. . 1 printed from The Evening Post, Februaru 18, WIS opy 1 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THIS WAR BY CHARLES D. NORTON. RED CROSS WAR COUNCIL ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK LIFE UNDERWRITERS FEBRUARY 16, 1918 Reprinted from The Evening Post, February 18, 191S THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THIS WAR BY CHARLES D. NORTON RED CROSS WAR COUNCIL ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK LIFE UNDERWRITERS FEBRUARY 16, 1918 The American Red Cross in this War Addi'ess before the New York Life Underwriters February I6th, 1918 The American Red Cross with its Fed- eral charter and its diplomatic status under the Treaty of Geneva is an organi- zation of citizens which receives Govern- ment recognition. With its small endow- ment and its permanent home in Wash- ington it can live quietly in quiet times, always prepared for the emergencies which increasingly arise in our complex modern life. Its duty is to accumulate and record experience and to develop a technique for the effective handling of [3] emergency situations; it must shun any tendency toward rigid bureaucratic method; it must not stifle independent effort, but rather encourage it; it must be capable of instant expansion into a huge machine in time of war or of other great disaster, but it must be equally capable of prompt contraction when the emergency passes. This form of organization is peculiarly adapted to American life and American ways, for we have vast num- bers of public spirited individuals and or- ganizations ready and able to enlist for temporary service in the relief of human misery. To-day, for instance, millions of American women are knitting and sewing for our armies and for the needy civilians of Europe. So many volunteers are ready for this work that it is not possible at the moment to purchase in the markets of the world sufficient yarn and other materials to keep them fully occupied. [41 Two years ago the Red Cross member- ship was hardly more than twenty-five thousand ; today it is twenty-three million. Two years ago its income for war relief was trivial; this last year it was well over $100,000,000, money given twice because given quickly, money skillfully expended by experts, with every penny vouched for and recorded with absolute accuracy and fidelity. And I believe that America is ready to refill the Red Cross treasury whenever the right moment comes to ask for it. America's heart has been deeply touched by the miseries of others. But do we Americans appreciate the seriousness of our own position? I think not. It is a deadly serious game, this war of peoples, with all deference to the gener- ous praise of America's effort by our courteous guest, Baron Neuflize. We are not yet really in that game. We do not at all realize what is going on in Europe. [5] The war is for most of us still an adven- ture. Our young people are rushing gladly into uniform, while the older gen- erations find joy in various unaccustomed war activities. Even in our submarine encounters thus far we have been fortu- nate, and just before they are rescued our shipwTecked men sing, "Where Do We Go From Here?" It will not be like this very long. We know little or nothing of the utter weariness of discomfort, of privation, of the grim and ghastly per- sonal losses, of the ever-sharpening pangs of hunger which bear on all of the people of all of Europe. We permit strikes in our ship-yards at this moment when ships are vital, absolutely vital, to our success. After a year of war our labor and indus- trial leaders have not solved problems that were attacked in England and France be- fore this war was three weeks old. With- out ships, without labor peace, all these [6] great efforts of ours bear the same rela- tion to the actual fight that a moving pic- ture bears to the thing it portrays. We are not down to the real business of war. Among our enemies there may be grow- ing numbers of liberty-loving Germans who realize with horror that they are fight- ing and dying to enslave the world. On our side, the conviction deepens that this curse of conquest by militarism must be stamped out by the Allied Armies; but soldiers alone cannot win this war. The peoples that will win the war are the peoples that can endure ; and if the Allies cannot endure, the Allies will be whipped. Our Red Cross sensed this early. We threw ourselves instantly and unre- servedly into the struggle to preserve among our Allies and to create among our own people this spirit of endurance, or morale. Without waiting for our armies, our Red Cross mobilized a great [7] force of men and women and money. The work has gone forward under Murphy, James Perkms, Folks, Patten, Devine, Swan, Margaret Curtis and all that group in France; under Endicott, Wells, and Mrs. Whitelaw Reid in England; under Baker, Taylor, Robert Perkins and Am- bassador and Mrs. Page in Italy; under Bicknell and Van Schaick in Belgium; under Severance and Ryan in Serbia; under Anderson in Rumania; under Bill- ings and Thompson in Russia, a great force of devoted men and women under the American flag and the Red Cross flag to fight misery, to fight tuberculosis, to reunite refugee families, to feed the hun- gry, to care for the sick, to locate pris- oners, and to prepare — always to prepare — for the great rising tide of sick and wounded American soldiers and sailors. The Italian situation, and particularly the great Italian retreat, affords an apt [8] illustration of the need for work behind the lines such as our Red Cross has under- taken. My visit along the Italian front oc- curred during the week just preceding the great November retreat, and at the front line trenches above Gorizia and Monte Santo I saw the very spot where later the line broke and