to be taken care of, it was then that the day of real business arrived, and every pupil joined forces to swing a project of real magnitude — an entertainment, a sale, a school garden, or one of the innumerable "business opportunities" that the mind of youth could devise. Per- haps it was a bazaar run by all the schools of the city, like that of the city of Minneapolis, in the year of 1917, where the stock was all made by the children in school time. For six weeks before the sale the sewing classes and school carpenter shops were scenes of keen rivalry and com- mercial ambition. The children worked as never before in the knowledge that the fruit of their labor — running the gamut of transformations from knitting bag to silver coin, from coin to hanks of wool, from unknit yarn to socks — at last would reach the soldiers overseas. In other instances it was some arrangement producing a steady income. The children of Los Angeles and the Red Cross children in many other places derived unfailing sup- port from the collection of unsalable waste. Periodical calls were made upon householders, who gladly surrendered the week's accumulation of waste paper, old rubbers, tooth-paste tubes, and broken pans. The booty was carried off trium- phantly in '' two-boy" power-cars, to be turned into real 98 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR money by a senior Red Cross Committee. The Los Angeles school fund averaged about a thousand dollars a month from this source. In Southern California the Juniors harvested castor oil beans from vacant lots. In Lenhi County, Idaho, they collected five hundred pounds of wool from the trees and the wire fences of the sheep ranges. Some New Jersey children marketed arbutus in Atlantic City. During the season of sudden rains a Minnesota youngster capitalized the weather by standing on the street corner with an um- brella, ready to take people home from the car for five cents. Frequently, the children's financial activities were of double value — they seemed to have a faculty for hitting both birds with one stone. The war gardens added to the national food supply. Toy making in school workshops aided markets that were depleted by the boycott on "Made in Germany." The collection of junk saved time and raw materials for overcrowded war industries. Though their efforts were occasionally amusing and their successes fre- quently amazing, it was not to be forgotten that the first value of all this work was not the resulting dollars and cents ; young America was learning from the school fund the value of money, and acquiring some little skill in the business of handling it. One youngster remarked thoughtfully, ''You are really giving when you give to the Red Cross, because all you get out of it is the good feeling that you have ' done your bit.' " No, young man, that is not all. When you put your "movie" nickel in the Red Cross box, you found out some- thing about budgets and the relative value of money for you and for the starving refugee, something that you did not know before the war came to America and the Junior Red Cross came to your school. But raising money was the beginning, not the end, of the Junior's work. As fast as the coins came in they were turned into supplies for the Red Cross. Everybody had a MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 99 share ! The girls sewed and knitted in sewing-class ; the boys in their manual-training shops turned out hundreds of pieces for the Red Cross convalescent houses, and thou- sands of peg legs, potato mashers, equipment chests, bedside tables, splints, etc., for the use of the United States Army. Even the youngest kindergartner could string together the right number of buttons for a garment. In four months last year the Junior Red Cross delivered 255,000 refugee garments — garments that saved lives in Europe. In an even shorter time the boys contributed over 4000 articles, which included writing tables, chairs, benches, rugs, etc., for the furnishing of the Red Cross convalescent houses in our American camps. Most of this valuable supply work for the Red Cross was done by the children as a part of their school work. Instead of making model aprons, tabo- rets, and pencil-racks, in order to learn the processes of laying hems and joining corners, they made pinafores for children who really needed them and splints for wounded Yanks. The stimulus to proper hemming and joining was immediate and wonderful. The following incident relating to a little girl of ten years is vouched for: ''Well, Mary, are you learning to sew?" asked an interested visitor to the Red Cross sewing class in Arizona. "I don't know," replied Mary, who was taking out a seam for the third time that hour, "but I'm certainly learning to rip." It may not be out of place to assert here that work for the Red Cross opened the stage door to the great world drama. What little girl laying careful stitches did not visualize the French four-year-old who was to be wrapped in that very cloak, or see a gallant ''doughboy" charging across No Man's Land wearing her socks? What boy did not drive his plane straighter for thinking of the wounded Yank whose life might be saved by this very splint ? The Junior cog fitted happily into the Chapter machinery. Numberless were the ways in which the children could help. 100 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR They were tireless enthusiasts for parades and pageants. They oiled the wheels of administration, not in a haphazard way, but in orderly relays of stenographers, clerks, mes- sengers, and odd-jobbers. Bare workrooms acquired tables and cabinets from the school carpentry shops, while standard packing cases appeared in the storerooms with yarn winders and knitting needles without end. The print shops turned out creditable stationery and office blanks. ''Call up the Junior Red Cross," became a familiar phrase on the lips of the Chapter chairman. The success of the Junior Red Cross was founded on the correlation of two great systems, the Red Cross and the American schools. It was made possible only by enthusiasm and hard work on both sides. Fitting the Red Cross pro- gram into 60,000 schools, and doing it in the first year of the new membership, was not a small task. But the school is the children's natural workshop — it must teach him to deal with life, or its mission has failed. He can learn to control human situations only through meeting them. Together these two great forces, the school and the Red Cross, gave the boys and girls of America their rightful place in the nation's work. By opening the road of mercy beyond the town orphanage to the pain-racked thousands of France, the Red Cross offered the children of America an active part in the great issues of to-day. It put the schoolhouse in perspective with the world situation. For children, as well as for men and women, work strengthened the emotional thrill aroused by the Stars and Stripes into something more durable and active — the will to serve. In many cases the thing went farther than the children. For instance, in a Chicago school a whirlv/ind campaign had won 100 per cent membership and the children were very proud of their new Red Cross buttons. At the end of the day one boy brought his badge to the teacher with a request MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 101 that she keep it overnight, his father having promised to give him a beating if he came home with any such nonsense. The teacher explained that the button was his own respon- sibihty ; that he had wanted to join the Red Cross and he could not be a member in school and a non-member out- side ; and that he could not check his membership with her to be called for the next day. The boy saw the issue at once and v/ore his button home with a good deal of trepidation. The next day he was looking cheerful. He had not been punished, though family disapproval was deep. Work progressed, and with it the Junior's en- thusiasm. A month later the boy's father appeared at the school. The teacher prepared for a struggle. *'Say," he asked, "can I get one of those buttons like my boy wears?" All through the Southwest the Junior Red Cross broke through the barriers that confronted foreigners too shy to go to Chapter workrooms or talk with strangers. These aliens had no contact with the patriotic life of their com- munities, until women came to school with their children, asking to be allowed to sew for the war sufferers. American children of many nationahties are in the ranks of the Red Cross workers. Tim Ford, the prize draftsman of the Tonopah, Nevada, Auxiliary, made furniture for Red Cross houses. In spite of his name, Tim was a full- blooded Chinese. The Blue Bird Club was a group of Chinese girls, somewhere in the Pacific Division, each of whom made at least one garment for a soldier. Little Italians, busy in their American schoolrooms making clothes for other Italians who fled across the Piave before the on- coming Austrians, felt a great pride in the big-hearted, long- armed country of their adoption. Race prejudices gave way before sympathy of ideals. There were twenty-six small Japanese in the Rick Spring School in New Castle, California. A year ago they organized 102 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR their School Auxiliary to sew for French refugees. East and West met in the great American schoolrooms. Out of the war must come a brotherhood that will reach the national frontiers; and the children, still free from prejudice and bitterness, the inevitable concomitants of war, learned this wide sympathy from the Red Cross. The plan for fitting Red Cross work into the school system allowed a maximum of thirty-five minutes in the school program of every day as a service period. The service period gave opportunity for discussion of the interests and activities of the Red Cross, the aims of the war, thrift, conservation, and all the other things in which the child could cooperate. This fixed the Red Cross idea in school life and in the school mind, — dignified it by making it a fundamental part of education, a preparation for life. It was a practical reply to the call of human society on every person for his contribution toward the world's welfare. The school work did not end with the school hours. The activities discussed in the classroom were followed up by the teachers who, in this service, became the officers of the child army; from principal down, they had the handling of their Red Cross forces to think of and plan for. There was actually work to do, and the system injected a new pur- pose and a new interest in the school life. The rural schools, where an overtaxed teacher coped with a multitude of sulbjects, offered a somewhat difficult situation. The meeting of that situation happily involved assistance on Red Cross afternoons from the parents of pupils, who helped in conducting the many lines of Red Cross work. This worked two ways ; the lessons of cooperation and service went straight to the home in double measure. It was obvious from the beginning that Red Cross teach- ing, to enlist popular favor, must interfere to a minimum degree with the process of scholastic instruction, and also show convincing results in increased practical ability and MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 103 development of character. The returns were most gratify- ing. The range of benefits, material, moral, and social, surprised even the people who had devised the plan and who had the faith in its efficacy that enthusiasm gives. Re- ports from schools all over the United States make an interesting contribution to the literature of education. They are a volume on juvenile psychology, a revelation of a keen intelligence in children which had never before been suspected. A number of things came to light. The school child of America proved himself possessor of resourcefulness, in- vention, ingenuity in finding ways and means, faculty of organization, capability in execution, competitive energy, and understanding of the olDJectives and the inner meaning of the war in such a degree as to put him fairly on a plane with his elders ; the demand on his generosity disclosed unselfishness and intelhgent sympathy for the sufferings of children in other countries. From an extensive file of reports on Junior Red Cross work in schools in all parts of the Union, these sentences, taken at random, tell a story : "War has laid its hands upon American children as well as those in Europe — they are taking the responsibility seriously, as is shown by the readiness to sacrifice leisure time and candy money to the success of school war work." "The need of raising money for the school fund has brought business ability to light in unexpected quarters. Children who liitherto have had no sense of money values have worked, saved, and sacrificed to get money for the Red Cross." "War work leaves no time for loitering. Labor is dignified, and they manifest a desire to earn money rather than have it given to them. They hoard pennies with the enthusiasm of the miser, but only to give the money to the Red Cross. Thrift is no longer a dull personal virtue, but a patriotic service." "Time and money, of which youth is by nature prodigal, are taking on new values to the children." "Cooperation is essential to the success of such undertakings as sales 104 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR and entertainments, and this ability to work together is carried into more personal relations." '^ "The hard work which the children have done has impressed them with the necessity for neatness, accuracy, and teamwork." "From the tragedy of war, children are learning the lessons of co- operation and service." "Active generosity and the power of working with other people are by-products of these financial enterprises." "The Red Cross is not an outside organization. The children have made it their own. Their enthusiasm for its interests has drawn out their best virtues and proved that children can do much bigger and more important work than is generally expected of them." "Hitherto we have dwelt chiefly upon the benefits, privileges, and immunities of a democracy, without sufficiently stressing the responsibil- ities impUed in its citizenship. Now every child is realizing that he, as well as the greatest and wisest of his seniors, has a share in win- ning the war. The habits and the ideas that he is establishing are a national gain." "For years there has been a conscientious efifort to teach patriotism to the children of our American schools, but because the teaching was only verbal it often remained as a school association rather than as a reality of after life. The Red Cross has vitaUzed idealistic patriotism." "There is no evidence of lowered standards of school work — rather boys and girls feel the necessity of studying hard to lay a foundation for future work. The children accept personal responsibility and the binding values of a pledge of service." "Common interest and labor shared make a real basis of democracy. Home and school are drawn closer together. Through the work of their hands the children have won fellowship with their schoolmates, with the millions of men and women who are working for the Red Cross, with soldiers in the trenches, and the refugees behind the fines. There has come a wonderful awakening for the country child. He realizes for the first time his own importance as a part of the country — he is surprised and stimulated with his new outlook upon life. He develops an altruism hitherto unsuspected among these somewhat self-centered out of the way boys and girls. He is not to be outdone in his sacrificial service by his city cousin, but gives himself, his interests, his time, his money, and his energies." "Without seeming pessimistic, one may truly say that the average modern child had become self-centered. The next generation is learning lessons of responsibility and honest service." MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 105 These are not editorial observations. They are the first- hand reactions of men and women who saw this Junior Red Cross work start and watched its progress, who knew the old conditions and noted the changes, who saw un- imagined blossoms of character and ability grow swiftly out of the soil of selfishness, carelessness, and sloth. There has come a new vitality into all school life, even into the slow old routine of its exercises. The imitative impulse of childhood has a new goal : The lad no longer imitates the bad man of his village but has a new dream and a new model. He wants to keep fit like the soldiers, who have so nobly thrashed the Huns. Arithmetic loses its terrors when its problems are practical and urgent ones. The dismal maps of the school geography become a stage on which is passing the most thrilling "movie" of all history. Continents and peoples that once had for the American boy no more vital meaning than Noah's Ark animals are alive with interest that is intensely personal to him and to the boy next door. The threads of all the world run straight to his own house, and in the great picture of mankind's activity he feels himself a recognizable figure. The responsibilities and the vi^dd interests of world citizen- ship, the thrill of a proud nationalism, have gripped him with a hold that can never be loosened. He reads history now, as no parental pleadings have ever been able to prevail upon him heretofore to do ; it is the new history that every tempestuous day of war has written. He is gathering from every possible source the answers to questions that are ever- lastingly asking themselves in his busy brain. This is education in its best form. This is the leading of the home-boimd mind out into the light of the wide world's life and learning. But there is the reverse action of all the enthusiasm of interest. The school child, with the intuitive deduction which is a child property, gets at once the truth that if the strong and the clean are to win, if right and de- 106 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR cency are factors in leadership, then these virtues must begin at home. It is ''many a mickle that makes the muckle" and his town mus{ not be the only decadent spot in Denmark. The Red Cross says "community service," and it translates itself instantly into terms of a clean town, a healthful town, a progressive town, a busy town, a town full of thrift and empty of rubbish, and lending every possible hand to the world's big work. It is hard to overestimate the value and weight of the endeavor which was evoked in all these millions of children — at the time that I write their number is given, 10,728,715 — by this call for personal service. All the vitality, all the invention, all the sacrifice, which in the old lazy days used to go to finding some way of dodging work, were transformed and galvanized into righteous industry. By the wisdom and ingenuity of the teacher and those who worked with him, this new understanding was converted into national habits. It was systematized and dramatized, it was provided with workable methods, and it was sur- rounded with a living interest which was to continue after the stimulus of war had passed away. The Red Cross, with all its wide labors for the good of others, has done nothing more vital to the making of a better and more livable world than this stimulation and organization of child energy, this establishment of new aims, new standards, and a new field of ambition for the young. CHAPTER IX SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION Trying Problems of Organization — Personnel Department — Demand and Supply — Some Illuminating Figures — Address of the Italian Premier — "Emergency" Provision — The Earthquake at Guate- mala — The Halifax Disaster — "Hurry" Calls — Red Cross Pur- chases Combined with Those for the War Department — Bureau of Stores — Shipping Space for Red Cross Supplies — Bureau of Trans- portation — Report of Baltimore Export Warehouse — Some Figures from Report of New York Warehouse — Free Space Accorded Red Cross — Insurance Problem a Difficult One. ALTHOUGH founded on sentiment and built on purely idealistic elements, the Red Cross was, nevertheless, called upon to perform the most mechanical of all functions and upon the biggest imaginable scale. With free hand and unstinting faith the American people gave to the Red Cross large sums to be converted into everything that our fighting men might lack, everything that a wide and woeful world might stand in need of. The money was given with the intention that it would be made to go as far as energy and business intelligence could make it go. It was a big trust ; a stupendous contract. As might be expected, the Red Cross had many trying problems of organization, but none that were greater than this. Obviously, the men to solve it were those who had been identified with industrial and commercial institutions ; men who could apply to Red Cross operations the lessons of long and successful experience in business life. It was to such men as these, therefore, that the War 107 108 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Council turned to constitute the Red Cross Department of Supplies and Transportation. In the handhng of this huge business of buying and shipping suppUes they utilized the wisdom of which commercial competition is the shrewdest teacher. They were the men who converted the sentimental dollar worth into anywhere from one to three dollars' worth of clothing, food, medicine, and a thousand other things, and saw to it that they reached the people who needed them in the shortest possible time. The operations of the Department of Supplies and Trans- portation must not be translated by the famiUar and prosaic lexicon of trade, but in the language of the need and suffering that war brings. Its interminable invoices and correspond- ence ever reflect a picture like that, for instance, which France presented in 1917. Back of its continuous transfer of commodities, of shifting debits and credits, was the spurring consciousness of the sick and starving thousands of Macedonia and Serbia where brutality had left a grave- yard and waste ; through the hours of its buying and the rapid fire of its typewriters echoed the cries of the hundred and fifty thousand unfed babies in the city of Petrograd. There was a stimulus in this world's cry that chained these men to the job, that humanized and fairly put the breath of fife into the bills-of-lading, ships' manifests, and monthly statements, and not the reward that was in it, for there was none. With noiseless and methodical routine they went on filhng the orders and getting the ships away. Everything marched with speed and with lost motion reduced to a minimum. In business this would spell dividends; in the Red Cross its profits were counted in lives saved. For these purposes $9,000,000 a month in supplies passed over- seas to our fighting men, to our allies, and to the needy of many lands, in addition to the great quantities pur- SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 109 chased abroad and the things purchased for our soldiers at home. A few men kept this extraordinary work moving. Each had faith in the force of the saying ''the fellow who gets to the top is the one who can see what is going on outside with- out looking through the window." Thanks to that faculty the trains and trucks were always trailing to the seaboard ; the warehouses always had cargoes waiting ; and the ships with Red Cross money changed into victuals, clothes, and hospital supphes followed each other to the lands where the lack was. Organization wise, the Department of Supphes and Transportation was self-descriptive : it meant and did just what it said ; it exchanged the money for the thousands of things needed and transferred them from one part of the earth to another. On the chart, Hke any other business mechanism, it looked hke ABC. The details were multifarious but invisible. The fingers of this Depart- ment nevertheless reached out into every field and phase of industrial, agricultural, and commercial production and into every market place. There was scarcely a product which could be used for human comfort that it did not gather to its warehouses. The diversity of commodities was surprising. The manifests of these shipments for Russia, France, and the Mediterranean, were as catholic as a mail-order catalogue. They seem fantastical until one stops to visualize the countries for which they were bound ; then every item explains itself ; every column of figures supphes a vision. Take, for example, the figures that represent the January, 1918, shipment to Italy : — Surgical Dressings 1,495,270 Hospital Supplies 454,536 Hospital Garments 384,517 Articles for Soldiers and Sailors 52,369 Total 2,334,323 110 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR And again in February *. — Surgical Dressings 1,349,026 Hospital Supplies 258,075 Hospital Garments 226,214 Refugee Garments 4,059 Articles for Soldiers and Sailors 1,601 Total 1,838,975 What do these figures conjure up, I ask, if not the after- math of the Itahan disaster at Caporetto ! What do they instantly summon to mind if not a picture of wounded and homeless men safe, at last, and cared for behind the barrier of the Piave! But if visualization is lacking and words needed to understand the appreciation of the Italian people of the prompt action taken by the American Red Cross in forwarding supplies, I take the liberty to quote from an address at the opening of the Italian Parliament : — "Our soul is stirred again," said the Premier, "with appreciation and with admiration for the magnificent dash with which the American Red Cross has brought us powerful aid in our recent misfortune. We attribute great value to the cooperation which will be given us against the common enemy by the prodigious activity and by the exuberant and consistent force which are peculiar to the American people. . . ." But to return to the items : Take them straight down from the A's ; there is purpose and use for them all. In the distance that you travel between adding-machines and yolk-powder you can see the whole panorama of war and of the people whom it has made forlorn ; and, inciden- tally, when you get to the Y's, you have passed an astonish- ing amount of money. An entry of "ambulances and automobiles" brings into view with photographic clearness the ancient French and Italian highways, cluttered with the impedimenta of war and scarred with the ruin which the Germans left behind them. The long list of "agricultural SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 111 supplies," formerly itemized under "farm-machinery, tractors, farm-tools, seeds, and fertilizers," reveals the French peasant — sturdy women, men broken on war's pitiless wheel — trying with new American methods to restore the lost food production of France, or the unbending Serbian working out his own victualing problem again on the rich acres that the Austrians could not hold. There was an unbehevable quantity of hospital supplies and equipment and tents and portable buildings to shelter them and which moved promptly in case of need. There were drugs and surgical apparatus without end for the intricate operations which have come into common practice with the frightful wounds of this war. They tell their own stories of the scientific care which the Allied soldier received. There are household goods in variety that is dishearten- ing in these days of high prices : Games, clothing of every known fashion and size, camp things, auto parts, oils, gasohne, blocks, rope bottles, blacking, catgut, Bristol board, baiUng machines, cement, arm and leg supports, rubberized caps, carborundum, earthenware, glass sides, fire extin- guishers, enameled goods, crutches, cork, comfort kits, thermometers and photographic films, baseballs, dental goods, cutlery, nails, mouth organs, hooks and eyes, in- cubators, hammocks, ovens, mattresses, grindstones, razors, rakes, pillow-cases, tree-sprayers, stretchers, scales, stoves, pens, pill-rollers, syringes, shop tools, wax, threshing- machines, sweaters, tubing, washing-machines, puzzles and sewing-machines, oil-heaters and moving-picture apparatus, operating-tables and spool cotton, trench candles, etc., etc. This list taken from the files is sufficient to reflect the strange and almost absurdly variegated life that was lived in the zone of war. The Bureau of Purchases, whose business it was to buy all these innumerable things, divided its supplies into two sections : one was made up of what it had to buy and. 112 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR furthermore, to buy far in advance of the need in order not to be caught short when the hurry call might come. These were the raw materials for Chapter production which the women of America had turned out in a ceaseless stream with an astonishing total. The other section included sup- plies requisitioned by Foreign Commissions and supplies used for our boys at home. It is just as impossible to set forth in detail the infinite processes and steps by which these tons of diverse commodities were assembled together from everywhere and set afloat as it is to depict with par- ticularity the great scenes in which they later appeared. It will give one but little idea to know that 1,229,016 "pounds" of men's shoes were shipped — practically all to France, Rumania, and Serbia — up to July 31, 1918, and that 150,000 pairs went to Vladivostok in August for the Czecho-Slovaks. All of the women's shoes were bought in Europe. Surgical instruments do not weigh much singly, but they cost prodigiously, and in July the Red Cross delivered over 170 tons of them across the seas to mend shattered and twisted bodies. In sheer weight, it is interesting to observe, cigarettes and tobacco ran a close second to automobiles and ambulances, which show a total of over 1300 tons. In three months alone 280,000,000 cigarettes were sent overseas. There were 237 tons of bandages and 209 tons of absorbent cotton ; 400 tons of drugs ; 320 tons of soap ; 274 tons of sheeting ; 48 tons of slippers; 32 tons of pillow-cases; 170 tons of surveyors' instruments, and 30 tons of towels. There are some of these totals that are mystifying, for example, 40 pounds of yardsticks ; but 63 tons of chewing-gum confirms the oft-reiterated declaration that the Red Cross tried to make the American soldier feel at home. In war time "foodstuffs" was the most comprehensive word in the English tongue; it meant everything from pepper and jam to priceless ham and white wheat flour; i->- ^- 7. -'■■ ■ .^j^^.iitJi:^^'^:^ SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 113 even big business economizes on the clerical items when it comes to foodstuffs. There were times also when emergency was a most de- scriptive word. In contemplation of its task the Supply Department classed all the provisions it made for civihan rehef, mihtary relief, and foreign relief as "emergency." In the crisis of necessity all the red tape was cut. For instance, when the earthquake shattered Guatemala, there came on Saturday afternoon a cry for help. It was in the middle of winter and, naturally, the next day was Sunday, but Monday was New Year's Day ; a telegram brought the information that a ship was clearing from New Orleans for Guatemala on Tuesday noon ; at once a hst of food and drugs and clothing was telegraphed together with instructions to a Red Cross man, a New Orleans banker, that these things must be on board when the vessel cleared, which they were. When the explosion of December, 1917, shook Halifax, it was the same story : the Red Cross got together carloads of everything that could possibly be needed and had them in Hahfax within twenty-four hours. It would seem, therefore, that provocation is all that is needed to effectuate results for, again, when the Bureau of Foreign Relief handed over a cable to the effect that the people in the Madeira Islands were starving to death, there was a response from the Supply Department that surprised even themselves. What the Madeirans wanted to maintain life in their little island was com. On the Atlantic Coast there was no corn. In Illinois they were making fat steers and 60-cent bacon out of it. A ship loading in Norfolk for Madeira was scheduled to sail in four days and Chicago, in those times of congested traffic, was far away. The Supply and Transportation Department cracked this nut in three taps : first, it got the Navy Department to delay the sailing ; second, it bought, by wire, a thousand tons of corn in Chicago ; third, it got a priority order from the Railroad Administration; with 114 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR the result that the corn was hurried into 38 cars and rushed out of Chicago on a special train. It was followed through, and ten days from the date of receipt of the cable the corn was on its way to Madeira. Again : When, shortly after our entrance into the war, the Red Cross hurried off a Commission to relieve the crying distress in Russia, the list of commodities included a large quantity of drugs and medicines. There was another case where the ship was due to sail. Orders were telephoned to the chemists in Philadelpliia ; the supphes loaded on motor-trucks for New York; and $300,000 worth of supphes were put on board in forty-eight hours. There are many such instances. I remember that at the time the Palestine Commission was getting under way, it happened that sudden demand was made on us for essential supphes which were not at hand. It was on Friday that the requisition came, the boat was due to sail on Sunday, and the shortage was not definitely discovered until late Saturday afternoon. But all this mattered httle to the people at the Atlantic Division Headquarters when put in charge of this order. In a jiffy they had enlisted the service of a fleet of automobiles, located a number of dealers, induced them to open up their establishments on Sunday morning, and when the ship passed Scotland Light every last item was in the hold. Nominally, a dollar is worth a hundred cents. There were many obvious reasons for making the Red Cross dollar worth more if it could be done, and not the least sound reason was that it was a Red Cross dollar and was being gladly and graciously given in the interest of mankind. So when the markets became excited in the latter part of May, as everyone knows, and prices rose entirely beyond reason, the purchasing department sought to protect itself in its purchases ; with the result that an arrangement was effected with the War Industries Board whereby Red Cross SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 115 purchases were combined with those made for the War Department. With the talent at hand and the spirit of helpful co- operation everywhere it would be strange, indeed, if there had not been many savings made. But why attempt to recite them. It must not be overlooked, either, that the various departments of the Government extended every faciUty, which resulted in the saving of precious time and hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the days of submarine and overtaxed shipping, it had become the rule to forward nothing from America that could be bought on the other side. When this plan was first considered we first explored the French market. But, appalled at the volume of red tape necessary to conform to French regulations, we turned to England. That Govern- ment solved the situation by putting the American Red Cross on a parity with the British Red Cross. The Red Cross dollar went up in value. England got the business at a reduced margin of profit, and a vast amount of trans- Atlantic cargo space was saved for munitions and guns and Army supplies. As a matter of fact, during the year ending June 30, 1918, the purchases abroad for France, Italy, Great Britain, and Belgium exceeded in value the purchases made in America diu"ing the same period for shipment to Europe. We come now to the Chapter Supphes. These were small troubles to the Department of Supplies. There was a Bureau of Stores which did nothing else but look after the supply of material furnished to Chapters and the avail- ability of the resultant product for shipment. Every woman who knitted or sewed for the Red Cross knew that the whole business of Chapter production, which had a bureau all its own, had undergone a change since the early days of 1917, when every patriotic soul in the Chapter was buying yarn for herself and nowhere two sweaters looked 116 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR alike. Those were parlous days ! If there were three business houses in a Chapter town that handled wool and none had a sufficient quantity to fill a Chapter order, all three would rush a call into the New York market; the demand thus ran wild and the market was fluctuating and uncertain. Then the War Industries Board put its adjust- ing hand on the wool supply. By and by, through a studious process of coordination. Chapter production was put on a business basis. The Bureau of Chapter Production pro- vided specifications for all Chapter production, so auto- matically definite that sick soldiers looked like twins in hospital garments and socks were always mates. There may have been a better way to run this business, but no one ever found it. A million or more of silvery-haired grandmothers who had made stockings for foiu- generations had to change their method, showing that it is never too late to learn. To further aid in adjusting supply to demand, the Bureau of Stores was formed. The value of Chapter effort, always great, was multiplied many fold. It was estimated most conservatively at anywhere from sixty to a hundred million dollars. The principal business of the Bureau of Stores was inter- mediary. It was more a Bureau of Records, limited records, but of large importance. It had a set of books, — one for each Division, — which was turned in from the Division monthly and in which were set down the demands for material for articles which the Bureau of Production had allotted for manufacture; against the totals of these re- quirements the Bureau of Stores inscribed its stock on hand, and thus was enabled to know from month to month the state of its supplies by Chapters, which, when made up into finished articles, were shipped to the Division Warehouses, where they awaited demand. It was a very simple cog, but it kept the whole system of Chapter production pro- tected against lack of materials ; and, in conjunction with z < 2 -; X ^ s :i < ~ S X K ^ ^ a M - D O' O X n O SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 117 the Production Bureau, was of use in assuring a supply of finished goods on hand. I said in the beginning that it required purely mechanical processes to transmute senti- ment into relief. This is an intensified illustration. When the market goods were bought and the Chapter goods were made the thing was to get them to the people who needed them. The nationalization of the Red Cross has been a great aid in securing for it every possible advan- tage in ocean tonnage. The Allied Governments had been called upon to give space for Red Cross supplies to France, Italy, England, Russia (Kola, Archangel, and Vladivostok), Serbia, Greece, Switzerland (for American prisoners, Ser- bian prisoners, and the Swiss Commission), Palestine, Den- mark (for American prisoners). Virgin Islands, Madeira, Guatemala, Haiti, and Madagascar. In negotiating for space the Bureau of Transportation perfected arrangements for shipment in steamers controlled by the French High Commission, the United States War Department, the British Ministry of Shipping, the Italian Ministry of Ship- ping, the Greek Legation, the Russian Embassy, the United States Shipping Board, and the Commercial Steamship Lines. The Red Cross Ports of Export were New York, Newport News, Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans, Montreal, Seattle, and San Francisco. Beginning with a simple organization in 1917, it re- quired many changes, in the face of increasing difficulties, to perfect the present system of transportation. No smallest item that could contribute to increased efficiency was omitted, nor anything that would reduce by the smallest amount the cost of the operation. War tax, for example, was exempted on all Government freights. The Red Cross appealed to the Treasury Department for similar recognition on the ground that it was a governmental agency, and thereby secured exemption on all domestic transportation. It did not apply to foreign shipments. Revenue tax amounting to 118 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR hundreds of thousands of dollars was also omitted on soldiers' tobacco. Under private ownership it was the custom of the railroads to extend to shippers two weeks' credit on freight charges. The Railroad Administration, upon taking con- trol, cancelled this custom but exempted Government freight. The Red Cross claimed hke exemption and the administra- tion circulars were reissued to that effect. This concession contributed substantially to the smooth working of the Red Cross system. It enabled the Division to check their goods on shortage and simplified the processes of claim and recovery. To further profit in this direction, the Bureau of Transportation placed a traffic man in each Division and Port Warehouse for the purpose of checking freight and express bills, claims for overcharge, loss, and damage on raw materials delivered to, and finished supplies received from the Chapters, as well as suppHes handled through the warehouse. Each Division and Port Warehouse was responsible for materials received and shipped, and made its own recoveries. Expense bills remained in the records of the Division and Port Warehouse so that they might be available for use in prompt presentation of claims to common carriers. Many of these fundamental changes in transportation regulations solved embarrassing problems in the actual handling of material. At first, it was the custom of the division warehouses, and even of the Chapters, to ship to New York export warehouses small quantities of articles as finished. It was afterwards decided that no Chapter goods should be shipped unless in carload lots and without first obtaining necessary authority from the Bureau of Transportation — a step which estab- lished control of the movement to ports of embarkation, and did away with congestion, demurrage, and many difficulties in the adjustment of steamer accommodation. Under the old system Chapter goods were piled into New York in large aggregate, entaifing heavy operating expenses, SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 119 particularly for truck delivery. The cartage charge alone at New York City, railroad station to warehouse, was 35 cents per case. This was eliminated. The congestion in New York was troublesome until arrangement was made with the Italian Ministry of Shipping to transport all cases for Italy from Baltimore. A substantial saving was effected in securing short hauls, as will be shown in the following order for 400 tons of rice for Italy : under the old conditions this shipment normally would have moved from the port of New York. The Food Administration quoted on rice delivered in New York, but the rice was in New Orleans. Through the Italian Ministry of Shipping, the Bureau of Transportation secured space in a vessel clearing from New Orleans, and thereby saved freight revenue amounting in all to S4559, based on all-rail rate to New York at 5Gi cents per hundred pounds. A great amount of material which, ordinarily, might have required rail transportation to the eastern seaboard for export, was shipped from the Pacific coast in direct vessels. Much of this consisted of the products of the Chapters in the Northwestern and Pacific Divisions. The Bureau secured from the United States Shipping Board an allotment of seventy-five weight tons per vessel in the new merchant ships which were being constructed on the Pacific coast. The vessels from Seattle, Washington, and San Francisco, California, carried to France flour ground out of Austrahan wheat ; Pacific salmon and dried fruits from Cahfornia went directly overseas in the same way, which resulted in a saving in overland freight transportation of one dollar and fifty cents to three dollars per hundred pounds. There was scarcely an angle from which one could ap- proach the purchase and transportation of Red Cross sup- plies to-day without finding a saving in money, resultant from business efficiency and from the uniform consideration shown by the Allied governments, the departments of our 120 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR own Government and commercial interests everywhere. An interesting showing is made in the operation of the Red Cross export warehouse, even at the busiest ports. The operation report of the Baltimore export warehouse from April 1 to September 30 revealed a satisfactory economy in the handling of seaboard traffic. The total expense in the warehouse for this period — including warehouse and office rental, demurrage, cartage, lighterage, salaries, labor, and every other miscellaneous expense — showed a total of seventeen thousand and some odd dollars. There were shipped at this time 135,072 cases, with a total value of $6,727,928; the total weight was 7996 tons. The cost of handling was 12f cents per case, and by the ton $2.17. This ton cost — every ocean shipper will confirm this — was actually lower than a stevedore company would contract for the warehousing and loading or unloading of any vessel. The low cost per case is almost extraordinary when it is borne in mind that many of these cases were five-ton trucks, kitchen trailers, and other heavy equipment requir- ing steam derricks for handling. The New York export warehouse in its report covering the year ending June 30, 1918, disclosed an increase in shipments handled monthly from 26 to 55 ; and an increase in packages handled from 43,000 to 48,000 per month, but the cost per shipment decreased from $1,655 to $.508 over 242 shipments ; the cost per package from $1 to 53 cents; the cost per ton from $15.31 to $9.06; and the cost per $1 value declined from $.0373 to $.0157. But the greatest saving in all the business of transportation is shown in the record of free space accorded to the Red Cross. Before the Government took over the shipping lines the rates for ocean transportation appeared to have no limit. The average quotation was $110 a cubic ton, and it ran from that rate up to all the traffic would stand ; on the assumption of governmental control the Red Cross SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 121 fixed a commercial average rate value of $100 per ton. As the total shipments from April, 1917, to February 28, 1919, amounted to 196,000 odd tons, it will be seen that the value of this space ran well over $19,000,000. The problem of insurance upon these tremendous ship- ments of Red Cross materials was, necessarily, a difficult one. It conformed to the usual business practice of insuring shipments at sea against risks of war and marine peril. The greater portion of the war risk was covered by the Government War Risk Insurance, and the balance was offered to leading insurance companies at net rates and without commission to any one. As the volume of Red Cross shipments increased, it became possible to establish a plan of partial self-insm-ance whereby the Red Cross, guided by its technical insurance advisers, assumed a part of the war risk on each vessel. Altogether there was carried on Red Cross shipments $32,000,000 of insurance, of which by far the greatest part of the premium was war risk. Out of $1,400,000 of premium, $1,200,000 was on insurance of this nature, and only $200,000 on marine risk. Chapter goods were insured on cost of material only, since the value of the labor is given by the Chapter workers. CHAPTER X THE DISABLED SOLDIER New View of the Disabled — The Vocational Rehabilitation Law — Cooperates with the Department of Labor — Experience of European Countries — Five Recognized Forms of Disability — Places Where Treatment Is Given — Cure for the Mind and the Will — Illustrated in the Reeducation of the Blind — The Keynote in Cure — Fields Open to the Blind — Training in France and England — Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men — Home Service in Reedu- cation — Treatment of the Tuberculous — Institute for the Blind — Hospital for Shell-Shock Patients — General Resume. INJURED men have been an inevitable residuum of wars since wars began. To militant rulers of old they were merely an item in the wastage and were left to fate and their own powers of recuperation. The aim of modern science and of sociology is not only to leave nothing undone for our crippled soldiers that will make them productive members of society, but to go a long step further, while mending their bodies, and lift them forth- with out of the ruck of dependency and give them standing as co-equal workers in the working world. It would be at once foolish and insincere to pretend that this is a small undertaking. With its obstacles and its in- evitable corollaries it presents a heroic problem. It is the unhappy testimony of history that after the first outburst of emotional gratitude the consideration shown to crippled veterans loses grace and spontaneity. The madness of popular appreciation - — vocal at first in free-handed proffers 122 THE DISABLED SOLDIER 123 to the home-coming soldier — dwindles as the war recedes and the concentration of business intensifies. So far as the disabled soldier is concerned there are two principal elements involved in making a new man of him : one is the extent to which surgical science and reeducation can restore his efficiency. But the first and primary essen- tial is the will of the man to profit by his assistance, his ambition, his desire to be a doer rather than a dependent. We must season our gratitude to the wounded soldier with common sense, that it may not evaporate in the violence of its initial warmth. If we treat this wounded soldier like a man and a brother he will be one — for he has proved his quahty. People ''by-and-large" will scarcely credit the advance that has been made physically in the restoration of the dis- abled and their refitment for work. In order that every use may be made of the world's learning and invention in this field, and that the work may be pursued to its conclusion without interference, Congress enacted, and the President approved, the Vocational Rehabilitation Law, embodying a national plan which provided not only for the reduction of a man's disability to its owest terms by surgical and medical treatment, but, also, when this shall have been accomplished, to furnish him with the most perfect artificial limbs and appliances obtainable to render his injury in some degree inconspicuous, but primarily to restore locomotion and manual ability. Upon this follows reeducation to whatever extent may be necessary to assure substantial earning power and, finall}^, the procurement of employment for him in the trade or busi- ness for which he has been equipped. Wise provision has been made in the law that this acquirement of profitable occupation shall not reduce his pension, but shall supplement it to an extent which will enable him to live on a parity of comfort with other men pursuing similar lines of industry. 