IN the year 1905 the American National Red Cross, profiting, perhaps, not a little by the lessons of the Spanish War, was finally and permanently incorporated and nationalized; the President of the United States became its president; and the War Department its auditor. It had behind it the full sponsorship of the United States Government; its books were open; it was the property of the people and in their hands. In that sense, and in almost no other, it was ready for the frightful thing that Germany was preparing for the world.

It is, of course, not my intention to do more than refer to the activities of the Red Cross of that day. Save for prompt and effective relief to sufferers from fire and flood and every other form of calamity, no matter where occurring, it pursued a helpful but on the whole rather a pacific and uneventful course. The Red Cross of the first three years of the Great War may, likewise, be told briefly. All the effort of the organization at that time --- and there was earnest effort, however stereotyped, in many directions ---may be said to have centered around the conscription of funds, the enlistment of personnel, and the gathering of supplies to meet an infinitely greater demand for help than ever before. Factories were driven to top speed in the production of materials. Warehouses were filled to bursting with incoming gifts. Yet, in the face of so great a necessity, the leaders of the Red Cross were hampered by the laggard movement of monetary contributions. The psychology of this unwillingness to loosen the purse-strings is clear now. The truth was that America was still cased in its shell; it resented a war that it did not understand.

None the less, a month after the German troops crossed the Belgian border, a Red Cross ship sailed away,--- a German keel painted with the authorized red strake which, by agreement of the nations, marked the mercy ship,--- and distributed her hospital units and medical supplies, her gauze and anæsthetics, her hospital garments, cigarettes, and camp comforts for the fighting men of countries whose prayers had not availed to save them from this stroke of manifest destiny. Into France and England, into Russia and Serbia, into every place where the blight of war had fallen, even into Germany, these well-chosen benefactions found their way. To be sure it was a very small incident this sailing of that stout little ship, and in the shadow of a year or more of vast accomplishment no wonder that it seems indistinct and ineffably far away.

But it is all an old story now --- even that pregnant time when surely, if slowly, the picture on our moral retina was changing; when one after another the studied German insults, the revelation of guile, the wanton destruction of peaceful vessels, the brutal violations of neutrality, in short, the whole train of deliberate offenses against decency, were preparing the inevitable result.

Nothing could be more dramatic than the change that came over the United States in the first three months of the year 1917. It was almost magical in its swiftness. The war was at the summit of its intensity; the tortured Allies, armies and populace alike, had come almost to the extremity of effort; conditions in France were as ominous as they were heartbreaking. This supreme moment found many people without the bare necessities of life. The roads were full of the homeless, the hungry, and the half clad. The cities were clogged with them. Simultaneously, in the United States, the weary period of inaction was drawing to its end. The signs were no longer to be misread. Honor had been stretched to its last shred of endurance and continued peace, it was plain, could only be had at the price of shame. During all this wretched time the conduct of the American Red Cross was, to say the least, most creditable. Crippled by public inertia, by the popular inclination to keep out of war at all hazards, those who guided the destinies of the organization nevertheless strained every nerve, utilized every resource, to prepare for the storm which they knew was bound to come. They were held back by the ancient habit of the people---of waiting to give to the Red Cross until some great catastrophe had shocked the world and newspaper pictures from the zone of disaster furnished ocular proof of ruin, disease, and starvation. Day and night, however, they labored, formulating plans, creating a nucleus which proved of inexpressible value when the day of trial arrived, and saved months of slow and retarding. toil. By dint of the most industrious and carefully organized effort they increased the membership in a few months from 22,000 to 280,000, and the number of Chapters by more than a hundred.

At this period President Wilson penned an appeal to the American people on behalf of this sorely tried organization, in which he said: "It is for you to decide whether the most prosperous nation in the world will allow its national relief organization to keep up with its work or withdraw from a field where there exists the greatest need ever recorded in history."

And even the President's summons failed to arouse the people from their lethargy.

Dissecting the military and civilian needs, incident to the creation of an army, the Red Cross organized and equipped base hospitals as rapidly as they could accumulate the money. The service to our forces on the Mexican border had given some opportunity for practical training, which they improved to the uttermost. They directed their relief work for the Allied armies---such as they were able to perform---through the American Relief Clearing House in Paris, which had been organized early in the war to centralize and promote all American activities. By so doing they fortified and insured the efficacy of that institution which, afterwards, was classed as one of the greatest relief organizations in Europe. What that alliance meant is shown by the fact that from that time on all members of the Clearing House wore the uniform of the American Red Cross.

From February, 1917, events moved with a rapidity that, in retrospect, leaves one almost breathless, though at the time it seemed painfully slow. On the second of February Count von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, was handed his papers, and, on the following day, the Red Cross moved its scanty belongings into the New Memorial building, as yet without heat and equipment, and still littered with the débris of construction. The vice-chairman sent out to the 267 Chapters a telegram which deserves to be immortalized in the history of the Red Cross, and in the history of humanity, as a master-work of preparedness :---

"If not already active appoint following committees: finance, hospital garments and surgical supplies, comfort bags (see Circular 126), packing and shipping, publicity and information, motor service; appoint committee on coöperation with outside organizations . . . . If not already done appoint committee on education (outlined in Circular 144) . . . . Possibility of organizing sanitary training detachments should be taken up at once. (See Circular 136.)

That was on a Saturday. On Sunday and for many long days afterward the answers by wire and mail came pouring into the great building. The marble halls were crowded with stenographers, who worked from dawn till dark and long after in a temperature far below freezing, answering the thousands of letters that came from all corners of the country asking for orders or instructions how to form Chapters.

Then March came with its swift making of history: the Zimmermann note stripped off Germany's mask; and the House upheld the bill for the arming of American merchantmen. Inauguration Day, usually a pompous ceremonial, passed like a mere incident in the Washington routine. Two days later the last Romanoff abandoned in terror the throne of all the Russias and the German annihilation of the Eastern front had begun. The German plot for a Hindu uprising in India startled England.

