/ IO-3-33 
 
 What the 
 
 American Red Cross 
 
 Did to Help Save Italy 
 
 By PAUL U. KELLOGG 
 
 Editor of The Survey 
 
 American Red Cross 
 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive 
 in 2014 
 
 littps://arcliive.org/cletails/wliatamericanredcOOkell 
 
What the American Red Cross Did 
 to Help Save Italy 
 
 By PAUL U. KELLOGG 
 Editor of The Survey 
 
 ON the hills bordering Lake Garda to 
 the south, lies an old battleground 
 where sixty years ago the French 
 Piedmontese defeated the Austrians. For a 
 month past, not only French and Italian, 
 but British troops have been streaming 
 through this region. They have been re- 
 inforcing the new front on the line of the 
 Piave, where the Italian armies checked and 
 held the invading Austrians of 1917, who 
 came down late in October driving before 
 them half a million refugees from Friuli and 
 the Veneto. 
 
 This reawakening of old echoes of gun fire 
 in the long struggle for Italian liberation had 
 its response in the declaration of war by the 
 Congress of the United States. But there is 
 another span of circumstances in which 
 America played a more immediate part, from 
 Padua and Venice to the Sicilies, in the 
 prompt dispatch of trained men, supplies and 
 rolling stock from the Paris headquarters of 
 the American Red Cross Commissioner to 
 Europe. 
 
 For it was on this old battlefield of Solfer- 
 ino, that in 1859 Henri Dunant, the Swiss 
 fo- erunner of the Red Cross, went out before 
 the heat of the conflict had spent itself, tend- 
 ing the wounded who lay in anguish, without 
 water, or comfort, or medical aid. Here it 
 was that he was fired with his conception of 
 a non-combatant service which would be 
 respected by all armies. There followed that 
 
 [ 
 
 I 
 
 conference at Geneva in 1864, which chose the 
 Swiss flag, reversed, as its symbol — a red 
 cross on a white field — and laid the frame- 
 work for those international understandings 
 which are the law for the sick and wounded, 
 for stretcher bearer and ambulance man and 
 nurse, wherever the battle lines run. 
 
 The Red Cross 
 Off to Italy 
 
 And within four days after our declaration 
 of war against Austria, the first section of 
 twenty cars of the American Red Cross 
 Ambulance Corps for Italy traversed the old 
 battlefield of Solferino on the way to the 
 Piave front. 
 
 The Red Cross was even then in the sixth 
 week of its emergent relief work for Italian 
 refugees. 
 
 To pick up our thread of history; the ques- 
 tion on which it seemed likely that the Geneva 
 conference of 1864 would split was the belief 
 of the European delegates that the military 
 commanders would not brook the intrusion of 
 other than fighting men in the midst of their 
 operations. An American, a member of that 
 Voluntary Sanitary Commission which played 
 so active a part in all the campaigns of the 
 armies of the North, carried the way with his 
 testimony fresh from the battlefields of our 
 Civil War. 
 
 In the intervening years, Americans pio- 
 neered by employing the Red Cross organiza- 
 
 ] 
 
tion, which sprang from the bloody slopes of 
 this Italian battlefield, as our chief agency for 
 succor in times of great fires, floods and other 
 forms of internal disaster. There has been, 
 therefore, a sense of noble indebtedness, 
 nobly returned, that has entered these weeks 
 into the eager outreaching of civilian help 
 from the people of the United States to the 
 Italian people, sorely pressed as they are in 
 turning every city and village of the peninsula 
 into a haven of refuge for women and children 
 rendered homeless by the invasion. 
 
 Made American Aid 
 a Reality 
 
 At a time then, when American participa- 
 tion in the war has been only a phrase to the 
 mass of Italians, the American Red Cross, 
 with little more than a corporal's guard of 
 active workers, has made American fellow- 
 ship a reality. 
 