124 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR In charging the Federal Board for Vocational Education with the mobilization of resources for all necessary courses of training, the Government places at its disposal all the employment facilities of the Department of Labor. It is intended and provided that there shall be complete coopera- tion between the Army and Navy Medical Boards and all other departments that in any way contribute to the plan ; that the work, curative and educational, be so coordinated and combined that rehabilitation shall constitute one un- interrupted process, beginning in the base hospital and ending only when the disabled men, restored, equipped, and trained to the point of industrial efficiency, shall be definitely and permanently placed in lucrative employment. The up- coming generation will not see so much of the paupered veteran soldier, forced by his disability to depend on a precarious and ever diminishing charity, all too thinly veiled by the purchase of lead pencils on a street corner. In making large provision for this work, the Government took lesson from the experience of European countries. Plans are already under way for the creation of large centers, specially located, designed, and equipped to meet the problem. The schedules contemplate, with some latitude for com- plications and minor variations, five general forms of dis- ability : (1) Surgical, involving primarily the loss of one or more limbs; (2) Blind; (3) Shell-shock, including the various phases of psychoneurosis ; (4) Tubercular; (5) Deaf. In the reception hospitals at ports of debarkation, the men were classified and distributed to various general hospitals where provision had been made for specific treat- ment, surgical, medical, and occupational. The following institutions have been designated and equipped: General Hospital No. 2, Fort McHenry, Maryland ; General Hospi- tal No. 3, Colonia, New Jersey ; General Hospital No. 4, Fort Porter, New York; General Hospital No. 6, Fort THE DISABLED SOLDIER 125 McPherson, Georgia ; General Hospital No. 7, Roland Park, Baltimore, Maryland; General Hospital No. 8, Otisville, New York ; General Hospital No. 9, Lakewood, New Jersey ; General Hospital No. 11, Cape May, New Jersey; General Hospital No. 16, New Haven, Connecticut; General Hos- pital No. 17, Markleton, Pennsylvania; General Hospital No. 19, Azalea, North Carolina; United States Hospital, Waynesville, North Carolina; Army and Navy General Hospital, Hot Springs, Arkansas ; Walter Reed General Hospital, Takoma Park, Washington, D.C. ; Letterman General Hospital, San Francisco, California ; Fort Bayard, New Mexico ; Plattsburg Barracks, Plattsbm-g, New York ; St. Ehzabeth's Hospital, Washington, D.C. ; Whipple Bar- racks, Arizona. The estabUshments at Fort McHenry, Colonia, Lakewood, Walter Reed, Letterman, Fort McPherson, and Hot Springs are for general reconstruction. Blind cases in which surgery is required are treated at Cape May, but all reeducational work with the blind is carried on at Roland Park, Baltimore. Otisville, New York ; New Haven, Connecticut ; Markle- ton, Pennsylvania ; Waynesville, North Carolina ; Fort Bayard, New Mexico ; and Whipple Barracks, Arizona, are reserved for the tuberculous. Deafness is treated at Cape May, and insane cases are taken to Fort Porter, Plattsburg Barracks, and St. Elizabeth's, Washington. The Indian School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, has also been made available for reconstruction work. It was the custom in former times to discharge immediately from the Army all men who developed chronic disease or physical disability. At present, under the War Depart- ment's ruling, no member of the service disabled in the line of duty will be discharged until he has attained the fullest measure of recovery possible. In the treatment of these forms of disability there is in- volved a wide range of medical and surgical skill. The 126 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR infinite complexities of physical derangement tax to their last resource the ingenuity of physicians and surgeons ; they bring into service the latest fruits of scientific development and research. But in one sense all are alike. Their success- ful management, the attainment of right results in the end, had a common basis and background — the mind and will of the patient. The victim of war, from the moment his life is assured, becomes the object of care and attention with a view to making him useful to the world he lives in. A perfect illustration is the man blinded, from whatever cause. If in the first stage of hospital treatment it is thought possible that his vision will be permanently lost, the work of reeducation begins without his knowledge. From that time on, — even while he is yet ignorant of the truth, — the doctors are ''teaching him to be blind." While his eyes are still covered with an unnecessary bandage, perhaps, he is taught to do for himself things that the blind do, such as shaving and finding his own way about. It is one of the everlasting marvels of life that dormant nerves and muscles and brain cells, waked by necessity, learn in so short a space to do their work. By the time the blinded man dis- covers the truth the crushing force of the blow has been broken. From that point onward, — on the journey home and at every stage he must pass before the last hope of saving his sight is abandoned, — he, unconsciously, is being trained in the rudimentary lessons of blindness. With other forms of injury the same general theory is pursued, though perforce more slowly and in less degree. But back of all the physical problems still stands the mental one. In the first days, weeks, or months after realization, there comes the hard, incessant fight against depression, discouragement, relaxation of hope. The winning of this battle is the most vital factor in the work of reconstruction, in the remaking of the man's life. This mental infection of despair is the malady that requires most skillful medicine. THE DISABLED SOLDIER 127 and that if uncured may make all the drugs and surgery of no avail. It is a labor requiring infinite patience and tact and most delicate intuitions. But it can be done. The keynote of the majority of cases has without doubt been struck in a letter written by a teacher, himself a cripple, to the Surgeon General : — "You must," he says, "not only fit a man to become a wage-earner, but fully as important, you must fit him to enjoy the wages he has earned with his fellows. . . . Unless you prove to the cripple that there is joy ahead, you cannot help him. . . . When a man is wounded and crippled the reahzation of the crippling comes upon him at a time when the nervous system is least able to bear the additional shock which the realization brings. . . . The mental suffering is very acute, though the doctors and niu-ses may not know of it. . . . Couple with a shattered nervous system weeks of inactivity, with the idea of helplessness, with the idea of life ab- normal, outside the pleasures of the world ; it is wonderful that all cripples are not helpless. You must kill the idea of helplessness almost as soon as it is born, for in a few weeks it becomes very strong. You must show moving pictures of men who are crippled enjoying themselves in normal ways, dancing, skating, paddling a canoe, s^\dmming, playing billiards, and hundreds of things they cannot or do not know about. I could multiply these things a thousandfold, things which you would refuse to believe. But they must be 'put across' to the men early, and it must be done by men who have had experience first hand." An industrial engineer in the Government employ, whose business it is to make surveys for the purpose of finding fields open to the blind, states as a result of tests and investigations that approximately three per cent of the manufacturing industries involve work which blind men can do satisfactorily. It has, in fact, been found that in some branches of work blind men are more efficient by reason of their closer concentration and that the sense of touch, when developed to requisite nicety, is often more alert and more discriminating than sight. Fortunately for the work of reeducation in this country, France and England faced the problem before us. In their 128 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR experience the perfection of mechanical arms with a "chuck " for holding work or tools has opened to armless men occu- pations in which they would at first sight have been ac- counted helpless. One-armed men, and even blind men, develop incredible skill in the operation of a typewriter from dictaphones, the shift key being worked by pedal. The running of lathes, agricultural tractors, drills, and other machinery, carpentry, tool making, the manufacture of surgical instruments and tools of precision, watch-making, telegraphy, photography, typesetting — all these have been found possible. At the Ecole Joffre, near Lyons, which the French established early in the war, accounting and com- mercial work are taught, also toy making, bookbinding, shoemaking, mechanical drafting, woodwork, tailoring, wood carving, gardening, and machine tool work. It has been found here that industrial drafting and design attract the greatest number of pupils. The National Institute in Paris teaches tailoring, shoe and harness making, tinsmith- ing, cabinet work, accounting, and the operation and repair of farm machinery. Both in England and France there is a decided trend among the disabled men toward agricultural pursuits, particularly the raising of poultry. It is the aim of the reeducators in America to fit many men for agricultural life in some form. English schools teach carpentry and cabinet making, carving and gilding, frame, toy, and basket making, metal work, building and construction, decorating and electrical fitting. At Roehampton and Brighton are the greatest centers of training for the amputation cases. It is found that both in England and France the disabled men have proved expert in the making of artificial hmbs. This is a specialty in this country, which produces the best apphances of this sort. In anticipation of the task which lay ahead, the Red Cross estabhshed in 1917, with funds made available by gift, the Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men, in THE DISABLED SOLDIER 129 New York City. The purposes of the Institute are chiefly experimental and in the hne of surveys. It has compiled and repubUshed papers setting forth the results of the best reeducational work in Europe ; it has made a census of the cripples resident in New York City, with records of their accompUshment in various occupations; and it has begun experiments in vocational training in a large number of trades to determine what the cripple may derive from them. Teams of disabled persons, thoroughly trained, are put at work side by side with the sound to determine their relative capabilities. In some lines of work, the cripple has proved the better of the two. It is essential that after the class- room work is advanced the beginner in a new trade should have experience in shop practice, and in securing such faciU- ties from employers these surveys will be of service. In selecting a trade for the disabled man the most thorough search is made into his past history, his business or industrial record, his home life, into every detail, in fact, which may have weight in the planning of his future. It is desired, wherever possible, to return the man to his own town and to his own home and to select for him some branch of industry in which the place affords employment and a promise of permanence. The conditions of the home, its atmosphere, the mental attitude of members of the family and neighbors, the opportunity extended for further study and for helpful social relations are of the utmost importance as bearing on the encouragement which is so necessary to him. In all these hues of investigation, in preparing a man's family to be a help rather than a hindrance to him, the Red Cross Home Service is organized and equipped, by the very nature of its mission, to carry on a wide and helpful work. In looking after the welfare of the soldier's family it has established a relation with them as it has with the soldier himself during his training and transportation, at the front and on the way home, which makes for confidence and trust. 130 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR In what reeducators call ''follow-up work," — seeing the man well along on his new adventure in life and giving him a Uft when he needs it, — the Red Cross, represented every- where as it is by the Chapters, is "on the ground" the whole country over. It saw the soldier off and it welcomed him home. It is merely sticking by him now. The records thus far available indicate that the wounded, and especially those who have lost hmbs, are in relatively small proportion of the total number engaged, and the bhnd, even a smaller number. Medical cases outnumber the sur- gical, while tuberculosis is chargeable with a particularly large share of the discharges. Fortunately, the United States had developed before the war thorough practice in the treatment of tuberculosis ; and in planning its work for returning soldiers the Government has made preparation for them. There were nearly six thousand beds available in the hospitals already set aside for tuberculous patients. The function of the Red Cross in this work was to prevent, through its connection with the famihes of soldiers, the withdrawal of the man from treatment before his restoration should be complete and he cease to be a menace to the well-being of others. As an aid to the work of the blind, the Red Cross has estabUshed in Baltimore an Institute for the Blind, of which the medical officer responsible for the Army program for the blind is the director. The institution is situated con- veniently near to the General Hospital. It provided quarters for the relatives of soldiers who come to visit the hospital. In this, and in furnishing transportation for such relatives where necessary, it is helping to overcome the first and, perhaps, the most serious obstacle to reeducation, — the listlessness or discouragement of the men themselves. Of all the American soldiers returned from France, it is recorded that twenty-five per cent are suffering from some phase of "shell-shock" or nervous disorder. The treatment THE DISABLED SOLDIER 131 of these, in many cases, is extremely difficult and requires time, patience, and extensive equipment of appliances for electric treatment, baths, etc. The special center for these cases is the hospital at Plattsburg Barracks, which includes in its personnel only those who have had to do with treat- ment and care of similar cases in civilian life. Medical authorities estimate from the British Army records that the great majority of all men discharged will return to civil fife with but little more need for medical care than might be expected in the case of a man of somewhat more advanced age in ordinary surroundings ; but for the "disabled," the provision that is being made is broad and hberal, in the highest degree human and kindly, and governed by intelhgent counsels. If understood and wisely availed of by the men for whose benefit it is devised, a great part of the poverty, demoralization, and unhappiness which, in other times, have followed long in the wake of war, will have been done away with and comfort and contentment exist in Uves which, at first, may seem to have been utterly blighted. PART II CHAPTER XI ON THE BATTLE FRONT Workers at Every Point in the Red Gross Service to the American Soldier — A Gap in the Gontinuity of This Service — Gooperation with the Army Medical Gorps — Research Bureau Maintained — Work of Gommunication Bureau — Picture of a Ganteen — Rest Stations — Girl Heroes — Mobility of Red Gross Formations — The Narrative of Gompiegne — The Hospital at Annel — The Rolling Ganteen — Extract from The Washington Post — The Ambulance Drivers — Ambulance Sections Absorbed in the Army Medical Gorps — Hos- pital Service in the Army — Appropriation for Ravi Taillement Serv- ice — Hospital Supply Service — Fifty Base Hospitals Furnished to the Army — Examples of Special Efficiency — Scientific Triumphs — The Gause of Trench Fever Discovered — Diversions in Hospitals — Gomforts Furnished — Letter Writing for the Boys — American Wounded in French Hospitals — Searchers for the Bureau of Gom- munication — Searchers and Help for Prisoners — Gare for the Dying and Dead. THE hugeness of the war and the detailed awfulness of it will never be told. For those, like myself, who touched the edges of it, there can, of course, be no telling of it save that each recite his vision of the little fragment that was his lot to see. It is written in the Book of Ages, and military science will analyze its strategy, but before the tragedy in its entirety can ever be fixed in human record the waters of God-forgiven-forgetfulness will have washed away a great part of it. It is better that it is so. The hope of mankind lies in the 132 ON THE BATTLEFRONT 133 revelation of inborn human kindness ; the task of mankind is to heal the scars that the war has left. Fortunately, as the horror has grown so has grown the unremitting cry of sympathy and pity. And certain it is that men of vision have never ceased to believe that the world will be saved and that hope's patient litany will save it. For the soldier, the Red Cross had workers in the field at every point where they could by any chance serve him : at the port where he landed, in the stations through which he passed on his way to camp, at the camp itself, at the stations between the camp and the trenches, and, finally, at the very front. The canteen convoyers brought up supphes of hot food for him despite the weather, shells, or gas. They were ready through the cold, rainy night to comfort him ; while a little back from the lines was the canteen where he could wash off the mud in which he might have been standing for nights, where his clothes could be disinfected, and where he could sleep if he had a few hours to wait. In short, it was our intention that the soldier should never be without anything that could express the appreciation of his country and lessen his sacrifice. Unfortunately, however, in a war that has to be told in fragments, it was all too easy, as will be seen presently, for gaps to appear in the continuity of this service. ^'It is absurd," said a French soldier who had just come out of the trenches, "to talk about Red Cross work. It has not existed. . . . How could it? A few litter carriers went with us on some of our expeditions but they were soon shot down. ..." For the wounded the Array Medical Corps provided the best and quickest care. Alacrity in this department was the essence of effectiveness. An hour might have meant the difference between life and death. That hour was saved by mounting on wheels everything conceivable so that the wounded might be met at the nearest possible point. The 134 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Red Cross contributed ambulances with operating equip- ments, dental operating rooms, ophthalmological ambu- lances, plants to make ice to pack head wounds, heating plants, and disinfecting plants. In the American Medical service there was surgical skill that is not surpassed in the world ; and to supplement the medical work the Red Cross, with Army cooperation, maintained a research bureau, the value of which has been recognized by all medical authorities. For operations there was a plant manufacturing nitrous oxide gas which, otherwise, could only be obtained in France after long delay. There were shops to manufacture artificial limbs; there was a department — the Comimunication Bureau — which searched for the missing man and gave his family news concerning him and which, like the Home Service in the home camps, straightened out a thousand tangles and did a multitude of things that were seldom twice alike. All the permanent or semi-permanent Red Cross plants in France, — following the practice of the Army, — were built and equipped for future requirements. The French onlookers had a thought in reserve when they saw the prep- arations that were being made for debarkation of the American armies — the unconscionably huge buildings, the ponderous railroad equipment and hundreds of miles of rails; they looked dubiously, too, at the preparations of the Red Cross and wondered if the finished fabrics of ac- complishment would ever fit their vast foundations. But within eighteen months they saw two million soldiers walk off these same docks and move forward promptly to business over the iron pathways ; they saw incalculable stores of everything under the sun following in uninterrupted proces- sion, food and raiment, engineering supplies and building material, and all the paraphernalia of war. A well-known Liberty Loan speaker upon returning from France, referring to the big line of stations, said : — ON THE BATTLEFRONT 135 "I didn't know what a canteen was like. I didn't know whether you rolled it or kept it back in the kitchen somewhere ; but here is what it's like : if you took one of those piers in the North River that you tie a big steamship up to and converted it into a business enterprise to rest and feed and sleep and wash people, that is about the size of the proposition. The kitchen came first — a huge room full of caldrons and chopping blocks and meats and tilings — and next was a lunch-counter affair with some tables where they could probably feed five hundred at a clip. Next was the living room where the soldiers could throw off the accouterments of war and rest themselves and write letters. Outside they had some very pretty gardens which had been decorated by the camouflage artists of France. Next came a large theater, — mostly moving pictures, — I was told, but occasionally the men got up entertainments of their own. Next came a place where I suppose 2500 men could sleep, and they had baths and ways to make their clothes sanitary and things of that kind, aU very essential. "The women workers in this same outfit are entitled to some kind of a memorial, if it is notliing more than in our hearts and minds. They are doing a wonderful work. There is a group of women over here taking care of about seven or eight thousand soldiers every day. It is at a rail- road center where they transfer off the trains and are redistributed. That thing is done twenty-four hours a day in three sliifts of eight hours." The American soldier interpreted ''Rest Station" — with its subtle and more or less elusive course dietary of the French — as something more or less like home and the good old dishes of childhood. Home, therefore, became the keynote in all the buildings and furnishings of the Red Cross way-stations on the road to war. There was the home flavor in the seasoning of the food, and a home atmosphere in the chintzes and various commodities at hand, such as soap, towels, reading matter, and phonograph records. The facihties which the Rest Stations afforded for writing letters back home made the censor of one section, who had to handle them, old before his time, and brought forth a plaintive, if humerous, protest against the stimulation of correspondence. It was not easy work that these women did. As a matter of truth it involved the hardest kind of physical labor. 136 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Moreover, they were accomplishing unconsciously, perhaps, what even they did not realize at the time — the keeping uppermost in his mind the home idea of women. Thus, until the day came when the trains of wounded began rolling back to the coast, the soldier's journey was not such a bad journey, after all. And when he got within sound of the trouble he was clean and fit. That was what the Red Cross aimed to make him. The war has brought to light many heroic deeds. How- ever, not all heroes were men : there are girls who went out in all humility to lend what help they could in the service of the Red Cross canteens and who came home with the Croix de Guerre; there are girls who stayed at their posts of duty in the canteens while the soldiers were at the front and when the windows of their huts cracked from shellfire, and the roof fell in pieces — stayed through nights of tumult and danger where their lives were worth scarce a penny whistle ; and, again, when on the jammed roadways in the great advance, where the crowding thousands of troops were choked and stayed by ambulances and trucks with their hundreds of wounded, these Red Cross girls were there to help dislodge the tangle so that the great currents could flow normally on their way. This, surely, was getting into the road and makeshift of war. "We feed 4000 or 5000 soldiers a day, and our canteen is never closed," wrote a Red Cross canteen girl. "All of our boys on this line of communi- cation stop and rest and have meals and refreshments. After every battle and at intervals we see them coming back. Over 1500 came in lately and practically none had ever had first-aid service. Blood-soaked, weary, but oh, how brave ! With shell-wounds and bayonet-wounds, they will tell you quickly, *I can wait, look after Jim, here.'" It was a long hard grind with existence always in the balance and with no rest or change other than the precipitate retreat or advance as ground was lost or gained. The pictures did not vary except in minor details and in intensity. ON THE BATTLEFRONT 137 The canteens were located in all sorts of places, — any shelter, almost, that would keep out the rain, served the purpose, — but the vital creature comforts were there. The worn, mud- marked, often bloody faces of war-weary men swarmed in out of the night. There was no light save candles or a guttering lamp. They did not eat, — they fed, gulping the hot coffee, munching ravenously. They were spent, but the urge and rush of battle was still on them. The great guns punctuated the talk and the clatter ; there was the sibilant half-moaning whistle of the German shells and the muffled roar of their breaking; one had the sense of being depersonalized, or the dual feeling that comes of hasheesh. And yet, for all its awful reality and nearness, it seemed like a dream. The last exchanging columns having passed away into the night the canteeners slept — these men of varying age and calling who, with gray in their hair but with youth's dreams still weaving in their hearts, were keeping Mercy's outposts on the borderland of doom. And the evening and the morning were another day with a flight to the cellar when an air-raid began or when the rangefinder picked up the little area where the canteen was situated. In times of violent action, when the lines changed under the weight of new forces, the mobility of these Red Cross formations was invaluable. In the broken chronicles of the great German drive in 1918, there were thrilling stories of the quick shifts made by hospital and canteen workers : a sudden gathering of food and equipment, of medicines and instruments, and that heaviest of all known impedimenta, the wounded men under treatment ; a swiftly executed move rearward, trucks loaded with gear and personnel and wounded, but never farther than was absolutely necessary ; the establishment of new quarters and the quick resumption of work, for men's lives spelled victory and delay was death. The narrative of Compiegne, where 100,000 men a day 138 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR poured forward and back as through a narrow gateway, is a moving picture. It started on the morrow of the great German attacks of March, 1918, when French Grand Head- quarters had been moved away to Tevhs and the civihan population had fled ; away back in the days when Lloyd George was cabling President Wilson to send men — and send them quick ; away back before the main American Armies came. In a big hotel, long abandoned, the Red Cross took lodgment, threw open the doors and never closed them for two weeks, intent on its work of general relief. It was indeed a world cast from its moorings! Soldiers were lost, — separated from their commands, — foodless, shelter- less, cold, and wet ; and the streets held crowds of refugees. There were doctors and nurses, executives and handy men of every nationality and every faith, who gathered in this center and joined in its work. The kitchen held steaming stew-pots which were never empty. On the floors of the great reception-room and ball-room, soldiers of all armies slept side by side. The city's stores were opened and dry food given away to the crowding refugees. The truck drivers, with aerial bombs falling all around them, gathered terror-stricken people from their houses and making their way over bridges that were under vicious fire hauled them away to safety. In the railroad stations an improvised infirmary was established where doctors dressed the wounds of fifty to a hundred soldiers a day — wounds that had been inflicted two days before. In the hospital at Annel, six miles from Compiegne, in an old chateau, were two American doctors who had stayed on the night of March 25, 1917, after seeing the wounded carried away by canal boats. The artillery near at hand thundered on with scarcely a pause. It was a night when the Germans were hammering at Noyon and threatening to break through any hour and start down the main road to Paris. But the American ambulance drivers, from force of habit, kept ON THE BATTLEFRONT 139 coming with loads of wounded. The American doctors stayed on and worked over the tables for two days or more. Five Red Cross trucks arrived with supplies and their drivers administered anaesthetics while these two American doctors operated on poilus, Tommies, or whoever came along. Some canteen women came in from Compiegne, and with the big German planes soaring overhead and the grumble of the battle drowning speech, these two lion-hearted Americans remained at their posts. This was the sort of courage and the sort of faith that carried the American wherever his job lay in the hurly-burly of war. After the fighting became open — after the second battle of the Marne and after the Germans started moving toward the Rhine — the rolling canteen proved the prime solution of the quick-lunch question. In the zone of war the Red Cross workers did not think of safety beyond the sane precautions of the soldier. The Red Cross man offered his life as a gift to his country and to the cause of humanity. The picture of the ambulance drivers and their venturous task has become more or less familiar. Their peril was in- cessant. On the other hand, considering their numbers, the forbearance with which death passed by their charmed ranks since the day the first American units went over in 1914, has been a wonderment of the war. Trying as these young ambulanciers did to get the wounded from the most forward point possible, they carried their cars through raining shells and bombs, through gas, through every menace that the fire zone knew. In and out, journey after journey, waiting the summons always by night as well as by day, there is a long record of their courage and their ungrudging devotion to one of the most trying duties of the war. This letter from a Red Cross ambulance driver at Verdun, in the awful summer of 1916, merits preservation as a picture grimly faithful of the scenes in which these non-combatant 140 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR heroes played their part, and a pathetic record as the agony by which France made good the promise, "lis ne passeront pas.^' (They shall not pass.) My Dear : To-night I am sitting in a small underground cellar of one of the public buildings of the town, acting as a sort of time-keeper or starter for the cars going up to our most dangerous post and handhng the reserve cars for wounded in the town itself. I wish I could describe the scene as it is before my eyes, — for the whole world is passing here — French, Ameri- can, living, wounded, and dying. A long heavily arched corridor, with stone steps leading down to us ; two compartments off to one side lined with wine-bins, where our reserve men and a few French hrancardiers (stretcher-bearers) are lying on their stained stretchers, some snoring ; beyond a door that leads into a small operating room, and to the left another door that leads to a little sick ward, the most pathetic little room I have ever seen — with four beds of different sizes and kinds on one side and six on the other, taken evi- dently from the ruined houses nearby — and one tired infirmier (hospital attendant) to tend and soothe the wounded and djdng. In the bed nearest the door, a French priest, shot through the lungs — with pneumonia setting in — his black beard pointed straight up, and whispering for water. Next to him, a Uttle German lad, hardly nineteen and small, with about six hours to live, calling, sometimes screaming, for his mother, and then for water. Next to him a French captain of infantry with his arm off at the shoulder and his head wounded, weak, dying, but smihng ; and next to him a tirailleur in delirium calling on his Colonel to charge the Germans. The infirmier is going from one to the other, soothing and waiting on each in turn. He asks what the German is say- ing, and I tell him he is calling for his mother. "Ah, this is a sad war," he says, as he goes over to hold the poor lad's hand. A brancardier comes in with a telephone message, — "A blesse" (wounded man) at Belleville — "very serious." This is a reserve car call, so one sUdes out and is gone like a gray ghost down the ruined street, making all the speed its driver can — no easy matter — with no lights. In twenty minutes he is back. The hrancardiers go out — they come in again bearing the wounded man on a stretcher and place it on the floor beside the little stove. One of them, who is a priest, leans over him and asks his name and town ; then in answer to what his wife's name is, he murmurs : "Alice" ; while on the other side another brancardier is slitting the clothes from his body and I shiver at the pity of it, the sight I saw. ON THE BATTLEFRONT 141 The surgeon comes out of his Uttle operating room. Weary with the night's tragic work — after so many, many other tragic nights, he douses his head in a bucket of water. Then he turned to the wounded man. He looked long at him, gently felt his nose and lifted his closed eyelids. Then, at his nod, the stretcher is again lifted and the wounded man carried into the operating room, and soon after into the little room of sorrows. In answer to my eager question the surgeon shook his head. Not a chance. A brancardier and I gathered the soldier's belongings from his clothes to be sent to his wife, but even we had to stop a few minutes after we saw the photograph of his wife and their two little children. An hour later, as our night's work was slacking down and several cars had driven up and been unloaded, the infirmier came in from the little room and said something to the brancardiers. Two of them got a stretcher and in a moment "the blesse from Belleville " came past with a sheet over him- They laid him down at the other end of the room and another brancardier commenced rolling and t>ing him in a burlap for burial. As you looked he changed to shapeless log. Then out to the dead wagon with it. Soon after I went into the little ward again to see how the others were coming through the night, and was glad to see them all quieted down; even the Uttle German seemed less in pain, though his breathing still shook the little bed he lay on. Through a chink I saw that day was beginning to break, and as I noticed it I heard the Chief's car coming in from the "Sap" and I knew the night's work was over. In France after the American Army began going over in volume, the ambulance service, in common with that of the hospitals and early work with the wounded generally, was mihtarized almost as completely as the fighting forces them- selves. Many of the ambulance sections which, previously, had been allied with the Red Cross, were absorbed into the Army in the same manner as the nurses and base hospitals : In all, the Red Cross organized forty-seven ambulance units which operated under Army management and as parts of the Medical Corps of the Expeditionary Force; it main- tained its ambulance units in the nature of reserves, en- gaged in transporting wounded men, who were on the way 142 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR to recovery, from base hospitals to the convalescent establish- ments maintained by the Red Cross in all parts of France ; it also maintained service for the Marine Hospital at the port of debarkation. The line of demarcation established in General Pershing's forces between the Red Cross ambulance service and the units definitely identified with the Army itself had a measur- able degree of elasticity, which made all Red Cross force and equipment available for the service in advanced territory in case of need. At the Chateau-Thierry fight when the flood of wounded was overtaxing the space and the Army machinery for their removal after treatment. Red Cross ambulances were called into service, carrying their unhappy burden of injured straight from the front to Paris. This official relation of the Red Cross to the Army — a supplementary and coadjutant one — was through the whole field of military activity, whether in the supply of materials or of service. In a sense, it is for this purpose that the people of the United States maintain the Red Cross as a quasi-government institution and for this ultimate purpose that it was nationalized. In the average mind, confused in contemplation of the war's swiftly moving picture, it is doubtful if there exists any clearly defined idea of the perfectly regulated system by which the Army effected immediate removal of its casualties, and the continuous and progressive treatment of their injuries while, at the same time, relieving any con- gestion that hampered the steady back-flow of wounded from the fighting lines. Under the Army system there were in hospital service three parallel zones — somewhat roughly defined, and vary- ing with conditions — in which it was intended that all the elements involved shall be of the Army service and not voluntary. In a mobile Army each division had four com- panies, each company twelve ambulances, with dressing ON THE BATTLEFRONT 143 station equipment. These stations were set up in some sheltered place, if such could be found, and to them the wounded were brought. They were provided with a certain amount of equipment, food, and supplies, such as could be easily carried and would suffice for initial treatment of injuries. Back of these — marking the second zone — were four field hospitals under canvas, each capable of caring for 216 patients. There were beds but no cots. These stations carried operating equipment and adequate kitchen outfits. At the next stage — the head of the line of communication — was the first evacuation hospital. The capacity here was double that of the field hospitals, since the transportation facilities farther up might in time of intense action be over- taxed. This was a more or less permanent station, usually located in some suitable existing building. It was not mobile in the sense that it had no transportation equipment. The wounded were dispatched by ambulance or by hospital trains. It was equivalent to what in the British Army was known as the Casualty Clearing Station and was, usually, located in the nearest town. Its function was to clear the field hospital for future emergencies and was permanent save in cases of retreat. If an advance was made, a new evacuation station would be set up in the acquired ground, thus shortening the distance from the mobile area. From this point the patient, when in fit condition, was removed to the base hospital. Back of this lay the so- called ''home zone." From the base, progress was to the convalescent hospitals in Paris or other parts of France, some of which were maintained by the Red Cross. This, in short, was the process by which the soldier caught up in the instant of his injury, or as soon after as possible, was passed along on the way to his recovery with progressive medical and surgical treatment. Outwardly, and in its operation and control, it was exclusively an Army organi- zation, but the function of the Red Cross, other than in 144 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR crises where the system was overloaded and the Army service needed reenforcement, was still an important one. The largest single appropriation of the Red Cross for the United States Army in 1917-1918 was $4,330,760, for what is known as ravitaillement service. Under this title the Red Cross furnished all sorts of things contributory to the proper and convenient care of the wounded, to the end not only of humanity but of military effectiveness. It included port- able kitchens, heating and lighting plants, laundries, baths and disinfecting outfits, dental ambulances, and material for what are called mobile complementary hospitals; also it furnished huts, barracks, and miscellaneous supplies for the purpose of facilitating restorative work among the wounded and maintaining such work in the advanced terri- tory at the points of greater availability. Under the advice of Army Medical authorities the Red Cross established two plants, one in France and one in America, for the manufac- ture of nitrous oxide gas for the purpose of anaesthesia in cases where the patient was in too critical a state for ether. The total normal capacity was over 25,000 gallons a day. The hospital supply service, to both American and French hospitals — and the latter are nearly 4000 in number — was very wide. It was operated by having agents call at the various hospitals and obtain from them lists of needed articles not regularly supplied by the Army, such as special surgical instruments and apparatus, convalescent garments, bandages and slings for special operations. These were delivered from the Hospital Supply Service. There was a diet-kitchen service maintained to supply invalid foods for wounded men. Large stores of these foodstuffs were held in Red Cross warehouses, subject to requisition by the Army. These, in a way, were emergency contributions to the wounded man's welfare. The organization of base hospitals, of which the Red Cross furnished fifty to the Army Medical ON THE BATTLEFRONT 145 Service, at a cost of over $2,000,000, was most fundamental in its character and value. The Marne fighting of July afforded striking illustration of the importance of the Red Cross supply system in supple- menting the work of the Army hospitals. In one shipment seven tons of surgical dressings and five tons of diet foods were dispatched to the front for use in evacuation hospitals for American wounded. The Red Cross medical officer's storehouses and pharmacies were open and busy day and night throughout the counter offensive. On July 18 the chief of the medical section arrived from the front and started back at three o'clock the following morning with a load of emergency supplies, including fifty gallons of alcohol ; 2000 doses of tetanus antitoxin ; surgical instru- ments ; several gross of surgical needles ; and dressings and operating material of all kinds. There are no speed laws in war, and the means that are quickest and nearest at hand were taken for every service. Drugs or hospital equipment needed in a hmTy have been rushed to the front by motorcycle. There is a record in Paris of the establish- ment and preparation of evacuation hospitals behind the front, which makes all previous performances look painfully slow. A hospital officer left Paris with ten nurses and ten tons of equipment. They found a desirable building, rented it, equipped it with everything needed, including operating room and X-ray outfit, and were receiving patients within three days. Thus through every phase and department of hospital work the Red Cross sought in greater or lesser degree, as opportunity served, to upbuild and maintain the most effective and most modern service for the healing and restora- tion of the wounded man. The millions of dollars of popular subscriptions that were placed at its disposal have not only worked in every possible direction to insure his comfort, but the Army's shoulders were lightened of a time-consuming 146 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR load and the paramount business of saving lives has been sped. The war signalized more than one triumph which was not of arms. One of the most conspicuous of these was the conquest that medical and surgical science achieved over scourges which devoured man power in the armies of the past. In July, 1918, the Red Cross mobihzed in this country a six months' supply of the bacillus Welchi serum for the cure and prevention of gas gangrene, amounting in all to 120,000 doses. Tetanus had been mastered, but the deci- mation of forces by the cruel agency of poison-gas was not overcome until by exhaustive research the immune serum was discovered. The Red Cross assumed responsibility for dispensation of it to the Allied armies. The providing of splints, of the six types now developed for confinement of injured members in cases of fractm-e, became another large-scale activity of the Red Cross. The boys of the Junior organization acquired high proficiency in their manu- facture and produced them in volume. The Red Cross also maintained five factories for the purpose in Paris, with a total output of 16,000 splints each month. At the American base hospitals the Red Cross installed various forms of diversion, which shortened the weary journey of the soldier back to health. A little garden enter- prise was started at one of the bases which proved of such benefit that the Red Cross sent to America for men and equipment to extend the work to all the base hospitals. These little farms proved a perfect medicine for the " shell- shocked " men, and furnished tons of vegetables toward the food supply of the institutions. In 1917, the Red Cross had provided funds for a Yule party and entertainment in every base hospital, and a Christmas tree in every ward where a soldier or sailor lay. There were 1,750,000 Christmas cheer packages distributed at home and abroad, which cost approximately one dollar ON THE BATTLEFRONT 147 each, and which contained socks, handkerchiefs, tobacco, chewing gum, cigarettes, and other useful things. In 1918, the Red Cross, complying with the Army rule that permitted each soldier to receive only one package of speci- fied dimensions, supplied the cartons and distributed them. Just to make sure that each soldier received one it prepared and filled several thousands of these packages for those who might be overlooked. During the war the Red Cross furnished each wounded man — who in the stress of the battle lost all his belongings — with a comfort bag that contained toilet articles, razors, handkerchiefs, and many other necessities. These were especially appreciated by the soldiers. A toothbrush was often the first thing a wounded doughboy would ask for on arrival at the hospital. ''These things," said General Pershing, ''bring the soldier to remember that the people at home are behind him. You do not know how much they mean to the soldier who is over here carrying the flag for his country." With a view to centralizing the activities of relief organi- zations overseas, and to facilitate the work with the Army, General Pershing designated the Red Cross as the only relief society to work in locating and administering to Amer- ican wounded who had been removed to hospitals in France. There were 4500 hospitals. To simphfy the task it was conducted on a zone system and wounded Americans con- valescing in France were enlisted to carry it on. The work of giving information regarding soldiers to their relatives was organized under the Bureau of Home Communication. Primarily, this work consisted in gather- ing full and detailed information as to casualties and for this purpose "searchers," both men and women, were sent to France, their numbers increasing with the numbers of overseas troops. It was the duty of the War Department to give notices of casualties to famiUes, but these notices 148 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR were necessarily laconic and businesslike. No War Office in the world could be asked, in the multipUcity of its duties, to write famihes detailed reports, but there was need of just this thing. Famihes sending their boys overseas could not understand why, when their son was wounded, he should not come home immediately or why the mother should not go out to nurse him. Here was a new opportunity for the Red Cross to be of service. It placed women in the hospitals abroad to write letters or reports about the young men who were ill or wounded or dying, and these were transmitted by the Bureau of Communication in Washington to the families. Sometimes these women were overwhelmed with work, as, for example, in some of the evacuation hospitals where the wounded passed through in a steady stream. They could not report on all the cases, but they tried to re- port on the more serious cases and to write to the families a personal letter about those who had died. With the divi- sions near the front there were men searchers. Their busi- ness was, in the first place, to answer the inquiries forwarded from America concerning men who had not been heard from or who had troubles which might be assisted by word from home. Sometimes they, too, reported on casualties without any request. Such a case as the following occurred very often : in the Chateau-Thierry drive the wounded men were poured into a hospital, the most seriously wounded to be treated, the others to be sent on. The searcher had to give most of his time to assist the stretcher-bearers and the sur- geons. He still had time, however, to lie on the ground beside some seriously wounded man and to jot down the last message he wanted sent to his family. It was impossible that a searcher, under circumstances of this kind, could talk with all of the wounded or even a large proportion of them, but the few who were seen made the whole work worth while in that it brought one ray of comfort to a few bereaved families. ON THE BATTLEFRONT 149 All the information collected abroad was sent to the Paris office where it was classified and forwarded to the Washington office. The Uttle group of letter writers was rapidly aug- mented and it was always the plan to send the famiUes letters which gave the facts as completely and as kindly as possible. There was also kept a card file of all casu- alties, which file finally grew to contain some 400,000 cards giving, so far as possible, on each card the history of the case. The Army was thoroughly cooperative in that it reahzed the need and understood that the Red Cross could be of service not only to the families but to the mihtary authorities. The files at the Central Records Office were always open to the Red Cross workers stationed there and much of the information received outside was checked by the official reports. The only work under the general super- vision of the Bureau of Communication which did not actually go through the Washington office was that of keeping families informed concerning men sick in the camps and cantonments in this country. Here, also, men were placed to send out the so much needed information and probably many thousands of letters went daily to families from these camps and cantonments in addition to the thou- sands concerning the troops overseas which went out from the Washington office. But to return to the work abroad : particular attention was given to all cases of missing men or prisoners. In addition to its search work the Bureau received through the International Committee at Berne, Switzerland, a Ust of American prisoners in Germany, officially provided by the German government. After announcement to the relatives, the prisoner's case was transferred to the Bureau of Pris- oners' Relief. The Red Cross suppUed to each prisoner, for account of the given unit, twenty pounds of food. As a matter of record, there was return receipt card for proof that this food was delivered. 