Three American ships in a day went down before the German submarines. Berlin was "bitterly surprised" at America's resentment, and fifteen thousand people crowded in Madison Square Garden and cheered for war. The pacifists were pleading for delay with a thousand tongues, and the "willful men" in the Senate still struggled to keep the muzzle on the dogs of war.

And then, decently and in order, the thing was done. On April 6th Congress, called by the President, in special session, voted war. Twenty thousand militia were called out, and then four thousand more; enlistment in the Navy was ordered for immediate service overseas; money was placed at the disposal of the President, and the selective draft system was adopted. Men in khaki, forerunners of millions that were to follow, began to appear in the city streets. English and French Commissions hurried to America. The United States was launched on the greatest and most perilous conflict in history.

Meanwhile, the Red Cross, like the Army, to the utmost limit of its means had mapped out the work of the "crowded hour" that was at hand. Base hospital units for the Army had been multiplied with all possible speed, and were steadily increasing throughout the country. Twenty-five were already organized and equipped ready for service, and four more were in progress. Three field columns had been formed, and three additional bases for navy hospitals organized. Through the Chapters and other organizations, surgical dressings, garments, and other supplies to the value of eight thousand dollars for each unit had been made and contributed, in addition to all the offerings that had already been sent abroad. The Red Cross had enrolled more than seven thousand graduate nurses, and plans for the training of another regiment of nurses were under way. Even the little knowledge that we had at hand of Europe in the throes of war was sufficient to teach us that every doctor and every nurse should prepare; that every city and town should be ready on the instant to get under its burden; and that voluntary service and coördination of relief agencies, under the Red Cross, was a crying necessity.

Naturally, the country had no understanding of all this. It did not know that the Red Cross was not in shape to take care of an Army, although neither the army nor the Red Cross was blind to this fact. From studious investigations in Europe the Red Cross knew in detail the most effective methods of organizing base hospitals, medical supply bases, ambulance sections, civilian relief centers, and all other way-stations of mercy and restoration.

"I spent a year and a half," wrote one of the organizers of that early Red Cross, "in the heart of the war in Europe---one year of it as the American Delegate of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, in charge of the Belgian Province at Antwerp. I saw how refugees must be fed and clothed, sheltered and administered to, how those dependent on the soldiers at the front must be assisted, and how the civilian population must be organized and energized, if it is to survive where the waves of war have passed over it. To do such work adequately means the loyal support of every man, woman and child in the land. We have this in Belgium. To do the work which the Red Cross should do, and must do, in America, requires the support of far more members than the American Red Cross has to-day. The work should touch all humanity, alien or friendly, rich or poor, high or low."

But while the membership under active urging was increasing with great rapidity, the money lagged. It was clear enough now that the task facing the Red Cross was no longer a matter of sending a Red Cross ship to scatter its hastily collected supplies around the globe. Red Cross shipments, if its work was to be competent and nearly equal to the needs, would be measured in fleets; and such a Red Cross required a wider horizon, a longer arm, and a deeper pocket. It had been computed on the basis of the old condition that the organization must have at least five millions of dollars to meet the needs of the war.

On the 10th of May, 1917, President Wilson appointed a War Council for the American National Red Cross, and I was asked to take the chairmanship.

It was not long before it became very apparent that our mission, at least in the narrow aspect of it, would be to look after the men of our own Army and to assist the War Department in doing the things it could not do alone or that did not fall wholly within its province. That was indeed our duty, but the bitter sacrifices of the other nations for three long years had brought into the equation the vital and imperative question, however illuminating the answer later, whether there was in the world --- or in America --- any such thing as national gratitude and appreciation; whether plain, simple humanity had been utterly submerged in an ocean of commercialism. In this whole development the War Council held firmly to two things: first, a vision of our bounden duty as a people, and, second, an abiding faith that our national heart, when we found it, would prove to be in the right place. Nobody could fail to discern the need: Thousands of old men, women, and children were homeless and starving, fleeing before a relentless enemy; whole towns and cities were crumbling into dust under the increasing pounding of the guns; food, clothing, and medicine were lacking; and disease was raising its ugly head in the wake of death and desolation. If ever the brotherhood of man was to be demonstrated and proved, the hour had surely come.

But while emphasis gradually was laid upon the necessity of money, if we were to do our part, nevertheless we of the War Council did not lose sight of the fact that money would be the smallest part of it---merely the bridge by which we must cross to the land where our duty called us and where our opportunity lay. You might, we agreed, pack the building with dollars and still fail to do the thing we ought to do. Our concentration here was about the amount of money we should ask for. In working out this problem we discussed at length about a request for twenty-five millions of dollars. The essential thing, if the Red Cross was to accomplish its maximum of good, was to have everybody share in it; to be able to go now, at the very climax of need, to the suffering people of Europe, carrying the message of good-will from all the people of America,---the poor, the rich, the young, and the old, all asking the privilege of helping them in their distress.

And so the appeal went out to the country for a hundred million dollars. It was a neat sum but, as time has shown, small for the magnitude of the work involved. In taking account of stock we found that the Red Cross statement showed one liability. True, it was a moral one, making it all the more binding, viz., the obligation to meet and relieve suffering caused by the world tragedy. But it also showed one asset an asset that overbalanced all: the good-will of the American people. In sum total the statement seemed an excellent one to me. I believed that the American people would see far more in the Red Cross effort than simply taking care of our own men and that they would look upon it, as I did, as an opportunity to do the great big human thing; nor did I have the smallest doubt but that the campaign to raise that money would start a spirit of giving and of sacrifice that would mean a great deal more than the money itself.

There were obstacles in the way: summer was coming on and the people were preparing to go away; moreover, the first Liberty Loan drive had the right of way and nothing must interfere with that. We were all bound to take off our coats and help it. It was finally and definitely decided that we should fix June 18-25 ---three days after the closing of the loan drive---as Red Cross week. From that time on it was like a military campaign. The gentleman who had been chosen to head the Executive Committee for the campaign went at the task like a veritable Foch. Like Foch he certainly proved to be a great offensive commander, and his staff were of the same dynamic character.

