THE Soldier of the Cross is a very human crusader. Where civilizations have crashed in disaster she makes living clean and possible; with the modern magic of medicine, 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 --- 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 realities --- 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 affiliated 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 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 shipwreck, 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, supplies, 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.

When, 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 coöperated to rush volunteers and huge quantities of supplies into the infected country. Serbia 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 familiar now to our ears, but in those early days its horror was unbelievably 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 immediately, enough to care for an army of a million, according 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 our shores preparedness 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 each group were accustomed to work together. When they moved they carried with them the personnel (from pharmacist to scullion) 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 relief 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 corpsmen, six civilian employees, a chaplain---the complete personnel signed the muster roll of each and pledged to report for duty whenever called within two years. The personnel of each list 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 knowledge and confidence.

Beds, bedding, ward furniture, drugs, surgical instruments, laboratory supplies and equipment, mess-gear, sterilizers, ambulances, touring-cars, motor-trucks, a motorcycle, complete X-ray plant, kitchen, disinfectors, surgical dressings, and hospital garments, some refrigerating and laundry equipment, telephone system, and machine shop --- all the supplies that would not deteriorate in storage were collected at a convenient point. It was at first estimated that the total cost of equipping a Base Hospital 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; corpsmen were enlisted 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 equipment were stored; the completed unit was turned over to the United States Army Medical Corps ---and life went on much as before. The personnel scattered to their daily jobs, the Director put the key to the warehouse in this pocket, and the storage bill and the muster roll were the only outward signs of the powerful machine that could be assembled on such short notice.

A Base Hospital Unit was mobilized 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 mobilization 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 assigned to duty with the British Expeditionary Force. The Surgeon General decided, however, not to use the nurses' aids mobilized with the Base Hospital Units. Number 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 demanded 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 life, succumbed 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 Units was sent to the cantonments.

This was an advantageous move, as it gave the nurses preliminary training in a military hospital and also gave the hospitals an adequate nursing staff. Throughout that winter and spring they worked gallantly in the face of appalling, though unavoidable 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 responsibilities as "the chief reserve for the Army and Navy Nurse Corps." During the summer months enrollment was speeded up to the limit, 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 3,734 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 $3000 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 circumstances 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 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 machinery 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, oftentimes, 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 expended $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 spelling home and a release from narrow barrack quarters. In France the Red Cross meant something besides 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 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 with, 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 with 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 shown 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 Hospital takes up about 62 acres and so far has 32 wards and more in process of construction. A few months ago this region was a stretch of wilderness and the first division 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-like building and found a bed allotted to me in a dormitory with about 50 other nurses. I must admit that this 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 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 threatening 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 commanding 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, 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 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 our 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 friendship 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 lingo." No wonder they were pathetically grateful for the American 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 relief and excitement that followed his surprise at not finding 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 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 Bureau states that "The hospitals have a way of doubling overnight." A shift in the offensive, a sudden flood of repatriés into Evian, evacuation of a strip of bombarded territory, and the hospitals were swamped and personnel commandeered 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 Commissions, 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, 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 communities, 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 sanitation, 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.

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 little 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 serving 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.

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 handicapped 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 little 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 mental 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 somebody 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 Headquarters, 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 involved 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 some time ago, people even now, and not infrequently, have asked us "why did you do it? Why did you bring into the organization 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.

"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 direction?"

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 trying for years to formulate such an idea in practical shape, and had been endeavoring 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 circumstances 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 interest of the locality. In the quantity, variety, and management of its productive work, the School Auxiliary, 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 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. Perhaps 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 commercial 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 yard 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 support 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 triumphantly in "two-boy" power-cars, to be turned into real 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 umbrella, 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 frequently 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 something 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 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 thousands 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, taborets, 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, -, are you learning to sew?" asked an interested visitor to the Red Cross swing 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. 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, messengers, 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 program 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 child'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 whirlwind 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 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 responsibility; that he had wanted to join the Red Cross and he could not be a member in school and a nonmember outside; 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 wore 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 enthusiasm. 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 communities, until women came to school with their children, asking to be allowed to sew for the war sufferers.