150 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR And so to the last possible notch the Red Cross followed the way of the soldier. If he was wounded and came round fit and went back, as he was always restless and eager to do, well and good. His family knew it and he didn't go back hungry or in need. If his injuries unfitted him for further service and he was sent home, then Red Cross men or women met him at the home port and stayed at his side until he reached the hospital to which he had been assigned. And, finally, there remains the one last service — the saddest of all : it was to watch over the brave souls who had given all for their country and for humanity ; to stand by them to the brink ; and to soften, in whatever way possible, the sorrow of those who mourned.^ If there be any service in the world that is nobler, more faithful, or more inspired by love than this, I do not know of it. * Through the Department of Communication the Red Cross has a corps of photographers, working under the Graves Registration Service in France, whose task it is to take photographs of all identified graves and these, as soon as received, will be sent by the Red Cross to the families of the dead. CHAPTER XII The American Red Cross in France — First Request — Pioneer Work to Find Families and Keep Them Together — Belgians in France — Cooperation with the French Government — Cooperative Union with EngHsh and American Society of Friends — Cooperation with Other Relief Organizations — Dispensaries — Purchasing in France — Warehouses Secured — Assistance to the French Army — Ac- knowledgment to the French Government and French Officials. ONE of the first things I was told when I arrived at our headquarters in Paris was that the French people had said that the American Red Cross came to France so silently that they did not know it had come. It was a particularly graceful way, wholly French in its subtlety, of paying a comphment to the newly arrived Commission and, needless to say, was much to the hking of men almost overwhelmed with the magnitude and strangeness of their mission. For, although men may have gone on greater missions, — and even that is doubtful, — surely none could have been stranger than that which left the United States in June, 1917, — two months after the declaration of war, — with only the vaguest idea of what they would be able to do in the way of all kinds of relief. Nor was the full meaning of their undertaking revealed to them until they touched French soil and had become eye-witnesses of the great havoc caused by three years of valiant wresthng with the huge and, at times, all but overwhelming labor of maintaining an un- broken front against the invader. That the ranks of soldiery had been terribly depleted, 151 152 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR there were signs on every hand ; nor were there evidences lacking of the acute suffering among the civihan population, where whole families found themselves separated : fathers were in the trenches, mothers worked in the munition fac- tories, while the children were adrift in a world of disorder ; in short, there was not a man, woman, or child that was not a vital factor in the situation ! The crying need, therefore, was not only to keep up the morale of the soldier but also to build up and maintain the spirit of the people behind the line, — something which could not alone be accomplished by the first handful of Amer- ican soldiers that went over to take the assurance to the mihtary authorities that America was in the war. Early, it had been demonstrated that weeks and months must, necessarily, elapse before the American Army could find her place on the battlefield. So it was not mere soldiery that would serve to hearten the French people, but something that would tell them that the soul of America was, and would be, with them in all their multifarious needs, to the depth of her universal strength and the length of her great resources. From a purely practical viewpoint it was argued that every particle of strength and confidence which America could give to the French people, would be a real contribution not only towards relief but towards shortening the war. Furthermore, that all care for her sick and wounded and all relief for her destitute people would tend to reduce the num- ber of killed and wounded among Americans in France. So, from the utilitarian as well as from the humanitarian side, the work of the Red Cross in France, in those early days, was altogether worth while. With the American passion for reducing every project to a business formula, the Commission built in advance on the old Red Cross basis of military and civiUan relief, thinking that the work would readily divide and subdivide itself un- der these heads for purposes of organization and develop- "BACKING UP THE FRENCH" 153 ment ; but its calculation went for naught. What it did was to begin relief first and work out the organization afterward. It took counsel with the men who were controlhng the soldiery of France. General Petain went down the hues and put it up to his poilus: "What is wanted more — care for yourselves or your famiUes?" To a man, they answered: "Forget us — look after our famiUes." Before the Commission had been in France a fortnight it cabled a request for food, clothing, hospital supplies, and lumber to help the refugees and begin relief in the devastated regions in the north of France — that long strip of country from which the Germans had been driven out and which they had left shattered, polluted, and stripped of every- thing that might be of beauty or of use. On July 12, the War Council set aside $1,000,000 for the relief of sick and wounded French soldiers. And when, on July 16, word came by cable of the immediate need of doctors and nurses, especially those expert in the treatment of children's diseases, the War Council engaged at once the foremost pediatrist of the country who, with a staff of child speciahsts and a corps of nurses, took ship for the other side where he and others estabUshed a most ex- traordinary series of homes. So they began with the children, — the most pitiful as well as the most numerous refugees, — and at Toul estab- lished a refuge for them, one of many that has been set up between that day and this. Toward the end of 1917, there were at Nesle a thousand little broken down Belgian children under treatment, while preparations were being made for taking in other thousands to be cleaned and braced up and placed somewhere in comfortable homes. From this, the natural advance was to the refugees of larger growth. Work was started in Paris, where the congestion was most acute, and carried out into other cities and towns of the devastated departments. 154 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR For the refugees, as for everybody else, the work was done in cooperation with the French Government, which had a system of its own with which it had been trying vainly to stem the tide. It consisted of a Department Committee in Paris, theoretically with a member from each of the eighty odd departments, but actually with only two or three repre- sented, who passed on the applications for relief and the identification papers of the applicants. The Government turned over the task to the American Red Cross, which en- larged the organization so that each of the invaded districts, whose outcasts thronged the rest of the country, had a com- mittee at work. But at best it was hopeless to endeavor to meet such a problem with the bureau. There were only phantom meals to give away, the supply of clothing was not a fraction of what was needed — for these people had been practically blasted out of their homes and had hurried to the highway with German shells bursting behind them. With distress and tragedy written in their faces and their souls, they headed for the centers with the love that misery has for company, and Paris was the Mecca of the great pil- grimage. The result was inevitable. There were families of six, seven, and eight herded in one room, and thousands that had no roof over them at all save as the chance of a night might offer. By converting great public buildings and unused structures of every sort into ''apartment houses," by supplying stoves and furniture and other requisites, the American Red Cross set out to move twenty-five thousand families into comfortable quarters before the advent of cold weather. In handling this multitude of the homeless the Red Cross did not have normal people to deal with. The adults, like the children, were worn to the bone by their vicissitudes, broken in strength, in nerves, and almost in hope. A great part of them were ill, some shattered in mind, while the tubercular were an army in themselves. It was not alone the misery "BACKING UP THE FRENCH" 155 of these last that called for abatement : it was the menace they presented to the future of France. The Red Cross took over, by courtesy of the French Government, and also in some instances from private organizations, already es- tablished hospitals which, for lack of funds or of forces, were unable to maintain maximum operation ; it completed half- finished buildings, refurnished abandoned barracks, papered, painted, and put in glass solaria and partitions to make pri- vate rooms for those victims who were near the end of the struggle ; it singled out from the battalions of the homeless and exhausted many upon whom the ''white death" had set its mark, and even those whose physical depletion might ren- der them easy victims ; it established for such, both old and young, preventoria, where by careful treatment and nourishment the doom might be turned aside. Health, — health and strength were the things needed, not only for the fighting which was to come but for the peace which was to follow the fighting. France, with her decline in birth rate, representing a huge net annual loss, with her sacrifice in war, with the future all black before her, could not neglect any means of saving life if she was to remain a nation and enjoy the freedom she had worked for so valiantly. And, with the back-breaking burden of the war's expense still piling up, to permit this increasing multitude to settle down as absolute dependents, inactive and unproductive and consuming the food of idleness, spelled ruin so plain that the bhnd might read. Gradually the solution of these com- posite puzzles began to outline itself. Taking the cue from the French Government, whose efforts had all been directed toward the return of the refugees to their provinces, so far as the conditions might permit, and availing itself of the con- suming love of home which is ingrown in the nature of the French race, the Red Cross combined its efforts for the care of the refugees with a broad and ca.refully evolved plan to start them on the way to self -maintenance. To this coherent 156 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR purpose it added provision for the maintenance of health and sanitation, and the instruction of its new wards in the ways of hygienic hving. Little by Uttle the situation began to unfold and the way of progress to reveal itself. The work gathered speed and volume. The machine, now increasing its scope and strength, began to register. Every ship that passed the German sharks brought new additions to the Red Cross forces, both men and women ; and every day saw fresh details of them moving out to some new field, pioneers of pity, soldiers of the new creed. The refugees from the farming country were keenest of all to go back to the home acres. And the French com- mittees, by way of stimulating this tendency, withdrew a moiety of their assistance and promised to refund, after the War, whatever the land tillers would expend for their own rehabilitation. So the stream began to move northward into the territory the Germans had left. On ahead of them, at their side and behind them, moved the columns of the Red Cross, ready with food, with lumber, and other materials for reconstruction, with seeds and tools for the restoration of the land, with labor provided by a cooperative union with the English and American societies of Friends, who had done heroic work from the beginning of the War. There are long records in the Red Cross archives in France showing in de- tail what roof was replaced upon this farmer's barn, what glass put in the windows of another's farmstead, and end- less other repairs to fit the places for human habitation and rural industry. There was an amazing shipment of pumps, for it is well to remember that what the German apostle of Kultur could not carry away he smashed and what he could not smash he fouled. Like homing birds, these French farmers settled down among the ruins to resume the tenor of their placid lives. The like of it could not happen elsewhere in the world! "BACKING UP THE FRENCH" 157 The Red Cross was with them, ready to lend a hand at any- thing they needed ; it showed them short cuts in agricul- ture and rebuilding ; it taught the lessons of modern sanita- tion. It established dispensaries, with doctors and nurses and facihties for transit, and the sections mapped off with medical routes after the fashion of Rural Free Delivery. All up and down the districts established behind the lines, away to the valleys and sloping mountains of the Vosges, the Red Cross set up dispensaries to do the work of the vil- lage doctors who had gone away to war. There was scarcely a community in France that had not suffered in health, and for the good of all concerned, particularly of the Ameri- can Army that was to come, it was imperative they should have the ounce of prevention. In fair and foul weather these American doctors and their assistants traveled the roads of France, visiting the villages and holding office hours in some public building or going from house to house where more serious sickness existed. There were maladies of all sorts, and in some cases incipient epidemics. There were children with mumps, measles, and other things ; there were the aged, weary with years, upon whom the War had laid the final straw of pain, and others who never lived to see springtime renew the green of their home hillsides. All through the winter, staying neither for wind nor weather, these Red Cross doctors went toiling over the snow-drifted and wind-swept highways of France, "practicing medicine" with an assiduity which was not inspired by hope of gain, and helping far more than they knew to win the War. Like the agents of empire in far places of the world, these "struggling" doctors in the ''listening posts" of health never knew of the great drama of relief which was being en- acted elsewhere. By this time in France the people had begun to dismiss all doubt and incredulity, and had come to the realization as to what the American Red Cross really meant. They saw the cloud of miserable refugees dissolving 158 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR from the city streets. By day and by night the trucks and trailers of the Red Cross motor corps roared along the roads of France or through the streets of the cities, burdened with the material of relief. It was providential that there al- ready existed in France so many relief organizations whose members were familiar with the field and its difficulties. With each of these, when possible, the Red Cross promptly struck partnership in the common cause ; and lacking at first personnel sufficient to handle the mass of detail, that so vast a problem presented, it shared in the burden of their work. By November, 1917, it was financing and assisting seventy-five of them. To the French Red Cross, struggling with the awful labor of service to the Armies, the American organization gave liberal sums of money for supplies and, indeed, furnished upon demand any and all drugs and equip- ment of which there was lack. The Civil Affairs Depart- ment took over the varied activities of the Tuherculeux de la Guerre, established by Mrs. Edith Wharton, of the Secours Americain at Amiens, and the American Society for the Re- lief of French Orphans. In other cases, such as that of the American Hostels for Refugees and the Vestaire VAccueil Franco-Ammcain, the Red Cross assumed financial respon- sibility, leaving the administration in the hands of the former governing boards. In all, 397 grants of money were made in the first six months to 322 institutions, whose work had been an immense contribution to the aid of suffering France. The French, when they came to know us better, coined a complimentary name for the American Red Cross which, even now, is current: "The Godmother of Good Works." But the Godmother of Good Works was an overtaxed fairy when it came to the delivery of her benefactions. Time was of the very essence of the situation. The lack of every- thing was so intense, the Atlantic so wide, the ships so few compared with the huge load there was to carry of munitions "BACKIXG UP THE FRENCH" 159 and inter- Allied supplies, of advance materials for the hous- ing of our Armies and the building of the transportation system, that the Red Cross Commission accordingly found it wiser to buy in France, Spain, and England the many thousand-and-one commodities that were instantly required, than to wait for the long process of purchase and shipment from the United States. It was supplying the French Army with hospital appliances and drugs; to the refugees it was furnishing caps and pinafores and other articles of children's wear ; to the societies in the devastated region went cloth- ing, implements, and even animals; and to the organiza- tions in Paris the multitude of indispensable things for making homes. Buying in advance of requirements the Red Cross enumerated on its sheets 470 standardized classes of articles, many of them with numberless sub-classifications. The greater part was stored in Paris, where a dozen ware- houses were established. As the calls came, these things were requisitioned and started on their way in the motor transport, the formation of which had been begun early in the campaign. It will shed some interesting light on the scope of these operations to reproduce here the requi- sition shps of one day, — thirty-six in all, — which was less than the daily average. They represent grants of 4009 articles sent far and near to nineteen organizations. An "article" may mean anything from a poster to four hundred yards of flannel. Woolen caps, mittens, coats and capes, scarfs, condensed milk, jam, sugared cocoa, meat juice, cheese. Tapioca, lemons, checkers, backgammon, croquet, playing cards, face towels, kitchen towels, bedside tables, bedcovers, armchairs, chaise longues, bowls, candles, candlesticks, undervests, woolen socks, house sUppers, woolen pajamas, phonograph records. Books (Dumas, Verne, Hugo, Daudet, Merimee, Loti, Anatole France). Galoshes, blouses, underskirts, stockings, sabots, finger bandages, beans, hams, sugar, canned meats, wool, posters, roller toweling, serum, drugs, folding beds. 160 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Blankets, pillows, sheets, wardrobes, stock pots, saucepans, enamel saucepans, small dishes, basins, roasting pans, cliildren's blankets, eider- downs, straw mattresses, dust cloths, tea cloths. Earthenware, hot water bottles, wash-basins, sterilizers for milk, sheet- ing, bath toweling, flannelette, cahco, white flannelette, apron print, gray wool for stockings, flannel. Soup ladles, tablespoons, butcher knives, peeling knives, kitchen knives, chopping knives, large coffee pot, roasting pans, graters, flat pans, serving pans, black sateen. Girls' drawers, stockings, handkerchiefs, shoes, stove to cook for sixty persons. Assorted boxes clothing, nightgowns, shirts, part wool, long drawers, girls' bloomers, boys' pants, shirts, girls' dresses, woolen sweaters. A diversified business, such as this fragmentary Ust indi- cates, called for sheltering places. Facilities for handhng and shipment were imperative, and there was always the bogie of future growth in volume, which it was now clear would be swift and enormous. The warehouse of the Ameri- can Relief Clearing House was soon outgrown, even for exist- ing business. Three more of much larger capacity were at once secured with railroad connection, and the Red Cross cleaned up and installed modern equipment. One establish- ment was leased, cleaned, altered, and ready for business in forty-eight hours despite the fact that labor was the scarc- est thing in Paris. The Red Cross employed soldiers on leave. French, red-fezzed Moroccans, and Indo-Chinese ; with them as laborers a system of transportation was built up of light and heavy trucks which balked at no burden of traffic to any part of France. In one room of a Paris warehouse there were thirty tons of tobacco ; in another wing foodstuffs were stored in quan- tities to tax belief. Three hundred tons of coffee for example, a greater tonnage of beans, and everything else in proportion. It was not a storage ; it was a gate, through which this vol- ume of supplies flowed in a ceaseless stream. Attached to the warehouses were garages where repairs and reconstruc- tion were done upon the hundreds of machines which were "BACKING UP THE FRENCH" 161 employed. Even in September of 1917, the motor trans- port was up to handling in and out of the Paris warehouses 150 tons of freight a day. Even American threshing ma- chines were set in motion. In all the districts back of the Hnes were divisional warehouses to which the goods were carried for distribution. One of these was an old seminary which, when the Red Cross took possession, had fifty-two shell-holes in its walls. Most of these ware- houses were overrun in the German drive of 1918. After the armistice they were replaced by a chain of depots, extending from Lille to the eastern border, from which supplies were issued to the people returning to the devastated regions. To the French Army the American Red Cross lent every possible form of assistance. It set up spacious rest and recreation canteens in Paris and at several of the great in- tersection points along the railway lines, where thousands of French soldiers were made comfortable ; it established roll- ing canteens behind the lines ; and in conjunction with the French Government, after it got under way, it furnished hot meals to almost a million soldiers every month in huge canteens like lumber-camp barracks, where the weary poilu could not only eat and sing and forget his troubles, but bid good-by to his cooties, treat himself to a shower bath, a clean bunk and go away a happier human and once more fit to associate with his family. The story of the work of the American Red Cross in France for the French people and the French soldiers can never be correctly told without acknowledgment to the French Government and French officials everywhere for the hearty and never-faihng cooperation in every endeavor. The Paris Temps, commenting on the Red Cross gifts and on Red Cross accomplishments in France, in December of 1917 said : ''We find proof in it that the German does not wholly monopolize, as he pretends, the secret of organiza- 162 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR tion ; and that other nations can demonstrate, with ours, their energy in work and at the same time their powers of methodical apphcation and disciphned labor." Such was the beginning of the Red Cross accompHshment in France. CHAPTER XIII THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE The France of To-morrow — The Army of Refugee Children — Methods of Work — The Call from Toul — The Work Reaches Dinard — Help in French Schools — Health Centers in Munition Districts — Children's Wards in Tuberculosis Hospitals — The Red Cross Flag at Nesle — A Traveling Dispensary — Evian — "The Gateway of a Hundred Sorrows" — Hospitals and Refuges — Child Welfare Exhibit at Lyons — German Policy in the Discharge of Refugees through Evian — French System in the Care of Refugees — Par- ticulars of American Red Cross Assistance. IF the old adage holds true that the boy is father to the man then one need have little fear for the future of France. It is to this France of the future, the new genera- tion that is growing up in a sense of comradeship with the millions of our own, that my thoughts now turn. And how near we of America are to these children of France is best told in the following letter from a fourteen-year-old school- girl to the American Red Cross : — "It was only a httle river — almost a brook — it was called the Yser. One could talk from one side to the other without raising one's voice, and the birds could fly over it with one sweep of their wings. And on the two banks there were millions of men, the one turned toward the other, eye to eye. But the distance which separates them was greater than the stars in the sky — it was the distance which separates right from injustice. "The ocean is so vast that the sea-gulls do not dare to cross it. During seven days and seven nights the great steamships of America, going at full speed, drive through the deep waters before the lighthouses of France come into view — but from one side to the other hearts are touching." It was the effort of the Red Cross to still the cries of the children that went straight to the heart of France. If all 163 164 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR the rest had been beyond our power, this one thing would have won for us undying gratitude. For France, the saving of the children meant their future and their world. "There can be no real victory," said a Marseilles newspaper, "unless we can successfully combat child mortality. If we consider the enormous adult death rate for the war period, we can only conclude that after the war nothing will be left of France but a glorious skeleton — glorious in name but depleted in substance. The American Red Cross has come to aid us in the fight for our children. Because of this, if for no other reason, we owe the Society a debt of unbounded gratitude and affection." "If the Germans," wrote Alphonse Seche, "have changed the idea of war, the Americans are in process of changing the idea of alUance. The war being everywhere, menacing the race, our Allies have decided to be everywhere, in the front and in the rear ; shoulder to shoulder with our soldiers, standing side by side with our mothers over the cradles, for the preservation of our race." The pictures of Toul and Evian, of Nesle and Lyons, of Dinard and Dieppe, of Caudebec and Barenton and Issy- le-Molineaux, are etched into the very soul of France. They are a sage and cautious people these, who do not wear their hearts upon the sleeve. The vivacity which is their form of expression, the politeness which is their philosophy, the good manners which a wise man has said the French invented, — these are not France. They are merely the habiliment of its civilization. In America not all the children are clean; not all have enough to eat. The great East side finds some occupation still for the welfare worker, but I do not believe America has yet any conception of the magnitude of the child prob- lem that existed in France. The condition was far worse than even the French people or its government had time in the tumult and stress of war to know. And it was growing even worse as the war progressed. There was the awful accumulation of refugee children from all the departments of the north and from Belgium and the shifting fortunes of war ; the pitiless rush of the Huns ; the increasing destruc- THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 165 tion from the air and the hungry shells, always ranging farther, leaving more and more little ones orphaned or maimed or shaken in understanding and memory. This was the greater company, the orphaned and the destitute, those whose fathers were dead or at the front, whose mothers were gone, and who had none to care for them. Added to all these was the army of repatriated children — including a host from Belgium — who, like the adults who came over the border, were suffering from the varied ills of malnutrition, if from nothing worse. That was not the whole story. Even the health of the children who had homes was running down. Epidemics of local character could not be checked. The average of doctors in America is one to 500 people ; in France, where the call for nurses and physicians at the front had been incessant for three years, the ratio in 1917 was one to several thousand. That should tell its own story to people who have children of their own. The necessary lack of care and the scarcity of proper food made easy the progress of disease. With all the other crying needs that confronted the Red Cross at that moment, this peril to the child life loomed high. Much of the misery and disease was only too obvious, but there was a tremendous number of children needing treatment whom it was hard to reach or even to discover. And, to begin with, it was found necessary to rid the French people of the fixed idea that the American had come to deal solely with the soldier. It took time to do that, yet every moment of delay was courting more and more danger. To accomplish results, the Red Cross had to provide suitable places for operation and get the children together to examine and sort out the tuberculous and contagious cases, to provide nurses, labor, and medical supplies, den- tists and attendants and artisans to make requisite repairs at a time and in a land where every man who could carry a rifle was needed at the front. What all of this child army 166 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR needed first was to get clean and to be fed, for the vast majority of them were hungry, and food of any kind was not plentiful, — much less the kind of food they needed. In the devastated regions, the Germans left nothing ! They had destroyed even stoves and water systems, so that in the districts back of portions of the lines the first desiderata of sanitary or medical activity were lacking. Numberless little charities, organized by nuns or by kindly women who were heartsick at the spectacle of so much misery, were trying in the cities to do something to stem the tide. To these, the Red Cross made haste to lend aid. Many of them, such for example as the refuge founded at the Hotel Biron by Madame Viviani, wife of the former premier of France, developed into a stronghold of good. In Moufettard, Paris, Mile, de Rose conducted another charity, which was founded by Mile, de Perignan, a granddaughter of Lafayette, comprising a social center, a home for working girls, a model tenement, a vacation home in the environs of Paris, and agricultural schools in the country. It lacked a health center, which the Red Cross supplied together with a dispensary and clinics for chil- dren and mothers ; it helped every Governmental effort to cope with the problem. These charities were chiefly in the cities. But along the highways and in the little towns there was great need and no ray of hope. Then out of obscurity rose the virile personality of the Pr^fet Mirman, who, when he shall have died and gone to the glory that is his due, will be the patron saint of the department of the Meurthe et Moselle. Without Prefet Mirman, Toul would have been as it has been for centuries, ever since Roman times, merely the rock-bound gate that has barred the invaders of many wars from the rich and industrious town of Nancy. But the Prefet, having faith added to hope and charity, believed the Americans meant what they said, and he gave to Toul a fame that will never die. THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 167 When Nancy was under fire, life there was not worth a whisper, but the artisans of the town had to stay at their work for France needed them. They are a rugged folk, these workers of Nancy. In 1917, when the gas shells exploded they had been trained to gas masks and worked on, although the children, in panic, smothered and died in agony. They had no guard against that ghastly death. On July 26, the Prefet sent a classic telegram to the Com- mittee of the American Fund for French Wounded, begging for nurses and doctors. They went to the Red Cross offices just opened ; that night the chairman of the Secours aux Blesses left the Red Cross station in Paris with three camion loads of supplies and eleven doctors and nurses. As they rumbled into Toul in the gray of the dawn, there were five hundred women and children swarming the barracks which the French soldiers had abandoned. All was confusion ; dirt and vermin were over everything. In the Caserne de Luxembourg, — a group of barnlike structures on the sheltered plateau over Toul, — these women and doctors swept and scrubbed and scoured, installed beds and chairs and tables, and business began. It was slow work luring the confidence of the Lorrainers, but the ice was broken ; and until the spring of 1918, when the Huns pushed forward again, Toul was a lighthouse of mercy and health and happiness to the children of the north. From that the work was established until it reached Dinard. It would have made the old-time spendthrifts who dined and wined and danced and flirted in the great Hotel Royal open their eyes to see the swarm of refugee children who, in charge of the Red Cross doctors, took up life there in the wake of the soldiery that had used it as a barracks. They were doctored and brought back by care and nourishment to sturdy health; they went on with the schooling that is the reigning passion of the French child. The waifs, — the fatherless and motherless from 168 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR the crowded wards of Paris, and the wasted repatries from the receiving station at Evian were sent to find in the salt air and water heahng a cure from the curse of bone tuber- culosis. There was clean, pure Ufe there, a sowing of kind- ness that will some day yield a perpetual harvest of understanding and good will. Once having set out on children's relief, there was no turning back. More doctors and more nurses, more teachers and welfare workers kept coming from America. The Red Cross saw the necessity for help in some of the French schools, so work was begun in them. ''Unless we can start a canteen up here," wrote the doctor who conducted the children's clinic, ''in the Nineteenth arrondissement of Paris and give these children some food, this children's work is not going to get anywhere, because what these children need is nourishment and I can't do much till I can put something in their stomachs." The school luncheons had been cut down, but the Red Cross dietitians figured out the calories in what was left and found that there was need for wheat and sugar, so they built a Red Cross cake and added it to the ration. Rapidly the child welfare problem grew into one of the most extensive branches of Red Cross work. Health centers were opened in two munition districts just outside Paris, with welfare workers. Red Cross doctors, clinics, and visiting nurses who reached within a very short time three hundred families. It was very sorely needed. The population of the district had increased greatly; two hundred munition factories had risen like mushrooms over- night, with 110 new buildings erected for the workmen to live in. The congestion was terrible and the spread of disease likewise menacing when the Red Cross came to the rescue. A large area of Paris was covered in the same way. There was so much tuberculosis among the children, that child / I THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 169 welfare was combined with the tuberculosis service, and children's wards were established in all the tuberculosis hospitals. In high, healthy country districts, the Director had farm schools estabhshed where weak children could be built up and taught to make things grow. The cardinal test of any project was what it promised for the future of the children and of France. Boys were taught trades and girls were taught sewing ; and among the denizens of the poorer quarters were promulgated the magic of the toothbrush and the rules of health — for which dentists came over- seas with all their tools. Nesle was another of the northern towns in the track of war which, after the ''strategic retirement" of the Ger- mans, suffered bitterly. In four towns about it not a house or building of any nature had been left with one stone on another. When the Germans moved away, they destroyed everything that could be of service in any act of life. 'When the Red Cross doctors arrived in the old Hotel de Nesle it was stripped bare. From the outlying country, the children began drifting in, sullen, dazed, stunned by the horrors they had seen and suffered. And none smiled. A Red Cross woman, who worked at Nesle, said that the far horror in the eyes of the children was as if they w^ere looking beyond the things of this earth and into the gates of Judgment. Here again was a work for Hercules, and it practically wore them out. Throughout the first week all the patients of the clinic were Red Cross workers. There was no heat, and for a day or two no gauze or bandages or dressings; but there were twelve hundred children who needed care and the Red Cross toiled away to give it. It goes without saying that it cost much hardship to raise the Red Cross flag at Nesle ! The Red Cross designed, and built in Paris, a traveling dispensary — an automobile hospital, with drugs and supplies 170 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR of all sorts and an outside seat on which a nurse could trans- port a sick child to the hospital. With this mercy wagon, the workers went from town to town about the district. Through the countryside, the children were afihcted with skin diseases and with strange forms of blood ailment, caused largely by malnutrition. This working for the children of France was a day to day and an all day and all night deaUng with the plain animal facts of sick and ill-nourished bodies. There were women fighting the good fight of the Red Cross against the miseries of Europe who, perhaps, have never found the glory that they longed for ; but they found what was better — their own mother hearts that they had never known. Someone has called Evian les Bains the ''Gateway of a Hundred Sorrows." It was here, as the war wore on and the food supply began to dwindle, that Germany, balancing up her efficiency schedules, turned back into hungry France the sorry army of French and Belgian civilians who had been taken from the devastated country in the north in the first onrush of 1914, and since held in bondage. In the summer of 1917, this wretched jetsam of the German war was herded over the frontier at the rate of a thousand or more a day. Daily, for a long time, two trains, morning and night, rolled in from the German border. A woman who watched their debarkation day after day said in a letter at that time : ''The curtain never falls at Evian." It was so. In the drama that France lived behind her roaring battle lines, there was no more somber scene than Evian. Here, again, as at Dinard, and other one-time resorts on the northern coasts, was a gruesome contrast with the ancient atmosphere of fashion, wealth, and idleness. Nesthng on the hills above exquisite Lake Geneva, Evian was the last setting to be chosen for so woeful a spectacle. From forty to sixty per cent of these cast-offs were chil- dren, by far the greater part of them under twelve years of THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 171 age. A great number were dying from tuberculosis, many far advanced ; but all were unutterably dirty, half clad, worn to emaciation with sorrow and hunger and slavery. They were moribund. Germany could wring no more unpaid labor from them. They had given to the uttermost pfennig's worth. The people beyond the Rhine picked out those who seemed past hope and sent them to France to be cared for. They were a multitude, — and these chil- dren were not riffraff. Many of them had known luxury and the tenderest care. It was all one wretched, miserable story after another; and yet, from the gray monotony of it, two cases seem to stand out in the memory of those who saw them for the reason that they proclaim more clearly than others, perhaps, two saUent phases of German brutahty : one was a wisp of a girl, just turned fourteen, who bore in her arms a year old boche baby ; and the second, only a little older and marked with tuberculosis, had for three years worked twelve hours a day in a German coal mine. It is manifestly impossible to tell all the stories of the unfortunates of Evian ; but thou- sands of them are recorded in the files there against the day when the world may know the depth of German iniquity. When the train wound its way up the grades into the famous old watering place there was a band playing the Marseillaise, and the French and Belgian flags were waving. There was the Mayor and half the town crying welcome to them — welcome back to France — and still they did not smile. French and American stretcher-bearers boarded the trains to take out those that were too crippled or too weak to help themselves, and there w^ere Red Cross ambulances there to carry these helpless ones away to the old Casino, which had been converted into a hospital. There were these heart- breaking processions every day, at morning and evening, hundreds of children and aged people at a time, ambling on toward rest and kindly care, with faces haggard and 172 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR' drawn but singing out of numb hearts their homeland songs ; and men and women with hearts torn at the picture, stood in crowds by the wayside with tears raining down their faces at the misery and the glory of it, and were not ashamed. ''The scene," says the Chief of the Children's ReUef, in his professional report, "is indescribably emotional." The story of Evian cannot be told. Mothers and chil- dren met there who had been lost to each other ever since the Germans surged over Belgium. It was a great, over- powering drama of mingled sorrow and happiness, of death — yes, and of resurrection. These children were marked for death, but they were caught in the very nick of time. And even so, there were sad little funerals now and then wending through the village streets. But as an institution it went with a mathematical precision, by every means that science or sentiment could devise, bringing health to sick and exhausted bodies ; and smiles to faces that one might have thought could never smile again. There were children who came to Evian, marked for death in a thousand wsijs, but who, through the ministrations of mercy there, will go singing their way on to the end of their poor Uttle blasted hves. From all the touching records of the station which are held in the archives of the Red Cross, I take almost at random this paragraph which, like a ray of sunlight, reveals the other side of the picture : — "He was crippled, horribly crippled. Only his hands and his eyes seemed to be ahve, but he said proudly that the Germans would never have let him through if they had known how many pairs of stockings he could make in a day on his knitting machine, which we have given him to make him forget." Among the many hospitals and refuges which were estab- Ushed all over France to receive this wreckage, there are THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 173 several in the vicinity of Lyons, chief of which is the Chateau des Halles, built by Mangini, the great French raihoad builder, whose widow gave it to the French government for use during the war. Lyons is a child town ; and the Red Cross, with a broad idea of starting in France a general movement for child hygiene, selected it for the scene of its first child welfare exhibits. The timid said it wouldn't go. It was early in April, 1918, the great drive was on and two hundred miles to the north men were dying under the German guns. Who could think of expositions? But in the week that it was in progress more, than 100,000 persons between eight in the morning and ten at night crowded into the hall. There is no doubt it was an American show ; but by the same token it had at its opening session twelve hundred doctors, lawyers, government ofiicials, founders of hospitals, and the best citizens of Lyons. For the first time in the memory of man there sat on the same platform the Cardinal Archbishop of Lyons, the Prefet of the Rhone, the Mihtary Governor, and the Mayor of the town. Neither Church nor State could shut its eyes to the patent fact that here was the path to the salvation of France. And it was a great show ! It was a veritable field day for the toothbrush, and an American dentist operated while his assistant preached the gospel of dentifrice. There was, also, a great demonstration of the sterilization of milk ; and outside, in the square, there was a playground with equipment for basketball, swings, slides, sandboxes for babies, and all such means of outdoor exercise for the making of strong, sturdy children. In a glass "greenhouse" in the center of the hall at regular intervals each day, Red Cross nurses washed French babies ; the Lyons mothers watched the whole process down to the sanitary and scientific disposition of the last towel. On the last day of the show, a poilu was found by one of the nurses copying the dietaries from a poster. 