We had one month, to be exact, in which to prepare for this task. A New York friend of the Red Cross set a keynote for the undertaking by an initial gift of a million dollars. It is my belief that it was this inspirational act that gave to the whole undertaking an almost decisive influence. An interesting feature was the calling to Washington of some 450 leading men from all parts of the country for the purpose of laying before them the foundation of our plans. The conference, strictly speaking, developed into a great patriotic gathering and resulted in enlisting the services of a group of men with large experience in financial matters and in the raising of funds.

The next step was to extend the organization. The country was mapped out into four divisions, each with a director in charge, and under these were 114 field agents and an office force that grew to more than 300 members. Presently, and while the whole country was organizing, we were flooded with letters and telegrams, all of which must be answered. It seemed as if all the brains and energy in the world were concentrated on delivering the message to the people, awakening their interest, and getting results.

The whole country was humming with activity long before the drive started. Men left important positions to come and ask what they could do. They were given a desk and a job and went at it. And when the local workers wanted "ammunition," it was provided in the form of advertising copy, placards, street-car signs, banners, slogans for electric-signs, pictures for lantern slides, material for speeches, sermons and lectures, newspaper features, and advice without end. And, curiously enough, the public never realized that all through that fevered time when city, town, and country were at white heat over the drive, the Red Cross organization was busier than it had ever been in its life, planning and putting into action the work of relief which the money was to do.

With the team leaders it was a game, and they played it with all the sporting joy in the world. Everywhere people vied with one another in giving. Rival cities strove with one another to be first in raising their allotment, and then started a new contest to see which should go farthest beyond the mark.

But why recount now the story of that week! It is still fresh in everybody's memory. It was a typical American accomplishment, and when at the close of the campaign it was known that the country had given $115,000,000, there was rejoicing like that which follows a great political victory. Better far than that, for it was the rejoicing of a great people in that they had demonstrated a vast capacity for unselfishness. And there was still more good news to come, at least to the managers of the campaign: it was found that the collecting of this great fund, thanks to the willingness of everybody to help, had cost only a little over one half of one per cent.

AGAINST the dark background of that eventful year few things, naturally, stand out more luminous to me than the arrival of the Red Cross at a commanding financial position. Obviously, such an increase in money power meant that we could do for our soldiers and sailors all that we should do; it meant that our people indorsed our purpose to go to the peoples of Europe in the way that we should go; and, finally, it meant nothing more or less than a resolve on the part of the Nation that liberty should triumph at any cost.

There was no time, however, to dream over the great mission of the future. In the numberless informal conferences which it held prior to its first formal meeting on the 21st of May, 1917, the Red Cross War Council had taken the measure of its task and proceeded with the work of massing the forces of mercy side by side with the raising of the great army which America, now awake and full of purpose, was creating in record time, and for the doing of which we had the faith, the credit, and the women ---the problem of the moment being how to capitalize them all.

In general our plan divided itself into two problems: first, to get the necessary relief to Europe in the shortest possible time, and so avert what we now know would have developed before long into a colossal catastrophe; second, to organize ample means of caring for all the various needs of our own army. For the solution of this problem we had three possessions of value: the first was the machine which our predecessors in control of the Red Cross had worked to build up; the second was a now rapidly growing membership and Chapter organization; the third,--- and of inestimable importance in the work of expanding the machine and of putting it on a war footing,---was the volunteer service of an army of some of the most competent, aggressive, and experienced men in the country, and of women who had brains, initiative, and the inborn quality of leadership. Indeed, the day was an exceptional one which did not reveal new Red Cross assets of superlative value. It began to be borne in upon us that we had not more than half read the Red Cross balance sheet.

It was not a matter of sentiment alone that brought the War Council, at its very first meeting, to a realization that our duty was to get help to France; on the contrary, it was a clear business proposition to ascertain without a minute's delay just what was needed there first and to start it on its way there as early as possible. We had a sufficiently clear picture of the situation; what was needed was to measure it up, even if only tentatively, in the terms of necessary dollars.

Then it was that the Red Cross asked General Pershing what it could do for him, and almost immediately came his answering cable:

"If you want to do something for me for God's sake 'buck up the French.' They have been fighting for three years and are getting ready for their fourth winter. They have borne a tremendous burden, and whatever assistance we can lend them promptly will be of the greatest possible value."

It must not, however, for a moment be supposed that the spirit of the poilu was broken or that he was not fighting with the dash and unflinching courage of his race; but there were sectors where the conditions of war and the long continuation of service were beyond the endurance of body and soul and, added to which, there was the consuming anxiety which preyed upon the soldier from the devastated regions concerning the whereabouts and welfare of his family.

To this end a commission of eighteen men, bent on clearing away a mountain of misery, was dispatched to Europe, and landed in France on the 13th of June.

Meantime, the American Ambulance in Paris needed new cars; and the Civilian Relief in France, trying to cope with the tremendous problem of the soldiers, the refugees, and the numberless pitiful children, called by cable for women's and children's clothing, preserved milk, seeds, farm tools, and money for the mayors of villages to distribute among the starving refugees that had been quartered upon them. Further funds were needed for the purchase of hospital supplies and hospital garments, rubber goods, and surgical instruments --- all matters of life and death.

Unquestionably, those early days were full days. Headquarters was on the tiptoe of expectancy and perilously near chaos. The whole world, it seemed to me, was writing to Red Cross Headquarters at Washington upon a thousand-and-one different subjects.

Through the end of May and into June, while the Commission to France was hurrying across the Atlantic and the War Fund drive was going on, we were trying with one hand to handle the incoming business, and with the other to frame up an organization that should be broad and strong enough in all directions to "carry on" as long as the war would last. The success or failure of this whole undertaking lung upon it. In due time we chose legal counsel, and selected a great New York trust company to handle the money end of the business; we formally appointed the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States as treasurer of the war fund, and the trust company provided from its office force a corps of forty trained men to look after the finances. And while we were seeking everywhere for experienced men to fill important positions, it was a ray of encouragement to receive this message from a former United States Minister: "You will find men everywhere are ready to coöperate enthusiastically with you to a greater extent than you are perhaps aware."