the Germans burst through. Fighting almost everywhere on enemy soil, the Italian armies had cap- tured positions nearly impregnable. Their engineers had built superb roads to the very front. They had spanned mountain gorges with ingenious telef ericas or aerial trams. Their hospital and ambulance ser- vice was admirable, and the transport and repair services were most effective. Yet it was possible even for a civilian then and there to record a premonition of impend- ing disaster. And why? The answer is to be found in that hard-worked word "morale.'' There v/as trouble behind the lines and the men knew it. Every day along that front noticeably large numbers of soldiers were sitting outside their tents at mid-day writing letters home. It w^as explained that the few north and south railway systems through the long, nar- row country were heavily overtaxed. South Italian soldiers had been on that mountain front from tvv^elve to eighteen months without once revisiting their homes, just as American boys from Texas, Wisconsin, Montana, and Maine may fight in France for months without seeing home. The Italian soldiers are hardy fellows; but, as the third winter's campaign came on, homesickness became acute, and the news from home was disconcerting. The frugal Italian woman is accustomed to fill her jars v»ith wheat and macaroni some- what in advance of daily needs. I saw in [101 Rome a double line of police with arms interlocked surrounding a mob of women who were waiting for a pasta shop to open its doors. In the eager confusion a woman and her child were trampled to death by those women. In the central square of another large city we saw in the broken park railings evidences of the bread riots, in which, one week earlier, civilians had been killed. So that the Italian army, which had won a greater measure of tangible success than any of its allies, which had been held up in its August rush toward Vienna only by failure of its sup- ply of heavy ammunition and guns, be- came aware, as winter drew nearer, that their Allies who had the coal and the wheat had failed them and that there was a shortage of coal and wheat at home. This lowered their tone and value as sol- diers. They were less ready to meet the shock of disagreeable surprise that was in store for them. [11] The chlorine gas shell of the early days of the war was devised for use in the level plains of Flanders. It did not prove so effective or dangerous in the north Italian mountains; but when that sudden November storm of the new, invisible, deadly mustard gas came down upon the Italians, it fell upon regiments whose morale at that moment had been impaired ; and they broke. Comfortable, well-fed war critics in America have said too much of treachery, of hostile propaganda. There was something of both and a few officers and men were shot for it; but a grossly unjust aspersion has been cast upon one of the bravest, the most success- ful, and the most devoted of our Allies. From the beginning our Red Cross has realized that it must be braced to meet the shock of such a situation as that, whether it occurred among our own troops or among our Allies. First of all the Red [ 121 Cross financed itself; then established its great warehouses in New York, at the French ports, in Paris and at the Fronts. It bought goods — blankets, hospital sup- plies, sweaters — and then more and more goods. It organized and equipped motor transports; it mobilized relief workers; it centralized shipping arrangements; it di- vided the United States into thirteen divi- sions with headquarters each self-con- tained; and by thus de-centralizing it quickly relieved the congestion in Wash- ington, and then with all possible free- dom from red-tape it settled down to hard labor. Let me tell you of a few typical activi- ties of our Red Cross over there. We went up to Soissons through roads crowded with men and guns converging for the great Chemin-des-Dames fight where one week later the French won a glorious vic- tory. Near Oeilly, just under the Ridge [13 1 and within a thousand yards of a flashing line of French 75's, in a ruined village, we found sheltered a rolling canteen — a little Ford motor equipped with huge soup and coffee kettles. A vigorous young New Yorker, a bond salesman at home, and a lame, frail j^oung French Professor were living in that perilous spot — an 8- inch gun was hidden in its camouflage hard by. A few hours earlier a German shell had killed or wounded fourteen men within a hundred j^ards of the house. We arrived at sundown. Our young American was taking a swim in a little mill pond, preparatory to beginning his night's work. Before 2 A. M. as the night shifts went in or came out of the trenches, these two boys would hearten 1,500 French soldiers with hot soup, coffee and bread. Further up the lines at the Railway junction point of Chalons, we found a [14] huge freight shed converted into an at- tractive canteen where thousands of French soldiers en route to or from their homes found rest, food, baths, lodging, while waiting for their trains. The Chalons canteen swarmed with men, all in high spirits, talking, joking about the last fight, the last air raid at Bar-le-Duc, or singing the praises of the American men and women who found it worth their while to help win the war by washing dishes, serving soup, coffee, hearty stewed meats and war bread. We arrived at 11 P. M. and found Miss Marjory Nott, Miss Ely, Miss Mitchel, Mrs. Francis and others serving a train load of 500 men; and at nine o'clock the next morning we found them back at their posts for a new day's work. At Toul we saw 500 wonderful little French children under seven years of age, housed in empty barracks, being cared for (15 1 by Miss McCormick and Dr. (Miss) Brown and others. By "cared for" I