174 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR ''I can fight no more," he said; ''when I went to the front I had a wife and seven children. My wife was killed by an air bomb, and the children had no one to care for them — so four of them died. I am reforme, but I can work for them, and now I know what to feed them to make them grow strong. That is the main thing." These are simple, homely things. They seemed small in the vast tumult and upheaval of a world at war, but out of the sum total of them, and the French know it well enough, is coming that second army which, now that the cannon are silent, is to win for France the battle for her place among the nations and so complete the victory over the Hun. By January 1st, over fifty thousand of these people had passed through the little station, and Evian had become not only a tragedy but a real menace to the health and future of France. Analyzed from the German standpoint, there were three great primary purposes served in the holding and the final discharge of these people : First, the labor which they contributed was of a cheapness which, otherwise, would have been impossible. They cost nothing but the bare food to keep them alive, and, as their condition showed, received far less than they needed. They were driven by every form of terrorization and abuse to do all their wrecked bodies could endure ; second, when by reason of inevitable exhaustion and disease their labor no longer showed in the German accounting a balance of profit, the efficiency experts of Berlin converted them into an active military force. This is not purely figurative. The plaintive picture of these broken people at Evian does not at first blush suggest anything of military value ; they could not operate artillery or machine guns nor charge trenches, but there were deadly injuries which, properly utilized, they might inflict upon their own country. Germany figured that the imloading of THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 175 these people on France would make a serious draft upon physicians and nurses, money, hospital supplies, clothing, and transportation. In all of these France was seriously reduced ; third, and far the more serious purpose, was to undermine for all future time the strength of France by weakening her child population and distributing throughout her borders the carriers of disease. France could not know the extent of Germany's sup- ply of this deadly ammunition. The number of military prisoners taken by the Germans was passably well estab- lished in the Allied countries, by the army records ; but of the great population of Belgium and northern France that had simply vanished into the tempest — there was no means of estimating how many of these had died, how many remained to be used as an instrument against the welfare of France. And the reserve forces for meeting it at this time were in the worst possible condition. What the Germans did not reckon on was the assistance which in this crisis came to France from the American people. The American Red Cross was the x quantity in the equation ; and it was here that with the short vision which in the crucial things has seemed to be a German faihng, the plans of the Prussian strategists went awry. Before the coming of the American Red Cross, the French government, reaUzing its danger, had made well-planned ejfforts to offset it. The French government, the Comite de Service des Repatries d'Evian de Thonon d'Annemasse, and the Comite de Secours aux Repatries de Lyon had worked out a system of caring for the repatriates, which was prosecuted with what vigor and thoroughness was possible. A physician boarded each convoy train at St. Jingolph, on the Swiss border, to single out such of the company as were too ill to be taken from the station to the Casino. Upon the arrival of the train these were removed at once to the 176 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR hospital, those badly exhausted to the rest-house, and the remainder were taken either on foot or in ambulances to the Casino. The first effort at Evian was to restore the repatriates to a mental state which would facilitate the work of their handhng and distribution. After being fed and cheered up, they were arranged in the great hall in alphabetical groups, and full personal details taken. An elaborate system of card indexes was established for the pur- pose of fixing the identity of each man, woman, and child, residence, remaining family, so far as known, and their whereabouts. Telegraphic inquiries were instituted to ascertain if the repatriate had friends or relatives remaining to whom he could be sent. If there were none, he was forwarded to some prefecture in the center, west, southwest, or southeast, to be located permanently by the prefet. Houses vacated by the war were used for this purpose, as well as for housing of refugees, the government making an allowance for main- tenance. A system of colored tags such as is used in America for immigrants, was employed to facilitate distribution. Only in some such way could these swarms be handled. The sick were housed according to the nature of their illness, and on recovery the children whose friends could not be found were sent to institutions, chiefly those near Lyons. Old persons, not claimed, were dispatched to formations created by the Ministry of the Interior. It was obvious, however, that with the continuance of these deliveries, the facilities for their disposal would soon be overtaxed, and the repatriates would become what Germany had intended — an unbearable burden and a menace both to France and to our army. So the Red Cross set about assisting the French in the development of further hospital facilities and transportation for patients, and the provision of dispensary service at the Evian Casino, so that every repatriate could receive prompt THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 177 medical inspection and care; also, of the establishment of convalescent hospitals for those recovering after treatment. A large hotel was converted into a hospital, and then the beautiful Chateau des Halles was taken over from the city of Lyons, to which it had been given by its owner for use as a children's convalescent hospital. The dispatch of the tuberculous was attended with some difficulty but was soon satisfactorily adjusted. Meantime, largely through the aid of the Lyons' committees, the expansion of the convalescent system was continued. The people of Evian objected to any permanent hospitals in their neighborhood, particularly for the tuberculous. Evian was, and remained, a clearing house in which the whole solution of the repatriate problem of France had its center. For what reason the German government chose to make its deUveries of repatriates intermittently has never been disclosed ; but there were intervals when for a fortnight these deliveries were wholly discontinued. These were of the greatest importance, as in every instance they chanced to coincide with the requirements of the Red Cross or- ganizers for time to get their equipment in order, and gave the French Committee breathing space to enlarge its facilities for handhng the repatriates both at Evian and at the second stage in the orphanages and hospitals at Lyons. In the interval from October 15th to November 5th, the staff of Red Cross nurses from Paris and new supphes of hospital equipment and materials were taken to Evian, and the hospitals received a large number of cases and were in good running order before convoys were resumed. With the advent of the Red Cross forces came a great increase in the speed and efficacy of the work at Evian. The medical service was combined with social welfare work, and repatriate mothers, who awaited children under treat- ment, were organized into a working force. What impressed 178 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR the French was not alone the rapidity and thoroughness of the American staff in handhng their cases, which quickly ran into thousands, but the range of their efforts. When a sick repatriate child went out of Evian, he had not only been far advanced toward cure of his ailment, but every physical tendency had been charted, his teeth fixed up, his dietary and exercise prescribed, and his mother in- structed in the essentials of hygiene and sanitation and provided with a manual of simple instruction. The new and, obviously, vital factor in all this work, as shown in the French Committee's report, was the tact and sympathy of the American workers, from the doctors down, but the system was severely thorough. At the request of the French authorities, parents were permitted to visit children in isolation hospitals, but they were supplied with caps and gowns, and were compelled tb wash their hands and faces in antiseptic solutions before leaving. If there be any doubt concerning the contribution that the American people has made through its commission to the Red Cross, Evian with its correlated hospitals and rest places, its competent medical work and its correlated demonstration of the value of hygienic methods among the French working people, would be sufficient to dispel it. CHAPTER XIV SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION International Committee at Geneva — International Agency for Prisoners of War — Swiss Activities in the Interest of Prisoners — Reports on Prison Camps — Great Scarcity of Food and Supplies in Switzer- land — Gift of the American Red Cross to the Swiss — Food for American Prisoners Sent through the Red Cross — Receipt Cards — Communication Service Enlarged through the Committee at Berne — Red Cross Commission to Switzerland — Hospital for Tuberculous Serbian Officers — The Swiss Evacuee Problem — Italian Problems in Switzerland — Help for Belgian Children — Number and Isola- tion of Prison Camps — Process of Locating Prisoners and Providing for Them Thoroughly Systematized — Money Sent Prisoners Paid in German Prison Script. NOTWITHSTANDING that our experience in the past war, with its imperious demands for big things to be done in a hurry, for unheard-of production both of men and materials, has given us an accurate measure of what we can accomplish when our brains and hands are fairly put to the test, I am not at all sure that it would not be a good thing for some millions of self-satisfied Americans to discover that there are some remarkable people in the world besides themselves. Take the Swiss people, for instance : Switzer- land, as we all know, was the parent of the Red Cross throughout the world, and when the storm broke the Inter- national Committee at Geneva, with no resources other than its own, struggled bravely with a problem which was great at best but the magnitude of which was doubled by its nearness. For Switzerland entertained no doubts regarding her 179 180 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR position in the war. There was, to be sure, the great natural barrier of the Alps, but living as she did in the very middle of the war, with cannon echoing on all her borders, it was absolutely necessary that she keep an army of half a milUon men in a high state of preparedness, a compulsory service that cost her not a few million francs. None the less, there was no phase of Red Cross activity in which the Swiss were not engaged with all the determination and foresight that they possess to so great a degree. It is not possible, of course, to discuss all their efforts. Lest, however, our Red Cross should be inclined to boast of the successful attempt we made to care for our prisoners of war in Germany, it will be salutary to know that the Swiss Red Cross began the formulation of the system and laid its groundwork in 1914. Its own view of its achievement has been modestly recorded thus : 1914, improvisation ; 1915- 1916, organization; 1917, coordination. Consequently, when the United States finally came into the war, the Inter- national Agency for Prisoners of War was a well-run and well- equipped organization. And that same year the Prix de Vertu Charrau and the Nobel Peace Prize were awarded to the International Committee in recognition of its work in the cause of humanity and charity. Despite the obstacles that stood in the way, a complete file was kept — always open for consultation — of evacuated, repatriated, and deceased prisoners. There was an Entente Department with a section for Greece which forwarded correspondence to prisoners at Gorlitz ; a section for France concerning itself chiefly with search for the dead and the missing; another for Russia working through the German Red Cross into Poland ; and still another for Great Britain which sent money to British prisoners in enemy countries. Besides these, there was correspondence with occupied Serbia, not to mention a department for the Central Empires. At the same period, the Bureau International de la Paix SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION 181 was handling some 350 letters a day to and from prison camps and all parts of the field of war, seeking the missing, finding the burial places of the dead, and sending to sorrowing people the only small comfort they could ever hope for. Here is a paragraph from a report of one of their members : — "I cannot refrain from adding an optimistic note to this account of our efforts to mitigate so much sadness and suffering. And ha\ang opened hundreds of letters from German families, after filing thousands of letters from French, English, and Belgian famihes, I arrive at the con- clusion that the mentality of the great masses who are passing through the anguish of doubt and despair is of moral quality much more elevated than one could have believed. It goes without saying that we have strange revelations, to say no more, about the private life of certain families. It remains none the less true that in the uncouth letters of ignorant women, peasants and working women, whether thej' come from the mountains of Bavaria or those of Auvergne, from the coast of Flanders or that of Scotland, one often finds expressions of gratitude, of serenity, of confidence, which moisten the eyelids, even though they are the eyelids of an old practitioner. It is still among the humble and the disinherited of this world that the Carpenter of Nazareth has disciples after his own heart." As far back as 1917 delegates from Switzerland had been sent to Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Spain, Den- mark, England, Sweden, Egypt, and India to inspect and report on the prison camps. Arrangements were made for correspondence with the occupied regions of France, Alsace, Belgium, and Rumania and for the repatriation of women, children, the aged, and the sick, that they should no longer be repatriated in groups, but that each case must be taken up individually. The International Committee overlooked nothing for which warrant existed in the articles of the convention or the rules of war in its care for the interests of imprisoned men ; and, as a result of many complaints, following the visits of its delegates to the prison camps, it made insistent 182 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR demand upon the belligerents for recognition of the right of imprisoned men to a decent allotment of space and ade- quate measure of exercise to maintain health. Moreover, it urged upon all the countries at war the wisdom of per- mitting their officers, when imprisoned, to give their parole as justification for freedom of movement. And that the attitude of the Swiss throughout the trying period of the war was most admirable and ideally neutral, is shown in the statement from the "General Catalogue covering the Benev- olent Work of Switzerland during the Present War": "Switzerland gave to French prisoners 250,000 kilos of bread, while nearly 4,000,000 letters for prisoners of war were handled in August, 1916. . . ." (The Swiss post-office had become a benevolent institution.) A fairly accurate idea of the extent of Swiss activi- ties follows : for the forwarding of letters and the trans- fer of money to prisoners, they went to not a little pains to perfect their system ; they fought for changes in the postal regulations of warring countries which should simplify and expedite the process of transfer; they placed freely at the disposition of the belligerents every service that Switzerland's government or its civilian population, for that matter, could render looking to prisoners' relief; in conjunction with the Danish Red Cross, — which early in 1918 sent a delegate to Geneva, — the International Society moved for the establishment at Paris of a bureau analogous to that founded by the Danish Red Cross at Berhn. Its object was to provide mental relief to prisoners by means of books, games, and sports ; to secure admission to personal relation with the prisoners ; to look after the food supplies and the inspection of camps ; and it secured the promise of this arrangement in behalf of German prisoners on condition of complete reciprocity by Germany. The reports on the prison camps were thorough and enlightening. SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION 183 In January, 1918, the Society had been obhged to abohsh the delivery of food packages to the section camps because the expenses were growing with the increase of prisoners. Assistance was lacking ; food was scarce ; and the reserves had been used up. Moreover, there were more and more French arriving and they did not receive the packages sent — in many cases not even so much as one a month. Com- plaint was made that the sanitary condition of the camps was bad. There was plaintive cry for help to enable the Society to render assistance to sick prisoners. Away back in 1917, the Committee had been fighting against the growing meagerness of the food supply. The reflection of conditions in the German and Austrian camps, from the Committee's reports, was not cheerful. A fund was urged to secure food with reasons as follows : — "The prisoners suffer more and more from hunger. The food they receive from Germany and Austria is insufficient. Their rations are the same as those allowed the civil popu- lation but do not equal those of the armies. Some of the causes for increased mortality among prisoners might be successfully combated if it were possible to get food. In Rumania the mortality has increased three hundred and forty-five fold above normal." Everywhere war and war makers were consuming the supplies. The civilian populations were taking in their belts. Societies of women in every country in Europe were scraping little supplies of food together, but daily these dwindled. The French and English prisoners lived almost exclusively on food sent from France and overburdened little Switzerland, and prayed that it might not fail. Sup- plies were sent from Switzerland to the Belgians ; the internal Italians had little save the Swiss donations ; while great numbers of Russian prisoners — held in the part of France occupied by the Germans — were slowly starving to death, although Switzerland was sending them a share of its victuals. 184 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Imprisoned Rumanians had fifty kilos of food a month from Sweden and there were 79,000 of them, — all of which distri- bution resolved itself into a mathematical problem of no small proportion. ''It is absolutely impossible," said the Swiss Committee, "to get the necessary food in Europe. In Asia and China it is equally impossible. It is, therefore, necessary that the supplies for the prisoners of war must come from either North or South America ; it is also of equal importance that the question be settled before the coming winter, when new restrictions governing the work of neutrals shall be in force and whereby the prisoners will receive less and less from the Austro-Germans." To say the least no more dismal outlook is conceivable than that wliich Switzerland, the innocent bystander, faced with pockets and granaries alike empty. She was fairly mother- ing the multitudinous waifs of Serbia, whose sufferings under the bitter Austrian onslaught had passed all power of de- scription. In Geneva and Berne there were bureaus organized to give the Serbians help, but the transportation was hard and uncertain, and the Serbs went on dying. The Swiss cities were full, as was France, of Serbian officers and men who were sick and penniless and dying of tuber- culosis ; but, for all that, they were happy in their estate when contrasted with the wretched remnants elsewhere. The cantons were overrun with the sick and homeless of all the world. The cities were crowded with representatives of every country till in Berne and Geneva there was not a house to be had for love or money. The picture that had been painted of prisoners' life in the German and Austrian prison camps had made them more than a thing of dread than even the cannons or the gas. The subterfuge of food, which Kultur spat upon before it was proffered, the filth, the crowding, the merciless labor, the cold and the brutal usage — these were the softest forms SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION 185 of vengeance that the repatriate prisoners of AlHed nations reported when they came back from their confinement. Facing such possibihties, the heavily handicapped Swiss organization for prisoners' rehef was as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. The American Red Cross gave the Swiss S125,000, to assist in work among their own destitute Swiss population and the Allied troops and civilians in transit from Germany and Austria. There were at the opening of the war only about 75 Americans interned in Germany, chiefly the members of merchant crews from American vessels. But as the American soldier began to take his place in the French battle line the number slowly grew. In the spring of 1918 the Red Cross, through the International Committee in Berne, was supplying food, clothing, and other needed things — for account of the Government — to 230 Americans scattered among the detention pens of Germany. The Red Cross box weighed ten pounds, — four of which went to every man each fortnight, — and contained two and one half pounds of corned beef, two pounds of bread, one pound of biscuits, one pound of sugar, three quarters of a pound of pork and beans, one fifth of a pound of cocoa, one pound of coffee, a pound of oleomargarine, half a pound of soap, and fifty cigarettes. While this hst was standard it was varied from time to time. The Swiss Committee had devised a system of receipt cards upon which the prisoner himself acknowledged receipt of the delivery. If the card did not return, in- vestigation was started through the German and Swiss Red Cross or through the Spanish embassy at Berlin. There was also space on the card for the recipient to indicate any articles of which he might stand in need. Letters received from the prison camps showed that American prisoners lived wholly on the food sent by the Red Cross and turned over their prison rations to the unfortunates of other countries. In a year the Red Cross had sent to the stores in Berne for dis- 186 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR tribution to American prisoners tons upon tons of supplies which included food, clothing, tobacco, soap, mending out- fits, toilet cases, stationery, pencils, shoe laces, brushes, and other useful things too numerous to mention. Incidentally, the Quartermaster's Department was unable to help as much as was expected. Upon our entry into the war it was prepared to furnish supplies of food to last 10,000 men six months ; but the burden of ocean traffic was so great in the transport of men and military materials that only in the spring of 1918 were these supplies beginning to arrive in Switzerland. It was early in the year that the Red Cross decided to increase the scope of its communication service. Organized, primarily, to maintain a source of dependable information for relatives concerning men in army service, to search for the missing, to find in the haystack of war's confusion the needles of fact for which anxious families at home were waiting regarding their men at the front, the service was now expanded to furnish information, through the Com- mittee at Berne, concerning American prisoners and to es- tablish, where possib^ communication between them and their families. The Bureau was also licensed as the sole agency for the transmission of money to American prisoners in Germany. It undertook to maintain communication between persons in this country and their relatives or friends in every territory. But it was not until June, 1918, that the United States Government arranged through the Swiss Government and the Spanish Embassy in Berlin to intern American invalid prisoners in Switzerland. As easily as can be imagined, the rapidly growing num- bers of American soldiers in Europe made it necessary to provide fully for the care of such as might be taken prisoners ; and with this purpose in view the Red Cross in June of 1918 appointed a Commission to Switzerland to super- intend all relief work for both American and Allied prisoners, SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION 187 and citizens of Allied powers resident in Switzerland, and to aid the Swiss in their efforts to relieve the universal suffering. The budget of the Commission for this work to December 31st, called for a total of $1,972,323.75. Up to that time the Red Cross expenditure had been only $200,000, of which $75,000 was for the care of the interned Russians. I have already said that the position of Switzerland was desperate. Stripped of food by the flood of people that either passed through her territory or were quartered upon her, she was between the upper and nether millstones : Germany was in a position to shut off her supply of fuel, and France could forbid her food. Meantime, the tourists, who were her chief source of revenue, were absent and in their stead came a tremendous inflow of hungry, half-clothed people from everywhere, — a vast army of mouths for which, in the name of common humanity, food must be found. To relieve Switzerland herself was part of the task of the American Red Cross Commission, which proceeded to adjust the supply and storage system for prisoners by the establish- ment of houses at a small town, near Lausanne, and at Biim- pliz in the outskirts of Berne, where new buildings were erected ; the Commission, also, made a review of the difficulties be- setting the Swiss organization, which resulted in a contribu- tion of 500,000 francs to be used solely for the Swiss Red Cross work among the Swiss population and for the relief of Allied troops or Allied civilians in transit from Germany and Austria. This action, suspending as it did the drain on the Swiss organization, caused great happiness among the Swiss people, while there was strong disapproval in Berlin. Definite arrangements were also made for distribution of relief to the destitute Russians. At Leysin, the Commission found a concrete house con- taining seventy-five rooms, each having an outside sleeping- porch, which it proceeded to take over and prepare for a hospital for tuberculous Serbian officers. Medical attend- 188 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR ance was provided by the Swiss and the Red Cross made a per diem allowance for each patient. This work, I wish to add, was planned with the cooperation of the Serbian minister. Switzerland, too, had its repatriate problem, or rather evacues problem. The poor wretches — women, young children, and old men, whom the Germans had taken from their homes in northern France — were coming into Swiss territory at the rate of 1200 a day. Many of them had walked miles to the train, and their feet were bruised and swollen. All had ridden for two or three days, unfed, un- washed, uncared for. With only brief notice Germany had begun unloading these sorry folk at Basle in November of 1917. A local committee had provided 225,000 francs toward caring for them, which began with facilities for washing in the railway station and a small infirmary such as the Red Cross maintains at its canteen stations in America. There was a room for feeding the wanderers, a special car for bathing and dressing babies, and a storeroom for clothing and necessities. The Swiss Government fed them, while other necessities, including clothing, were provided by charity. As at Evian in France, an elaborate card index system of information was maintained by volunteer women for the purpose of securing information which might assist in reuniting families. It was the same old picture of sickness, dirt and misery that we have seen in France, repellant but heartbreaking in its appeal. From Bouveret these wayfarers were distributed through southern France, and 10,000 of them passed weekly through the confines of Switzerland on their way to homes that were far away and that would only be accessible when the Germans should be beaten back. There was an Italian problem, too. Indeed, there was no problem that Switzerland did not have ! At Buchs, where 2500 Italian soldiers poured through each month on their SWITZERL.\ND THE CENTRAL STATION 189 way back into Italy, the American Red Cross established a canteen. These returning Italians were sorry pilgrims, — many of whom were badly wounded while others were tuber- culous, lacking in underclothing, stockings and, in many cases, were without shoes. Moreover, most of them were half starved, or worse, since almost every train had its quota of those who had been unable to stand the ordeal of the journey and had died on the way. In addition there was a great army of interned soldiers in Switzerland who were looked after by the officers of the Swiss army. The minds of many of them had been shaken by the shocks of war and the deprivations and maltreatment of the Teuton prison camps, and with nothing to occupy their minds or engross their attention they were a great and grow- ing menace. Various societies were formed to furnish them with employment in workrooms, in the manufacture of leather goods, glassware, beadwork, portable houses, fur- niture, and various other things. In many instances these men were barely fit to work ; while others had been idle so long that they had lost the faculty of working. The output of these ateliers was sent to America and found immediate sale. The first problem was raw material, for the Swiss resources were no longer able to provide for them or to pay the freight of the products to the American market. The Red Cross devoted 750,000 francs to the establishment of these workrooms and training-schools for soldiers interned in Switzerland and founded a bureau for the sale of their products in America. Over $40,000 worth of these things were sold within a year. Two workrooms for making hospital and relief supplies were added by the Red Cross. The places were reconstructed and re-equipped for extended production of regular standard Red Cross supplies, needy women being employed in their manufacture. Much of the product, such as underwear for women and children, was used immediately at Basle. 190 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR In Geneva there was an American Red Cross Chapter con- ducting workrooms at the Palais Eynard. The Commission planned to establish units of Americans at Zurich, St. Gaul, and Lucerne who might be relied upon for assistance when American soldiers should come to be interned in Switzerland. But it did not end there : at Fribourg there were 2000 Belgian children who had been under the protection of the American Red Cross Commission of Belgium, and their numbers grew steadily with successive evacuations ; Switzer- land was full of tuberculous, of all ages and races and degrees of helplessness. Swarms of civilian Serbs were crying for help from desolate Serbia whose sufferings at that time were terrible ! The Red Cross proposed the sending of a Swiss- American relief force to Belgrade to estabhsh a dispensary and distribute relief. There was trouble over the Italian prisoners in Austria for whom Italy could not care. Italian societies were ready to relieve them, but food and clothing were unobtainable. There was no doubt of their appalling condition. Those who passed through Buchs gave proof enough that all the harrowing tales were true. Innumer- able packages, sent by friends from Italy and from the two Americas, never found their destination or were worthless from bad packing. There was undoubtedly an improvement in the whole prison camp situation in the German and Aus- trian territory — more prompt and certain delivery of food shipments. Upon packages sent to American prisoners from Berne the record showed that the system functioned per- fectly. Ninety-five per cent of these were delivered without interference, and the condition of the camps where Americans were detained was reported as good. Food conditions in Germany were stringent. Returning prisoners said that where the packages were received the prisoners fared better than their keepers. There were in Germany twenty-seven prison camps, of which Tuchel near Danzig was selected to be the chief place SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION 191 of detention of Americans. In nearly all the twenty-seven centers, among them Tuchel, Berlin, Havelberg, Parchim, Brandenburg, Cassel, Langensalza, Cologne, Siegburg, Aachen, Limburg, Mainz, Giessen, Darmstadt, Heidelberg, Karlsruhe, Villingen, Rastatt, Bayreuth, and Landshut, there were American captives in June, 1918, either captured soldiers or seafarers who had been collected from submarined ships. There were reports from 231 men, and to all of them packages were being sent from the warehouses at Berne by the Red Cross, acting as distributing agent for the Army or Navy which provided the supplies. Villingen was the camp for the officers. Data obtainable in midsummer indicated that there were about 200 more captured Americans who had not yet been located permanently. There was food enough then stored up in Berne to last 22,000 prisoners for half a year if required. Three American prisoners in Tuchel had been appointed a Red Cross Rehef Committee, — custodians of liberal sup- plies sent there for the use of prisoners when they should arrive, — and similar supplies were ready for immediate distribution to other camps. When it became apparent that the Germans were slow to give notice of the transfer of prisoners from one camp to another, heads of the French Relief at Berne and the Prisoners' Depots at Paris and Lyons issued orders to French Committees in all the German camps to supply new American arrivals with whatever they required. Arrangements had been made that all, or nearly all, of the German prison camps should be stocked with similar emer- gency supplies, in anticipation of the wants of those who were unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the enemy. There were approximately 200 main prison camps in Ger- many and some 10,000 prison groups, counting the small detachments of prisoners sent out to do farm labor. The American Red Cross laid plans to supply all these work 192 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR camps with the regulation food parcels as well as others where American prisoners were held. The process of locating prisoners and providing for their comfort was thoroughly systematized. Immediately on receipt of the German Usts the Central Prisoners of War Committee in Berne wired them to General Headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force in France, which in turn cabled them to Red Cross Headquarters in Washington. Food packages were immediately dispatched, every item of which was accounted for on the receipt card. Shoes, hats, and clothing could be ordered. Officers' uniforms were made to measure in Berne from cloth stored there for the purpose, and the rank insignia accompanied them when shipped. The Red Cross notified a prisoner's relatives of his capture, and letters could be sent either direct or through the central bureau at Berne. The prompt provision of clothing is important, since a man captured in battle is apt to be pretty badly disarranged before he is taken. Individual packages shipped by friends and relatives at home were also forwarded, as well as money remittances. The practice of sending food and clothing from America had been discouraged, but there is a human side to it which was considered in the framing of the program and its regulations. With customary Teutonic caution, the German authorities paid over moneys sent to the prisoners not in German currency but in prison script, which was good at the prison-camp canteens but outside of which would pur- chase nothing. From the communications received from American prisoners it was indicated that the cruelties of the early years, reported to have been permitted and even encouraged in the Austro-German camps, were not practiced so largely in the treatment of American captives. CHAPTER XV BELGIUM Belgian Refugees in Other Countries — Work in Belgium, a Department of the French Commission — Housing Problem — Coordination of Scattered Relief Agencies — The Phght of the Belgian Army — Recreation and Eating Hut Provided by the Red Cross — Canteen and Other Comforts for the Soldiers — The Red Cross Supplemented the Work of the Belgian Government — Plans for a Possible Catas- trophe — Barrack Houses Erected — Work of Belgium's Queen — Private Enterprises of Relief — Colonies Scolaires. IT is one of the psychological phenomena of the war that the longest mark in the Belgian's score against his as- sailant is that the villain, not content with destroying his agricultm'e, also took away all the industrial machinery of the busy Belgian cities to his own shops across the Rhine. That one item of vandaUsm left in the Belgian soul a scar that time cannot obliterate. By ill fortune Belgium was the first horrible examp^ which Germany depended on to awe the rest of Europe ' submission. The brutality of the blow, delivered German strength, long held in check, was at its maximum, staggered civilization. When the first impact was past, Belgium struggled to her feet, agony, however, she was an object for pity, h and more trying struggle for self-maintenanc universal admiration. A helpless and vicf to humanity's salvation, she rose from her courage and a model for faint hearts the v And so although Belgium ran the whol o 193 194 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR ing from the first hour of war down to the present minute, and although she still suffers, her stalwart courage and con- spicuous practicaUty, her sturdy sense and simple dignity have long since lifted her above the lime-light zone of hys- terical pity. In September, 1917, however, there were 275,000 Belgian refugees in France ; 150,000 in England ; 50,000 in Holland ; and many thousands more in Switzerland. It was estimated that in free Belgium, — the 500 or less square miles which still remained free from invasion, though all within easy reach of the German lines had been swept every day and hour by missiles from the German guns, — there were 90,000 more stubborn ones to whom the soil of home was dearer than life. There were fewer than 250,000 left of the Army, who had gathered about the stalwart figure of the King and settled down in the trenches of the coast sectors in a grim determination to see it through. The rest of the teeming population, which had made Belgium the leader of the world in productive agriculture, and, for her size, foremost as well in industrial output, Ger- many or the grave had swallowed them all. Belgium had nothing save what she could borrow — no land, no industries, no food, and no clothing. She was down, helpless, stripped, and with Winter not far away. Into this situation came the Red Cross, in the person of >puty dispatched by the Commissioner for Europe to what was left of Belgium along the British front. 'rip," the deputy wrote back, '4s only about thirty- long and fifteen miles wide and there is no foot of lot be reached by German shells or air bombs." 000 people still clinging to this target that they more than 10,000 were children, and from this Igian government, circumscribed as it was, :en away six thousand imperiled children in homes in Switzerland and France, viz. C ;^ o 2 h c 0:S PS o r- S BELGIUM 196 in Paris and in the Colonies Scolaires north of Paris, and others in the departments along the coast of the English Channel. At this time, however, burdened as they were with a multiplicity of problems, they had come to the van- ishing point of their resources ; so they asked if the Ameri- can Red Cross would not help to remove and furnish shelter for some six hundred more who were in the area of greater danger. The world has never seen a more pathetic lot than were those children! For ''coolness under fire," as the phrase runs, commend me now and evermore to those little children in the lost corner of Belgium who, day by day, they tell me, went trudging fearlessly and cheerfully from shell-shattered homes to half-ruined schoolhouses, along roads where the deep shell holes yawned like giants' graves ! In all the great panorama of danger and desperation and death that made up the battlefront, I venture to say there were no stouter hearts than these. To mark their unconcern, as the missiles came and went, was to understand a little more of the spirit that kept their fathers on the firing line through four years of hardship and misery, and their mothers guard- ing the home fires and holding the families together as best they could, with hideous death forever at their elbows. These toddlers had seen their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters blotted from the earth beside them in a whirl of sand and not gone mad. They were the soul of Belgium! At first, the Red Cross work in Belgium was organized as a department of the French Commission ; but later, as it expanded, there was established a separate commission with headquarters at Havre. And when once the start was made in Belgium the labor did not lag. The territory that remained accessible, of what was Belgium, was so small as to be easily canvassed and planned for; only the refugee problem was distributed over a large area. But in it all the work was simplified, first by the keen organizing sense 196 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR and the intense devotion of the leading people, both men and women, among the Belgians, and second by the habitual industry of the working folk. It was speedily found that a great number of these were nearly or almost self-supporting. After the Belgian fashion they had sought service at the trades in which they were skilled. The Flemish refugees from Belgium in the year 1917 tilled 60,000 acres of land in France, and helped to feed the Belgian Army at the front. The Red Cross and the Belgian organizations made system- atic effort to place the refugees ; and lace makers, jewelers, machinists, and men and women proficient in many lines were soon permanently and profitably established. Most of them, to be sure, were old, but a Belgian is seldom too old to work. When he is he dies. The French govern- ment, likewise, with all the multitudinous loads of its own to carry, was giving to a great many of these Belgian wander- ers a small allocation or allowance to guard them against want. A most perplexing need, however, was for living quarters for the refugees. Naturally, in the cities of France, — Paris and Havre, — to which most of the refugees made their way, no proper provision had been or could be made to care for such a horde and under such stress of circumstances ; as a result, respectable Belgian families were compelled to take lodgment in the lowest quarters of the city, sometimes in wretched old houses, sometimes in sheds or outbuildings where there were no conveniences, no comfort, and no sani- tary safety. When the Red Cross first came to Belgium, it entered into close and practical cooperation with the government officials and, together, they attacked at once the trouble- some housing problem. In Havre, — where the population had increased by sixty thousand and never a new house had been built, — the situation was most acute. Here the Red Cross and the Belgians took over and equipped a group BELGIUM 197 of vacant barracks and also leased a number of apartment houses, thus providing shelter for several hundred families. With the Famille Beige the Red Cross organized a chain of cooperative stores, such as are in vogue in Belgium, and cut down the high cost of living to the refugee families. To assist in maintaining the health of the Havre colony a 250-bed hospital was presented to it, which was managed by the Minister of the Interior and included in its personnel the Red Cross staff of doctors and nurses. Health centers were estabUshed at Havre and Rouen with infant clinics and pouponnieres for the care of abandoned babies. The opera- tion of these shelters was taken in charge by a group of prominent Belgian women. Here, as in France and Italy, it was the aim of the Red Cross in all its work of relief to coordinate by means of needed assistance, monetary or otherwise, all the scattered agencies and enterprises that were trying to cope with the situation, organizing them all into sections under the direc- tion of a government official. There was a host of them, too, for clothing, for layettes, for the families of Belgian soldiers, for emergency relief, for mothers and children, for housing, for hospital service, and for tuberculosis. By means of monthly conferences with delegates from each section, how- ever, all the work was correlated and widely extended, and cooperation was maintained through a system of weekly inspection with all governmental and private agencies of relief, both French and Belgian. Meanwhile, the refugee problem was never quiescent : always the stream of the newly homeless kept drifting down the long road from the zone of war. To relieve the situation in Havre the Red Cross gave $600,000 for the construction of a village of temporary cottages. The site was prepared by the Albert Fund, with paved streets, water supply, and electric lights. Each of the hundred cottages soon boasted a laundry-shed at the rear and a garden neatly fenced in. 198 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR There were two schoolhouses with Belgian teachers, a church with a Belgian priest, and the inevitable cooperative store, without which the Belgian would not feel at home even in Brussels. There was also a town-hall for meetings and administration use. The rents were nominal. As a matter of fact the whole project was characteristically Belgian. After its entrance into Belgium, the first important con- tribution of the Red Cross was 500,000 francs to the Belgian Red Cross toward its great military hospital at Wulvering- hem. La Panne, which had been the hospital center, had become a barrack town ; and the great hotel where the hospital was installed was a pet-mark for the German gunners and air-men. At Wulveringhem the work on the splendid new hospital with its wide range of barrack wards was lagging for lack of means, but the Red Cross gift hurried it to usefulness. When it was finished the plant and the patients from La Panne were moved there and, once more, the Belgian Army doctors could operate without the per- petual interference of German shells. It was a needy army, in those days, that Belgian Ai*my which helped the English to hold the Channel front, and it lived the life of a hunted animal ! There were the abris and dugouts in the first line, wet and overcrowded ; on the second line, about seven or eight miles back, some shelters and ruined buildings ; and in the rear some new brick barracks where at intervals good Belgian soldiers went when they did not die. When they did die — and their casualty roll mounted into the thousands each month — there was the endless graveyard near at hand. It was a somber place, all in all. ''It is not the bombs that we are afraid of," said a Belgian soldier, who had once been an attache of the Rocke- feller Foundation, — "it is not the bombs, or even the shell when they have the location of our quarters ; it is the bitter cold and the wet feet, and no place to go." BELGIUM 199 Indeed, they had no place to go. All the way by Merck- hem and Bixschoote and up to the edge of the Houthulst forest trench lines were blotted out ; in their mad plunges for the mastery of the Channel coast the Germans had torn the whole land to tatters. The entire front was a wilder- ness of shell-holes, cratered and furrowed to the limit of desolation ! The defenses were not lines at all — merely advance posts, machine-gun emplacements and batteries, and always under fire. In the second line retreats there were no lights of any nature. In the tumbledown barns the soldiers on repose slept on soggy straw, or ran back and forth all night to keep warm' because of the lack of blankets. Many a Belgian hero took his ''day off" sleeping in a pig- sty ; and where there was a stove the men were brought in to get warm beside it in detachments. It became evident, therefore, that the Red Cross must do something towards removing this situation. A million francs was appropriated ; and together with the Belgian Minister of War, and other Belgian representatives, a project was set on foot for the erection in the Army zone of recreation and eating huts and of double tents, equipping them with dishes, baths, moving pictures, and reading rooms. The men them- selves undertook to manufacture the furniture. In addition, the Red Cross gave a fund to the Livres des Soldats Beiges, which sent out books to soldiers in the field. There was a great demand for technical books of the pro- fessions by soldiers who had left engineering and law offices and scientific schools to take their places against the invader and who did not wish to die intellectually. All these de- mands the Red Cross supphed. It contributed to societies whose object it was to furnish small comforts to the soldiers ; it helped in the expansion of the canteen system ; and it gave money for the erection and equipment of new canteens. It also gave money liberally to the Foyer du Soldat Beige — and if there ever was a soldat who was entitled to a Foyer 200 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR it surely was the soldat Beige. There were thousands of them who had not known a day away from the cheerless expanse of mud and shell-holes and ice since the war began, for the very simple reason that they had no place in the world to go nor a sou to take them anywhere. In the Army, where the wages of the soldiers ran as low as seven cents a day, where the baths were few and far be- tween, and the clothing dilapidated, one did not travel for pleasure. So, when the Red Cross took detachments of these poor fellows and cleaned them up and with money in their pockets to spend sent them for a ten days' stay in Paris for a look at the bright lights and a change of diet, it brought these men back to a realization that there were still people in the world who were not dirty and unshorn, unshaven and scarred, and it made a distinct contribution to the cause of democracy. There was a Red Cross canteen at the Gave du Nord which had been supported by English donors, and which the Red Cross helped to enlarge and supply. This was for Belgian soldiers coming to Paris, or passing through, and it did any- thing and everything to make them comfortable. The Red Cross also made substantial contributions to the Conge du Soldat Beige, which had been supported by the Belgian, French, and Italian trades unionists. The Conge was differ- ent : its plan was to take a small number of the Belgian soldiers and treat them like country cousins who had come on a visit. The old number was ten at a time. The Red Cross increased it to fifty or more. But for the most part, as I have said, the "leave" of the Belgian soldier was not burdensome to his hosts. As soon as he was cleaned up and well fed he went out and got his pay check, which there was no trouble about his doing, and when he went back to his dugout he had money in his pocket. The Belgian Minister of Agriculture supplied employment for a multitude of the Flemish farmers on leave. The Red BELGIUM 201 Cross started a fund for wounded men who, on account of their injuries, had been released from the Army, to pro- vide them with civiUan clothing to take the place of the uniforms — which they must surrender when discharged — and to help them make a fresh start. Altogether, there were half a dozen hospitals in Belgium and three in France accommodating about 5000 persons, which the Red Cross assisted. It contributed to a mess at Sainte Adresse, near Havre, which supplied 300 meals a day to workers in munition factories; it furnished money to the soldiers' club at Fecamp, and another at Dieppe; and a great deal of work was done at Calais in connection with the School of Gunnery. For the canteens and barracks for permissionaires at Ouvre, He