 Before its own permanent commission to 
 Italy had yet sailed from New York, the exist- 
 ing organization in France, at the very peak 
 of its load of work for American troops, 
 French troops and French civilians, was able 
 to fill in the breach with experienced men; 
 open central offices in Rome early in Novem- 
 ber; canvass the situation by wire through the 
 American Embassy and Consular service; 
 despatch an ambulance section and two 
 trains of supplies; make wholesale purchases 
 in Italy (while these supplies were enroute 
 from France); wire money to spend on the 
 spot to consuls, committees and local agen- 
 cies (while these last supplies were enroute 
 from the Italian markets) ; send out north and 
 south the nucleus of a field staflf ; and commis- 
 sion two ranking American experts in emer- 
 gency relief to make a rapid survey of the 
 whole field as the basis for a long plan of help. 
 
 Working with 
 the Italians 
 
 In saying this much, we must keep things 
 in perspective. The part which the American 
 Red Cross played in these first weeks of 
 emergency must be seen against the back- 
 ground of voluntary efTort put forward by 
 Italian agencies; the part which these agen- 
 cies have played must be seen against the 
 
 [4 
 
 background of government action — munici- 
 pal, provincial, national and the part which all 
 together have played must be seen against the 
 tremendous rush of emergent need. 
 
 The brunt of it fell on the refugees — they 
 bore it, hungry, athirst, drenched to their 
 skins, packed in cattle cars, or sleeping on 
 stone floors when better provision failed. 
 More, the excruciating experience of their 
 slow southbound transport is but the first 
 chapter in a situation, which if we are to 
 judge by the experience of French and Belgian 
 refugees of three years ago, will tax the com- 
 petence and generosity of all the agencies 
 concerned for months to come. 
 
 The part which the Red Cross has been able 
 to play has been larger and more effective 
 with every day that has passed, and not only 
 the spirit of the doing, but the things done 
 were made the subject, no more than a month 
 from the date the Red Cross Commissioner 
 to Europe reached Rome, of appreciative ref- 
 erence by the Italian Premier in his address at 
 the opening of Parliament early in December. 
 
 He said: "Our soul is stirred again with ap- 
 preciation and with admiration for the mag- 
 nificent dash with which the American Red 
 Cross has brought us powerful aid in our re- 
 cent misfortune. We attribute great value 
 to the cooperation which will be given us 
 against the common enemy by the prodigious 
 activity and by the exuberant and consistent 
 force which are peculiar to the American 
 people." 
 
 Money Sent 
 by Wire 
 
 Take a single example, more dramatic than 
 most, but by no means unrepresentative of 
 the way Italians and Americans have breasted 
 together minor emergencies as they arose. 
 The first two Red Cross men reached Rome on 
 November 5, and the first step they took was 
 to appropriate money to the American Relief 
 Clearing House, which enabled it to open that 
 very night the first of two canteens for refu- 
 gees at the railroad stations in Rome. Inci- 
 dentally this was four days before Italian 
 canteens were opened there. 
 
 At 4 o'clock one afternoon, the volunteers 
 who manned the canteen — American residents 
 
 ] 
 
in Rome who have since become active mem- 
 bers of the Red Cross staff — had a wire that 
 12,000 southbound refugees would pass 
 through the Portonaccio station, six or eight 
 miles out on the Roman Campagna. The first 
 train would arrive at 6 o'clock. The refugees 
 had been fed at Florence before leaving, ten 
 hours before, and had had nothing to eat 
 enroute. The Italian authorities could supply 
 the children with hot milk, the adults with 
 bread and soup. They turned the rest over 
 to the Americans. 
 
 There was just two hours leeway. The can- 
 teen workers jumped into motor cars. They 
 bought 1,200 blankets, they bought hams, 
 they bought sausages, they bought chocolate, 
 they piled them into the cars and made re- 
 peated trips to the Termini station, where they 
 secured permission to dump them into the 
 baggage car of the Florence express which 
 left on its northbound trip between 5 and 6 
 o'clock. In this way they had their supplies 
 out at the Portonaccio station before the 
 arrival of the first refugee train. 
 
 Soldiers Making Sandwiches 
 
 Here they found a squad of the Granatieri. 
 an Italian regiment dating back to the seven- 
 teenth century. In the present war, so heavy 
 has been their part in the fighting that it has 
 taken 60,000 men to keep filled their ranks of 
 6,000. Tonight the Granatieri were armed 
 with big knives and from now until 9 o'clock 
 the ' ^xt morning, when the last train went 
 through, they turned huge stacks of bread 
 into sandwiches, cutting the loaves into big 
 chunks, slicing them, and stuffing them with 
 ham and sausage. 
 