mean that these children, who had been removed from cellars in the gas zone be- cause they were too young to wear gas masks, were being separated from the filthy rags and the vermin which covered them and were being converted into healthy, playful little sprites. In Paris tenements we saw the huddled refu- gees being assorted and transferred into better quarters. In a single room which I measured and found to be thir- teen feet wide and fifteen feet long, Miss Curtis showed us a group of five children of Arras and Peronne — those ruined cities to the North — all under eight and all liv- ing night and day in that one room in care of a married pair — the father affected with tuberculosis and the mother an am- munition worker, trying to support them all. The Red Cross secured permission [16] from the French Government to take pos- session of unfinished apartment houses and other structures, the building of which was arrested by the war in August, 1914; permission to do sufficient work to make them habitable, and then the task of Miss Curtis and her associates w^as to break up those congested groups and bring them into a condition of life suitable for human beings. We saw Dr. Farrand, Dr. White and Dr. Miller creating sunny wards for the many tuberculous soldiers, stimulating with greatest skill and diplomacy French leadership in a public health reform com- paratively new in France; and then in cooperation with that French leadership mobilizing the scientific methods, the money, and the staff of the Red Cross and the Rockefeller Foundation Commission. We have heard too much of tuberculosis in French; we have heard too much that ( 171 France is "bled- white." If that superb, determined army of 5,000,000 men — the best in Europe — which is even today hold- ing two-thirds of the Western Front, is the army of a Nation "bled- white," I should be sorry to be compelled to face them when their blood is red. So too of England's glorious effort we have a scant appreciation. Four days at the British Front and three at the Tyne and the Clyde and at the Grand Fleet in the North, and a visit to the great new government munition works, convinced me that it is a new England over there. The old rigidity of social structure has gone. They are dealing with labor — man- fashion, face to face. In the Unions, big- ger and better and more sensible leaders have appeared. Among the employers there is coming to the front the type of man who is fair, who declines to profiteer, who knows the need of decent housing and \ 181 of moderate hours of work, who is close to his work and his workers. The women have become enormously important as workers. On certain repetition jobs on machines they excel the men. During a recent offensive General Haig called sud- denly for a large supply of shells of a certain calibre. Teams of the best men workers and the best women workers were organized. The women won by 30% on a week's work. In the presence of National danger English common-sense methods prevail — and when this war ends, that new England will be a far more dangerous commercial competitor for Germany than before; for in adjusting her war profits and war taxes she has permitted and encouraged an almost complete reconstruction of her an- tiquated industrial plant. An afternoon on Vimy Ridge, looking out over the city of Lens and the sur- [191 rounding plain, watching the shells ex- plode in the towns and on the trenches, listening to the rattle of the "heavies" as they flew over our heads, gave us a sense of the mastery which the English have ac- quired by marvelous organization and by laborious fighting — ^mastery of the higher ground — superiority in quantity and quality of shells — mastery of themselves; so that with the old resolution, the old courage, the new England fronts and bests a military machine that has been constructed through forty-five consecutive years of military effort. In all that welter our troops will soon take their place under the able Pershing. And our Red Cross has its place over there. Here behind the lines you can sup- port the efforts of Director General of Civilian Relief, Frank Persons, and his civilian relief committees. Not one of you but knows a man who has left his bench [201 or his desk and has left anxious ones be- hind. Give them your sympathy, your friendship, and if need be your help. Join these Red Cross Committees: keep this great citizen organization financed; and loyally help the men and women in charge of the Red Cross to attain the efficiency, the broad spirit of sympathy, to which they aspire. And ever bear in mind that when peace comes there will follow a sickening realiza- tion over there of the horrible destruction and devastation that has fallen on parts of Belgium and France and Italy and Po- land. Then will come our best oppor- tunity to show our appreciation of the plain truth that for two or three long years, while we prospered, they fought our fight. I do not know how it will end ; but as I drove from Vimy to Amiens, past Arras, Cambrai, Albert, Peronne and St. Quentin, through a desert as great in ex- [21] tent as the Connecticut Valley, it was clear that no money indemnity will com- pensate. Nothing but the labor of men's hands can restore these ruined lands. I could only hope that the day will soon come when the victorious Allies can say to a beaten Germany: Now choose! Your valleys shall be equally desolated, your cities shall be equally destroyed; or you shall leave here your millions of men in uniform, without arms and under guard, your tentage, your stores and your trucks; here they shall remain at work until they have restored what they have destroyed; and only when they have restored it may they go home. 1221 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 015 845 673 4