de Cezambre, La Panne, Isenberghe, Bulscamp, Hoogstaade, Hondschoote, and other places, maintenance funds were provided. Libraries, games, and moving pictures were furnished to keep the soldiers cheerful and mentally fit. The library equipment was extensive. Actors and singers were secured to give enter- tainments. A valuable work was done in the support of educational courses, in which thousands of students were enrolled ; individual gifts were distributed to all soldiers who were decorated or cited in Army orders for bravery. In all these undertakings — the providing of comfort for the soldiers at the front, recreation for soldiers on leave, hospitals, hospital equipment, medicines, instruments, look- ing after the families of soldiers and stiffening all along the line the Belgian military morale — the Red Cross was help- ing a government which had only a temporary abiding place, and was carrying on national business under a tremendous burden of difficulty. But throughout all the Red Cross work in Belgium it held merely the position of a contributor. The Belgian government had a thoroughly competent system for the handling of its problems ; what it lacked was the means to carry its plans into execution. This the Red 202 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Cross furnished. It was a very vital contribution, for not only did it lighten the load of an overtaxed governmental machine, but it put new life into the Army of 200,000 men. In planning its work for the territory back of the lines, the Red Cross had a more perplexing problem, which resolved itself into a species of speculation on the fortunes of war. There had been no moment since the line adjusted itself in the north that was free from the possibility of swift and imperative demand. Any day some change in conditions along those northern sectors, held jointly by English, French, and Belgian troops, might send a final stream of refugees rolling down into France, calling for shelter and for instant supplies of food and clothing ; or, a German retreat might release new areas whose inhabitants wretched after long periods of German rule would create an even more stringent condition. There would be a great and instant tax on the Army supplies, the Red Cross stores and the foodstuffs gathered for the remaining occupants of free Belgium. With an impossible condition of transportation and a paucity of food to begin with, it was plain that any diversion in the Belgian sector of the front would make trouble, and failure to meet it would be fatal. It was here perhaps that the Red Cross performed its most important task in the Belgian field, although the crisis which it was devised to meet never arrived. In the fall of 1917, twenty barrack-houses, each twenty by one hundred feet, were contracted for near Adinkerke. Nine of them were first erected by Army labor on sites convenient to rail- way lines, highways, and canals, in order to provide prompt distribution. Arrangements were made with the Friends' Ambulance Unit and the British Red Cross for the use of their trucks in case of need. In addition, Paris Red Cross Headquarters agreed to place from twenty-five to fifty loaded cars in the Belgian region on demand, within twenty- four hours. Canal boats were placed under charter, in BELGIUM 203 order to make use of the network of canals running all through the districts. With these provisions made, the Red Cross Commission set about the purchase of $2,000,000 worth of emergency supphes, such as food, clothing, blankets, to supplement the great stocks in the Red Cross warehouses in Paris, which could be drawn upon at short notice. An idea of the nature of the food supplies laid up in these warehouses against the day of need may be got from this list of goods shipped in for the first of the buildings that was completed : — 500 cases condensed milk 310 sacks of rice (50 kilos) 40 sacks of rice (100 kilos) 7 sacks of macaroni (100 kilos) 60 sacks of dried peas (100 kilos) 190 sacks of lentils (100 kilos) 914 cases of salmon (50 lb. to case) 913 cases of corned beef (50 lb. to case) 120 sacks white beans (100 kilos) 600 boxes biscuits (4^ lb. each) All this was simply a gamble on the chances of war, an insurance against the horrible possibilities which the lack of these supplies might cause. What happened in Italy, what happened in Belgium itself at the beginning of the war might easily be repeated, and in the depleted condition of the country after four years of war the possibilities were awful to contemplate. ''The danger from the beginning has been recognized," observed the Red Cross Commissioner at that time, ''and we have resolved to take no chances. We prefer to lose part of our goods rather than to be caught napping. We realize that none of this food put in the warehouse at the front may ever be needed, that the lines may not change, and there is a possibility, even, of their changing in the wrong direction. But if the lines should change both rail- road and highways will be filled and there will be delay in 204 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR getting food up there from Paris. There have been pro- tests against putting the food there on account of the danger of its being shelled. A high officer of the British Army- told me that he had been in command of troops which took possession of a sector of French territory, and that if his soldiers had not been double-rationed the civilians would have starved to death before any help could have reached them. The world will never forgive," he emphasized, "the American Red Cross if it does not run the risk of losing some property for the sake of saving lives." It was wonderful tenacity that the Belgian folk displayed in cUnging to this vestige of land called "free Belgium." Their infatuation for home soil stands out as the most graphic feature of the war situation in Belgium. After the fighting around Nieuport in the spring of 1917, and the stubborn battle for Paeschendaele Ridge in the fall, this country became not only an armed camp but a battle ground wherein these peasants went about their homely tasks with their lives eternally at hazard. Many of them paid the last price, but that did not frighten away their neighbors ; and the Belgian government, knowing its own people, encouraged them to stay on. They farmed away in utter disregard of German marksmanship, of danger and of horrible death, and in the words of an American writer who visited the section, "their ditches and hop-poles and stacked wheat, quite beyond the needed crops for which they stand, are so many markers of Belgium's claim to her own. ..." Some of the most serious fighting of the war has been carried on here, from shell crater to shell crater. But to the civilian Belgian these stretches of ground and the civilian country that lies between them and the sea are alike and the same. They are his native soil. They are free Belgium, heritage of the past and earnest of the future. At this time the Red Cross came in touch with the splendid work done by Belgian's Queen, who, as all the BELGIUM 205 world knows, was an indefatigable worker for the children and the aged, and who Uved in such constant peril and distress. La Panne, where the hospital had been, was at first the center for reUef operations, but when the vicious attacks of 1917 began to make it untenable, the refugees there had to be gotten out and away to safer places. At first out of one hundred and eighty old men and women in the Repos d' Elizabeth, her Majesty's charity, only twenty-six answered yes when all were asked if they wanted to be taken out of danger. But when the houses all around them began going there was no longer any room for home love, and the Red Cross furnished the money to transport the whole company to a comfortable and safe place in France. Gradually the Society joined in, more or less as a silent partner, with all the organized forces of rehef in the district. It gave money to the commissaries of the arrondissements and to the Service de Sante conducted by English and French women. Clothing and milk were supphed for the babies, of which, in Belgium, even in normal times, there are plenty ; a portable barrack was found for a baby hospital at La Panne, and a Red Cross woman was sent from America for the clinical work. In areas where it was impossible to buy milk the Red Cross furnished it ; it also bought supplies of eggs for tubercular patients. In all the story of the war's miseries there are probably no more pathetic chapters than those of some of the private enterprises of reUef in Belgium. In the heart of the British war zone the Countess Van Steen, herself a nurse, had a hospital. Her home, which she had in the beginning turned into a hospital, fell into German hands and, hke a soldier, she withdrew and began work in free Belgium where she was made directress of the Elizabeth Hospital at Poperingue. Again the bombardment forced retirement, and in the next station at Proven the shells were still falling all about her and the highways resounded to all the clamors of war. On 206 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR every hand the rough miUtary buildings sprang up. To her little station there was always a procession of wounded, soldiers and civilians alike — wounded horribly. There were children, sick and injured and blinded with gas. The record of horrors in that neighborhood is not pleasant read- ing. In one evening twenty-eight cases were brought in from one little neighboring village. The wards, the tents, were all full, always full, and the means were very scanty. Then the Red Cross came and supplied what was lacking, and the work went on without hindrance. It was so with the Colonies of the Belgian Abbe Delaere at Wisques and Wizernes, which had grown out of an earlier work at Ypres. The Abbe Delaere had been the last of civilians to leave Ypres. There were others of these Colonies Scolaires, too, — nearly sixty of them, — scattered all over northern France in all sorts of available buildings, filled with thin-faced children brought from places within range of the never silent cannon, broken in nerves and full of fear. To all these schools the Red Cross made gifts, supplying everything from buildings to buttons. The Queen's school at Vinckem was a thriving establishment, with playgrounds, infirmary, and splendid gardens. But it was well in the danger zone, for the King and Queen re- fused to leave the soil of the Kingdom, and to be in Belgium meant to be under fire. The Red Cross assisted the Queen to expand the school's facilities by the erection of a babies' pavilion so as to take in younger children ; it established school buildings at Cayeux-sur-Mer in France to accom- modate children from the abandoned establishments until the new permanent institutions could be completed at Leysele on the French frontier; and it transferred whole colonies of children, at the suggestion of the Queen, through Switzerland to many retreats in France. Victory, indeed, found the Red Cross more than a helper in things Belgian, — it found it a friend. CHAPTER XVI THE STORY OF ITALY The Red Cross Uniform in Italy — The Disaster of Caporetto — Emer- gency Commission from France — Refutation of Propaganda to Discredit America — Cooperation with Italian Authorities — Ar- rival of the Permanent Red Cross Commission — Ambulance Sec- tions at the Front — Rolling Kitchens — Aiding Soldiers' Families — First Anniversary of America's Entering the War — Epidemic of Influenza — Aid for American Soldiers — EstabHshment of the Red Cross Hospital — Red Cross Welcome to Our Soldiers — Forward with the Victorious Army — Care for the Starving Civilian Popula- tion — The Problem of Italian Prisoners of War — Opening of the Department of Tuberculosis — Activities Turned Over to Italian Authorities. THE many millions of Americans, whose support made possible the work of the Red Cross abroad, can have no adequate conception of what the presence of Americans of the Red Cross, in the uniform of their country, meant to the people of Italy in the fall of 1917, and the year following. It was not until July, 1918, that American fighting troops were sent to Italy. Then one regiment was dispatched from France, receiving a welcome that will never be for- gotten. They had been preceded in the last week of June by about 1600 officers and men of the United States Army Ambulance Service, but before that time the only uniformed American force in Italy had been a few student aviators at training camps and the personnel of the Red Cross. It came about, therefore, that at a critical period in Italy's history and in the progress of the war, workers of the Red Cross, conducting their work from one end of Italy 207 208 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR to the other, from the front Unes to the tip of Sicily, brought to hundreds of thousands of ItaUan soldiers and to millions of Italian people in civil life their first sight of an American in the uniform of his native land. The American Red Cross came to Italy just three weeks after the disaster of Caporetto, when thousands had been slain, hundreds of thousands taken prisoners, vast quan£ities of munitions captured, and a half million or more old men, women, and children had been driven from their homes by the invading enemy. Such a disaster has had few parallels in history and it is, perhaps, the greatest tribute possible to the power of resistance of Italy's people and the courage of her soldiers that on the slender stream of the Piave, — almost negligible as a military barrier, — her retreating troops reformed and repulsed a numerically superior foe, advancing with all the elan that a great victory gives; while behind the lines the people of Italy, who had suffered the hardships of war for two years, rallied to the support of her heroic Army, and stood firm. It was into these darkest days of the war in Italy — when no one knew how long the Piave line could hold and no one could tell when the burden placed upon the people would become greater than they could bear — that the Red Cross found its greatest opportunity for service there. Upon a telegraphic request from our Ambassador in Rome, an Emergency Commission was sent from France, and Italy had her first widespread opportunity of welcoming officers and men in the uniform of the United States Army. The Red Cross men appeared as the first visible evidence of the sincerity of America's pledge that she would devote every man and every resource to winning the war. German propaganda had been extremely active in Italy ; one of its endeavors had been to discredit America's sincerity by the assertion that the United States was growing rich out of the war, that she was willing to prolong it by supplying WW Eh H THE STORY OP^ ITALY 209 the Allies with money and munitions but that she would never send her men. The men and women of the American Red Cross in Italy served as living refutations of that German lie ; moreover, it soon became kno\^n to the Italians that these men and women were not merely the advance guard but that they had come to Italy as volun- teers, leaving behind homes and positions in order to share the lot of the Italians and side by side work with them in the great common cause. Everywhere that I went in Italy, I heard from the ItaUans, from their statesmen, and from their women and little children, expressions of gratitude, friendship, and admiration for the spirit of the American people, as represented by these workers in the Red Cross, who came to them first in their hour of greatest suffering. The immediate problem to be dealt with was the feeding and housing of the hundreds of thousands of refugees from the invaded districts. Few nations in modern history have been called upon to face a more serious problem than that with which Italy was confronted : from the two northern- most provinces the civilian population had come in a great flood that overflowed the roads and swept on over the fields toward the south ; the barrier of steel which had held back the Austrian and German troops at the border had given way without warning, and women and children and old men, knowing only too well the cruelty of their foes, had left everything they possessed in an effort to escape. Women trudged along with children in their arms; the bedridden were carried in wheelbarrows and on stretchers. Fleeing civilians were inextricably mixed in with the retreat- ing soldiery : abandoned guns, trucks, ammunition wagons, ambulances, and automobiles clogged the roads. Daugh- ters were separated from mothers ; little children were swept away from their parents — some of them to be united months later in American Red Cross homes, others never to be together again. Women trudging along barefoot in 210 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR nightdresses; many walked until they fell, weak with hunger. In the midst of this great military disaster and the future of the Kingdom at stake, Italy, already suffering from privations, with every resource strained for the trans- portation of fresh supplies of munitions to her troops, was thus called upon to transport a civilian army of half a million or more souls, to find new homes for them, to feed them immediately, and to supply them with clothing and food for their journeys to other already burdened localities. The way in which she met the problem and solved it won the admiration of every American in the Red Cross who saw the conditions at close range. The American Red Cross cooperated with the Italian authorities and Italian Relief Societies, bringing carloads of foodstuffs and clothing from our storehouses in France, buying other necessaries in the open market, distributing food to the refugees in trains who journeyed often for days, establishing homes and, as the destitute homeless women reached the desti- nations assigned to them, providing work for them that would occupy their time and afford a small remuneration. Asylums were opened for the children where these war orphans could be taught, fed, and clothed. Soup kitchens were inaugurated to give simple, sustaining food to those who, still laboring under the influence of that nightmare of panic-stricken flight, were trying to adjust themselves to their new environment. In this practical way the Red Cross went about its mission of relieving the wounds that war had caused to innocent women and children. The Italians accepted it as an earnest pledge of America to share a part of the great war's burden, and the morale of the people was strengthened as the morale of any one who is suffering is strengthened by the presence of a friend. Adding to the mental distress induced by her reverses and to the physical deprivation consequent upon the loss of two rich provinces, the winter of 1917-1918 fell upon Italy THE STORY OF ITALY 211 with unusual severity. There was snow in the streets of Rome and on the mountains, and in the plains the soldiers suffered from the intense, penetrating cold. It was a fore- gone conclusion that when the weather permitted in the spring the Austrians would resume their drive, for all through that dismal winter the invaders boasted con- fidently to the unhappy inhabitants left behind in the conquered district that they would go on to Rome before the trees were green again. The forces of the Austrians were numerically superior by twenty-three divisions and military commanders awaited with anxiety that threatened attack. Would their soldiers, their morale inevitably weakened by a great defeat, be able to hold the Piave and the mountain passes, or would the enemy break through and invade the Lombardy plains? No human intelligence could answer those questions ; and yet upon the answer Italy's fate depended. These were the conditions in Italy when the permanent Red Cross Commission arrived. Immediately, ener- getically, devotedly, they took up the work begun by the Emergency Commission, extending it until it had reached all parts of Italy — all of which was accomplished in almost an incredibly brief time. There is a map, repro- duced on another page, showing graphically by means of dots and symbols the extent and variety of the work in Italy. A large majority of dots and symbols were placed upon the map in the three or four active months after the arrival of the Permanent Commission when every hour was filled with the work of organization and of actual relief. Multiform as were the activities and urgent as was the need for haste, — for with the enemy threatening always in the north not a moment was to be lost, — a clear, con- sistent purpose ran through it all. Everything that was done became the expression of the spirit of the American 212 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR people in their consecration to the common cause for which Italy had suffered. To Italians, whose deep love for their children is a national characteristic, the American Red Cross became in a very real sense the great mother. Many thousands of children whose fathers were fighting for liberty were taken under the shelter of the American Red Cross schools, homes, and day nurseries. Nearly all of these children were suffering from undernourishment, the slow starvation that renders the young an easy prey to disease. They were supplied with milk and wholesome food from America. Some of the older girls were taught lace making ; the boys were taught the rudiments of carpentry and shoe- making. To mothers, whose husbands or sons were soldiers, the opportunity was afforded to supplement their meager pensions by work in shops where garments were made out of cloth from America, and these garments, together with the contents of the Chapter boxes that came in great quan- tities from the United States, were used to clothe the chil- dren of the soldiers at the front. Those whom war had deprived of their natural means of support were enabled to become self-supporting by work that went toward the winning of the war, and the spirit on the part of Americans and Italians engaged in the work was the spirit of cooperation, of mutual helpfulness, of sympathetic understanding, and of fraternal friendship. Without the effective, complete, and cordial cooperation of the Italians, indeed, the work could not have achieved the measure of success which it did. The result of this widespread activity became evident very quickly in the changed spirit of the troops. In the records of the American Red Cross at Rome are many post- cards glowing with thanks from soldiers and letters from commanding officers, and in the minds of our men and women workers are the memories of innumerable spoken tributes, all eloquently indicative of the change which came THE STORY OF ITALY 213 about in the morale of the Army, of its renewed hope and determination to resist, now that America had come to its support. There was much that was done, too, which affected the soldiers even more directly than this care of their families. Hospital supplies, drugs, medicines, surgical instruments, bandages, hospital furniture had been lost in vast quantities after the defeat of Caporetto, and it was almost impossible to replace them in Italy. Red Cross Medical Warehouses were established in Rome and other centers, particularly in the war zone ; from these warehouses many Italian military and not a few civilian general hospitals were supplied with the things they lacked. In all between 1500 and 1800 hospitals were aided, many of them two and three times. In other ways less obviously urgent, perhaps, but having scarcely less effect upon the morale of the troops, the Red Cross came into close contact with the soldiers. Ambulance sections were established at the front with advanced posts near the lines. The ambulances were manned by young American volunteers, many of whom had seen service in France. These ambulances did effective work in transport- ing the occasional casualties and the many sick from the front lines and from distributing hospitals to base hospitals or evacuating base hospitals to the rail-heads. To bring some degree of comfort to the men in the stormy trenches of the Alps and the icy, mud-caked trenches along the Piave, the Red Cross established "Rolling Kitchens" where the soldiers returning from the trenches could always have hot coffee, jam for their dry bread, cigarettes, and the friendship and encouragement of the Americans in charge, and which, undoubtedly, counted far more than the food. There were a score or so of these posts, through which, it is said, a half million or more Italian soldiers passed in the course of a month. Men who had stood for hours in the cold 214 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR under arms went away from these little kitchens where the Italian and American flags flew side by side, revived by the hot coffee and cheered by the greeting of a fellow soldier from another land. Of Lieutenant Edward McKey, who took out the first "Rolling Kitchen" and who lost his life in the work, it has been said that to the Italian Divisions who held the key-positions of the Brenta passes, ''he was the entire American Army." From time to time, as the winter wore on, upon the occasion of a feast day such as Christmas or New Year's or upon days significant to Italian patriotism, gifts were made to the soldiers of packages containing useful articles, generally a cake of soap, warm socks, a cake of chocolate, and a pack- age of cigarettes, with post-cards bearing a symbol of the union of Italy and America in the cause of liberty. As the spring advanced every effort was made by the American Red Cross, always cooperating closely with the Italians, to carry the practical message of the American people to every soldier and to every city, town, and hamlet. During part of the months of March and April, American Red Cross agents, traveling in automobiles by day and night, actually visited more than two thousand towns and villages. They sought out the destitute or needy families of soldiers, families that lacked medicines or food or clothing, and supplied their wants immediately by leaving in the hands of duly constituted authorities sufficient funds to meet the local emergency. In this work the Red Cross had the efficient cooperation of departmental prefects, mayors, and community committees. The Italian Premier, Signor Orlando, advised the prefects of the coming of Red Cross representatives; with the result that when our agents arrived they found the lists of the needy prepared and crowds of women and children waiting to receive this visit of men from America. Then, by means of speeches and of placards posted upon the walls, the purpose of the visit THE STORY OF ITALY 215 was explained. In all more than 300,000 families were aided in this way in the short space of a month ; and from these 300,000 families word went at once to their men at the front that America was actually and actively in the war, for they had seen with their own eyes and had re- ceived with their own hands the pledge of America's faith. On the occasion of the first anniversary of America's entrance into the war with Germany, I was in Rome and was present at the impressive ceremony held in the Coliseum in honor of the day. No one could have doubted the sincerity of the words there spoken, words of gratitude on the part of Italy's representatives, addressed to the President and people of the United States and the American Red Cross ; nor could any one have failed to be touched by the spon- taneous applause from the soldiers and the men and women who, in a downpour of rain, stood in that great ruined open amphitheater to do honor to our country. Later, I went to other chief cities of Italy, and everywhere there were the same cordial, fervent demonstrations of friendship and appreciation. The message of America had been well carried to the Italian people. The Austrians had boasted, as I have said before, that they would be in Rome before the summer ; but when in June they began their delayed offensive they found opposed to them men confident in victory. By weight of superior numbers they forced their way across the Piave in several places only to be beaten back with severe losses ; the passes of the Brenta and the Grappa had become walls of granite which they beat at in vain. The failure of that offensive marked the salvation of Italy. In the time of actual fighting the American Red Cross concentrated its forces in the war zone, aiding the hospitals with supplies to care for the increased demand upon them. Our rolling kitchens, supplemented in number, continued their work, and all our ambulances were in action, many of 216 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR the men receiving the War Cross for their service under fire. During the sununer the work of the Red Cross throughout Italy went on with unabated energy. The main attempt of the Austrians to break through was followed by a lull in the fighting, but another affliction came upon the people of Italy: An epidemic of influenza or ''Spanish fever" of great severity ravaged the entire kingdom, claiming many victims. In helping to check the spread of this plague the American nurses of the Red Cross and our men did heroic service. Milk was greatly needed to nourish the victims of the disease and to fortify children against attack. So while the nurses were visiting stricken communities, making house to house visits, our men distributed large quantities of condensed milk received from America. In every way possible our organization cooperated with the Italian authorities in combating the epidemic, even though our hospitals were filled with patients from our Army and Navy, from our diplomatic corps, the Young Men's Christian Association, and our own personnel. With the arrival of American troops the work of the Red Cross in Italy took on another phase. The scope of this work was, necessarily, limited by the small number of American troops, but the Red Cross was able to do many comparatively small things, and stood ready at all times to meet any demand upon it by our few thousand soldiers actually in Italy, or by larger contingents, if they had been sent. In the summer the Army Ambulance Service that had been in camp at Allentown arrived in Genoa. The Red Cross at once undertook the establishment of a hospital, and in the short space of two weeks a suitable building was found near the encampment and equipped as a thoroughly modern hospital. Later this hospital was given by the Red Cross to our Navy for the use of our sailors and soldiers. A few weeks later when an American regiment of the THE STORY OF ITALY 217 line, the 332d, arrived in Italy from France, the Red Cross made our soldiers welcome, provided coffee for them at the stations through which they passed on the long journey overland ; at the place of detraining in the war zone they were met with something hot to drink, something to smoke, and a temporary hospital. Likewise, when these men took their place in the Une, Red Cross Home Service men went with them, following them across the Piave in the victori- ous advance against the Austrians. The story of Italy's complete and brilliant victory over Austria in the closing days of October, and the rapid forward march into and beyond the reconquered, devastated districts, forms the culmination of the story of our Red Cross work in Italy. It was a victory upon which every hope had centered, toward which all of the long effort of Italy and those associated with her brave soldiers and her patient, enduring people had been devoted, but when it came it was so much greater than any reasonable anticipation could have foreseen, so much more complete and rapid, that its immediate effects were well-nigh overwhelming. After a stubborn resistance, the Austrian line in the mountains and on the plain broke, and then followed the utter rout of the enemy. Our ambulances and rolling kitchens with our officers and men swept forward with the ItaUan troops. It was difficult to keep up with the advance, so difficult, for instance, that our American regiment out- stripped its commissary and for three days practically subsisted, contented, happy, and victorious, on the light stores that the Red Cross with its more mobile trans- portation was able to bring up across the crowded pontoon bridges and over the shell-torn roads. In the year that the Austrian, German, and Hungarian troops had held the northern provinces of Italy, they had systematically despoiled the remaining inhabitants of their possessions. It had been a year of slow starvation for those 218 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR who, unfortunately, had been unable to escape, with food growing more and more scarce. When the final rout came the enemy took all that was left. It became a case of gen- eral loot : shoes were taken from the feet of citizens ; women were robbed of their clothing; all of the supplies of food were commandeered, and what had been slow starvation changed to acute suffering and death from want of something to eat. The Italian Army of fifty-three divisions, the French and English with three divisions each, and the 332d American Regiment pursued the rapidly fleeing enemy. All the railroads were torn up and the bridges destroyed, so that all supphes had to pass through the narrow neck of the bottle represented by the temporary pontoon bridges over the Piave and then be transported by camion over roads which were choked with moving troops and guns — wretched roads neglected by the enemy and filled with pits from heavy artillery fire. There was small opportunity at that moment of vital military emergency for Italy to take care of the starving, shivering civilian population ; and it is probably no exaggeration to say that the opportunity for service which then came to the American Red Cross was the greatest and most urgent it had during all its Italian experience. In some places the trucks of the American Red Cross laden with provisions entered a town within a few hours after the Austrians had quitted it; rarely did more than forty-eight hours elapse between the departure of the enemy and the establishment of a Red Cross center for distributing food — condensed milk, soups, beans, peas, sugar, and often, salted beef. Pitiful stories of cruelty, oppression, and long privation were told by these unfortunate people, day after day, as they stood in line before the Red Cross distributing stations, and many and fervent were the blessings upon America as they received the life-giving THE STORY OF ITALY 219 food from the hands of men and women in the uniform of the Red Cross. With the signing of the Armistice following upon Austria's utter defeat there was thrust upon Italy a new problem of large proportions — the problem of feeding, clothing, and transporting Italian prisoners of war released by the cessation of hostihties. Austria — anxious to be freed of the burden of their care — turned these men loose without direction, without system, and without preliminary arrangements. They came from prison camps by tens of thousands, making their way south, as best they could, on trains as far as the trains would go, then on foot by road and field and mountain pass, a hungry, half-clad, ragged army, weak from long confinement and insufiicient food. Over the Alps and down upon Trieste at the head of the Adriatic and upon the devastated, suffering redeemed districts they poured, strag- gling into the cities and towns. The city of Trieste, which more than five hundred years before had fallen into Austrian hands but had remained, through many vicissitudes, Italian at heart and in speech, was the objective of many of these released prisoners. A few thousand came the first day, more the next day, and still more each succeeding day until, finally, they stood shoulder to shoulder a vast unorganized hungry army of many thousands, crowded into the only space where they could be put, — the public shipping docks. At the time Trieste was cut off by raihoad ; there were almost no ships available ; and the mere problem of feeding the liberated city, rejoicing in its new freedom, was taxing every resource without the added burden of this army of men who had suffered many hardships, who could not be moved, and whose number constantly increased. As fortune would have it, however, a Red Cross "rolling kitchen" with two Americans had followed the troops from the Piave far to the east, and in the first hours of the Armis- 220 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR tice pushed on through the Austrian lines and, skirting the sea, reached Trieste overland with a stock sufficient for, perhaps, 2000 rations of soup. These men at once took up their station in the concentration camp, and while one of them served the soup the other got on board a torpedo boat and went to Venice for more Red Cross supplies. Our Venice representative with a deputy commissioner from Rome arrived in Trieste the same day and made arrange- ments inamediately to cooperate with the mihtary author- ities. From that time on until the men were reformed and disposed of, — a period of about one month, — the Red Cross, working always with the approbation of the Italian authorities and aided for a time by a committee of Trieste ladies, relieved the situation. By camion overland and by sea provisions were sent from our warehouse; other pro- visions were brought by the British Red Cross. Clothing was brought and the army of the repatriated, crowded, sick, and hungry, in that provisional concentration camp by the sea, began to emerge from its long nightmare of Austrian prison camps and to experience once more the joy of liberty and life among people of their own nation and its allies who, in spite of the urgent need among themselves, had the spirit and willingness to provide for these soldier sons of Italy who had come back home again in the hour of victory. In the reconquered districts, meanwhile, and in the land of Italia Redenta, upon which for centuries Italy had looked as provinces lost to her that would some day be restored, foodstuffs were supplied, hospitals refurnished, and the sick visited. The progress of events ever carrying the work into the towns of the Dalmatian Coast across the Adriatic. The work in all this newly opened territory, with normal means of transportation utterly lacking, gave to the Amer- ican Red Cross an opportunity to show again its effective- ness as an organization for emergency relief and, by the very THE STORY OF ITALY 221 nature of its organization, the relief was forthcoming more quickly than could have been possible through the more complex governmental or military machinery. The result, seen so often in the war, was typical not alone of Red Cross activity in Italy, but in all countries. While attention was centered on the territories liberated by the victorious armies and while effort was concentrated there, the work went on throughout all Italy of caring for the women and children who were sufferers from the war. New activities were added. One entire new department be- gan its work during this period : the Department of Tuber- culosis, consisting of experts sent from America by the Red Cross to cooperate with the Italians in combating the rav- ages of the disease which, through conditions attributable directly to the war, has become of even greater menace. The cessation of hostilities brought about a change in Italy, as elsewhere in Red Cross work, as there was no longer need for many of our military activities. Wherever pos- sible and advisable the activities of the Red Cross were turned over to the Italian authorities and to duly con- stituted Italian societies — a process made easy of fulfill- ment by reason of the close association in the work between ItaHans and Americans; moreover, nearly all of the chil- dren's institutions estabhshed by the Red Cross were being carried on by Italians, as wherever it was necessary, provision was made for these institutions during the period of adjustment. In all cases the American Red Cross ful- filled its obligations, express or impHed ; and even though our personnel are to-day no longer on the ground minghng with those who had come to be their friends, nevertheless the spirit of the work is going on, providing a lasting bond between our two countries — a result in which not only the devoted workers of the Red Cross in Italy but every supporter of the Red Cross in America may, with just pride, claim his or her share. CHAPTER XVII GREAT BRITAIN Activity of the British Red Cross — The London Chapter — Com- mission to Great Britain — Tuscania Tragedy — Red Cross Sta- tions on the Irish Coast — Otranto Disaster — Work in Camps and along Lines of Communications — Hospital Work — Camp Service of America Transplanted to England — London Workrooms — London "Care Committee" — Communication Service — Multi- farious Duties — Library Committee — Grosvenor Gardens, a Center — "Our Day" of the British Red Cross — Gift to the British Red Cross. HOWEVER much I may have taken advantage of the rather exceptional opportunities that I had of observ- ing the manifold sacrifices — be it financial, moral, or military — that Great Britain made to strengthen her sup- port of her Allies, my good friends the British would prefer, I know, that I should not enumerate them. But for all their modesty the soldiers of the American Army know what the British did in France ; the men of the American Navy know full well what the British did for us in the transpor- tation of our Armies and in the moving of our supphes ; and the Red Cross knows, as neither the Army and the Navy can know, how ungrudging was the measure of British achieve- ments in labors of Mercy at a time when her own resources in man-power and money were taxed to the breaking point. There was no scene of suffering, whether near by or distant, in Belgium or Baikalia, France or Mesopotamia, Italy or Palestine, wherein Great Britain did not bear the largest part of the burden of relief. From the early days of the 222 GREAT BRITAIN 223 War the members of the British Red Cross, never ruffled or flurried, went about performing their difficult task in that unostentatious manner that is so characteristic of their race. And no matter whether the Americans pitched their tents along the northern shores of the White Sea or beside the southern waters of the Black Sea or anywhere else, they were sure to find that an encampment of the British Red Cross had preceded them. Whatever disagreements, to put it mildly, may have been fated to the two great English-speaking nations in the past, there can be no question that Great Britain, from the King to his last stout soldier, has been our close friend and good Ally all through the Armageddon that has now ended. Quite naturally, therefore, it was our appreciation of this friendship, together with the knowledge of the magnitude of the British efforts, that had so much to do with the spirit in which the work of the American Red Cross was begun in Great Britain. For some time British activities had enjoyed our intelligent help in England, not a few of our men having foreseen our eventual entry into the war. Indeed, it is a well-known fact that more or less definite plans were made for the estab- lishment of our work in England — chiefly through the organization of a London Chapter — before the declaration of war in April, 1917. So that when the tide of American soldiers began to flow through England, it was clear that we had in that country a great natural center for our work on behalf of our troops, even though it offered little protection against the bombing planes. And, in time, as we all know, this center became a great distribution depot for our men until we had established adequate facilities on the French coast. In October, 1917, the War Council appointed the Com- mission for Great Britain. Scarcely had it arrived at its post before its Commissioner made a large donation to the British Red Cross. It was nothing more than an act of 224 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR civility, and the War Council proceeded to vote three more appropriations in rapid succession, amounting to $4,750,000, to enable the British Red Cross to expand its work still further. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to imagine that a people, who had given for one war purpose and another until giving was very hard, should have shown, as indeed they did, a hvely appreciation of our gift. It was not long, however, before the wisdom of our promptly setting up the American Red Cross organization in England was made manifest when it was suddenly decided to brigade American troops with the English in Northern France. Thousands and tens of thousands of American soldiers thereafter went to England, and nobody at that time could foretell how many of those who reached France would be borne back on hospital ships to Dover and Folkestone and Southampton, — towns which, as every Englishman will tell you, had had more than their share of that sort of thing. In the midst of these preparations there suddenly came the news that the Tuscania had been sunk by a submarine, off the Irish Coast. No sooner had the first tidings of this disaster reached London than a little company of Red Cross men were rushed to the scene. In true American fashion they went strenuously to work, helping to equip the survivors, supplying money for needful things, talking with the men, and writing letters home for them ; in short, doing every- thing that was necessary and helpful to relieve their anxieties until the last train-load had left the httle Irish village. Obviously, since this was a new experience for us, most of the troops who came through safely were quartered at five British Military Camps in the North of Ireland, where all their needs for clothing and other things were supplied from the British Red Cross stores under an American Red Cross guarantee. Necessities were purchased wherever they could be obtained, and each man was not only fully supplied but had an extra bag of good things when he boarded the boat GREAT BRITAIN 225 at Belfast to complete his journey to his camp in England. When it was learned that nearly all of the 107 officers on the Tuscania lost their outfits, the Red Cross at once advanced $17,000 to enable them to reequip. Nor must it be supposed that this disaster did not teach us anything; far from it. From that time on there were provisions at half a dozen Irish stations for six thousand men in case the submarines should score another hit off those difficult coasts. Arrangements were also made for prompt billeting of any number of men, and squads of Red Cross motor cars were kept in readiness for the transport of workers and emergency supplies. And that the American Red Cross had certainly taken time by the forelock in establish- ing these Irish Emergency Stations and preparing for every possible contingency — not only in Ireland but along the shores of England and Scotland — was soon shown by the terrible Otranto disaster that followed. It was after this tragedy that the Army gracefully acknowledged its obligation to the Red Cross through the Commander of the American Forces in Great Britain. "The first thing we did," said General Biddle, ''was to go to the Red Cross for material and suppHes ... we in the army feel a gratitude to the Red Cross which is hard for me to express in words." And praise from the Army, to paraphrase the well-known saying, is praise indeed. But it must not be thought that the other departments were not at work in the camps and along the lines of communi- cation. Effort was concentrated in an attempt to bring an atmosphere of home into the life of every American soldier and, particularly, to surround the sick and wounded with it. The hospitals for American wounded had to have a thor- oughly American personnel, and the patients back from Northern France found themselves in the sympathetic hands of American doctors, surgeons, and nurses, to say nothing of the smiling Red Cross women ''Visitors." 