Often times after an attack the men will not have eaten for some hours, so the Army Medical Corps prepares sandwiches, to fortify the men in their fight back to health T By Francis R. Bellamy HE Red Cross has obtained a hundred million dollars from you and It has spent the greater part of it. That is the one great fact about the Red Cross to-day. me. Two questions arise immediately. First, what has the Red Cross done with this huge sum; secondly, is what it has done worth supporting? There can be no dodging this, no evasion. Have we been justified in going down in our pockets for a hundred million dollars? A huge sum! Are we justified in supporting the Red Cross to the limit in the future? WHA Oh, no! The truth is that the Red Cross is fighting the uphill, never-say-die battle of the maker of achievement since the world began. The Red Cross is suffering, is praying, is clenching its hands with a determination that is all human. The Red Cross is doing what you and I are doing for it! That is all. There is no triumphal march of conquering Mercy into France, over the Alps into Italy-La Panne, Amiens, Paris, Toul, Evian. Only infinite tact, endless human sympathy, and all the magic of the personal touch, have enabled the Red Cross to go so far on its task. Do you know the real story of Evian, where the American Red Cross is caring for thousands of refugee children with its heartrending, poignant implication, its dagger pointed at HAT has become of those dollars you and I gave to the Red Cross last year? Just what has been done with the $100,000,000 fund? The answer to that last question lies right between you and me. You and I are the American Red Cross. The Red Cross isn't relief workers, it isn't nurses, it isn't war councils, divisions, chapters. Chapters are necessary to enable us to know and take everybody by the hand as if they lived in our town. Divisions are necessary to coördinate the work the chapters do. War Councils are necessary to direct intelligently our efforts and the result of our efforts. Workers, surgeons, and nurses are necessary to carry out these duties. Well, it has served the American soldier in sickness and health; it has established hospitals; it has succoured stricken pitals; it has succoured stricken nations--but read and see just what each dollar has done for humanity. But you and I are the Red Cross. The Red Cross is just what you and I make it. It isn't any more; it can't be any less. It is an organization-a human organization, liable to make mistakes, liable to great depressions, capable of magnificent achievement. Has the Red Cross made mistakes? Certainly. Every Every human being does. Has it made any big mistakes? No-not one! You who read the newspapers have the impression, perhaps, that the Red Cross is a sort of triumphal procession, a glorified, irresistible superhuman Sister of Mercyof Mercystretching out her hand easily, divinely, to the weak and suffering of this war-tortured world. the heart of France's children, the France of the future, the France you and I shall know? Or have you thought of Evian and its thousand children a day from conquered Belgium, the French provinces-pitiful little boys and girls with arms blown off, with vermincovered bodies, pinched cheeks and startled eyes-have you thought of Evian as simply one more Red Cross activity, with white-capped nurses, khaki-clad doctors meeting the trains from Germany and giving American kindness and help? Do you know that the Red Cross was many long miles away when the first train from Germany came unheralded into Evian with its load of human misery from Belgium and the conquered provinces? On the train was a draper-a mere milliner; a man of sixty; a milliner with his two sons dead in the trenches of France and his children disappeared forever. He awaited his mother and father on the next train. They came. He has met every train of refugees since as his thanks to Providence that his own parents' lives were saved. He met the trains at first with mere kindness his heart burning with gratitude to Providence. Then, thanks to friends and acquaintances, he met them with what aid he could gather. Finally, he met them with all the doctors and nurses and supplies and the giant sympathy of the American Red Cross. Help where help was needed! This is the story of the Red Cross in Evian. Suspicion of strangers, physical obstacles, lack of money and supplies and trained men and women, all overcome. You gave your money to the draper of Evian when you gave it to the Red Cross. But you could never have given it if it had not been for the Red Cross; the milliner of Evian would have broken his heart waiting for help that could never have come without the Red Cross. Again the Red Cross brings the American Flag to Toul, the newspapers tell us. Another triumphal procession! But do you know the story of Toul! The real story? A story of foreigners in a strange land; peasants who preferred to die in their shelltorn farms rather than be taken care of by strangers. There has been no triumphal procession, at Toul, with its wards of children, tubercular from months in damp cellars in shattered villages. Only the desperate need of France could ever have given America even an opportunity to take care of these waifs of war. France would have held tight to her own breast her war-stricken children! Infinite tact, endless study and work, supplies without number and price and above all the desperate need of France! These are the things that have given the Red Cross its hard-won opportunity to help in the children's hospitals at Toul of which such good use is being made. From Noyon came a peasant woman-on a ten-day vacation from the farm she worked at night, because the German shells kept her down in her cellar during the day-on a tenday vacation to give birth to a sixth child. In two weeks, she left, straining the child to her breast for one last hug