One by one, as the expansion progressed, we found them. All through the hot summer months we kept on building up the machine. During the day the War Council held meetings at Headquarters, and in the evening, to change the scene and put new life into our work, we continued them at my house in Washington. There was no let-up to the volume of correspondence from all over the country; nor was there any cessation of the cries for help which kept the cables continuously busy.

But while the work of foreign relief was imperative, it involved, perhaps, less of difficulty than did the solving of the problem of selecting the right men for the Commissions, which were being formed to represent and to do the work of the American Red Cross in foreign countries. What we required was to get men who, although sympathetic and human in their appreciation, had expert knowledge, unbounded energy, initiative, cold judgment, keen perception of the point of attack, and the faculty of instant decision and consummate skill in organization; we needed men who could cut red tape, men who could rise to emergencies; we needed men of tact and diplomacy for the handling of what, unquestionably, was a most difficult mission. For there are in all the world no more sensitive peoples than the Latin races, and to have gone to them in such a crisis with anything that bore the faintest tinge of charity or condescension would have been fatal to the intent and purpose of the Red Cross. Our money would have been given its value as money but nothing more. Here, again, the future and the cause of humanity hung in a fine balance. The story of what was achieved in France and Italy will show with what delicacy this critical phase of the work was carried through. But while the task of planning for the relief of Europe and determining what was best to do first was put squarely upon the shoulders of the Commissions which, one after another, were rapidly dispatched to the various countries, nothing was enacted, whether military, diplomatic, or financial, which had not received thorough consideration from every angle and with confirmative advice from those within whose special province it fell.

From the very beginning it was the controlling principle of the War Council that nothing, however small, should be done which could not bear careful scrutiny and which was not fully warranted by existing conditions. The Red Cross forever maintains a scrupulous regard for the fact that it is the people's servant and is spending the people's money; its books and its transactions at all times have been open to public inspection. All of which, nevertheless, increased materially the burden of the work. At a very early stage of the proceedings, therefore, it became apparent that the Headquarters' force, augmented though it had been, was soon coming to the point where it would be submerged unless some means of simplifying its duties could be found.

In appointing a general manager the Red Cross found a man who was versed in the handling of big problems and knew how to reduce them to little ones. He solved the difficulty with the word "decentralization" which, in this case, resolved itself into the partitioning of the United States into thirteen divisions, each division a smaller Red Cross, with all its departments and bureaus under a divisional chief and a force complete in every detail with the various lines of endeavor firmly and clearly outlined. It cleared the sky in a day --- it saved the situation. When once the foundation was complete, the War Council had no more to do with the Chapters or any of their activities, save in the way of judging the needs, devising methods, and fixing standards. The Chapter's business was regulated in the department to which it belonged by the divisional officers. The division manager was the general and supreme in his division. He was to his division what the general manager in Washington was to the entire organization. Washington Headquarters was now free to proceed with the handling of the larger problems which, with the widening of the sphere of effort and the progress in army-building, were growing daily to greater magnitude and importance. It was simply taking a leaf from the book of armies and of big business, and it multiplied the efficiency of the whole Red Cross organization at a time when efficiency, or the lack of it, spelled victory or defeat. The main problem of the division arrangement lay, as it did in the Commissions to Europe, in selecting with the most studious care the men to head the divisions. It was not until September that this important matter was finally settled and the roster of division chiefs and their forces brought to completion.

In order to secure the maximum result from all lines of effort, it was necessary to expand and reform in many points the work of the several departments. The Chapters and the membership, which in the preceding year had been substantially extended, now increased automatically and with a speed which told clearly enough that the human force throughout the country was aroused and at work. In January, 1917, the Red Cross managers had started a campaign for a million members before the following year. By September there were six millions and the Chapters, numbering six hundred when war was declared, now ran into the thousands. At the end of the membership drive in December there were 22,000,000 names on the lists. All through the summer singers, actors, and people of every trade and calling taxed their wits to devise entertainments for the benefit of the Red Cross. To enumerate the sources of contribution is impossible. The stimulation of interest, which in earlier days had been one of our vital concerns, had ceased to bother us. Interest had stimulated itself.

Meanwhile the Chapter organization had done its work well. Production was going forward in a wave. It was the age of wool; everybody was knitting! In the large cities, particularly the division centers, model workrooms were established; to the last little auxiliary in the farthest town everybody was doing something for the Red Cross.

The divisional plan, distributing as it did the burden of details, had enabled Headquarters to do effective things in standardizing and perfecting the system of production, collection, and shipment. So that before the summer was far advanced a great volume of earnest but misdirected effort had been turned into established channels, its effectiveness doubled, and confusions and waste of strength and nervous tissue greatly reduced.

Millions of circulars were sent out to the Chapters through the divisional offices, giving diagrams and explicit directions for the making of knitted goods and other requirements, not only for equipment of our Army but for the hospital work of the units which were hurried to war, and to supply the urgent needs of Allied hospital service now so sorely taxed. With an eye to future requirements the educational work of the Chapter organization was vigorously expanded. The Red Cross, like the Government, was making its preparations for a long war. With this in mind, training classes were established and the Junior Red Cross, so long looked upon as "child's play," was converted into a large contributive factor, both for the present and the future.

Throughout the country there was a multitude of willing souls, bursting with patriotism, eager to help in some way, but debarred by sex, age, or physical infirmity from going into the trenches. The Red Cross was their lodestar. It was the work of the Department of Development to concentrate, to organize, to direct this mass of energy. Much of it also was absorbed by what had previously borne the stilled and unconvincing name of " Civilian Relief," but which, now that its day of supreme usefulness had come, was made over into a practical instrument under the expressive title of "Home Service."

In the schedule which the Red Cross was perfecting, Home Service was the ultimate power behind the man behind the gun, the force that never slept, and that must know, from day to day, the condition, the needs, and the worries of the families left behind. As the building of the Army progressed, no branch of Red Cross effort gave more substantial proof of its value than this. It was the guardian and the surety of national morals. What Home Service did towards helping to better the condition of the poilu it likewise did for the American soldier at the front and the reserve army of waiting folks at home.