226 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR In regard to hospital work of the American Red Cross, it is necessary for me to go back to the time of the arrival of the Commission in England. This was, of course, work that would brook no delay and the Commission opened its first hospital within a few weeks at Mossley Hill, Liverpool. From the very first day of its installment there it was filled with Americans who had been taken ill on board the incoming transports. In more ways than one it was a distinct achieve- ment on the part of our people ; for otherwise our soldiers and sailors would have had to be taken to the British hos- pitals in the vicinity. Another hospital was early estabhshed at Paignton in sunny South Devon, which was taken over in January, 1918, from an American Committee which had established it as far back as 1914 for the use of British privates. Like many similar enterprises in England and France, this hospital was in danger of being discontinued from lack of funds. After assuming responsibility for it, we arranged to leave it to be used by British privates until it was needed for American soldiers a few months later. There was a similar institution at Lancaster gate in London for officers which was taken over with the same understanding. In this connection, it would be a mistake not to include St. Catherine's Lodge in London. This house had been given by an American for the duration of the war, together with a gift of fifty thousand dollars for equipment, and was occupied by British officers until the American began coming back from the hard fighting of the late summer. It was con- ducted in conjunction with the famous British Orthopedic hospital at Shephard's Bush. By all odds the most impressive American Red Cross hos- pital in England was located at Salisbury Court, not far from Southampton. It was opened with about 400 beds, but had facilities for about three thousand more. It was in the park of one of the most beautiful country estates in GREAT BRITAIN 227 England, and had a mile of waterfront along the Hamble. Around the Manor House our Red Cross began building acres of hut wards, a separate isolation hospital, and large buildings for the medical and surgical staff. And, as often is the case in England, there were trees of the great-grand- father type on this 186-acre estate, and from which, by the way, much of the heavy timber was taken for the hospital buildings. Well might a wounded soldier feel that he had the best chance in the world of convalescing successfully in a hospital situated in the loveliest of the English picture coun- try, with boating, fishing, fresh milk and eggs, and the prod- ucts of a 10-acre vegetable garden to tempt him back to hunger and health ! In some ways, perhaps, the most pretentious of all the American institutions in England was the Naval hospital in Park Lane in London. Built by a South African dia- mond king, this big marble mansion occupied an entire block, and was used during the first years of the war as a hospital for British officers before it was taken over by the Red Cross to provide a place for the officers and men from our warships. Another London hospital was that in Kensington Palace Gardens, the former residence of an Indian prince; and a little way out of London was the magnificent Lingfield rest house for convalescent officers. It gives me pleasure to recall that among other kind thoughts on the part of the British Red Cross, it offered to build for us a model war hospital in the Royal Park at Richmond, which work of construction was just starting when the Armistice made its continuance unnecessary. In summing up I must not neg- lect to say that our Commission also established tent hos- pitals to accommodate men suffering from minor ailments in about fifty small American cantonments in England. While the needs of the sick and wounded were being thus provided for, another large section of Red Cross personnel 228 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR in England was devoting its attention to the soldiers who were not ill. These were pouring into England by the thousand, shipload after shipload, in never ending streams. Needless to say these men had no aches and no pains ; they needed no bandages, no sphagnum moss, and no ether ; but what they did want was the old comfortable familiar things which they had seen the Red Cross doing along the hne of communication in the States, and the Red Cross saw to it that they got it hkewise in England. As a matter of fact, our whole Camp Service, with every familiar feature, was transplanted from America to England by a Red Cross man who knew it backwards and forwards. He saw to it that a homelike Red Cross headquarters was set up in every camp ; and that we had the same familiar type of Field Director from New York or Boston or Chicago or Ohio, ready to do anything or get anything. Let me take a few figures from the record to let you know how prodigiously this Camp Serv- ice figured in the hfe of the American Army. The record shows that in one month there went out from the Red Cross storehouses to the American fighting men on their way to the front the following supplies : 30,000 sweaters ; 2000 blankets ; 10,000 razor-blades ; 500,000 paper napkins ; 5,000,000 cigarettes ; 3000 pairs of socks ; 10,000 pairs of gloves; 300,000 boxes of matches; 8000 pounds of soap; 2000 pounds of chocolate ; 50,000 sticks of chewing gum ; 10,000 tubes of tooth paste; and other things ad in- finitum. As for the canteens — they were along the railways and in the camps and always had the best British war bread and the toothsome ''Chicago ham" and '4amb-chop" and chocolate and all the rest of the innumerable other things at hand. Our supplies, of course, required considerable storage space, although nothing like that in Paris. Nevertheless there were three large warehouses in London, two in Liver- pool, and more in Glasgow and in Edinburgh and various GREAT BRITAIN 229 English and Irish cities, and their contents all went to our soldiers. On the whole our Red Cross in England had every right to feel that they took as good care of the soldier on their side of the water as we did on our side, if allowance is made for the fact that in England, however hospitable and considerate her people, facilities there were not comparable with those at home. Nor did an American soldier ever have to lose sight of the Red Cross on his journey to the continent. Just as the Red Cross had been the first to meet him when he landed in England and last to bid him good-by when he embarked for France, just so it again welcomed him on the French dock and took him in charge. On each succeeding visit I made to England during the war I was impressed with the fact that the Red Cross in England was really a good deal like, if not precisely a replica of, our Red Cross at home : the Chapter was there, the work- rooms, the busy fingers, the flying needles, and the gauze for bandages. The London workrooms were a modest affair at first, but in a few months they grew to 30 vigorous branches with 2000 workers turning out 300,000 articles a month. When a call came for 2,250,000 surgical dressings of a special tjrpe, they were turned out at the rate of 150,000 a week, and the whole order was finished long before the time set by the Army. With branches everywhere throughout England, the London Chapter had what was called a ''Care Committee, " composed of American women who were notified as soon as an American soldier arrived at any hospital in England, and the members of this Committee, I am told, looked after 10,000 American soldiers on an average in a month, estab- lishing communication with their famihes and providing all the httle things that go to make life in a hospital more bearable. 230 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Conimunication Service also was maintained at a high level of effectiveness. Home Service — which somebody dubbed the "Trouble Bureau" — was as busy in England as it was everywhere else, and everyone knows how busy this Department can be. Moreover, a large staff of searchers was enrolled by our Home Communication Service in Eng- land, and in one single day they secured complete records of more than a thousand American soldiers in British hos- pitals ; and what is more it did not fail to gather detailed information concerning each and every one of them. As may be easily seen there were all sorts of odds and ends of kindly work for the Red Cross to do. The schedule was never exhausted. Those whom it served, British as well as American, included not only officers and men but war workers, soldiers' families, and slum babies. Eight mater- nity centers were opened, and the Red Cross maintained a considerable amount of health and welfare work among the children of half a dozen crowded cities. Working in con- junction with local associations in London, it dealt with 500 cases of aggravated shell-shock among children after the German air raids ; and it provided money to send those most in need of quiet to homes in remote rural districts. Then there was om* Library Committee in London, first organized by the London Chapter. It dispensed from its headquarters upwards of ten thousand books monthly to soldiers. This feat may be said to have aroused the interest, if not envy, of His Majesty King George V whenever he visited an American camp or hospital. He is represented as being unable to understand how our convalescents re- ceived the American papers so promptly. I do not know, of course, what explanation was given to him, but all Americans will understand, I think, when I say that the Red Cross saw to it. Grosvenor Gardens was the center of Red Cross war activities. The organization occupied five or six buildings GREAT BRITAIN 231 close to the American Army and Navy Headquarters as well as the Embassy. And how busy these Red Cross buildings were during the height of their activity may be judged from the fact that their total budget reached nearly a million dollars a month. It is almost a pity that I have not space for the items of this budget, for they reflect clearly the tremendous increase in the number of men sent over during the latter months and the corresponding increase in Red Cross activity which spread rapidly to the remotest corners of the British Isles. Thus the canteen service installed large canteens at Southampton, Edinburgh, Bir- mingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Winchester, Leicester, Derby, Romsey, and Chester, as well as hospital exchange canteens in fifteen places. The items in the general budget included provision not only for hospitals and camps but such things as officers' clubs, camp warehouses, shower-bath buildings, garages, portable houses for infirmaries, hospital theaters, and so on. On October 25 the indefatigable British Red Cross had what is called "Our Day, " which is the date set apart for its annual drive for funds. It was our good fortune to start it off with a rush the night before when the Commissioner of the American Red Cross for Great Britain, at a Red Cross dinner given in their honor, handed to the Treasurer of the British organization a check for five hundred thousand pounds — two million, three hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars at the then current rate of exchange — as a subscription from the American Red Cross. Many distinguished British and Americans attended the dinner. Towards its close our Commissioner, in a few happy words, told his attentive hosts how grateful we Americans were for the great and generous service of the British Red Cross in placing at his disposal almost their entire organization. "I can cite countless instances," he went on to say, ''of your valuable assistance . . . and we should be sadly lacking 232 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR in appreciation if we did not make some effort to show our gratitude." The remarks of the Commissioner — as all who were present have testified — expressed so succinctly the appre- ciation of our people for the stupendous and ever increasing effort during four years of war on the part of the indomitable men and women of Great Britain, that there is no need for me to give here the contents of the letter which I sent with the check on behalf of the American people to the represent- atives of the British Red Cross and the Order of St. John. In conclusion, suffice it to say that no American could have been in England or the War Zone without a realization that no words could adequately express his admiration for the glorious part that England played towards bringing victory to her Allies and to herself. CHAPTER XVIII RUMANIA ^ Appalling Conditions — American Red Cross Forces Fight Disease — Commission Treated with Courtesy by the Russian Government — No Transportation for Relief Supplies — Program of First Mission — The Story of her Majesty, the Queen — Agents Sent to Russia for Food — Food Brought to Jassy — Story Told by a Rumanian Newspaper — A Call to Washington for Supplies — Comprehensive List of Hospital Supphes — Supplementary Cablegram — Shipments by Order of War Council — Departure of Five Members of the Commission — British and American Red Cross Forces Cooperate — Some Supplies from the British Red Cross — An American Christmas — Carloads of Hospital Supplies and Food from America — Roman Hospital Taken Over from the British — Material for Clothing from Russia — Relief Station at Jassy — A People Dying for Principle — Distribu- tion at Sascut — Red Cross Aids Government Work for Orphans — Comfort and Healing for Thousands — End of Work of Commission — Members of Commission Decorated by Queen — Cable from Queen on Departure of Commission. IN the chapters of unhappiness which German-made war has written, there is none, to my mind, more pathetic than that of Rumania. Geographically, that country is a part of the Balkans whose mountain passes, since the days of the Caesars, have resounded without ceasing to the clash of arms. Battered by Romans, Turks, and Austrians, traded upon by Greeks, Russians, and Prussians, she has held fast to her place on the Danube, to her oil fields and her salt mines, her honesty of purpose and her faith in God. Here is a nation skilled in arms but which has no need for capital punishment. Here is a people which, even amid the 233 234 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR horrors of destructive war and in the clutches of starvation, maintained and expanded its system of compulsory educa- tion; a country where there are petty misdemeanors but no crime. Subject for divers periods to the Moslem, it remains a Christian nation. Surrounded by Slav, Goth, Vandal, and Turk and, although invaded times without '\ number, it has still in its veins the blood of Trajan's soldiers. - It remains a Latin race. To understand the dislike and rancor of the Teuton powers towards Rumania, one has merely to recall to mind that Rumania has a Hohenzollern king and that it was the people of Rumania who indorsed the Allied cause. In justice to the King, however, it must be said that once the decision was made, he loyally acquiesced and won the respect of his people and those of the Allied countries by his coura- geous leadership in the midst of disaster. The ambition of the Rumanians was to recover their ancient province of Transylvania and restore to their own household the popu- lations suffering under notorious Austrian misrule. With this prime purpose in view at their first entry into war, they drove their armies through the Austrian opposition into Transylvania in the autumn of 1916, and with the re- mainder held watch upon the Danube against the Bulgarians, who were massed to the south. But the Rumanian arma- ment at the opening of the war was of German manufacture and, obviously, could not be replaced. Again, their third province, Dobrudga, was by the terms of alliance to be defended by Russia, who, as we all know, failed in her compact. And Russia's failure in her part of the task spelled disaster to the Rumanian contingents on the west. German forces were added to the Austrians, and together they drove the Rumanian armies back into Wallachia; they bombarded Bucharest, and with its fall and the removal of the court to Jassy there began the Rumanian exodus into the northwest. RUMANIA 235 Moldavia is a little province no larger than the state of Connecticut, and it was at once filled with miUions of people who had httle or nothing to eat or to wear. This was in the beginning of December, 1916, — and Rumania has a climate, it is well to note, that is not unlike that of middle and lower Canada. When in 1917 the American Red Cross went into Rumania, its army was holding with grim tenacity the Molda\4a boundaries, but machine guns could not block the progress of the invisible legions of disease. Every condition in the overcrowded, underfed remnant of Rumania, that still was free, was a standing invitation to this most deadly of the forces of war. At first came pneumonia, then typhus with a toll alone of 1000 lives, which was followed by recurrent fever and smallpox, all traveling with fatal swiftness through the crowded thoroughfares of Jassy and other towns, and along the country roads where the little villages joined one another. The uncomplaining, half- clad refugees, huddled like animals in their dugouts, struggled to keep the cold from pinching their lives out. They were consumed by vermin, the chief and efficient distributors of pestilence. In these wretched retreats the dead lay with the living, and hunger, the last executioner, waited at the doorway for such as might by miracle escape. There were two feet of ice and snow through that awful winter, and children, whose covering consisted only of a single cotton garment, went up and down crying for food until the clutch of the cold at last strangled their crying and put an end to their hunger. The dead were everywhere in the Jassy streets ; in the wards of civil hospitals patients were frozen to death. This was the price the Rumanian people paid for casting their strength into a cause that seemed to promise a united n'ation, hving its simple hfe with work in a place of freedom. When the Red Cross went to lend what help it could to 236 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Rumania and its army at the front, the soldiers were well- ordered and intent upon their purpose, but the Russians were yielding to the spirit of disorder which followed the revolu- tion. Wherever they were quartered, there was filth. The manure piles from their horses Uttered the streets of the villages. The Russians drove the people out of their houses and took up residence in their stead ; they invaded the hospitals and slept beside patients who were ill with contagion, and they consumed eternally the food supply, while the Rumanian peasantry starved and died. The people in the villages back of the Unes had no shoes and no stockings ; the refugees slept in the fields, exposed to the pitiless winds. There was httle left to sustain Ufe nor medical care to sustain what there was of it, for the doctors were in the army or had succumbed to disease. A fortunate hamlet here and there had bread twice a week, while others had none at all. There were people in these miserable districts who subsisted hke the beasts, by gnawing the grass and roots of the fields. In Beltiu, a village in the district of Putna, our Red Cross visitors reported the most gruesome conditions. They found in one house three children whose father was at the front and the mother had died from typhus. A girl of ten was trying to care for the other two, one of whom lay dying on the floor of starvation. The third had only a ragged shirt which partly covered her and whose httle body was no more than a framework. There was no one to help them — three httle souls flickering out. ''It was a tragic picture," our representative wrote, "of famine and disease from which even the Rumanian officer was forced to turn away." Another report told of a dilapidated house with the roof full of shell-holes and the glass all shattered from the windows, and in which ten persons were crowded in squalor and RUMANIA 237 misery. There was no bedding except some bags. The tenant was an old woman whose husband had just died, but she had three sons in the army. She was a mere specter. There was not even a handful of cornmeal in the house. One child of three lay under the stove in which there Ungered dying embers of a little fire ; the other nine were strewn about the place. Hunger-stricken, horror- stricken, waiting the death-stroke from shell-fire or pestilence, trusting in the bravery of the Rumanian Army to guard them from harm, complaining not at all, burying at night their poor Uttle possessions to save them from the Germans — these were the wretched people for whom Marie of Rumania, granddaughter of Queen Victoria, sacrificed earthly riches and gave gladly the best years of a gifted and beautiful life. In the first crowded months when the Red Cross War Council faced its problem of carrying relief to a world over- whelmed with suffering, the word that came out of Rumania had been sorry enough ; but by the time the Red Cross Mission which was dispatched in August had traversed the long way to the scene of its labors, Rumania had become a tragedy, the more heartbreaking because it was played out in stoical silence and with unwavering faith. All know that in our devotion to the niceties of surgical science we demand the perfection of sterilization ; but the wounds of soldiers in Rumania, torn by German missiles, were being dressed with whatever was available. Rumanian children swarmed the streets with stomachs and feet swollen from dropsy; pellagra claimed its victims by thousands. To reach Rumania, the Red Cross Mission was compelled to journey by Vladivostok and cross the long reaches of Siberia. It was met with every courtesy by the Russian government, but underneath the visible surface of its wartime life, Russia, like every other Allied country, was honey- combed with German intrigue and peopled with German agents gnawing Uke rats at the underpinning of the state. 238 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Russian railroads, for the most part in the secret control of Germany, lagged and miscarried in their labor of supplying the Russian troops. On the wharves of Vladivostok were lying milhons of dollars' worth of supplies for the Russian soldiery which should have been deUvered three years before. Already, the great clumsy body which had been Russia, was tottering to its fall ; and in the midst of the unrest there came to the surface the ancient hatred of Rumania, which had been put away when the Rumanians entered into the Entente. Assiduously nourished by the German agents, this hoary grudge wrought itself out in the studied delay of Rumanian supplies, the failure of the Russian officials to ship, even, into Rumania, the food for maintenance of their own troops. As a result, Russia, a well-nigh inexhaustible granary, was herself starving, and with munitions awaiting them some- where, the Russian peasant soldiers confronted with bare hands the merciless artillery of the Huns. In this light, it is not difficult for me to understand why the Red Cross Mission was ushered with all politeness and the greatest possible expedition into Rumania but thereafter could secure almost no transport for the material of rehef. There was no access to the suffering Rumanians after the reverses of 1916, save over the endless roads of Russia, with the invisible German clutch upon them all. Slowly, but surely, the patriotic people of a brave Uttle country were being starved into the arms of the Central Powers. Behind them Turkey, Bulgaria, and the Sea; on the north a Russia which had played them false and was even now on the brink of a German peace ; and to the west, the Hun, taking fuel from the Rumanian oil wells, feeding on the Rumanian harvest, harrying the devoted army, and through its Russian agents stopping the supply of the simplest necessities. Seemingly, the doom of Rumania was written, even then, in letters so large that no man could RUMANIA 239 fail to read them. On the black horizon shone no ray of hope save that at last the Allied Arms might triumph and the dream of centuries come true. It had been the purpose of the Red Cross to perform a great labor of relief in Rumania, to care for her refugees and her fighting men, to supply nurses and doctors and food and clothing in abundance, to restore her strength and to uphold her courage, to help her stand firm as the pillar of Allied strength in southeastern Europe. But Germany had planned too well. From the time when the German divisions, fighting every step of the way, drove down into the rich plains of Wallachia, the days of Rumanian resistance were numbered. This fact was all too evident. Indeed, the Director of the Red Cross Mission has since informed us that he had had no illusions about the truth of this state- ment from the moment of his arrival at Jassy. It was the program, however, of this first Mission, to make rapid and thorough canvass of Rumanian needs, and after a few weeks to return and outline a broad general plan of action. When it came to Jassy, the Mission brought with it only the smallest of supphes. In that land of desolation and want they vanished in a day. It was not a question of studying the needs of Rumania ; the need of Rumania was a nightmare. Its voices were never silent. It stared in the streets; it prayed from the cadaverous faces of that misery-marked populace; the sick, the naked, and the starving were on every hand and winter was at the door. In all the tragic panorama of the War, there appears, perhaps, no sadder and nobler figure than Marie of Rumania, a Queen, to paraphrase, who is every inch a woman and who had been trying at the cost of every conceivable sacrifice, with a courage equaled only by her devotion, to stem the tide of suffering. Utterly fearless, she had gone among her starved and scourge-ridden people like an angel, carrying such food and clothing and medicine as she could gather 240 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR among those who themselves had nothing. Into the tj^phus hospitals where hundreds lay dying of smallpox ; into the horrible dugouts of the refugees; into every place where there was a mouth that she could feed or a soul that she could cheer, day by day went the Queen of Rumania, and yet, by some strange dispensation, she lived. But, although passing scathless herself, her youngest son, unfortunately, fell a victim to the typhoid in the early days of his struggle ; yet far from giving up from this new grief in her heart, she plunged all the deeper into her work of mercy. To our Red Cross Coromissioner this unhappy Queen told in detail the story of her country's misfortune, which had been crowded into one brief year. "The retreat from Wallachia," her Majesty said, "the sorrow and depression of a vanquished Army is a story filled with tragic grief; the winter was one of darkest horror, thousands of our soldiers died of sheer want. We could neither feed, clothe, warm, nor house them. Disease in its worst form fell upon us ; and being cut off from all aid, we struggled against odds we had no means of overcoming. Row upon row of graves and uncounted numbers of rough wooden crosses throughout the land stand as mute witness of a tale too sad to relate. Thousands of little children, left without father or mother, died before help could reach them, and I, the Queen, heard each cry of anguish, shared each terror, and divided each fear. Then spring came — and as by a miracle, our armies seemed to have a rebirth. The specters that had haunted our streets in winter became soldiers once more. Our thinned ranks were filled up. A new desire for vengeance and intense longing for homes taken away by the enemy steeled every heart for a new effort. But our newborn hopes were destined to wither away. The Russian revolution had sown discord and disorganization in the hearts of our nearest allies, and when the great hour for action came — the hour which our army had hungered for, and into which our troops had thrown themselves with a bravery that justified our dearest hopes — our neighbors failed us." In the files of the Red Cross, there are many declarations in various languages of gratitude for the great and the timely aid of the American people. It is doubtful, however, if ever there came a deeper note of thankfulness than that of RUMANIA 241 the Rumanian Queen and her suffering people for our work of rehef during the winter of 1917. ''But there was only one thing to do, " wrote the chairman of the Commission. ''To get food, medicine, and clothing from any source and in whatever quantity possible, in order to save what lives we could before disease and starvation and the winter should outstrip the German armies in the ruin of the land. . . ." Fortunately the Commissioner had some funds which had been placed in his hands for such casual use as might be required, and he requisitioned this for obtaining food. It was not, of course, a dietetic question. The need was for food, — anything that would sustain hfe. And the re- port shows that with all possible haste agents were dispatched to every corner of Russia, where starvation had already set in, to pry out from its hiding place whatever food the magic of money might discover. To Moscow, to Petrograd, to Odessa, and even distant Archangel, to every place that might afford a chance of victualment, they hurried at post haste. In Moscow they found flour and beans ; in Odessa they bought tons of dried vegetables; in the North they found five thousand barrels of herrings, and all these and other things they drove forward over the congested and dis- organized Russian railways through districts whose popu- lations were even then on the verge of civil war, with guards riding the "wagons" to fend off the hungry mobs in towns through which they passed. So at last when the food train rolled into Jassy, there was a storage house ready for its cargo, and in the heart of the city adjoining the national theater, a canteen was opened and equipped. All that were there unite in saying that it was indeed a sorry coterie — some five hundred and odd persons who came on the first day merely to satisfy their curiosity. For the Rumanian, near neighbor to the hard trading East, had Httle faith in the story that these strange Americans 242 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR would give away food for nothing. If it were true, they told themselves, then such people must be seen anyway, for such a phenomenon would never happen again. On the second and third days, however, the number increased until on the fourth day the American canteen was feeding two thousand people who without it would have died of starvation. In this connection I am sure that an excerpt from a Rumanian newpaper would be of interest. It read as follows : — "The hungry poor from the outskirts of the town, especially the women and children, began to assemble early in the morning in front of the shed, in which were also the kitchen and the store full of food brought from be- yond the ocean, from the country of friendly deeds, not of words, empty and illusive as the dust of the road. Every day the number of those who came from the borders of the town, the naked and hungry, increased. The distribution of the food begins at ten o'clock and lasts until three. Around the two tables there is room for a hundred and twenty people. All of these are in rags, and with faces emaciated to the bones. In one hour, about nine hundred can eat. The greater number were cliildren between six and twelve years of age. I have even seen mites only three or four years old, with shaggy hair, bare feet, and clothed in rags, out of which their thin little bodies protruded. Some came from as far away as the windmill where on the Tatarasi hill the white belfry of the church in the Eternitatia cemetery stands. Early in the morning they leave their shanties, half dug into the earth, and drag their rags through the dust or mud of the numberless little alleys toward the shed out of which daily flows the aroma of hot food. It seems as though the American mission had spoken the Biblical words of the Savior, 'Suffer little children to come unto Me.' And the cliildren, "Rath thin faces and naked feet, descend every morning from aU the suburbs toward the foreign Pity, which rises Uke a white Christ out of the midst of human evU." Was there ever an article that appealed more to the heart ? And what is more those present declared that this motley throng cheered the American flag, kissed the hands of the workers, threw things into the air, and wept and prayed and carried home morsels of food to their brothers and sisters, who were too weak to undertake the journey, while, almost a Q < I— t RUMANIA 243 simultaneously, I may say, the Commissioner was cabling us in Washington for supplies of every sort. Although hampered by the almost total lack of trans- portation, the relief of the refugees was already under way and advancing day by day. There was a crying need, of course, for some means of supplying hospital accommo- dations for the multitude of wounded and sick. Without these, it was plain, disaster would overtake the army, which was almost entirely bereft of any means of caring for its wounded men. Besides, the defection of Russia has brought a heavier blow than the military reverse : The hospitals, maintained by the Rumanian Red Cross on the front, had been swept away in the German deluge, and at best they had little enough of equipment. Moreover, Moldavia was so far from the original front that no possi- bility of retreat to it had ever been entertained, and no preparation made there for the establishment of hospitals. And when the retreat did come with its great lists of wounded, every school and other large building was utilized, but there was no equipment. For beds, they had coarse sacking stuffed wdth straw and only one sheet and one blanket to each bed. There was no adequate supply of fuel and the transport service, what there was of it, was all employed in army supply. It must not be forgotten, also, that Rumania had few railways. The highways were good but there were few cars, and the oil supply was in the hands of the enemy. Many of the oxen which did most of the heavy hauling of the country had been taken by the army and lost. Three million of them, along with propor- tionate numbers of horses and sheep, had been sold to Russia and Germany at the beginning of the war by men whose greed obscured their vision. In almost everything Rumania was beyond the possibility of self-help. She had no trained nurses — only willing women — and of her twelve hundred doctors, two hundred had died from 244 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR typhus, and a great number, not definitely known, had met death in battle. Indeed, so obvious and so vast was the lack of hospital accommodation that almost immediately upon the arrival of the Mission in September, the Director cabled a requisition to us in Washington for a comprehensive list of hospital supplies, which in condensed cable form covered nearly two closely typewritten pages. The list began with 250,000 yards of mattress cloth, ran through the entire range of simple drugs and essential instruments, and ended with spaghetti sufficient for 20,000 patients for six months. This fist was the minimum. Two days later, the following sup- plementary cable was filed : — Civil population worse condition. Three million in territory inhabited by one million. No clotliing, shoes, or material for same obtainable any price. Plainest food bought in Russia limited amount. Transport un- certain. No nourishing foods available for sick or wounded. Eighteen thousand orphans registered ; probably many more. All without clothes or shoes of any kind for winter. Unless warm clothing, shoes, or ma- terials with needle, thread, and accessories make same, sent immediately, these and many additional civilians must die this winter. Much sickness now. Some typhus. Severe epidemics inevitable this winter unless can obtain supplies and take prompt measures required prevent far- reaching disaster. Useless try handle situation without some one with authority and access to Government on ground with proper organization similar to Belgium look after transport, receive, and distribute supplies and spend what money can be advantageously used here and in Russia. Can probably secure cooperation of representatives of Allies here. Deem situation so serious am willing to remain all winter, organize, and handle matter if desired, provided can be assured substantial support. Will probably require several million dollars for effective work. Large part would be spent in America, remainder here. Details be sent later. Must have regular transport for definite supplies. Think we can arrange this in Russia if you can arrange ocean tonnage. Announcement of definite policy and appropriations would have most beneficial effect now. Spurred on by this revelation of the imperative need of Rumania, we of the War Council made haste to ship from RUMANIA 245 New York such hospital supplies and food as could be obtained. Shortly after this five of the members of the Commission, following the original program, returned to America; but the Chairman together with the remaining members stayed on as did the eleven doctors and twelve nurses. And this little force set out to cope with the dis- heartening task of Rumanian relief despite the fact that everything seemed against their success. But they did not have to struggle with this forlorn hope all alone : the British Red Cross fought side by side with them. This organization had undertaken a brave work of relief, but like the Rumanian Red Cross had been swamped by the conditions. Their doctors had made a canvass of all the districts in the little provinces and learned the sorrows of Rumania first hand ; they had traversed the front from Delli to the Carpathians and studied the needs of the makeshift hospitals where even bedding and food and hospital clothes were wholly lacking and the patients undernourished, and where used bandages and blood-stained garments were put back after the soldier's wounds were dressed. But for the betterment of these dire conditions, there was no hope save in shipments from the United States. All western Europe was struggling under a need of them which it could not supply. There was nothing left for them but to wait and to hope, while the poison of German intrigue and treachery increased from day to day the uncertainty of all dependence upon Russia. Meanwhile, the labor of civilian relief went on. By the New Year our Red Cross, in cooperation with the British Red Cross and Queen Marie, was feeding ten thousand people in Moldavia, and awaiting with such patience as it could the arrival of supplies which we had shipped to them. By good fortune the Director of the British Red Cross had in storage a quantity of condensed milk which he contributed for the feeding of infants ; while on our part attention was 246 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR given to the alleviation of the misery of the soldiers at the front. At Roman in the hospital the Red Cross gave something the patients had never dreamed of seeing — an American Christmas. Evergreens were brought down from the mountains, and candles were found in all sorts of places for their illumination. There were little gifts, such things as the workers of the Commission could find or manufacture ; there was food and songs to sing, and as if in despite of the misery that hung like a pall everywhere, there was the spirit of the Christmas over it all. To brighten the sky for a multitude of unhappy refugees, the Chairman of the Com- mission cabled us that he had given to the Queen just before Christmas for distribution the sum of 250,000 lei (about $20,000). Food of every sort and in lots both large and small was purchased wherever obtainable. There was a distribution two days before Christmas in Sascut of dried fish, sunflower oil, and cornmeal. Two hundred and sixty-eight families carried away supplies of food and plans were made for further dispensation through a committee of the Commune, the Notar, the village priest, the schoolmaster, and the chief of police, who were to furnish lists of the needy. A Belgian sugar refiner in the district and his wife attached themselves to the Red Cross and gathered every available scrap of old clothing and other supplies ; they established a Red Cross sub-depot in their house and visited the people of the surrounding country three or four days each week. They organized a company of young Rumanian women as relief workers, and when the first of March came, they were ready on the coming of spring to carry on the work on a larger scale. Through January the Red Cross had started to lend a hand to the government work for orphans. These constituted a large problem in themselves. The casualties of war and the ravages of disease had raised this menace to a terrifying proportion. Schoolhouses were secured which, formerly, had been used RUMANIA 247 as Army hospitals and in which during the preceding year hundreds of men had died from typhus. The slow process of cleaning and equipping these places had gone on steadily. The relief work in Jassy and many of the outlying districts was well organized though hampered by the fatal lack of supplies. The hospitals at Roman and in Jassy with their 500 beds were doing a distinguished work with the limited facilities available. The Red Cross, in the face of almost insm-mountable obstacles, had brought comfort and healing to the thousands of sufferers (and even dying people). In a land where there was no food it was feeding 40,000 people and turning out from its relief station clothing that saved unnumbered lives. It had reached through a sea of difficulties the firm ground of organization where it was ready to handle a great work of relief. From America, in November, there had come two car- loads of hospital supplies and one of food ; and with these and what remained of the British equipment, the Red Cross took over the British hospital at Roman, 60 miles from Jassy and 30 miles from the front. This single ship- ment was all that ever reached Rumania of the supplies which were sent forward by orders of the War Council in Washington. But even with such materials as these limited sources could supply all accounts agree that the Commission made of the Roman hospital by far the best institution of its kind in all Rumania. The British had turned it into a good establishment, heated by steam and lighted by electricity. Its function was that of a base hospital to which soldiers were removed after first treatment at the front. A number of civil cases were also taken. In the rear of the hospital were erected wooden barracks with sleeping accommodations for upward of a hundred orderlies. There were also a car- penter's shop, shoemaker's shop, machine shop, an outside swimming pool, a disinfector, a large laundry, two motor ambulances, two operating rooms, an X-ray laboratory, and 248 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR ocular and dental departments. The Thanksgiving Day celebration at the hospital, which the Queen attended, was an occasion long to be remembered. Once having got the Roman hospital into thorough opera- tion, the Red Cross undertook to establish a civilian hospital in an old palace in Jassy, a work which was well on the way to completion when the concentration of troops in Jassy made it necessary to take the building as barracks. The winter was now at its height, but the clothing problem had in a measure been relieved. From various places in Russia the Commission had secured some 400,000 yards of cloth, 100,000 spools of thread, 50 000 needles, half a car- load of buttons, and 50 sewing machines. The Red Cross Canteen at Jassy was operated in connection with a public triage — a bathhouse and disinfector ; and having cleaned and fed and restored to animate interest in life some thou- sands of starving women, the Red Cross opened in conjunc- tion with the canteen a clothing department. There women, as soon as supplies were obtained, were set to work in the hurried manufacture of simple clothing to save threatened lives. Thousands of garments w^ere manufactured, the Queen herself distributed many of them in the small country villages and, in addition, the utter lack of shoes was over- come by making simple moccasins from canvas and burlap, which proved a most satisfactory substitute. There were, at least, fewer frozen, bleeding feet in the streets and highways of Moldavia. The records show that at the relief station in Jassy where now food, clothing, disinfection, and medical attention were dispensed, 1200 persons were cared for daily from the date of its opening on February 25 up to March 9, when the Commission was forced to leave Rumania by the imposition of the German peace. Now that the suffering had, in a measure, been modified, every hand in Rumania was called into service. Widows and orphans and crippled soldiers joined in the work, carry- RUMANIA 249 ing Red Cross assistance to the needy when their own govern- ment was powerless. The American flag and the Red Cross emblem in every district were the signboards pointing the way to help. The heroic Queen traveled Rumanian roads in good and bad weather. There was no such thing in all Moldavia as public charity, for no one had anything to give away. They had lost it all. Charitable organizations, which had been amply endowed for whatever rehef was necessary in peace times, were hopelessly crippled by the terrific strain of war. Commercial stocks of food and cloth- ing had vanished and there was no hope of replacement. The greater part of the factory installation m Wallachia had been left behind in the retreat ; those in Moldavia were destroyed to save them from German hands. There was no oil for machinery, no cows to furnish milk for babies, no Russian ally. It was a people dying for a principle, no more, no less. With all their suffering, they made no complaint. The Army must have the best — all, if need be. In the desolate villages behind the front it was counted good fortune for a peasant family to get the entrails of an animal that had been slaughtered for the Army. The wretched people boiled this ofifal and made soup to keep the breath of life in them. The Army was in good order and would fight to its last soldier. It had no other purpose. But if Russia fell, every- thing fell. And then, indeed, the bell rang for the curtain. On the 9th of March, to save herself from the utter annihilation which Germany had promised for the little Balkan country's portion, Rumania gave up the struggle. It left her hemmed in by revengeful enemies and wdth the knowledge that Rus- sia, her former protector, had played her false in practically the last political act before she herself went down into an abyss of revolution and Bolshevism. The AlUed world laid no charge of bad faith at the door of 250 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Rumania. Her necessity was too obvious. She had tried and failed. In the trial she had stripped herself bare of ( every possession, and had lost by slaughter and disease about ^ten per cent of her population. With us such a pajnnent would mean ten millions of our people ! It is indeed to be hoped that Rumania's sacrifices be not wholly forgotten even in these days of short memories. Scarcely had Rumania yielded than the Germans ordered the immediate dismissal of all French, British, and American agents of relief from the country. It was folly, of course, to expect any reversal of this order. At the time of the Mission's departure Rumania's Queen cabled to Washington as follows : — "At this hour when tragic events leave my country defenseless in the hands of a revengeful and relentless enemy, my thoughts tm-n with grati- tude towards those who in anxious days, but when there was still hope, came to my aid. I wish once more to thank the American Red Cross for the splendid way in which it answered my appeal of a few months ago. The work the American Red Cross Commission did amongst our wounded and amongst the suffering population is unforgetable to me and my people. Now that my country has to remain alone and forsaken, sur- rounded by foes, I wish once more to raise my voice and to thank all those who helped me, and to ask that we and our nation should not be forgotten, although a dreadful and humiliating peace has been forced upon us. I ask of the great heart of America to remember Rumania, if even for a while. Strangulated, her cries will not reach it, and her tears will have to be wept in secret." There is little more of this sad story to be told. To the thoughtless, or those who think in numerals and have not the larger view of what the Red Cross purpose really is, it might appear that its mission in Rumania was a failure. But even these persons, I think, would not say so had they been among the fortunate ones who were present when Marie of Rumania conferred decorations on the members of our Mission. All of them have since said that they knew that the decorations were the only proofs of her gratitude that RUMANIA 251 the Queen had left to give, but it was easy to see that she exulted in the giving. On our part, the Commission put into the Queen's hands an order for food sufficient to feed several thousand persons for six months. And when the Commission took up the perilous road to the North through Russia, thousands of these people, who for centuries have forgotten no kindness and no injuiy, crowded the public square to say Godspeed to those who were leaving their un- happy country. It was a demonstration of a Nation's affection and an assurance that the memory of our efforts, however pitiful when contrasted with the need, will never fade as long as the Danube flows to the sea. CHAPTER XIX THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST Serbia — The Great Retreat of the Serbian Army — Reorganization of Army in June and July, 1916 — Conditions in April, 1917 — First Commission to Serbia — Hospitals Established — Shelter Provided — Cargo of Steamship Coesar Purchased — Rolling Canteens and Supplies for Army — Gift to Serbian Red Cross — Pitiful Plight of Prisoners — Tons of Farm Machinery and Tools Sent from America — $70,000 for Clothing for Serbian Prisoners — Food and Clothing from Red Cross Warehouses in Berne for Prisoners — 175,000 for Serbian Refugees in Bucharest — Help for Tuberculous Serbians in France, Switzerland, and Italy — 125,000 for Serbians m Siberia — Greece — Conditions in Greece when the War Began — Germany's Work in Greece through the Turk and Bulgar — Greeks Driven from Their Homes — Greek Red Cross Appeals for Aid — Allies Furnish Medical and Hospital Supplies — In the Islands of the iEgean Sea — American Red Cross Commission to Greece — Pales- tine — Cable from the American Committee for Syrian and Ar- menian Relief — British Relief Fund — Medical Units Established by British — Red Cross Commission Sails — Conditions Found in Jerusalem and Adjacent Country — Description of Relief Work — Total Appropriations by War Council to October 1, 1918. IN telling the story of the Red Cross in the East the dis- comforting thought is ever present in my mind that I may not dwell as long as I should like upon a scene as touch^- ing as that which concluded the report from Rumania. No sooner have I visualized the little station at Jassy and rejoiced, however vicariously, with the departing mission in their consciousness of a deed well done than I am called upon by the very nature of this book to depict scenes of 252 THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 253 suffering in Serbia and Greece, Palestine, and the Near East that would appear to be more poignant than anywhere else in Europe. Until our own entry into the struggle the Balkans, if the truth must be told, had been merely a name, a far-off place associated with rugged hills and beautiful embroideries; and, in a relief way, our only touch with it had been in the special Typhus Commission that went to Serbia in 1914. Serbia's role in the war may be fixed by events before and after the Great Retreat in the fall of 1915 — when the Serbian Army, hopelessly outnumbered, commenced its retirement with the snow three feet deep and the cold in the bleak Albanian hills almost unbearable. Soldiers were Uttle better clad than the wretched civilians who dropped in the snow and lay where they fell. The historic retreat of Napoleon's armies across the snowbound Russian plains from Moscow was less fearful. Of the Serb Army of 250,000 that had opposed the enemy at the frontiers, less than 100,000 reached the ultimate haven — Corfu, that lies like a fairy isle in the Ionian Sea. Fifty per cent of the civilians who fled out of Serbia died of starvation, disease, and exposure before help could reach them ; while of the remaining half, 20,000 found sanctuary in foreign lands, Corsica, Switzer- land, France, and Italy, and along the African coast. During the following year, great effort was made by the British and French governments, and sympathetic individuals every- where, to mitigate the sufferings of these homeless people who had been driven from their firesides to the ends of the earth. But I must not forget that it is of the Serbians in Serbia of whom I would write, the singing Serbs of the gentle hearts and genial firesides who, in the midst of a turbulent land, under a wise and generous government, have managed to preserve the autonomy of the Serbian States as well as its customs and traditions. 