before she returned to her farm and said good-bye to her baby in the foreign Red Cross wards at Toul. of Noyon when you gave to the Red Cross. She is the Red Cross, too. You cannot give her money without the Red Cross. And without the Red Cross France is that much the loser. THE WORK OF THE NURSES You do not hear much of the nurses of the Red Cross either-the war has not come home to America yet. But do you know that the nurses become part of the army and navy-that they cannot take photographs, that they write only reports, and that their work remains enshrined only in the hearts of the people they have helped: here a patient-faced Russian who cannot take a step without remembering a hospital in Kieff where a white-capped nurse from a foreign land helped him back to life and the use of his fractured leg; there a Serbian who can never forget the days in Belgrade, his only memory of typhus and of the Austrian bombardment being the interminable cups of water an American woman gave him; a Belgian who struggled against death in the hospitals at La Panne, while outside the head surgeon buried his wife's body in the sand and the American nurses clung to their task beneath the Prussian storm; American boys who have hovered between life and death, watched over by a girl from home; English and Italian lads; French men, women and children-all these will never forget the Red Cross even if no person of bitter experience and vivid imagination ever arises to write their chapter of history. Her Listen to a girl who has been serving in a French hospital since the war began. letter is to a friend. "I am over my weakness, my sickness now," she writes, "and can bear anything, even death, if I can know that I have sent back to the trenches from this building one more fighter for France!" One more fighter for France! Sent back by Red Cross supplies, and an American girl! That nurse in Rouen is the Red Cross, too. She, too, is fighting the uphill fight of the Red Cross in a land destitute of labor and luxury fighting it in bitter cold, unheated, wooden barracks, aiding the doctors and surgeons in their endless work. She, too, is unaware of the triumphal procession of Mercy. She only wants bandages, dressings, garments, always and forever, as all the refugee The Boche to-day seems absolutely bent on destroying everything that is American. His idea is that if he can get the American soldier over here where we are short of everything and then cut him off from every sort of supply, he will have done a smart thing. I want you at home to realize this fully, because unless you do understand the situation over here you will never send us the things we need in sufficient quantity to meet all dangers. We should never be satisfied until we get over such enormous quantities of everything that we can lose half of them and take the setback without a groan. THE VAST SYSTEM OF TRANSPORTATION Enormous quantities of everything, and the transportation to move it! That is the watchword of the Red Cross to-day. That is where some of that hundred million dollars of yours and mine is going. The National Headquarters at Washington is the centre of a vast, weblike telephone exchange. From every hamlet, village, and city the lines of the Red Cross converge-money, supplies, volunteers-on this central exchange whose wires are human beings, whose power is patriotism, whose continual message to the men fighting in France is: "We are with you!" Through this funnel pour the supplies to Paris, to London, to Rome, as fast as transportation will allow. In France, particularly, transportation is the life and soul of the work. Last year, when labor was difficult to get and the American organizations were working on a small financial basis, relief boxes were piled high on the docks at Bordeaux. Three weeks ago outside inspection of the warehouses of the Red Cross revealed one solitary case. Everything else had been shipped to its destination in France and Italy. Within a few hours of their arrival supplies from America are on their way, to-day. That is where some of the hundred million dollars have gone. Transportation costs money, no matter whether it is run by an organization which collected its hundred million with an average cost of under one per cent. or not. Where there was one truck on the roads of France before, to-day there are dozens. They are necessary. In order to have relief come at a moment's notice, millions of dollars are being spent in trucks, bases, warehouses, personnel. Delay is not going to sign the death warrant of any American boy if the Red Cross can help it. Before the Red Cross came there was not such a thing in France as a warehouse for relief. When hospitals were in dire need they sent to Paris to some independent organization which depended on contributions from America. To-day enormous warehouses are being put up at vital points all over France, some of which hold 20,000 tons and keep 20 trucks for delivery. When this system is complete there will be no call from a hospital centre, French or American, that cannot be answered within the hour! DISPENSARIES AND HOSPITALS From the north of the frontier countries down to the Mediterranean, there runs to-day a long chain of dispensaries and children's hospitals under the direction of the best specialists of America. Toul, Nesle, Nancy are being duplicated and reduplicated. No expense is being spared in the equipment of these stations. It is requiring thousands of dollars to equip and maintain even the smallest of them. But they are building up again the bodies and minds of the little citizens of France whose constitutions have been wrecked by their living within sight and sound of the guns and the horrors of the conflict. Slowly and surely, too, every tuberculosis hospital in France which has stood in need of help has been taken under the wing of the Red Cross, in extreme cases even the property.j |