The vital factor in Home Service is neighborly feeling, sympathy, appreciation, personal approach. For that reason its work had to be correlated with the Chapters; and so in every Chapter there was a Home Service section, not bothered with knitting, paying no heed to bandages or hospital garments, but concentrating on the personal needs, the strictly private troubles of the soldier's family. It soon became apparent that the field of Home Service would grow wider with every fresh detachment of men sent overseas. An educational system was devised centering in the colleges and summer schools, but extending in less elaborate form down to the Chapter branches, to teach both theory and practice to fit people for what was bound to be a necessary and in more respects than one a delicate mission. In a few months an immense work of organization was done in the field.

The selective draft was now in full swing. The tramp, tramp, tramp of the men of twenty-one to thirty-one of every state, city, and township was ringing in our ears. This was no mere memory of '61! In the Red Cross we lived from day to day in the consciousness of the fact that the Army's manifold needs was hard upon our heels. The Army was only one item in our duty, but it was our first charge under the terms of our charter and, besides, it was America --- our home folks. Moreover, in the War and Navy Departments, whose servants, primarily, the Red Cross was, we had superiors who wanted quick delivery.

The equipment of soldiers with sweaters, helmets, wristlets, socks, comfort kits, and all the other manifold things necessary to keep them comfortable was, to say the least, a substantial order, yet it was merely an incident in the program. For the training of its multitudes the Government, at that moment, was building thirty-four camps and cantonments in various parts of the country, and the Red Cross must be on hand in them all prepared to do everything and more than it was created to do. There would be sick soldiers and cases of accidents, for which we must furnish hospital nits, nurses, and medical supplies; also, we must have competent people there to look after our work, for this was not a case where a casual clerk or shiftless office boy would do. We must provide housing for a Red Cross "lighthouse" in every camp to which the soldier, worried or in need, could find his way; and when he left training and moved from one camp to another or to the ship which was to bear him away on the great adventure, we must break the journey with a little food, a little cheer, and medical attendance if necessary. There was welfare work around the camp, too, and care, both material and moral, of the adjacent communities. There was the maintenance of the Red Cross Motor Corps, not alone for our own use, but for the Army and the Navy. And there was the Ambulance Corps, with forty-five companies of over 5000 men in training and in service.

So through the first summer and fall we drove ahead, whip and spur, gathering in the people, enrolling nurses, erecting buildings, buying supplies and machinery and means of transit, establishing canteens and equipping the Red Cross at every possible point where it could come in contact with the life and needs of the soldier. The War Department issued a call for 25,000 nurses before the end of the year. All over the country we carried on a nurses' drive; and the Department of Nursing in every one of the thirteen divisions tried to surmount many and grave obstacles. We combed the medical profession of the country, too, for doctors to go into service; we organized a Medical Advisory Committee of famous doctors and sanitary experts to give counsel in all matters relating to medicine and sanitation.

I have tried here merely to sketch in outline the various departments of duty which had to be mapped out, peopled, and set in motion, and to produce a sort of composite picture, necessarily inadequate, of the Red Cross in this vast formative period. At times it seemed well-nigh impossible to meet the accumulation of simultaneous demands. While careful and far-reaching were the plans for organization of our domestic work, oftentimes it became necessary to make fundamental changes, experiment having foretold failure to discharge our duties when the supreme test should come; and all this time the heart-breaking cry of suffering Europe was never for a moment still.

The work in France, as I have previously stated, had been started first, but within a very short time we had commissions to Russia, Rumania, Serbia, and Italy. A Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner for England had been chosen and a special department for Belgium appointed under the direction of the Commission to France.

Moreover, in connection with these, we had not neglected to build up a Department of Supplies and Transportation to handle all the millions of dollars' worth of purchases, the collection of the vast supplies from the Chapters, the provision of material, rail freights, the procurement of ocean tonnage, and the delivery of all the Red Cross benefactions to the points where they were needed. Further in the background, but indispensable to every day's labors, were the advisory committees to various departments, legal advisers who canvassed all our transactions,--- particularly with regard to international relations,--- a general manager whose function was to complete the coördination of all branches, solve problems, and smooth out rough places, a Bureau of Naval Affairs connecting the Red Cross in all lines of its service with the Navy and its requirements, while in the foreground was the Department of Publicity, establishing more firmly, as the work grew, our link with the public which stood behind the work.

THAT which we call a Red Cross Chapter is a highly perfected piece of social machinery. Its motor-power is supplied by the highest and yet the commonest human impulses, and its product, applied humanity, is the bright hope of a war-wrung world; but its high mission is based firmly upon modern business principles. Romance flees from the committee reports, the organization charts, the careful records, the waybills and invoices, and all the matter-of-fact and dreary system that insures the arrival of bandages and nurses in a plague-stricken East and the temperature of the coffee in a local canteen. Only the enthusiast with a pure passion for organization derives a real thrill from the knowledge that "a Chapter is a geographical unit having jurisdiction over a county or large city"; that "it is responsible for all Red Cross activities in its territory"; that it organizes this territory for convenience into Branches which miniature itself, and Auxiliaries which carry on one line of Red Cross service; that its officers and executive committee are elected annually by all the members; that it reports in detail to one of the fourteen Division Headquarters; that it must be a complete miniature Red Cross with a committee in charge of every line of authorized Red Cross activity, so that the line of communication may remain unbroken from Washington to the members of the tiniest branch and none fail to respond to a national call for help.

Dry as dust it seems on paper, with its analysis of administration committees (Development, Publicity, Finance) and productive committees (Chapter Production, Military Relief, Home Service, Nursing Activities, Junior Membership), with its provision for dividing membership and subscription between local and national activities, yet the perfected machine is the triumph of hard work. It is a skillful compromise between elasticity to local conditions and control from headquarters, and it was evolved under the tremendous pressure of war conditions, while new Chapters were being installed and veterans were running at top speed.