254 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR In June and July, 1916, the beaten army began to struggle out of Corfu, bolstered by allied support, reequipped and reclothed by allied funds. Many still suffered the effects of the retreat, and their physical stamina was not of the strongest ; but there were 30,000 Serbs at the front with the alhed forces that drove the Austrians from Monastir ! By April, 1917, there were 50,000 civiUan refugees in the little recaptured area, crowded chiefly into the shell-raked city and the wretched outlying villages; and there were 200,000 more scattered through the bleak plains of Mace- donia all the way to Saloniki. It was here in this region that the Red Cross found them in the summer of 1917, Uving in cellars, barns, churches, and mosques, subsisting as best they could, menaced by cold, hunger, and disease. The enemy had stripped the countryside of its grain, horses, cattle, food, and metals ; there was nothing, they say, not even a match with which to start a fire. Dearth, indeed ! To go into such desolation was like going into a wilderness. It was like making the world over again. The base of the Red Cross activity was, perforce, the Greek port of Saloniki that was having troubles enough of its own — with half of the city homeless after the great fire — without 10,000 additional refugees. Here the Red Cross established soup kitchens ; the sight of hot, appetizing food apparently conjured out of empty air seemed a mysterious feat to the natives ; barracks, sewing rooms, hospitals, and dispensaries were set up in accordance with the regular prescribed formula for the building up of civilian relief. Chaos enough there was in the city of Saloniki, more cosmo- politan than ever now with its narrow, hilly streets filled with strange, surging throngs ; with strange ships in its harbors and Turkish guns trained at its heart ; with strange soldiers in its streets and cafes and bazaars and always the cr3dng, hungry masses that the Red Cross had come to feed and comfort. A dismal, endless, hopeless task it seemed THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 255 and more wretched, somehow, than a similar task had seemed in other places. There was so little on which to build, either materially or spiritually. In the harbor of Alexandria, Egypt, lay the collier Coesar, loaded with food, clothing, and medicine, which had been sent by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian relief. Its destination had been Beirut on the Syrian coast, but operations in the Mediterranean had checked its de- parture. Of this the Red Cross took immediate advantage, buying the shipload of supplies outright and bringing them at once to the distribution point. This was more than timely; it was like manna from Heaven in this remote region which, inaccessible enough to the western world in normal times, was now struggling with the additional diflSculties of Turkish gunboats, Austrian submarines, and British mines. At this point, I take the liberty of making a slight digression in order to extend the gratitude of the Red Cross to the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief for its splendid cooperation in the Near East. This had been one of the first rehef agencies in the field endeavoring to salvage the thousands of star\'ing and homeless people along the coast of Palestine and ancient Judea. After our coming we were glad in many instances to profit by their experiences and to follow their example. What the Red Cross could not do the Armenian and Syrian Committee did ; territory untouched by the Red Cross was covered by them, and throughout there was the spirit of friendly understanding and cooperation and a happy dovetailing of enterprise at all points where they met on a common platform. It is therefore timely that due thanks be extended to this capable organization that contributed so largely to the relief so vitally needed in this desolate region. In Serbia proper the Red Cross centered its refugee work 256 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR in Vodena, a city half-way between Saloniki and Monastir, in which about 5000 refugees had found shelter. The first act of the Red Cross was the setting up of a fifty-bed hos- pital in a building supplied by the Greek Government; later, a second one of twice the capacity was established at Banitza, sixty-five miles from Saloniki. The villages about Monastir were crowded with home- less people who would not be dragged from their shattered firesides. To pamper this home-clinging spirit the Red Cross constructed a number of adobe houses on frame- works of wattles, a type of dwelling peculiar to all the Mediterranean countries and the Near East. In Saloniki, forests of tents were laid in the suburbs to shelter the fire victims, and milk was distributed regularly to the children. Clothing, shoes, and staple foodstuffs which they could not give to the penniless strangers within their gates, were purchased from the local shops ; and, in this way, the hungry were fed, the naked clothed, and the Red Cross became the wonder-worker of the East. For the troops, rolling canteens like those in use on other battlefronts were dispatched to the Serbian front ; motor trucks were ordered from Italy; and quantities of canvas for beds and hospital stretchers were purchased and made up. An artificial limb factory was started in Saloniki, while a staff of American dentists with ten fully equipped dental ambulances was sent from New York for service with the Serb armies. A sum of $50,000 was given to the Serbian Red Cross, which had moved its headquarters to Corfu, with a branch in Geneva. I have not yet mentioned the Serbian prisoners of war in Austria and Bulgaria. These, also, became the wards of the Red Cross, and theirs is yet another chapter in the story of terror and cruelty. There were 154,000 of them in cap- tivity, facing the Austrian winter without proper food or clothing. The Red Cross made an appropriation of $70,000 THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 267 to take care of their most vital needs, and tons of supplies soon began to move through Berne to Serbs in enemy prison camps. The story of these prisoners is an old one, and it were trite to dwell anew on prison camp hfe with its attendant horrors of pestilence, death, starvation, cruelty, and cold in a strange and friendless land. Many a Serb in his ransomed home to-day owes his hfe to the food sent by the Red Cross. In addition, generous appropriation was made for the sustenance and medical care of tubercular Serbs in France, Switzerland, and Italy. Thus the Red Cross intrenched itself in the hearts and hearths of Serbia. With the grand rally of the Serbian Army in the autumn of 1918, when all events moved towards the great chmax, the Red Cross was still there with its rolhng canteens and its comforts, although it was desolate enough at that, and sounds far more encouraging in printed words than it actually was, for the whole situation was hopeless and lacking in all those essentials that are absolute necessities to the efficiency of the spoiled and pampered westerner. It was a last, grand desperate effort, backed up by allied aid, against a staggering foe. The last bitter campaign was marked by great suffering among the troops. There were no women nurses, no anaesthetics, no surgical dressings save the pitifully small amount the Red Cross was able to supply, for the transportation problem was always an uncertain factor, one on which wagers could not safely be laid at any time. Tonnage was more precious than the jewels of a Rajah, and when it came to the loading of a rehef ship there was always a debate as to which should be given preference — food, clothing, medical supplies, or surgical dressings, each item being needed as badly as the other. If some were clothed, wounds were neglected ; if wounds were dressed, backs went bare or stomachs empty. Over 1600,000 was spent for relief supplies in Serbia, and even then, the Red Cross task was only half done. 258 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Looking down the long vista of her history, Serbia will find no page that is illumined with more valorous deeds and superhuman courage in the face of titanic odds than that which fills her r61e in the Great War — "Serbia that fights only for freedom and surrenders only to God." Of all the strange, incongruous settings that had to do with the transplanting of the Red Cross and its modern trappings, there have been none to compare with Greece — that cradle of art and classic antiquity, whose finger- prints are visible through the ages wherever men have tried to live greatly. Strange, indeed, it must have seemed to see the all too familiar bread lines and soup kitchens and dispensaries within the shadow of the towering Acropo- lis, white against the Athenian sky under the frown of Olympus or in the Daphne haunted glades of Tempe. The role of the Red Cross in ancient Hellas was confined almost entirely to civilian relief work, although this does not mean that its field there was a narrow one or in any way circumscribed. The hordes of destitute Greeks could not have been greater nor more forlorn had there been a wholesale enemy invasion of the Hellenic peninsula. Thou- sands of Greeks, living outside of Greece in Bulgaria and Turkey, became the objects of cruelest oppression and per- secution when, at the beginning of the war, it was decreed that every Christian should be driven from Islam at the point of the sword. The Twentieth Century reverted overnight to the Seventh, the shoddy cloak of tolerance fell from the shoulders of Turkey, and the Holy War was on as if there had been no surcease. Saladin rode again in defense of Acre. In 1914 Greece had just emerged from the Balkan struggle of 1912-1913 and had acquired by the treaty of Bucharest a portion of Eastern Macedonia, an indifferent land, un- THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 259 productive, peopled with refugees driven out of Bulgaria, or residents whose homes had been laid waste during the campaigns of the Balkan wars of those years. It was a barren countryside filled with a hungry, clamorous people. So Greece already had her refugee problem when the holo- caust of Europe took flame ; Belgium, France, and Serbia were old stories to her, and the war but served to enhance her difficulties. The poUtical position of Greece was a peculiar one. We are all familiar with the circumstances that led up to the abdication of King Constantine and the final decision of Greece to enter the war as an allied power in June, 1917. These civil disturbances had not served to heighten the morale of the people, and at the time of the appeal to the American Red Cross, Greece was a sad, tottering, hungry land, with swarms of her own people knocking at her gates for admittance, demanding shelter and food that she could not give. Countless stories have come from out of the East in regard to Bulgarian and Turkish atrocities, of hordes of women and children driven naked across the land, forced to march with- out food, clothing, or shelter under the pitiless desert skies — of young girls carried off into slavery, of massacres in the silent depths of Asia Minor, of Greek children kidnapped by the Bulgars and forcibly denationalized, and of countless other cruelties too numerous and too terrible to relate. Our task there was to salvage the unhappy remainder that knocked at our doors, faint with hunger, burning with fever, or driven insane by their experiences. When, at the close of the year 1917, the Greek Red Cross appealed for aid, an American Red Cross representative was sent from Saloniki to Athens to consult with the Greek Government and the Red Cross, while only a small com- mission was sent through the interior to look over the field. Of course the usual quota of relief supplies was in 260 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR order : food, clothing, surgical dressings, and medical needs, as well as hospital equipment, sewing machines, and uncut materials, hospital bedding, towels, linen, and ambulances. There were 50,000 Greek refugees in the islands of the iEgean Sea — those beautiful storied islands, lying like jewels on the bosom of the bright water, past which the Greek fleet had sailed on its way to lUium, past which the adventurous Argosy had run, whose shores are cloudy with almond blossoms in the spring! These wanderers were utterly destitute, having been driven out of Turkey with only the few poor rags that covered them. In the homeland, the mobilization of the forces had left the same economic problems behind as it did in other lands. After the Saloniki fire, still more homeless ones thronged the streets, while the civilian hospitals were being emptied to take care of the wounded. But the Red Cross had done so much it could do more. In the early emergency, fifty tons of general supplies were purchased from the Serbian Commission for use in Mace- donia, and at the end of September, 1918, the special Com- mission for Greece set out with a personnel of seventy. By that time, the whole situation in the Balkans had changed for the better : Bulgaria had capitulated ; the flag of the Christian had been raised over Jerusalem ; the Red Cross found itself in a more cheerful spiritual atmos- phere when the new Commission arrived at Saloniki. This, of course, was very close to the end of the war. With the obligations of the army removed, the way became at once easier and the Red Cross has since been steadily helping Greece back to her hearthfires. A good-sized appropriation was set aside for the rehabilitation of Greek refugees, while arrangements were made for the shipment of 320 tons of foodstuffs monthly for a period of three months, coming from Italian ports to the Piraeus and the Island of Mitylene. In the city of Athens, the children became the special THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 261 charge of the Red Cross as they have always been wherever the Red Cross has gone. Centers for the care of children of employed mothers were opened, and a daily milk ration provided for; while sewing rooms were opened not only in Athens but on the islands of Chios, Samos, and Mitylene in the iEgean Sea and in Serres, Kavalla, and Drama, the Macedonian centers of Red Cross work. In addition to this, a number of Greek women were given special training in care of children and home hygiene, — after the manner followed in France, — and by which the trained women in the role of visiting practical nurses could take the child welfare idea into the Greek homes. The Red Cross was also able to go into Bulgarian territory and give some com- fort to a number of Greek prisoners in internment camps there. The Red Cross came late to Greece, perhaps, but more than one report says that its presence had a most enlivening and heartening effect upon the people. Certainly, owing to the circumstances of the country, the Greek agencies were unable to handle the sorry situation that confronted them. It was fortunate indeed that the Red Cross was able to step into the emergency and discharge so well its obligations. In April, 1918, the Red Cross War Council received from the American Committee for Syrian and Armenian Relief the following cablegram which gives a fragmentary picture of the conditions which prevailed in Palestine at that time, and supplies the reason for the Red Cross' going into the Holy Land : — Fifteen hundred Armenians, survivors of many thousands exiled from Adana, Kharne, Marash, Aintab, Ourfa-Kessab, two and a half years ago, to the wilderness east of the Jordan, found trekking to Jericho. For months had been compelled by Turks to break stone on roads. Brought to Jerusalem in British motor trucks. Although weak and hungry, faces lighted up at first glimpse of Mount of Olives. 262 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Six thousand Syrian refugees from Es Salt vicinity expected this week. We will equip expeditions to meet exiles and will provide industrial relief if additional funds can be sent. Five hundred Armenians rescued by Arabs at Tawfile, between Maan and Dead Sea, will be moved to Port Said. For months from twenty to thirty died daily of starvation. Orig- inal number ten thousand. Following message has come through from Tawfile : "The price of a life is the price of bread." Fortunately for us the British Armies had cleared the way. They were at Antioch far to the North, in Jerusalem and in Jericho, and were crossing the river Jordan. The British Relief Fund for Palestine and Syria had already established Medical Units at Gaza, Hebron, Jaffa, and Jerusalem and invited the participation of the Red Cross. Until the coming of the British Committee, reUef in Pales- tine and other near parts of Asia Minor had been in the hands of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Re- lief, which had sent $10,000,000 worth of suppUes, $3,000,000 of which had been contributed by the Red Cross prior to our active participation in this field. So in March, 1918, the special Red Cross Commission for Palestine sailed from New York with hundreds of tons of supplies and complete traveling and camping equipment. The route was long, for travel in the Mediterranean was still hazardous and they went around the African con- tinent, touching at Ceylon and on through the Red Sea, so that it was June before the Mission arrived at the port of Beirut. The field before them in the Holy Land embraced half the measure of Asia. There was no turning back, once begun. Although housing and sanitary conditions in that part of the world had never been ideal, according to occidental standards, there was, fortunately, a more substantial back- ground on which to build than there had been at other relief points; for one thing, the British engineers were engaged in intensive sanitation work in Jerusalem itself, and after the fresh waters from the hills had been brought THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 263 down to the city by means of modern plumbing and pump- ing, the water-skins, filthy though picturesque, disappeared from the streets for the first time in two thousand or more years. Indeed, permit me to say here, that the work of the Red Cross in Palestine was made largely possible through the generous and benevolent attitude manifested by the British authorities in the occupied enemy territory, and by their marvelous and rapid organization and control of the civic functions. On the part of the officials there was always present the spirit of the most cordial welcome and a generous willingness to meet us halfway in all our undertakings. The Jerusalem that the Red Cross Commission found was a teaming babel, orderly enough under British Army dis- cipline, of course ; but it is doubtful if the ancient city with so many strange peoples mingling amicably in its streets, with heavy British cars and Army camions disturbing the calm of the stolid donkeys, the sleepy camels and the wailing thousands of refugees — more wretched than those that have wept before its walls for a thousand years, and more forlorn than the lepers that used to ask alms at the gate — ever knew times as stirring or as full of wonderment as these. On a Palm Sunday long ago, perhaps, the city had been as crowded with surging throngs ; as bewildered and as clamor- ous, perhaps, as now in the midsummer of the year of our Lord, 1918 ; but that was a very long time ago and Jerusalem has slept and dreamed through nearly two thousand sum- mers since then, while the world has grown old about it and the crescent of the Turk has hung over its gates. Therefore it was an unique atmosphere in which the Red Cross found itself: the birth-spot of Christ just set free from the Saracen, spread over with villages that had been villages when Joshua conquered Canaan, when Abraham journeyed from the plains of the Jordan down into Hebron ; and through which David had passed when he was fleeing into the wilderness from Saul — villages that 264 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR looked for all the world like western Indian pueblo villages, clinging old and brown and shapeless to the hills. It would be strange, indeed, if a little time was not given to medita- tion in a place of such antiquity, surcharged with memories that have so vitally influenced the life of the world. One can stand on one of the rolling Judean hills and watch the shepherds with their flocks in the purple shade of the olive trees; two thousand years ago they might have seen the Star from that very spot, for Bethlehem lay just across the valley. But the pressing need, according to all accounts, was for action and not meditation. The first relief work under- taken was among the homeless refugees, crowded into the city of Jerusalem, housed in various odd buildings, and tented in the vacant spaces. Strangely enough, among them were a number of Russian women pilgrims, stranded in Jerusalem by the war, although they are not to be classed with the type of refugee that had trudged across the Jordan Valley : these were intelligent, clean, hard- working, devoutly religious women of fine physique and handsome Slav features, who welcomed the advent of the Red Cross sewing rooms that were soon opened. In the city of Jerusalem fifteen hundred women — Mos- lem, Jewish, and Christian — were employed in the indus- trial workrooms instituted by the Red Cross, and engaged in spinning, weaving, knitting, dressmaking, basketry, rug making, mattress making, embroidery, and lace work. The Red Cross custom of helping the refugees to help themselves has always made for contentment and satisfaction in the sub- jects of our aid, giving work to impatient, idle fingers and, thereby, assuring them of the type and character of cloth- ing they preferred — a factor to be considered if they were to attain any measure of happiness. It was familiar things they wanted, things to which they had been accustomed, things they had known through all their dark narrow lives. THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 265 They admire western culture, perhaps, but they do not want it — not much of it ; in fact, they are rather afraid of it. There were ten refugee centers in the city, two of which were on the Mount of Ohves ; there was an orphanage for boys, conducted by German agencies before the war and which the British desired the Red Cross to take over. Later it became necessary to estabhsh another orphanage for boys and one for girls. Following the opening of the American Red Cross Hospital in the city, there also was established a series of clinics for children and adults in the city and in four outside centers. Six hundred orphans formerly the charges of the British Relief Committee were taken in hand, and a liaison was effected with the Zionist Unit for the relief of suffering Jews. At Port Said, at the head of the Suez Canal just across that curve of the land towards the west, where Asia Minor ends and Africa begins, a number of Armenian refugees were concentrated under the charge of the Red Cross, assisted by the Armenian Society and the British Relief Fund for Palestine and Syria. Refugee work along the foregoing hues was conducted in five centers in the Holy Land : in Mejel, where a hospital was established; in Remleh, with a clinic supplementing the work of the Government hospital ; in Jaffa, a few miles west of Jerusalem on the coast ; at Ram Allah and at Wadi-Surar, in western Palestine, where two thousand or more refugees were gathered under tents on the plain. Here was also a halfway camp for Armenians being taken to Port Said, and a flourishing school of six or seven hundred native children. Also, a small civilian hospital was estab- lished in Nazareth. In the agricultural districts, and Palestine is largely a pastoral land, ox-teams were secured for indigent farmers. Altogether the field in Palestine was most satisfactory, and with the cessation of hostilities and the subsequent 266 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR opening of the ocean lanes and ports, many problems that had existed as decidedly material barriers to the progress of relief work have disappeared. All the routes to Asia are open now. Supplies can go through and keep on going through without cessation. For all this work, including food, medical, surgical, and sanitary supplies, salaries and expenses, the War Council of the Red Cross had appropriated by October 1, $558,479. In addition to this, a monthly contribution of $50,000 is made to the Red Cross by the Armenian and Syrian Relief Committee for the work among the civilian population. The end of the war, however, does not mean the end of want or the end of suffering or disease in the Holy Land. It is a land sunk deep in tradition and superstition and into which the light of modern science or modern thought has not penetrated ; it is a land that has long suffered oppression and cruelty and misunderstanding, where the spirit of the peoples has been shrunken and terrified by persecution. But in this land the Red Cross has set a bright lamp, and we hope it will shine forever, bringing light and hope and good will to the old, old lands of the East. CHAPTER XX RUSSIA A Great Problem — Red Cross in Russia in 1917 — Asiatic Fatalism — Moscow — Russian Red Cross — Conditions in Petrograd — Trans- Siberian Railway — Loyalty of the Employees — Czecho-Slovaks — The Lost Children of the Urals — Russian Prisoners Released from Germany — United States Marines and Infantry in Russia — The Brooklyn — Fourteenth Division — Russian Island — Shipments by Mountain and Pacific Divisions to San Francisco — $3,500,000 Ap- propriated by War Council — Red Cross Equips 360,000 Czecho- slovak and Russian Soldiers' — Moscow and the Red Cross Again — New Red Cross Commission — Red Cross Supply Ship — Archangel, IT is a bolder pen than mine that essays to write of Russia to-day, even from the standpoint of relief work carried on within its borders. Perhaps everything that there is to be said of Russia that will convey an idea of its present condition — if there be a present condition in a land that is constantly changing — has been said. Perhaps everyone who reads this will have his own idea of Russia, as nearly every one of us has — each of those ideas different, each of them short of the truth in varying degrees, for Russia, un- consciously, hides herself from those most anxious to under- stand her. Those who have been in Russia at any time the last three years think they have seen Russia ; almost believe that they understand Russia; but they do not. Russia is as a kaleidoscope. We look upon to-day's picture and say : "This is Russia !" and scarcely have the words left our lips than there is a change and we discover that what we thought was Russia is not Russia at all. It was only a 267 268 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR distorted vision. At that, I am most ready to believe and not a few who have been there agree with me that the workers of the American Red Cross and other reUef agencies came closer to that vague, intangible thing that we like to speak of poetically as the soul of Russia, than a host of others who were never in close touch with the people — the common people, the peasants, and the people of the land, those teeming millions of the steppes struggling in the dark to discover just what the demise of the Romanoffs will mean to them. Russia is more than a country; it is a world in itself. Russia has every imaginable thing that land or water can hold in store for the benefit of mankind, and has it in a measure that is incalculable : there are fertile wheatlands capable of yielding billions of bushels of grain, and mountains that are rich in ore, silver, gold, and precious stones that have slept there through the ages ; there are valleys gushing with oil, vineyards heavy with wine, waters teeming with fish, and forests untouched. If ever a land flowed with milk and honey, it is Russia — Russia the virgin. It was into this country, this Garden of Alladin, shudder- ing under the suddenness and swiftness of the revolution that the Red Cross went, drawn by the suffering and by the needs of the Allied and American forces there — (albeit the Red Cross was in Russia before foreign troops were sent in). It was an effort to help the affected pop- ulation to withstand the stress of the times as best they could ; often help of this kind, at such a time, is as efficacious as forests of bayonets, although to say so in the Russian situation were an exaggeration. Yet, although Russia is still in a state of flux, like hot metal that has not found its mold, the work of the Red Cross, infinitesimal as it was in comparison with the crying need of Russia, has not been in vain. The Red Cross could not lead Russia to her destiny, but it could hold out a timely flame of hope to the be- RUSSIA 269 wildered, suffering millions that poured through the steppes — 12,000,000 they say it was — running away from the Frankenstein of their own hands' creating; it could show them that human understanding and human kindness still existed ; it could point the better way, although it could not command. When the great army of Russia surged behind the standard of the Little Father, up and down Petrograd and the Carpa- thians to the frontiers of Prussia and back, see-sawing across the land — now driving the foe before them, now giving ground without resistance — they left the same wake of suffering as did the armies in Belgium, Serbia, and France. But it was greater, it was more remote from relief, and it was voiceless. The Russian is Asiatic in his fatalism. Centuries of oppression have taught him not to complain. But overnight, Russia roused from her centuries of passivity. The Little Father no longer sat on the great throne in Petrograd. The Czar was a hunted exile in his own land and Russia was free ! It is impossible to tell of the Red Cross in Russia without going into the conditions in that country ; for vague and imperfect though it, obviously, must be, the work and policy of the Red Cross were molded and limited by the political situation there. Of all theaters of operation in which the Red Cross was active, that of ancient Moscow may be said to have been the most difficult, even if it was the most interesting and, per- haps, the most romantic. To appreciate the difficulties with which the Red Cross had to contend, the obstacles that had to be overcome, one must know or, at least, have an idea of Russia at the time. There, the Red Cross was confronted by problems heretofore unforeseen, un- encountered. That its position was a difficult one will be shown by the brief statement that it was a neutral, non- combatant relief agency operating in a land whose armies 270 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR were still recognized as part of the Allied forces, a land where those who were revolutionists one day were peaceable soil- tilling folk the next, or where the stolid peasant of yesterday became the cutthroat of to-morrow. It was a situation, to say the least, that called for careful diplomacy and great delicacy of action. Contrary to the expectations of the average Russian, to whom ''liberty" and ''democracy" were but vague terms, the millennium, as we all know, did not come with the dethronement of the Romanoffs. Russia began to wander through an evil dream, while her children cried for food and the enemy menaced her borders; the Army refused to fight ; authority was unrecognized ; the papers of one faction were worthless in the eyes of the next. Leaders rose and fell, commerce was at a standstill, transportation failed ; people cried for that bauble of freedom that they thought was within their grasp and killed each other in the streets, in misled hope of gaining the much-sought prize through bloodshed ; children cried for food and ran home- less into the fields. The Brest-Litovsk Treaty went through at last. Such was Russia — a cauldron, a bedlam, a world of many minds with but few who thought they saw the way, and a huge remainder doubting, suspecting, fearing, longing only for some sort of peace and stability — a few months after the outbreak of the revolution, when the American Red Cross came. Arriving at the port of Vladivostok, late in the month of July, 1917, the Commission was met by representatives of the Russian Red Cross, which had come through the months of turmoil a sorry wreck. Perhaps a few words about the Red Cross of Russia will not be amiss here, since the rem- nants of that organization were to form an important liaison between the Russian people and the foreigners who had come to help them. Under the old regime, it had enjoyed fair organization and had ramified the empire from Petro- RUSSIA 271 grad to the Bering Sea. At the time of the Russo-Japanese War, it had thoroughly supplemented the medical corps of the armies and had earned the confidence of the people ; but its very foundation was autocracy and, for this very reason, it went down with the fall of the autocrats. In February, 1918, the old Central Committee was dissolved by force of arms, and its guiding members found little mercy at the hands of the revolutionists. However, in the summer of 1917, a sincere body of its representatives met the Amer- icans at Madivostok and assured them of their ready cooper- ation and assistance wherever it might be needed. In a land as strange to Americans as Russia, the need of such assistance was obvious and the desire for cooperation un- questioned. The American Red Cross came to Russia with ambulances and $200,000 worth of medical supplies, intending later to order vast shipments of medical and surgical needs that were to find their way into Russian hospitals. One of the most urgent needs was for milk in the cities. The infant mortality in those congested spots was increasing each day. There were 150,000 homeless, destitute children in Petrograd that winter. The food situation was acute, although it was largely a matter of transportation rather than actual scarcity. However, it became necessary to send food to the Russians in the Murmansk district for the reason that hungry Petrograd would permit no food to go into that barren, frozen land. To the south of the Russian capital there were acres and acres of ungarnered grain, while the cities cried and fought for bread. A Red Cross appro- priation of $20,000 for the relief of officers' and soldiers' families in Petrograd was made before the political situa- tion became so acute that it was thought best to remove the Mission from the capital, which lay under the menace of possible German occupation. In March, 1918, the Mission left the city, and with the American Ambassador proceeded 272 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR to Moscow, leaving one man behind to carry on the milk distribution. It became clear that under the existing cir- cumstances, with the old capital and the surrounding country under the menace of invasion, that the work of the Commission was over. The field of action became daily more and more circumscribed, yet they stayed on — in Moscow, Murmansk, and in Archangel, doing what they could. Although the land was in ferment and confusion, somewhere beneath the chaos lay Russia reborn. There were two utterly unrelated factors that helped Russia through the strain of the last two years, factors that made many things possible that otherwise would have been impossible, one of which gave cause for continued Red Cross activity, and the other which made that activity possible — two factors on which the face of Russia may be said to have depended during that period : the Czecho-Slovaks and the Trans-Siberian railway. I will speak briefly of the latter first. All through the turmoil of the revolution, the great iron way that traverses Russia from Vladivostok to Petrograd — 6000 miles — was kept going, somehow, and in that fact lies something of the quality of the spirit of the real Russia : the employees of the railroad yielded to the lure of the freebooters and the revolutionists that infested the land less than any other class of workers, and it was their loyalty and steadfastness that kept the interior of Russia open, for they worked in the face of unimaginable difficulties, and enabled supplies to be carried from Vladivostok inland. The life of these men was one of exceptional hazard. Their families were in want and misery ; for months they were unpaid ; yet something made them see that the trains had to move if ever hope was to come out of the situation at all. The psychology of this vision, this urge on the part of these loyal Russian laboring men, will forever remain a mystery. It was something of the real Russia, the Russia that is worth while, the Russia RUSSIA 273 that will finally triumph. At that, I do not mean to convey the impression that the Trans-Siberian was a perfectly running, perfectly managed road. Far from it. To begin with, the rolling stock was old and dilapidated, the engines badly in need of repair and fuel was scarce; nor did they run on schedule time, breakdowns being the rule rather than the exception ; but they ran, somehow, the trains from Vladivostok inland, and it was through this medium that Red Cross supplies were taken into Russia. And the Czecho-Slovaks : Czech soldiers had been in Siberia since June, having joined the French and British forces in the field. The care of the wounded became an obligation of the Red Cross, while the American consul at Harbin, in Manchuria, was asking for cooperation with the Russian Red Cross there to take care of the refugees coming in along the routes of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The misery of the tumult was breaking out in a new place. Around the Czecho-Slovaks there was rallying a formidable force of Russians, and the port of Vladivostok, with its vast quantities of supplies which Sukhomlinoff had kept from the Russian armies, was now in Allied control. A crisis was imminent. Russia wanted peace and safety wherever she might find it : she would take it from Germany if the Allies could not produce it the more quickly. In the meantime, suffering increased and the cities, though in the midst of plenty, were still in the grip of famine — the peasants refusing to give up their grain at Government prices, when they could sell it in the open market for its weight in gold. Food commissions, created by the soviet govern- ment, were sent into the farming regions, there to wrest the food from the peasants by force, if they could obtain it no other way. Children from the breadless cities were sent into the country, thrown upon the charity of the peasants for their food. Some months later 1200 of these* ''lost children of the Urals" were corralled by the Red Cross in 274 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR Tumen and Irbit and brought back from savagery to normal life. The number of children who died in the wilderness will never be known. And so, as in Italy the previous autunm, the Red Cross went "to war" — it having been decided not to send, at least for the present, an American Army to Russia — to hold the Russians to the cause of right and save her from that greater chaos that wholesale enemy occupation would precipitate ; kindness and the relief of pressing needs in the way of food, clothing, and shelter was the means by which she was to be won to the Alhes' cause. Meanwhile, across the German frontiers, Russian pris- oners released from bondage in enemy prison camps — in some instances of four years' duration — were pouring by the thousands back into a Russia they did not know, a Russia that had come into being while they were rotting in captivity, a Russia that would flay them and try their hearts anew before granting them the peace for which they had fought. A large proportion of these men were ill and wasted physically. Many of them were tuberculotic. The needs of the newly released Russian prisoners offered an opportunity to bring home by clear, practical demon- stration, the fact that the Red Cross had come there to help them. Fortunately, our men were able to get a Government chartered ship, in which a load of food supphes, medicines, and drugs was soon on its way. Encouragement, also, came at that time from the fact that the call of the United States Consul at Harbin could be answered and was now going forward for the relief of the refugees there. There were swarms of them — a heteroge- neous mass of bewildered folk, ranging from the unkempt mendicant classes to unfortunate families who had known comfort and prosperity — Russians, Tartars, dark, round- eyed children from the Balkans and Armenia, and wailing Serbs, utterly destitute and forlorn. RUSSIA 275 From the beginning, the purpose of the Red Cross was to help the people of Russia without regard to political situa- tions, and with utter indifference to the policies of the political party that happened to be in power. Its aim was to keep clearly before the Russians the fact that the United States, through the Red Cross, wanted to help them. Yet the picture of Russia is a difficult one to paint, so many vital things were happening simultaneously. It was while the relief ship was preparing for northern Russia that a new and keenly urgent situation arose in the Far East : the Czecho- slovaks had developed a new theater of war and stubborn fighting was going on along the railway lines in Siberia and along the Volga. Light was beginning to filter through upon a state of things which three months before had been hope- lessly black. By July 15, 1918, one year after the Red Cross had come to Russia, United States Marines and regulars were landing at the Russian ports; the Marines at Kola on the Murmansk front ; and Infantry from the Phihppines at Vladivostok. Allied forces were in that city guarding the stores, and the Czecho-Slovak wounded were moving back over the railway in increasing numbers into hospitals al- ready filled to overflowing. The United States cruiser Brook- lyn, lying in Vladivostok harbor, was temporarily converted into a floating hospital, aboard which the Czechs were taken. Civilian conditions among the refugees driven back from the fighting zone were growing steadily worse. However, in the present emergency, as always, the letters from the Navy and State Departments and the cables received by the Red Cross were turned over to the Four- teenth Division, and the ball was rolling before the ink on the letters was fairly dry. The Secretary of the Navy cabled to the Commander of the Brooklyn that relief was on the way. It was a day and a week of the swiftest direct action and one in which the Fourteenth Division played one of its most conspicuous parts. 