American children of many nationalities are in the ranks of the Red Cross workers. Tim Ford, the prize draftman 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 oncoming 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 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 coöperate. 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 purpose and a new interest in the school life.

The rural schools, where an overtaxed teacher coped with a multitude of subjects, 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 coöperation and service went straight to the home in double measure.

It was obvious from the beginning that Red Cross teaching, 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 development of character. The returns were most gratifying. 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. Reports 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, invention, ingenuity in finding ways and means, faculty of organization, capability in execution, competitive energy, and understanding of the objectives 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 intelligent 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 hitherto 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 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 coöperation 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 responsibilities implied in its citizenship. Now every child is realizing that he, as well as the greatest and wisest of his seniors, has a share in winning the war. The habits and the ideas that he is establishing are a national gain."

"For years there has been a conscientious effort 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 vitalized 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 lines. 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."

These are not editorial observations. They are the firsthand 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 unimagined 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 vivid interests of world citizenship, 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 everlastingly asking themselves in his busy brain.

This is education in its best form. This is the leading of the home-bound 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 decency are factors in leadership, then these virtues must begin at home. It is "many a mickle that makes the muckle" and his town must 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 surrounded 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.

ALTHOUGH founded on sentiment and built in 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 Council turned to constitute the Red Cross Department of Supplies and Transportation. In the handling of this huge business of buying and shipping supplies 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 Transportation must not be translated by the familiar and prosaic lexicon of trade, but in the language of the need and suffering that war brings. Its interminable invoices and correspondence 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 graveyard 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 life 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 filling 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 overseas to our fighting men, to our allies, and to the needy of many lands, in addition to the great quantities purchased 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 without 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 supplies followed each other to the lands where the lack was. Organization wise, the Department of Supplies 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, like any other business mechanism, it looked like A B C. The details were multifarious but invisible. The fingers of this Department 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 supplies 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	2,386,692

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 aftermath of the Italian 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 coöperation 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, incidentally, when you get to the Y's, you have passed an astonishing 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," 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 unbelievable 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 disheartening in these days of high prices: Games, clothing of every known fashion and size, camp things, auto parts, oils, gasoline, blocks, rope bottles, blacking, catgut, Bristol board, bailing machines, cement, arm and leg supports, rubberized caps, carborundum, earthenware, glass sides, fire extinguishers, enameled goods, crutches, cork, comfort kits, thermometers and photographic films, baseballs, dental goods, cutlery, nails, mouth organs, hooks and eyes, incubators, 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, 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 supplies 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 particularity 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; even big business economizes on the clerical items when it comes to foodstuffs.

There were times also when emergency was a most descriptive word. In contemplation of its task the Supply Department classed all the provisions it made for civilian relief, military 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 list 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 Halifax 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 corn. 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 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 Philadelphia; the supplies loaded on motortrucks for New York; and $300,000 worth of supplies 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 supplies 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 little 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 purchases were combined with those made for the War Department.

With the talent at hand and the spirit of helpful coöperation 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 facility, 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 Government 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 during the same period for shipment to Europe.

We come now to the Chapter Supplies. 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 availability 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 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 adjusting hand on the wool supply. By and by, through a studious process of coördination, Chapter production was put on a business basis. The Bureau of Chapter Production provided specifications for all Chapter production, so automatically 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 four 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 intermediary. 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 requirements 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 protected against lack of materials; and, in conjunction with 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 sentiment into relief. This was 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 advantage 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, Serbian prisoners, and the Swiss Commission), Palestine, Denmark (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 Shipping, 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 required 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 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 control, cancelled this custom but exempted Government freight. The Red Cross claimed like exemption and the administration 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 supplies 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 established 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, entailing heavy operating expenses, 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 $4559, based on all-rail rate to New York at 56-1/2 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 Australian wheat; Pacific salmon and dried fruits from California 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 approach the purchase and transportation of Red Cross supplies 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 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 12-3/4 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 requiring 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 fixed a commercial average rate of 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 shipments 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-insurance 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.