Let it not be thought, however, that a Red Cross Chapter is merely a sublimated sewing circle. It is the applied humanity of its community. It represents the organized forces of friendliness and it applies them in ways as varied and as colorful as human need. Let me select as an example a call for supplies that was flashed underseas from a Red Cross outpost in some No Man's Land of want! Divided and subdivided it sped unerringly along the familiar lines from Headquarters to Division, to Chapter, to Branch, to Auxiliary until in the folds of a hundred hills, along marshaled city blocks, at village cross-roads each item of that order busied the hard-earned leisure of a woman's hands. Or, a depot-master who reported a troop-train headed east and four hours late; though it was in the weary dead of night the Motor Corps brought the Canteeners to the tracks on time to hand out coffee and sandwiches, postal cards, and words of cheer. Under cover of laconic entries in the production reports, "Christmas bags, 500,000," "Repairing 1,000,000 socks," the women in the Chapter workrooms mothered a million boys in camp. Did the Government ask for nurses or fruit-pits or tin-foil or platinum, then forth from Chapter Headquarters went campaigners, speakers, posters, to rake the highways and byways for recruits. The invisible cohorts of the comradeship rode east and west and north and south along the winding ways of all the world, drawing a cordon of safety around the doorways of home, spreading the wisdom of physical well-being, and guarding the hearth fires of those who had gone to war.

Chapter members had a great deal of hard work during the war and very little glamour. But to those who would see visions and dream dreams Centreville and its thousand counterparts were just behind the trenches. They were the Red Cross bases for money, for supplies, and for inspiration. To such souls all the rest of the organization was merely the line of communication that linked them to a hundred fronts.

Woman's classic part in war is to send her men away with a smile and then wait. Somewhere she must find the strength to bear that waiting; the women of the Great War found it in the countless workrooms of the Red Cross. In the concourses of railroad terminals, in department stores, and in hastily transformed offices, in Sunday schools, and in libraries the quiet, white-garbed women sat with flying fingers and thoughts that kept pace with the swift whir of machines turning out the endless yards of gauze and cotton for the war-locked lines in France. This is the freemasonry of woman, this white magic that they weave to shield their men from harm, laying innumerable folds of gauze and cotton between them and the bayonet thrusts.

The workrooms in action little suggested the house of dreams. The long, white-covered tables, the lines of busy sewing machines, the shining rows of bandage rollers and knitting machines, the shelves piled with materials, the business-like officials checking out supplies and recording finished work suggested the humming shops of a great factory. They were found wherever people most congregated; but whether they shared tall office buildings with lawyers and business firms or elbowed the general store and the post-office on the village main street, they wore the same aura of up-to-date efficiency. The demand was for expert workmanship and skill in many intricate processes, and this the irregular workers developed to a high degree.

New methods and machines were invented under the high pressure of demand in this new craft. Cotton had a double war use for munitions and surgical dressings, and because in that grim game the guns took precedence over the hospitals, sphagnum moss became in high favor in Red Cross workrooms. Tons of it were gathered in Maine, in eastern Canada, and the Northwest. Its absorbent qualities are so great that when water is poured upon the sphagnum compress it expands to twice its thickness before the under layer of muslin shows a trace of moisture. The preparation of the moss was a tedious process until a woman solved the problem by constructing a six-foot Ferris wheel hung with open air trays. In the big workrooms these machines were set up, the current switched on and the wheel left to do its time-saving work in the electric heat of the drying room.

Nor is knitting any longer of the feminine gender! A new hand-machine, turning out socks at a shocking rate, has made hundreds of men and boys successful rivals of the "knit two, purl two," brigade. It turns out a pair of socks in twenty-five minutes, and can be adjusted to any size or length. One millionaire groceryman spent his mornings in a New York workroom ribbing and turning heels with the ease and precision of a veteran.

Even chemistry played its part in the Red Cross operations. When linen and cotton materials for bandages and dressings were scarce in the market, an immense reserve was found in the drafting-rooms of manufacturers and architects. Here were great quantities of discarded cloth which had to be treated with diastase to remove the drawing ink and transparent dressing. Great laundry plants volunteered to handle the bulk of this work, but in many places Red Cross workers set up emergency laboratories in their own washrooms.

It has been estimated by some genius that to this work, after America went to war, two million hours were given, --- two hundred and thirty years of labor compressed into eighteen months! Whatever the actual time the record totals an enormous sacrifice of rest, of pleasure, of food, and sometimes even of sleep. Some of those hours represented spare moments between trains or unexpected lulls in a shopping tour; the bulk of them were hard wrung from busy lives. They stood for condensed housekeeping, forsworn frivolities, shortened lunch hours, night work volunteered by factory girls when the day's business was done. Miles of material passed under their busy hands. Every month they put a five-and-three-quarter-inch girdle of gauze around the globe; they used two and a half million pounds of wool. Here was the most marvelous factory the world has ever known: it kept no hours, and it knew no payroll. Its shops were erected in every crowded mart and on every country byway, in the Chicago loop, and in icebound Alaskan villages. The limit of its production was never reached, yet every item in its output was known and controlled in one white marble building --- the National Red Cross Headquarters in Washington. The evolution of that system is a monument to the energy and the self-discipline of the American women.

In the wake of the first staggering news of war in Europe came tales of awful suffering for want of bandages and dressings. The report that wounds were being covered with sawdust and newspaper sent pitying fingers hurrying to their task; and when with winter came the demand for socks and sweaters to expel the biting cold of the trenches, little groups of workers bravely started out to explore the unknown field of surgical dressings and refugee garments. The Red Cross had issued directions for their making, but almost anything was acceptable. Women made what they could, or what rumor reported to be right. With the result that wherever two or three women were gathered together, a new line of models arose. The Red Cross undertook to forward gifts to any designated country, and a motley stream of packing boxes passed through the New York warehouse. During two and a half years of divided sentiment, seething under official neutrality, eighteen thousand donors, individuals, ladies' clubs, charitable organizations, and Red Cross Chapters appear regularly on the record of shipments received. Seventy-five thousand big packages went overseas. But by April, 1917, a little order was coming out of the chaos. Classes in making surgical dressings had been established, and trained instructors were now directing the output in Chapter workrooms. In spite of individualistic tendencies a compress from Kansas was, obviously, now of the same family as a compress from New Jersey.