276 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR The physician in charge of St. Luke's Hospital in Tokyo was summoned by cable to take charge of the situation in Vladivostok at the head of a relief expedition, while the representative of the Russian Department of Commerce at Vladivostok was requested to oversee all preparations until the expedition should arrive. It was perhaps the most urgent and most vital emergency work that the year had exacted of the Red Cross, in a year filled with vital emer- gencies. There was fast work, too, in Tokyo and in Vladi- vostok. The Peking Chapter was accumulating supplies, while money poured in from Americans in Shanghai, Tient- sin, and Harbin. In Tokyo, the assembling of the hospital unit was hastened, and in eight days the staff with their supplies landed in Vladivostok ready for work. Out of all this energy grew the American Red Cross relief base at Vladivostok. On Russian Island — a dot of land two and a half miles out in the harbor, commanding a beautiful view of the busy ship-dotted bay and the broad, blue sweep of the Sea of Japan — the military hospital was located in buildings already there. There grew up, too, in an incredibly short time, refugee barracks at First and Second Rivers, near the city, capable of housing 2000 people, with soup kitchens, sewing rooms, laundries, and clinics. The sewing rooms gave employment to hundreds of refugee women who were able and eager to make garments if the material was provided. Sanitary trains were equipped to accompany the Czech army into the interior and a rolling canteen and a station canteen were set up between Harbin and the forward lines, in which many American women cheer- fully volunteered their services. The Far East, alarmed at having the war suddenly brought so near, was thrilled at the spirit of cooperation that quickly put things into action. The Americans were at last in the great game, and the war and the Red Cross had come three-quarters of the way around the world to RUSSIA 277 them. The great drama was being played on their very doorsteps. It was August and the beginning of the Siberian winter was but ten weeks away. Refugees were still coming in, especially from the district east of Lake Baikal, pouring across the Siberian steppes to the Pacific coast where the winter was a bit milder. A few well-to-do Russians in Harbin and Vladivostok volunteered financial help and the Russian Red Cross still stood by ready to render what assist- ance it could. The food and clothing survey held small hope of the possibiUty of being able to cope with the needs of the coming season, and heavy winter underclothing, overcoats, shoes, and uniforms were needed for 75,000 Czech troops. There was no agency to meet this demand except the Red Cross, and again the Chapter machinery was set in motion. Within a few days, quantities of knitted garments made by the women of the Mountain and Pacific Divisions were moving out of San Francisco harbor. This shipment in- cluded 250,000 pairs of socks and 250,000 sweaters. From New York came a shipment of a quantity of underclothing and mittens and 150,000 pairs of shoes, donated by the Russian Embassy at Washington for distribution by the Red Cross in Russia. An appropriation of $3,500,000 was made by the Red Cross War Council to carry on this momentous work of relief. Some idea of the speed with which this work went for- ward may be had when one realizes that, despite the distance from the base of supplies and the broad and diversified program of the Red Cross in Siberia, the refugee work in Vladivostok was well in hand by the middle of August. Red Cross had in its charge 4000 children and 60,000 adults scattered through that corner of Manchuria around the city of Harbin, where the Manchu territory seems to jut up into Siberia. There were fourteen American and seven Japanese 278 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR doctors in the hospitals, assisted by American, Japanese, and Chinese nurses. Fifty additional nurses and as many physicians were summoned. Altogether, quite a plant was growing up in Vladivostok. It was assuming the aspects of an industry. The whole nature of the old Siberian port had undergone a change — a relief center with its streets now filled with refugees from all points of Russia, soldiers in strange uniforms, and its hospitals filled with the wounded of foreign armies. Incidentally no one failed to speak of the Japanese in terms of the highest praise. Their cooperation in the relief situation is said to have been magnificent. There was nothing they could do to help that was not eagerly and promptly done. In time, the tide of war changed. Success followed the sword of the valiant Czechs, and early in September the Red Cross was called upon to furnish incidental equipment for 360,000 Russian and Czech soldiers, while the Czech commander asked the Red Cross to take entire charge of the army medical service, with the request for 100 specialists, nurses, and dentists. From Russian sources came new stories of need beyond Baikal for clothing, farm tools, kerosene, window glass, and general household items, all through the devastated regions, left bare by the retreating revolutionists. It seemed that the Russian situation was no sooner in hand than new situations sprang up. For such circumstances, the Red Cross must always be ready. The success of the Czech forces had great moral effect on the vacillating Russians. Thousands of them rallied around the victorious Czech banner, and in the heart of Russia the world's fortune once more swung in fine balance. Supplies for the use of the American troops were coming in from the United States, and there went into the interior a quantity of Red Cross supplies based on the requirements of 10,000 men and a 500-bed hospital. AN AMERICAN RED c;R().S.S DENTAL STATION IN SERBIA, THREE QUARTERS OF A MILE FROM THE FRONT LINE TRENCHES. RUSSIA 279 In the meantime, chaos was having its fling in Moscow and the city found itself cut off from northern Russia, facing the winter without food, fuel, oil, or wool, and very Uttle clothing. Moscow the luxurious was perishing; people fell in the streets from hunger. Soldiers were breaking into the homes and stripping them of all valuables and metals ; telephone service was cut off ; street transportation ceased ; only blood and tumult from day's end to day's end remained, while in the slow Russian mind the fear that they had been tricked began to dawn. Hanging on in the midst of all this misgovernment were the Red Cross men of the original commission who had remained despite the fact that spectators in Moscow could see no hope for Russia's regeneration, and irrespective of the orders from the United States Department of State for all Americans, official or otherwise, to leave Soviet Russia. Part of the Mission had drifted through Finland, and thence back to the Archangel district where American troops were in action ; others started down the Volga Valley to see what the Czechs were doing; everywhere they found not only a visible lack of necessities at all bases of supply but infinite difficulty to be overcome before supplies could be transported to the needy quarters. While the Red Cross workers in European Russia were doing what little circumstances would permit, and while the high-speed relief work was going on in Vladivostok, a Red Cross ship laden with supplies was making its way to Archangel with food, medicines, and all manner of needs for the soldiers and civilians of north Russia and a new Red Cross Commission was ordered there to oper- ate with the Allied and American troops that were fighting their way south, to effect a junction with the Czechs with the help of the reconstituted Russian forces. So much, at any rate, of the military situation must needs be told, in order to make the picture of Red Cross work in Russia clear. Half the time, it was like working in a bad dream. Unforeseen 280 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR emergencies constantly arose, apparently insurmountable barriers continually presented themselves. Difficult enough is the work of relief in time of calamity and of war when the affected population is ready and able to cooperate, but in Russia, menaced by the constant threat of invasion from the west and the revolutionists that placed every possible obstacle in the path of law and order, it became a question of helping Russia in spite of herself; and never had the Red Cross endeavored to carry out its purpose in the midst of such adverse circumstances. By October, the new Commission for north Russia was taking hold of the situation, and the Red Cross supply ship had reached port just in time to relieve the food con- ditions in Petrograd, where with the Siberian, Volga, and Ukranian food supplies cut off, starvation again threatened — if it had ever been wholly overcome. Fifty-seven per cent of the school children were sick — in some districts as high as eighty-seven per cent ; infant mortality had risen to fifty per cent and degeneration, riot, and death were wide- spread. The city's social welfare society had 70,000 cases on its inadequate hands, many of them homeless school children. Typhus appeared in the city. With each day bringing winter nearer, the Red Cross, in addition to its regular relief work about the base at Archangel, launched expeditions into hitherto unreached parts of the district. A Russian trawler loaded with food and medical supplies went along the White Sea coast of the Kola peninsula where the inhabitants, in virtual isolation, were facing starvation and suffering with scurvy and other diseases caused by undernourishment. Later, '' anti- typhus" trains financed by the Allied powers, and equipped and managed by the Red Cross, made regular runs through the typhus infested regions. So the Red Cross knocked at the heart of Russia, working steadfastly through the terrible cold, giving impartially and RUSSIA 281 with largesse. I cannot but feel that the problem faced and solved so well under the most trying circumstances was an unique one, and that in Russia, above all other places, the Red Cross proved its worth in time of need as easily as it demonstrated its ability to organize and act at a moment's notice. Through it all it has kept faith with itself and with those whom it has served, and at all times it has been deeply appreciative of the ready and effective cooperation of other agents in the field — the Red Cross societies of Great Britain and Japan, the Russian and Czech Army Medical Corps, the Allied Prisoners Commission of a somewhat late date ; and finally, but not the least, the warm responsive welcome of the Russian Red Cross and the Russian people. CHAPTER XXI THE LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES The Armistice — Demobilization — Conference with President Wilson — Formation of the League of Red Cross Societies — Appointment of Chairman and Other Officers — Conference at Cannes of Medical Experts — Program of the League of Red Cross Societies. LOOKING back, as I begin my last chapter, I realize that what I have written about the various spheres of Red Cross activities in Europe must seem unsatisfactory if not obscure and meager. Especially is this the case in the chapters which relate to Russia and the Near East where, perhaps, the lack of concrete details is more marked than anywhere else. In fairness to myself it should be said, however, that I have endeavored to refer to every important incident which came to the knowledge of the War Council from those distant countries; and, therefore, the blame, if blame there be, should rest rather on the very nature of the undertaking, which made it inevitable that not a few of the splendid efforts of our relief agencies should fail to attain their rightful place in our annals in Washington. Thus far, patently, my task has been to deal solely with the activities of the Red Cross in the stress of war ; but the time has now come when I have to concern myself with the peace efforts of the Red Cross which, despite any opinion to the contrary, must be regarded as scarcely second in impor- tance if not more difficult than those of war. As a matter of fact, it is becoming every day more and more apparent that our foreign problem, and our home problem as well, not only 282 THE LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES 283 did not end but rather began when the bugles sang truce across the battlefields. In that infinitesimal second before the guns were suddenly- quiet the whole war effort of America was at its height. Of the intense drama of that moment only the soldiers at the scene can tell; and they are strangely silent. To them, however, it brought a laying down of arms and a marching dowTi to rest billets ; to the women of the world it brought a prayer ; while to the Red Cross it marked an end and a beginning — a visible end, at least, to everything connected with actual warfare, and a beginning of the fulfillment of its obligations to aid the feet of humanity in struggling along the pathway of enduring peace. There can be no gainsaying the fact, either, that on the day of the armistice the Red Cross was doing its part and extending its efforts to the utmost. The home office at Washington, \dsioning months of acti\dty ahead of it, was one of the busiest places in the National Capitol ; food suppUes were going forward to all parts of the world, and production was approaching its crest; the men of our foreign commissions were in action or going into action in all the war-scarred lands; and, specifically and most im- portant of all perhaps, the Red Cross Commission in Paris, having just completed a thorough reorganization of its nine thousand loyal members, was equipped to render maximum service to our own army under whatever conditions the future exigencies of the war might develop. In view of this great concentration of relief work at the time of the cessation of hostilities, it would be folly to suppose that the Red Cross, like the soldiers, could lay down its arms at once. Far from it. Even if we had desired to follow such a course, attainment was impossible because of the tremendous impetus behind us. Nevertheless, little by little the thoughts of all mankind began to turn to peace and the reconstruction of the world, 284 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR and it behooved the Red Cross to adjust itself to the new conditions. As a consequence, therefore, and after con- sultation with the heads of its European commissions, the War Council proceeded to take up the exceedingly complex question as to how the Red Cross might complete the per- formance of its war obligations and yet, at the earliest moment, transfer its effort to the peace organization — by no means a small undertaking, when one takes into con- sideration the fact that the armistice left the great organi- zation intact, with all its energies a-tingle, and all its unspent resources free. But, be that as it may, consistent with the results aimed at, there followed a cutting-down of production and a gradual diminishing of Red Cross work in the actual war areas ; while an appreciable reduction took place in the personnel everywhere, particularly in the ranks of the vol- unteer war-workers who, naturally, were compelled to return to their vocations as soon as possible. Furthermore, it was decided at a conference between the President and the War Council that they should retire, and March 1 was set as the date on which the Executive Committee would be- come, as before the war, the permanent directing body of the American Red Cross. In this connection it gives me great pleasure to state that it was most fortunate for all concerned that Dr. Livingston Farrand was, finally, pre- vailed upon to accept the chairmanship of this committee. But all the while that this transfer from a war-time to a peace-time basis was taking place, not a few of those who had followed Red Cross effort during the war were deeply impressed with the idea that it was their duty not to suffer the slightest diminution of the humanitarian spirit which the war had aroused in the American people for their fellow- beings throughout the world ; that it was nothing more nor less than an obligation on the part of the American Red Cross to make certain that the results of its experience THE LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES 285 during the war should be placed at the disposal of the other Red Cross societies of the world, and vice versa. Hence, when I presented the idea of adopting a peace-time program of Red Cross activity to President Wilson, presi- dent of the Red Cross, he grasped at once its vast impor- tance and asked me to concentrate my efforts towards formulating some plan which would accomplish the purpose so much to be desired. Accordingly, soon after this in- terview I went to Europe where I called into conference the Red Cross societies of the more important countries with a view of developing a plan of coordination and cooperation. It did not take them long to recognize how vitally important it was for the future of the world that the Red Cross should have a peace-time function ; yet nowhere, I am glad to say, was this more quickly and clearly realized than in the council chamber where President Wilson, M. Clemenceau, and Premiers Lloyd George and Orlando met daily to draw up the final treaty. They saw, as did every student of the situation, that there could be no peace until the peoples were able to enjoy peace of mind as well as peace of body; that no set of men could establish with pencil and paper a peace which could endure unless the distress throughout the world could be relieved. And so it came about that in the revised Covenant of the League of Nations there was inserted the following paragraph as Article XXV : — "The members of the League agree to encourage and promote the establishment and cooperation of duly authorized, voluntary, national Red Cross organizations having as their purpose the improvement of health, prevention of disease, and mitigation of suffering throughout the world." And, indeed, as a whole it was a wretched world, a ragged, frightened, helpless world with so little to rebuild with and so little to cling to. Perhaps it thought that the transition to peace would be easy ; perhaps it did not fully grasp the extent 286 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR of the wastage of the last five years ; perhaps it did not realize the hunger and pestilence and dearth that war had engen- dered. On the other hand, nothing but the armed conflict of half the world could have aroused the people to the pos- sibilities of the Red Cross ; nothing but the agony caused by the destruction of all the factors of existence — houses and bridges, roads and fields and, in a sense, even life itself — could have shown the need of a universal organization for the promotion of good will wherever human life exists. In a word, these thoughts, far easier to feel than to express, united to form the idea of the League of Red Cross F cieties which, with Article XXV of the League of Nations as a sort of international charter, came formally into being in Paris, May 5, 1919. There were present delegates from the Red Cross organizations of the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan, whose representatives constitute the board of governors, of which board I was chosen chair- man, and by which Sir David Henderson was appointed director-general. At a later date Professor William Rap- pard, of the University of Geneva, became secretary- general. Invitations to join the league have been issued to the Red Cross societies of the following countries : Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chili, China, Cuba, Denmark, Greece, Holland, India, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Rumania, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Eventually, of course, it is confidently expected that every nation in the world will have a representative in the League of Red Cross Societies which, already, has begun to function at its estab- lished headquarters in Geneva. At this point, therefore, if only to avoid any misunderstanding, I think it advisable to state authoritatively that while the relations between the League of Red Cross Societies and the League of Nations will be of an intimate character there will be no statuary THE LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES 287 connection, since the League of Red Cross Societies is essentially a voluntary organization, non-political, non- governmental, and non-sectarian. But even while the League of Red Cross Societies was in process of formation, there was practically no limit to the reports, which came from every quarter of Europe and Asia, that the distress was beyond computation ; that the vitality of v/hole nations had been lowered almost to the death point ; that entire populations were without clothing ; and that it was certain that there would be a shortage of fuel and food at the approach of winter. At best, it was a situation so appalling that the governments alone could handle it satisfactorily, even if the governments did only the major part of the work, leaving the minor part to the voluntary organizations. And in view of all this it may be pertinent to give here the objects of the League of Red Cross Societies as set forth in the articles of association : — 1. To encourage and promote in every country in the world the establishment and development of duly authorized voluntary national Red Cross organizations, having as their purpose the improvement of health, prevention of disease, and mitigation of suffering throughout the world, and to secure the cooperation of such organizations for these purposes. 2. To promote the welfare of mankind by furnishing the medium for bringing M\'ithin the reach of all peoples the benefits to be derived from present known facts and new contributions to science and medical knowl- edge and their application. 3. To furnish the medium for coordinating reUef work in case of great national or international calamities. As will readily be seen the plan as adopted here, taken as a whole, is a conception which involves not merely efforts to relieve human suffering but purposes to pre- vent it ; to relieve not the suffering of one people alone but an attempt to arouse all peoples to a sense of their responsibility for the welfare of their fellow-beings throughout the world. But vast as is the scope of the 288 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR program of the League of Red Cross Societies, its ap- plication, nevertheless, is simple, practical, and scientific. It could hardly be otherwise since it received the unanimous indorsement of an unique gathering of medical experts who at the invitation of the Red Cross met at Cannes, France, in April, 1919. This conference, by the way, was presided over by Professor Roux, the successor in Paris of Pasteur, and Dr. William H. Welch, of Johns Hopkins University, and also included many of the foremost men of America, France, England, Italy, and Japan. All in all it was regarded as one of the most remarkable gatherings of health experts ever held. These experts adopted at the conference a minute de- claring that a great part of the world-wide prevalence of disease and suffering is due to widespread ignorance and lack of application of well-established facts and methods capable either of largely restricting disease or preventing it. "Altogether we have carefully considered," the minute asserts, "the general purpose of the Committee of the Red Cross Societies to spread light of science and warmth of human sympathy into every corner of the world ; and we are confident that this movement, assured as it is at the out- set of the moral support of civilization, has in it great pos- sibilities of adding immeasurably to the happiness and wel- fare of mankind." That statement represents the judgment of men who are qualified to speak with the highest authority on the subject of the great scourges of humanity, such as tuberculosis, malaria, venereal diseases, and epidemics; men who are authorities on preventive medicine and who represent the knowledge of the world in the great field of child welfare. It is their belief, based on certain scientific knowledge, acquired by practical experience, that these scourges can be controlled, or even eliminated, by organized, coordinated effort and cooperation. Moreover, regarding the proposed plans, the consensus of these experts was that THE LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES 289 they should be put into effect and placed at the disposal of the world at the earliest possible moment. They, also, claimed that in no way can the work be done so effectively as through the agency of the Red Cross. Through its headquarters at Geneva, the League of Red Cross Societies plans to stimulate peace-time activities of all National Red Cross Societies, and to help them to grow and to carry out the program of the Cannes conference for a world-wide public health campaign. It is not the thought that the National Red Cross Societies themselves should have the responsibilities of the actual work of safeguarding and improving public health, but that each society should stimulate and encourage the natural agencies for such work within their respective countries, including the departments of health of their governments ; and in cases where such departments do not exist, the societies should endeavor to create public sentiment for the establishment of such departments. Another point to be noted is that the League of Red Cross Societies will supplement the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross of Geneva, acting in harmony with it ; in no way will it supersede, absorb, or conflict with the activities of national societies, but on the contrary it will put at their disposal the latest knowledge and ap- proved practices of experts in public health and preventive medicines throughout the world. In all probability its immediate functions will be to coordinate relief work in combating pestilence such as typhus. In conclusion, I wish to say that actual experience has demonstrated beyond all doubt that the people of all nations are quick and eager to seize and act upon knowledge that leads to increased happiness. It would seem, therefore, that the far-reaching effects of the program of the League of Red Cross Societies may be measured by the suffering which exists and which it purposes to relieve. Hand in 290 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR hand with the world campaign for the betterment of public health will go the improvement of social and economic conditions of humanity, and a protective union, as it were, with all working together in a spirit of kindly consideration and cooperation for the common good. Surely this spirit of service among the peoples cannot fail to develop a new fraternity and sympathy to a degree not dreamed of hitherto ; surely the League of Red Cross Societies has a glorious future in the field of human kindness ahead of it. APPENDIX THE STORY IN FIGURES THE Red Cross War Council was appointed May 10, 1917. It went out of existence on February 28th, 1919. The Fu-st War Fund Drive for $100,000,000 was held in the week June 18 to June 25, 1917, and resulted in reported subscriptions of approximately $114,000,000. The Second War Fund Drive was held in the week May 18 to May 25, 1918, and resulted in reported subscriptions of approximately $170,000,000. Under the financial plan. Chapters were permitted to withdraw 25 per cent of their collections against War Funds, the remaining 75 per cent being at the disposal of the Red Cross War Council. Up to the conclusion of the administration of the War Council there had been collected against the two War Funds a total of approximately $283,599,000, of which $229,799,000 had been credited to National Headquarters and $53,800,000 withdrawn by Chapters. As the figures show, the total revenues of National Head- quarters and Chapters for the twenty months ending Feb- ruary 28, 1919, were $400,178,000, and during that period the total expenditures amounted to $272,676,000. Thus when the War Council turned over the affairs of the Red Cross to its Executive Committee, the permanent adminis- trative body, the total resources of the National Head- quarters amounted to $110,756,000. This money was represented by supplies held in the United States and over- seas valued at $48,678,000 ; cash advances amounting to $12,834,000, and current assets amounting to $52,606,000. Against the foregoing assets there were appropriations, which had not been expended and yet which constituted an obUga- 291 292 APPENDIX tion, amounting to $16,714,000. Thus the total net resources of National Headquarters were $94,042,000. On the same date the balance in the hands of Chapters amounted to $33,460,000. The accounts of the Red Cross are audited by the War Department and the full report is annually submitted to Congress. Details of receipts and expenditures of course are covered by these audited reports, which, however, only cover the period of successive fiscal years. The figures given below cover the finances of the Red Cross for the period during which the War Council was in control of its affairs. AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS Revenues Twenty Months Ending February 28, 1919 National Headquarters — First War Drive CoUections ... $ 92,947,000.00 Second War Drive CoUections . . 136,852,000.00 Membership Dues 18,930,000.00 Donations of Surplus Funds from Chapters 1,420,000.00 Interest 3,157,000.00 Other Revenues 6,697,000.00 Total Revenues — National Headquarters $260,003,000.00 Add — Fund Balance, June 30, 1917 3,135,000.00 $263,138,000.00 Chapters — Chapters' Proportion of War Drives $ 53,800,000.00 Chapters' Proportion of Membership Dues 18,440,000.00 Chapters' Proportion of Class Fees 390,000.00 Sales of Materials to Members for Relief Articles 20,290,000.00 Contributions, Legacies, Gifts . . 9,580,000.00 All Other Revenue 31,340,000.00 Total Revenues — Chapters . $133,840,000.00 Add — Balance, June 30, 1917 . . 3,200,000.00 ; $137,040,000.00 Total Revenues — National Headquarters and Chapters $400,178,000.00 APPENDIX 293 AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS Expenditures Twenty Months Ending Februanj 28, 1919 National Headquarters — War Relief in France $57,207,000.00 War Relief Elsewhere Overseas . . 63,841,000.00 War Relief in United States . . . 28,978,000.00 Disaster Relief 939,000.00 Collections, Enrollments and Publi- cations 4,660,000.00 Operation of Relief Bureaus . . . 2,727,000.00 Operation of Bureaus for Handling Relief Supplies, also. Transporta- tion in United States of Relief SuppHes 5,530,000.00 Operation of Administrative Bureaus at National and Divisional Head- quarters 4,360,000.00 Other Acti\dties 854,000.00 Total National Headquarters $169,096,000.00 Chapters — Materials Purchased for Relief Articles $60,660,000.00 Canteen Ser\dce ....... 2,320,000.00 Equipment of MDitary Hospitals, Ambulances, etc 3,070,000.00 Home Service 8,790,000.00 Miscellaneous War Relief .... 480,000.00 Spanish Influenza Epidemic Relief Work 1,680,000.00 Disaster ReUef 520,000.00 PubHc Health Nursing 380,000.00 Transportation of Materials and SuppUes 290,000.00 General Operating Expenses . . . 7,490,000.00 All Other Expenditures 17,900,000.00 Total Chapters $103,580,000.00 Total Expenditures — National Headquarters and Divisions $272,676,000.00 294 APPENDIX AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS Resoukces February 28, 1919 National Headquarters — Supplies — In United States $27,698,000. Overseas 20,980,000. Total $48,678,000. Cash Advances — (To Provide Working Capital) Overseas Commissions $ 9,509,000. Divisions in United States .... 2,994,000. Miscellaneous 331,000. Total $12,834,000. Current Assets — Cash in Banks $19,063,000. Cash and Securities in Hands of War Finance Committee 31,703,000. Securities Owned 1,206,000. Bills Receivable 3,000. Miscellaneous Accounts Receivable . 631,000 . Total $52,606,000. Less — Accounts Payable 3,362,000. $49,244,000. Total Resources Nat. Hdqrs. (Exc. End. Fund) . $110,756,000. Less — Amount Obligated by Appro- priations but not Expended on February 28, 1919 16,714,000. Net Resources National Headquarters (Ex- cluding Endowment Fund) $ 94,042,000. Chapters — Balance February 28, 1919 . 33,460,000. Total Resources (Excluding Endowment Fund) $127,502,000. APPENDIX 295 Endowment Fund Balance July 1, 1917 $ 1,361,000. Add — Revenues 20 Months to February 28, 1919 1,072,000. Total $ 2,433,000. Less — Income Payments to National Organization, A.R.C 106,000. Balance — February 28, 1919 . . $ 2,327,000. The following statistics may also be of interest. They represent the great volume of production and work which the American Red Cross undertook both at home and abroad : — Red Cross members: adult, 20,000,000; children, 11,000,000 31,000,000 Red Cross workers 8,100,000 Relief articles produced by volunteer workers 371,577,000 ^ Families of soldiers and saUors aided by Home Service in the United States 500,000 Refreshments served by canteen workers in U. S. . . . 40,000,000 Nurses enrolled for service with Army or Navy or Red Cross 23,822 Kinds of comfort articles distributed to soldiers and sailors in U. S 2,700 Knitted articles given to soldiers and sailors in United States 10,900,000 Tons of relief supplies shipped overseas 101,000 Foreign countries in which the Red Cross operated ... 25 Patient days in Red Cross hospitals in France .... 1,155,000 French hospitals given material aid 3,780 'Representing: Surgical dressings 306,967,000 Hospital garments 17,462,000 Hospital supplies 14,211,000 Refugee garments 6,329,000 Articles for soldiers and sailors . . . 23,329,000 Unclassified 3,279,000 Total 371,577,000 296 APPENDIX Splints supplied for American soldiers 294,000 Gallons of nitrous oxide and oxygen furnished hospitals in France 4,340,000 Men served by Red Cross canteens in France .... 15,376,000 Refugees aided in France 1,726,000 American convalescent soldiers attending Red Cross movies in France 3,110,000 Soldiers carried by Red Cross ambulances in Italy . . . 148,000 Children cared for by Red Cross in Italy 155,000 INDEX ^gean Sea, Red Cross work on islands Basle, care of evacuis in, 188. of, 261. Allied Prisoners' Commission, 281. Ambulance Corps, Red Cross, 21 ; sec- tions absorbed in Army Medical Corps, 141-142; sections established on Italian front, 213, 215. Ambulance drivers, heroism of, 139-141. Ambulance ship Surf, 55-56. Ambulances, for naval establishment, 61. American Committee for Armenian and Syrian relief, cooperation of, with Red Cross, 255 ; cable from, to Red Cross War Council, on conditions in Palestine, 261-262. American Hostels for Refugees, 158. American Library Association, 50. American Relief Clearing House in Paris, 4. American Society for Relief of French Orphans, 158. Annel, story of hospital at, 138-139. Archangel, Red Cross ship sent to, 279 ; relief work base at, 280. Armenians, relief work among, in Pales- tine, 265. Athens, work of Red Cross for children in, 260-261. Austrians, defeat of, by Italian army, 215, 217-219. Baker, Secretary, requests Red Cross to take over service at railroad stations, 39. Baltimore, Institute for Blind in, 130. Baltimore export warehouse, report of, 120. Base hospitals, personnel for, supplied by Red Cross, 56-57 ; fifty furnished to army by Red Cross, 144 ; enter- tainment supplied at, in France, by Red Cross, 146-147. Base Hospital Units, organization of, 81-83 ; amount spent on, 83 ; active work of, on declaration of war, 83-85 ; abandonment of system, 85. Belgian children, in Switzerland, 190. Belgians, in France, work for, 153-156. Belgiima, appointment of special Red Cross department for, 22 ; German vandalism in, 193 ; heroic qualities of, 193-194 ; the Red Cross to the rescue of, 194 ; work in, organized as a de- partment of French Commission, 195- 196 ; problem of li\'ing quarters for refugees, 196-197 ; coordination of re- lief agencies for, 197-198 ; plight of army of, 198-199; Red Cross relief work for army, 199-201 ; Red Cross work supplementary only to that of Government of, 201-202 ; erection of barrack houses in, 202 ; stocks of food supplies prepared, 203 ; splendid work done by Queen of, 204-205; work of Countess Van Steen, 205- 206 ; other private enterprises of re- lief in, 206 ; the Colonies Scolaires, 206. Beltiu, Rimiania, gruesome conditions in, 236. Bernstorff, Count von, departure of, from Washington, 4. Biddle, General, quoted, 225. Blind, reeducation of the, 126-127; Institute for the, in Baltimore, 130. Brest, base hospitals in, 57. British Red Cross, cooperation of, with American Red Cross in Rumania, 245. See Great Britain. British Relief Fund for Palestine and Syria, 262. Brooklyn, U. S. cruiser, converted into a floating hospital, 275. Bureau International de la Paix, 180- 181. Bureaus under Red Cross administration, 38. CcBsar, cargo of, bought by Red Cross, 255. California, Junior Red Cross activities in, 97, 98. 297 298 INDEX Camp Service, Bureau of, 38 ; work of, 47-51 ; among American soldiers in Great Britain, 228. Cannes, conference of medical experts at (1919), 288. Canteen, picture of a, in France, 134- 135. Canteens, Bureau of, 38. Canteens, rolling, 139, 213, 256 ; Canteen Service, vital importance of, 41 ; functions defined by army orders, 41-42 ; one month's statistics of, 45 ; in Great Britain, 228-229. Canteen workers, 34 ; on the battlefront, 136-137. Caporetto, disaster of, 208. Care Committee of London Chapter of Red Cross, 229. Cayeux-sur-Mer, schools established at, 206. Chapters, division of National Red Cross into, 16-17 ; description of work of, 23-36; supplies for, 115-118. Charlotte, N. C, incident at, 40. Chateau des Halles at Lyons, 173, 177. Children, mobilization of, in Junior Red Cross, 93-106. Child welfare exhibit at Lyons, 173. Child welfare work, extent of, as carried on by Red Cross in France, 168-178. Chinese children in Junior Red Cross, 101. Civil Affairs Department, 158. Coast hospitals, lack of, 56. Colonial Dames, Society of, hospital ships equipped by, 55. Colonies Scolaires in Belgiimi, 206. Comfort, hospital ship, 55. Communication service of Red Cross, 134, 147-149 ; enlarged to supply information about prisoners, 186 ; in Great Britain, 230. Compi^gne, narrative of, 137-138. CongS du Soldat Beige, 200. Convalescent houses built by Red Cross, 50; at naval stations, 61. Cooperative stores for Belgians, 197, 198. Czecho-Slovaks, the, 272 ; as a cause for Red Cross activity in Russia, 273- 274. Daniels, Secretary, letter of, concerning Naval Auxiliaries, 58. Danish Red Cross, 182. Davison, Henry P., appointed chairman of War Council for American National Red Cross, 7; elected chairman of board of governors of Red Cross or- ganizations, 286. Decentralization plan of management, 16-17. Delaere, Abbe, Colonies Scolaires of, 206. Delano, Jane A., a great name on honor rolls of Red Cross, 92. Dinard, Red Cross work at, 167-168. Director, the Red Cross, 48-50. Disabled soldier, treatment of the, 122- 131 ; broad and liberal provision for, 131. Disaster, work of Red Cross nurses in, 80. Dispensaries established in France, 157 ; traveling, in France, 169-170. Drive, the first, of the American Red Cross, 9-11 ; the second, 36. Drives of Red Cross, funds realized by, 291-292. Dying and dead, help for the, 150. Ecole Joffre, the, 128. Educational system of Home Service section, 19-20. Elizabeth, Queen of Belgium, great work of, for children and aged, 204—205 , Red Cross gives assistance to, 206. Emergency provision, 113. England, Red Cross commissioners chosen for, 21-22 ; lessons in reeduca- tion from, 127-128. ^ee Great Britain. Evian, Red Cross work for refugee children at, 170-172 ; German policy in discharge of refugees through, 174- 175. Exuma, island of, Red Cross work done in, 36. Families assisted by Home Service of Red Cross, 66 ff. Farrand, Dr. Livingston, chairman of Executive Committee of American Red Cross, 284. Fatalism, Asiatic, in Russia, 269. Field Director, the Red Cross, 48-50; time of, given to home problems of men in service, 72. First aid, 34. Follow-up work in reeducation, 129- 130. Foreign commission, appointment of, 14. Foreign Relief, Bureau of, 113. Fourteenth Division, story of the, 35; contribution of, in second drive, 36; INDEX 299 conspicuous work of, for Russia, 275- 278. Foyer du Soldat Beige, 199-200. France, appointment of Red Cross Com- mission to, 14 ; Red Cross nursing service in, 89-91 ; lessons in reeduca- tion from, 127-128 ; the future of, 163 ; the children of, 163-164 ; army of refugee children, and Red Cross work for, 164-178. French Army, help given to, 161. French Commission, Red Cross work in Belgium at first organized as a de- partment of, 195-196. French Goverrunent, work for refugees by Red Cross done in cooperation with, 154-156. Gas gangrene, serum for, 146. Genoa, Red Cross hospital established at, 216. Germans, anti-American propaganda of, in Italy, 208-209 ; underhanded work of, with Russians against Rumanians, 237-238 ; work of, in Greece through Turks and Bulgarians, 259. Girl heroes at Red Cross canteens abroad, 136. "Godmother of Good Works," French name for American Red Cross, 158. Goldsboro, N. C, incident of wounded soldier at, 44-45. Graves Registration Service, photog- raphers working under, 150 n. Great Britain, Red Cross work of, 222 ff. ; setting up of American Red Cross organization in, 224-225; hospital work of American Red Cross in, 226 ; hospitals of American Red Cross in, 226-227 ; Camp Service among Ameri- can soldiers in, 228; "Our Day" of British Red Cross, 231 ; America's gift to British Red Cross, 231-232. Greece, conditions in, when war opened, 258-259; work of Germany in, 259; appeal of Greek Red Cross for help, 259 ; Red Cross assistance in, 259- 261. Grosvenor Gardens, London, Red Cross war activities at, 230-231. Guam, Red Cross work in, 35. Guatemala earthquake, the, 113. Halifax disaster, the, 113. Havre, headquarters of Red Cross work for Belgium established at, 195 ; Belgian refugees at, 196-197. Hawaii, Red Cross work done in, 35. Henderson, Sir David, director-general of board of governors of Red Cross organizations, 286. Holy Land, Red Cross in the, 261-266 ; appropriations of War Council of Red Cross for, 266. Home Communication, Bureau of, 134, 147-149, 186; work of, in England, 230. Home dietetics, 34. Homes, reaction of Junior Red Cross on, 100-101. Home Service, Bureau of, 42 ; functions of, 19-20 ; individual problems in- volved in, 35 ; lasting effects of, in betterment of social conditions, 77. Home Service institutes, establishment of, 76. Honor rolls of Red Cross, nurses' names on, 92. Hospitals, lack of coast, 56 ; personnel for base, supplied by Red Cross, 56- 57 ; naval shore abroad, 57 ; for re- construction and reeducation of dis- abled soldiers, 124-125 ; for Belgian soldiers, 201 ; of American Red Cross in Great Britain, 226 ; in Serbia, 256. See also Base hospitals. Hospital service in the Army, 142-146. Hospital ships equipped through Red Cross, 55-56. Hospital supplies, preparation of, by Red Cross Chapters, 26-33 ; securing of, for Rumania, 243-245. Hospital supply service, 144-146. Hurry calls, 113-114. Incorporation of American Red Cross, 1. Influenza epidemic in Italy, 216. Institute for Blind, in Baltimore, 130. Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men, New York City, 128-129. Insurance of Red Cross shipments, 121. International Agency for Prisoners of War, 180. International Committee at Geneva, 179 ; awarded peace prizes, 180. Ireland, emergency stations in, 225. Italian children in Junior Red Cross, 101. Italian premier, address of, 110; ad- vises concerning coming of Red Cross representatives, 214. Italian soldiers, care of, in Switzerland, 188-189. Italy, Red Cross Commission to, 21 ; 300 INDEX Red Cross nursing service in, W\ the Red Cross in, 207-208 ; the dis- aster of Caporetto, 208 ; Emergency Commission sent to, from France, 208 ; refutation of German propa- ganda in, 208-209 ; cooperation of Red Cross with Italian authorities, 209-211 ; arrival of permanent Red Cross Commission in, 211; results of widespread activity of Red Cross, 211- 213 ; ambulance sections and rolling kitchens established by, 213-214; aid given to soldiers' families in, 214- 215; influenza epidemic in, 216; establishment of Red Cross hospital at Genoa, 216; Red Cross aid to American soldiers in, 216-217; de- feat of Austrians by forces in, 217- 219; care for starving civilian popu- lation of, 219-221 ; Department of Tuberculosis in, 221 ; Red Cross ac- tivities turned over to Italian au- thorities with cessation of hostilities, 221. Japanese, cooperation of, in relief work in Siberia, 278. Japanese children in Junior Red Cross, 101-102. Jassy, conditions in, in 1917, 235 ; food brought to, by American Red Cross, 241 ; relief work in, 247 ; Red Cross canteen at, and its work, 248 ; scene in public square of, upon departure of Red Cross Commission, 251. Jerusalem, work of British engineers in, 262-263 ; Red Cross Commission in, 263-264 ; character of relief work in, 264-265 ; care of orphans in, 265. Junior Red Cross, 18 ; creation of the, 93 ; reasons for, 93-96 ; account of activities of, 97-100 ; reaction of, on the homes, 100-101 ; notes from re- ports on work of, in schools, 103- 104 ; permanent beneficial results of, 105-106 ; splints for hospital use made by, 146. Knitting, machines for, 26. Labor, Department of, cooperation of Federal Board for Vocational Educa- tion and, 124. League of Red Cross Societies, formation and objects of, 286-288 ; future plans, of, 289-290. Lenhi County, Idaho, Junior Red Cross work in, 98. Letter-writing for soldiers, 148. Leysin, hospital for tuberculous Serbian officers at, 187-188. Library Committee of American Red Cross in London, 230. Lieth, base hospital in, 57. Lighthouses, Red Cross, 20. Liverpool, American Red Cross hospital in, 226. Livres des Soldats Beiges, 199. London, base hospital near, 57; St. Catherine's Lodge in, 226; naval hospital in Park Lane, 227 ; hospital in Kensington Palace Gardens, 227 ; Red Cross workrooms in, 229 ; ac- tivities of American Red Cross in, 229-231. Los Angeles, Junior Red Cross in, 97. "Lost children of the Urals," the, 273. Lyons, child welfare exhibit at, 173. McKey, Lieutenant Edward, work of, and impression made by, 214. " Madeira Islands, relief work for the, | 113-114. Marie, Queen of Rumania, 237 ; sad and noble figure of, 239 ; work of mercy done by, 239-240; story of her country's misfortune told by, 240 ; cablegram from, to War Council at Washington, 250 ; members of Red Cross Commission decorated by, 250. Marines, United States, in Russia, 275. Medical Advisory Committee, appoint- ment of, 21. Medical and Surgical Service of the Navy, 54. Medical Corps, Army : effectiveness of, 133-134 ; cooperation of Red Cross with, 134 ; ambulance sections ab- sorbed in, 141-142. Membership drive of 1917, 17-18. Mercy, hospital ship, 55. Military Relief, department of, 38. Minneapolis, Junior Red Cross in, 97. Mirman, Pr6fet, great work of, for refugees, 166-168. Moldavia, conditions in province of, 235. Moscow, Red Cross mission in, 271-272, 279. Motor Corps, Red Cross, 20-21 ; women enrolled in, 33-34. Motor Service, Bureau of, 38. Motor trucks for naval establishment, 61. Nancy, the workers of, 167. Nationalization of American Red Cross, 1. INDEX 301 Naval Affairs, Red Cross Bureau of, 22. Naval Auxiliaries, organization of, 58. Naval Reserve service, 53-55. Naval shore hospitals abroad, 57. Naval stations, camp service in, 61-62. Navy, Red Cross cooperation with the, 52-64. Nesle, Red Cross work at, 169. New York export warehouse, report of, 120. Nurses, Red Cross, 78-79 ; enrollment of, 79-80 ; called in cases of disaster, 80; mobilization of, in 1917, 81; in Base Hospital Units, 81-83 ; passage of, into military establish- ment, 86 ; account of war activities of, 86-91 ; tributes of foreign surgeons to, 91 ; names of, on honor rolls of Red Cross, 92. Nursing, Department of, 21. Organization, Red Cross problems of, 107-108. Orlando, Italian Premier, 110, 214. Otranto disaster, 225. "Our Day" of British Red Croas, 231- 232. Paignton, England, American Red Cross hospital at, 226. Palestine, Red Cross activities in, 261- 266. Paris, American Relief Clearing House in, 4 ; conference of Red Cross societies in (1919), 286. Park Lane, London, naval hospital in, 227. Peking Chapter of Red Cross, 276. Perignan, charity for refugee children founded by, 166. Pershing, General, advises "backing up" the French, 13. Personnel Department of Red Cross, 107-108. Petrograd, destitute children in, 271 ; Red Cross appropriation for officers' and soldiers' families in, 271. Philippine Islands, Red Cross work done in, 35. Photographs of graves taken by Red Cross, 150 n. Plattsburg Barracks, hospital for shell- shock patients at, 131. Poison-gas serum, 146. Porto Rico, Red Cross work done in, 35, 36. Port Said, Red Cross takes charge of Armenian refugees at, 265. Prison camps, inspection of, by delegates from Switzerland, 181-182 ; number and location of, in Germany, 190-191. Prisoners of war, help for, 149, 191-192; Swiss activities in interest of, ISO- ISO ; Serbian, in Austria and Bulgaria, 256-257 ; Russian, 274. Publicity, Red Cross Department of, 22. Purchases, Bureau of, 111-112. Queenstown, base hospital in, 57. Railroad stations. Red Cross service at, 39. Rappard, Professor William, secretary- general of board of governors of Red Cross organizations, 286. Ravitaillement service, appropriation of Red Cross for, 144. Receipt cards, prisoners', 185. Red Cross, American : incorporation and nationalization of, 1 ; sailing of first mercy ship, 2 ; increase in mem- bership of, 3-4 ; relief work of, through American Clearing House in Paris, 4 ; activities of, upon declaration of war on Germany, 6-7 ; appointment of War Council for, 7 ; first drive of, for $100,000,000, 9-11; plans and proj- ects of War Council at opening of 1917, 12-13 ; appointment of foreign commission, 14 ; scrupulous care taken by, in spending people's money, 16 ; decentralization plan, 16-17 ; membership drive of 1917, 17-18; the Junior Red Cross, IS ; Home Service, 19-20 ; work of, directly for soldiers, 20-21 ; Motor and Am- bulance Corps, Department of Nurs- ing, etc., 21 ; commissions to foreign countries, 21-22; Department of Supplies and Transportation, 22 ; description of work of Divisions and Chapters, 23-36; the Fourteenth Division, 36 ; work for the soldier at home, 37 ff. ; cooperation of, with the Navy, 52 ff. ; department of Home Service, 65-77 ; work of nurses, 78- 79 ; problems of organization, 107- 108 ; Personnel Department, 107- 108 ; operations of Department of Supplies and Transportation, 108 ff. ; purchases of, combined with those of War Department, 114-115; work for 302 INDEX disabled soldiers, 122-131 ; work on the battiefront, 132-150; "backing up the French," 151-162; work for the children of France, 163-178; Switzerland as a central station, 179- 192 ; work of, for Belgium, 195-206 ; work in Italy, 207-221 ; work of British Red Cross, 222 ff . ; work in Rumania, 233-251 ; work in Serbia, 254-258 ; work in Greece, 259-261 ; work for Russia, 274-281 ; statistics of work of, from May, 1917, to Febru- ary, 1919, 291-296. Red Cross, relief ship, 80. Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men, 128-129. Red Cross Societies, League of, formed, 286-287. Reeducation of disabled soldiers, 123- 129 ; Home Service in, 129-130. Refugees, work for, 153-159; discharge of, by Germans, through Evian, 170, 174-175 ; French system in care of, 175-176 ; particulars of American Red Cross assistance, 176-178. Relief Clearing House, American, in Paris, 160. Repos d' Elizabeth, Queen of Belgium's charity, 205. Research bureau maintained by Red Cross, 134. Rest stations behind battiefront, 135- 137. Rolling canteens, 139 ; in Serbia, 256. Rolling kitchens on Italian front, 213- 214, 215. Roman, hospital at, 246, 247-248. Rome, Red Cross Medical Warehouses in, 213. Rose, Mile, de, charity for refugee children conducted by, 166. Roux, Professor, chairman of conference of Red Cross Societies, 288. Rumania, Red Cross Commission to, 21 ; appalling conditions in, 233-234 ; American Red Cross fights disease in, 235 ; program of first Red Cross mission, 239 ; noble part taken by Queen Marie, 239-240 ; story of, told by Queen, 240 ; food supplies brought in from Russia, 241 ; excerpt from newspaper of, on feeding of starving people by Red Cross, 242 ; securing of hospital supplies for, 243-245 ; departure for America of five members of Commission, 245; work of civilian relief in, 245-247 ; hospital at Roman, 246, 247-248; manufacture of cloth- ing, from material secm-ed from Russia, 248 ; forced surrender of cause of, 249 ; dismissal of Allied agents of relief by order of Germans, 250 ; departure of Red Cross Com- mission, 250-251. Rural schools. Junior Red Cross in, 102. Russia, Red Cross Commission to, 21 ; relief of distress in, 114; food secured by Red Cross from, for Rumania, 241 ; material for clothing secured from, 248 ; magnitude of problem presented by. 267-268 ; the Red Cross in, in 1917, 268-271; the Trans- Siberian railway, 272-273; the Czecho-Slovaks, 273-274; Red Cross relief work for, 275-281. Russian Island, Red Cross hospital on, 276. Russians, relief given to destitute, 187 ; conduct of, in Rumania, 235-236, 249 ; virtual betrayal of Rumanians by, 237-238. St. Catherine's Lodge, London, Red Cross hospital at, 226. Salisbury Court, Red Cross hospital at, 226-227. Saloniki, base of Red Cross work for Serbia, 254. San Diego, relief work for survivors of, 62-63. Sanitary Service, Bureau of, 38 ; work of, 45-47. Sascut, Rumania, distribution of food at, 246. School Auxiliary, the, 96. Schools, correlation of Junior Red Cross and, 100. Scientific triumphs during the war, 146. Searchers, work of, for Bureau of Home Communication, 147-149. Serbia, Red Cross Commission to, 21 ; Red Cross work in, 80-81 ; hospital for tuberculous officers of, in Switzer- land, 187-188 ; role of, in the war, 253 ; account of Red Cross work in, 254-258. Serbian Red Cross, the, 256. Shell-shock patients, hospital for, 130- 131. Shipment of Red Cross supplies, 117-121. Sims, Admiral, praises of Red Cross by, 63-64. Social disease, measures taken in regard to, 47. INDEX 303 Solace, hospital ship, 55. Sphagnum moss, use of, in Red Cross workrooms, 26. Staten Island canteen, 44. Statistics of Red Cross work from May, 1917, to February, 1919, 291-296. Stores, Bureau of, 115-118. Strathpepper, base hospital at. 57. Supplies and Transportation, Department of, 22, 108 ff. Surf, ambulance ship, 55-56. Surgical dressings, preparation of, 26- 33 ; supplying of, 59-60. Surgical wards in Red Cross canteens, 43. Switzerland, International Committee in, 179 ; Red Cross actixaties in, 180 ; work of, for prisoners of war, 180- 185 ; assistance given to, by American Red Cross, 185-187 ; evacue problem in, 188 ; Italian problem in, 188- 189 ; care of Belgian children in, 190. Temps, Paris, tribute to American Red Cross by, 161-162. Tompkins^alle Naval Station canteen, 44. Toul, refuge for children at, 153 ; Red Cross work at, 167. Training courses in home service, 76. Transportation, Bureau of, 118-119. Trans-Siberian railway, importance of, to Red Cross activity in Russia, 272- 273. Transylvania, Rumania's hopes for re- covery of, 234. Trieste. Red Cross work at, 219-220. Tuberculosis, Department of, in Italy, 221. Tuberculous children, work for, in France, 168-170. Tuberculous Serbian officers, hospital for, at Leysin, 187-188. Tuberculous soldiers, treatment of, 130. Tuscania, sinking of, the, 224. Vaccination by Sanitary branch of Red Cross, 46—47. Van Steen, Countess, heroic work of, 205-206. Venereal diseases, measures taken in re- gard to, 47. Vinckem, Belgium, Queen's school at, 206. Virgin Islands, Red Cross work done in, 35. Viviani, Madame, refuge for children founded by, 166. Vladivostok, American Red Cross relief base at, 275, 276 ; refugee work in, 276-278. Vocational Education, Federal Board for, 124. Vocational Rehabilitation Law, 123. Vodena, refugee work of Red Cross in, 256. War Council for American National Red Cross, appointment of, 7 ; two ideals held by, 8 ; plans of, in spring of 1917, 12-13 ; precautions of, in expenditiu"e of money, 16 ; shipments of hospital supplies and food to Riunania by order of, 244-245 ," re- tirement of, 284 ; statistics of work accomplished by, 291-296. Warehousing in connection with Red Cross administration, 50-51 ; in France, 159-161. War Fund Drives, amounts realized by, 291-292. Washington Union Station canteen, 43. Welch, Dr. William H., at conference of Red Cross Societies, 288. Wharton, Mrs. Edith, Tuberculeux de la Guerre founded by, 158. Wilson, President, appeal of, in behalf of Red Cross, 4 ; declaration of war on Germany by, 6 ; War Council for American National Red Cross ap- pointed by, 7. Women, work of, in Red Cross Chapters, 25-33 ; in Red Cross Motor Corps, 33-34. Wulveringhem, Belgium, hospital at, 198. Young Men's Christian Association, 216. Ytile parties at base hospitals in France, 146-147. Zimmermann note, the, 5. Zionist Unit for rehef of suffering Jews, 265. Printed In the United States of America. rf^^ 0^1^^ <&D3KVS0l'^ '^/mm^vs^ ^5»EUNIVER%. 1' — ^ ^IDSANCEl^^ %flAINfl^«^ ^^ ^HIBRARVO^. (J %0illV0JO'^ ^OFCAllFOIKi^ %MAiNn-n?^^ ^^(?Aavaan-# ^^AHvaan-u^ .5MEUNIVER5// ■ iRARYQ^^ -^lUBRARYOc. WIF0Rj5^ ^OFCAUFOff^ ^lOSANCEl£r>