On April 30, the first foreign order was ticked off at Washington: "Ask Chapters for four hundred thousand pairs woolen socks and unlimited supplies hospital garments and clothing." At last a direct line of communication to the front was established. This first haphazard stock of supplies was built up under the pressure of imminent ungauged demand; during the war, a call from overseas was answered promptly without apparent effort. Often it was only a matter of shipping a certain number of packing cases from the piled reserves in an export warehouse. Segregated by size and kind in uniform boxes, duly inspected, recorded, and labeled, garments, bandages, and socks moved in orderly ways from thirty thousand workrooms, through division inspectors and export stations, by train and ocean liner, to the long line of warehouses that paralleled the Western front.

How the system was slowly perfected and strengthened in every link is told in a slim folder of varicolored forms, filed under "Foreign Requisitions" in the cable office at National Headquarters.

Following the blue sheet bearing the first request for "unlimited quantities" comes the Chapters' answer. Many yellow pages are written close with the serial numbers of packing cases invariably headed by the formal statement, "United States Transport sailing recently New York carried French shipment number 000." Soon the Commission was measuring its needs and weighing the relative merits of bandages and pinafores. In the same files under date of August 17th appears the following: "No more shipments from United States without specific request from France." This, by the way, did not mean a halt in production; it meant that the situation was so serious and the demand so urgent that to avoid confusion and duplication they would determine what was most needed and the order in which it should come.

When the Red Cross Commission --- those pioneers facing immense and unknown needs --- sailed for France in June, they made preparations for yet unsolved contingencies. In France an endless stream of gray ambulances poured wounded men into army hospitals, and refugees fled empty-handed from the battle-zone. Here, back home, American soldiers were entering the first stage of their journey to the front. These things the Commission knew. But if heretofore they had failed to plumb the capacity of the Chapter supply system they soon began to send enough specific requests to satisfy the most enthusiastic Chapter.

In September the right of way was given to surgical dressings and hospital supplies. In December the ratio of need was stated as seventy-five hospital to twenty-five refugee garments. By July, 1918, the veteran Commission had an accurate finger on the pulse of France. "Requirements for Military and Hospital Purposes for six months following" headed an order of six million items.

Meantime details of transportation were straightened out. After November, 1917, drains and bed socks and boys' corduroy trousers were no longer permitted to consort fraternally in "miscellaneous cases," but were ruthlessly sorted and packed in uninteresting uniformity with their kind. In the spring, the cases themselves were put into uniform. The familiar insignia and a three-inch diagonal red stripe on sides and ends proclaimed their source and destination. The piled boxes on the wharves of France were all of a size, dictated by the door space of the French box-car. The serial number stenciled on each was the key to its recorded march from a far-away workroom to fill its allotted 2x2x3 niche in the need of France.

"Bales or cases" became the subject most discussed in shipping circles. Cargo space was precious and cloth bulked smaller than wood, with the result that a few experimental bales were dispatched on sea voyages to test out various wrappings, fastenings, and markings.

Cabled orders read like ciphers. They referred to all items in Chapter production by their code numbers. This was the last step in a discipline of detail that spoke of the delicate balance of need and supply. Early in 1917 the Red Cross sent representatives to find out by personal investigation what surgeons and nurses in army hospitals wanted in the way of hospital supplies; and what size sheet was best for the regulation bed; also what length nightshirt fitted the regulation patient, and what form of surgical dressings came most readily to hand in the operating room. They also went from station to station behind the lines to learn what kind of clothes refugees like best to wear. Their findings, coded and crystallized in exact directions and patterns, were later in every Red Cross workroom. Number 453 became precisely the same thing in Evian and Palestine and Akron, Ohio. Every American worker knew that the awkward, unbelievably ugly garment she fashioned would be beautiful in the eyes of some refugee, a familiar link with the past, a tiny balance wheel in a life wrenched from its moorings and adrift in the backwash of war.

In the first month of 1918, two thousand packing cases of supplies were coming in daily from the Chapters. The workers had struck their pace. New recruits were gathered daily as reports came in of Americans in the trenches, and production soared. The average monthly production in 1917 was six million; in 1918, it was thirty-one million, up to September 30, 1918, 275,000,000 articles made by the women and children in the Red Cross had been sent overseas. The bulk of them, 250,000,000 in round numbers, followed the United States transports to France; the balance carried their message of comfort and good cheer to Italy, England, Serbia, Russia, and Palestine.

But, although the shuttle of their thoughts moved through a woof of many lands, the Red Cross women did not forget the cantonments that had sprung up at their gates. Their Christmas bags replaced the familiar Christmas stockings in the great barracks; their socks and sweaters and wristlets warmed the waning enthusiasm of many a novice in winter-camping. What more fitting than that they should do the army mending? In June, 1918, the Red Cross officially took over this duty from the Army quartermasters. In this transaction red tape was conspicuous by its absence. The privilege was restricted to those localities that boasted camps and quartermaster depots. The clothes, which included everything that a soldier wears, were delivered clean, but ragged, to the workrooms. They presented vivid examples of what one man could do to a perfectly good uniform, given perseverance and the facilities of army life. The garments that averaged more square feet of holes than material were cut up for patches. Thread and buttons came with the consignment; the magic of flying fingers did the rest. Trial lots of 5000 were issued to each Division in June; Within thirty days 500,000 garments of every size and kind had been returned to respectability. One Division rehabilitated 150,000 on its first order. Sometimes mending was a blanket term for complete transformations. Witness 96,000 collarless white shirts, opening in the back, that strayed into Northern Division workrooms and emerged a short time thereafter dyed, collared, cuffed, opening in the front, regulation O. D.'s. By November 1, 1918, more than one and a half million garments had passed in and out of the Red Cross mending bag.

The volunteer supply system was organized. As nearly as it was humanly possible every garment was made exactly like its model. Moreover, the same number of rolls or compresses was exacted from every yard of gauze, and workrooms turned out no more and no less than their accepted quotas. All materials were bought through the Central Supply Department at Washington and issued from Division warehouses on requisition. The constantly depleted reserves in the export warehouses were as constantly replaced by a steady, unhurried procession of uniform cases, each one containing one size of one article. These were factory methods indeed! One would say that production had become automatic. But let an emergency throw open the throttle and the "machine" responded with an elasticity of effort, a determination to accomplish the impossible that is the greatest birthright of human genius.

One day an army consignment went astray and a transport was sailing minus its equipment of surgical dressings. Could the Red Cross help? The appeal came at 11:00 A. M. At two that afternoon the ship was on her way "over there," with the requisite number of Red Cross boxes stored in her hold. When the influenza epidemic reached the United States on its westward journey, the Red Cross Chapters turned out 1,250,000 germ-proof masks in two weeks. One day an S. O. S. call came into central Headquarters. Contagion was rampant in an Iowa camp and the hospital must have ward masks.

Chicago had none on hand, but she knew where they were to be had, and in three days, twenty thousand of the precious filters were on their way from a northern neighbor. The thirty thousand and more Red Cross workrooms were cogs in a great machine, but it was a human mechanism, welded from millions of heads and hearts and hands.

The women of America from the day they first took up the burden of war to October 1, 1918, made and packed and shipped 253,000,000 surgical dressings; 22,000,000 articles of hospital supplies; 14,000,000 sweaters, socks, comfort bags, etc., for soldiers and sailors, and 1,000,000 refugee garments --- 291,000,000 pledges that America's women were right behind the flag. The value of this gift cannot be measured by its bulk nor by the $60,000,000 or more that it would bring in open market. The manner of its giving put it beyond price. It was a splendid gesture of courage, faith and love, commensurate only to the human misery it has lessened, the human courage it had stiffened to "carry on" against all odds. The little red labels sewed into every chapter-made garment carried the propaganda of good will around the world.

The gray uniforms of the Red Cross Motor Corps were a familiar sight in the streets of many cities. Between six and seven thousand women were enrolled in the Chapters' transportation system. In trucks and ambulances and in their own cars they went about the Chapters' business; they carried workers and food to and from the canteens; they hauled Chapter supplies and hospital patients and visiting personages. Their obedience to orders and their promptness in reporting for duty were as military as their uniforms. The Motor Corps was no place for faddists; it was a working organization of skilled drivers and mechanics. The prerequisites for the first division of membership included a course in automobile mechanics, sanitary troop drill and first aid, a chauffeur's license, and physical examination. The members gave at least sixteen hours' service a week. Local emergencies proved their spirit. During the influenza epidemic, many drivers stayed on their jobs twelve and fifteen hours a day and slept in the garages beside their cars.

At seven hundred railroad junction points where troop trains stopped to take on coal and ice, Red Cross canteeners were always waiting to greet the cramped and train-weary men with something to add to their comfort. In winter, it was coffee and sandwiches; in summer, watermelon or ice cream. Newspapers, magazines, postal cards, and stamps were popular the year round. The gift, small as it was, embodied enough good fellowship to last till the next stop.

The Red Cross is dedicated to the defeat of suffering. Its work in the face of actual disaster is the last stand of the battle. It begins in the Red Cross classes of instruction. The Chapter is the evangel of physical efficiency. Crystallized in three slim textbooks, "First-Aid,"" Home Dietetics," "Elementary Hygiene and Home Care of the Sick," there is enough simple knowledge to shield a whole community from petty emergencies and the insidious encroachments of disease and dirt. First-aid classes were organized in January, 1910. In eight years, 85,257 certificates have been issued. First-aid contests are an annual event in many industrial plants. Sixty thousand women have learned to make their homes strongholds of healthy lives.

Home Service --- a strong hand holding hundreds of thousands of families from disintegration under the dead weight of war ---may be a matter of economic and social laws among the file cases at Headquarters, but in the Chapter it resolves itself into individual problems in neighborliness, vivid with personality, inspired by loyalty to the absent soldiers of democracy.

In April, 1917, the Red Cross had 555 Chapters. Most of them were in the Eastern States and in large cities. To-day 3874 Chapters stand on the Red Cross rolls, and throughout the land there is no county that does not boast of at least one Auxiliary. The pre-war membership of 486,394 is lost in the mighty army of men and women, boys and girls, who answer with 30,000,000 voices to the Red Cross roll call. Sixteen million joined during one week of the 1917 Christmas drive.

The rallying of the comradeship is, indeed, one of the great romances of democracy. Millionaire and miner, red Indian, white man, and negro marched shoulder to shoulder in the army of mercy. One of the most stirring chapters in the whole series is the tale of the Fourteenth Division. When we entered the war, it was felt that through the Red Cross these exiled Americans scattered around the globe might help do their bit. As a result, the roil calls of the Red Cross echoed from Cairo to Vladivostok and from Buenos Ayres to Tokio. In its workrooms thousands of more or less homesick Americans felt closer to the state than they had for many years. In Porto Rico and Hawaii, in the Philippines and Guam and the Virgin Islands, men, women, and little children found a new meaning to their American citizenship.

Incidentally, it gives me great pleasure to state that when we figured up the result of our second appeal to the country for another $100,000,000, which resulted in a total subscription of more than $182,000,000, we found that the Fourteenth Division had contributed $1,700,000 to this fund, which meant that the Fourteenth Division had gone over six times its quota.

One thing more: in less than a year the scattered Chapters of the Fourteenth Division turned in a million and a half dollars' worth of supplies, knitted goods from China and Chile, surgical dressings from Brazil and Spain, tons of guava jelly from Porto Rico destined for French hospitals, and Havana cigars and cigarettes from Cuba. Red Cross work also was carried on in the little island of Exuma --- a scrap of land not to be found on most maps.

In Costa Rica twenty knitters called for the second hundred dollar lot of wool in four months, and knitting needles being scarce they made their own from cocobolo wood. The Fourteenth Division planted the outposts of the American Red Cross around the world.