 Each train carried about 1,000 refugees, 
 and the Granatieri v/ould no more than get a 
 thousand sandwiches made up than a train 
 would roll in. Then they had to work against 
 time to be ready for the next train. And they 
 did this for twelve solid hours and more, as 
 fast as men could work. 
 
 Perhaps in a writing which cannot hope to 
 speak of the hundreds of Italians in all walks 
 of life who have worked shoulder to shoulder 
 with the Red Cross men, and whose coopera- 
 tion has made their work possible, it may be 
 permitted to cite one as personifying many. 
 
 Giorgio d'Acarnia is the pen name of a young 
 writer on the proposed Jugo-Slovo State and 
 the future of Poland. He is known also for 
 his ardor on a certain battlefield, where he 
 was left for dead with a shrapnel wound in his 
 abdomen. Sometime later, stretcher bearers 
 brought his body to a field hospital, where the 
 physicians in charge said that he was clearly 
 dying. 
 
 They turned to more hopeful cases, and for 
 a second time he was left to one side for the 
 flicker of life in him to snuff itself out. It 
 happened that Bastianelli, perhaps the great- 
 est of the Italian surgeons — and Italy is 
 famous for her surgeons in this war — came to 
 that ward. "His case is hopeless," said Bas- 
 tianelli, "none the less I want to try to save 
 him." There followed the first of four major 
 operations which brought the young author- 
 soldier back to his people, a shadow of him- 
 self, with a great open wound in his side. 
 That was eight months ago. He cannot go 
 back to the front, but he still works on for 
 Italy. It was Giorgio d'.^carnia who was in 
 command of the Granatieri, cutting bread for 
 the refugees, train after train, all that night. 
 
 Refugees in the Rain 
 
 Pouring rain beat into the open train-shed 
 and through the doors of the cars. Rain was 
 the one farriiliar of these contalini in all the 
 strange placesthrough which they were driven 
 by the fortunes of war. It was pouring rain 
 when they struggled down the black road 
 from Udine. It was pouring rain when many 
 of them were put off the trains into the asili 
 at Florence, just as it was pouring rain when 
 they passed through Rome on this, the next 
 lap of their journey. It was pouring rain 
 when some of them were transferred from 
 ferry to train at Messina, and they stood 
 waiting in the dark in the drench of it for two 
 hours on the wharves. And it was pouring 
 rain when others — or perhaps some of the 
 same company— trudged after midnight up 
 the interminable folds of road that lead to the 
 mountain top town in Sicily that was for a 
 thousand and more their journey's end. 
 
 They came into Rome that night mostly on 
 cattle cars, some of these transformed for the 
 use of war into troop trains, but others clearly 
 
improvised for this trip, with benches taken 
 from little northern schools and churches for 
 seats. The American canteen workers could 
 read the names of them in the station lights — 
 "Santa " this and that. 
 
 Most of the people, those who came in 
 around midnight and after, had not eaten for 
 twelve hours. The babies were crying, the 
 few men that were among them were cursing, 
 the women wringing their hands. The Ameri- 
 cans, drenched to the skin in going from car 
 to car, passed the sandwiches out to them, the 
 hot milk for the babies, the soup for the adults, 
 the blankets for the old and sick. And before 
 each train had left the station, a young Italian 
 ofificer, tall, slender, with a great open wound 
 in his side concealed by his grey-green uni- 
 form, went from car to car, in the rain and the 
 cold, inflaming their hearts with words of 
 encouragement. 
 
 Not once, so the canteen workers tell the 
 story, but the trains rolled out with the people 
 singing patriotic hymns, and cheering for 
 Italy, for the Allies, for America. 
 
 America in Action 
 
 The American note has been struck in all 
 this Red Cross work in Italy — not in a spirit 
 of self-advertisement for the United States, 
 but rather of assurance for Italians, to give 
 them tangible evidence that in resisting inva- 
 sion and in getting under its heavy load of 
 civilian distress the American people are with 
 them, evidence not merely in sympathetic 
 cables and distant girdings for war, but evi- 
 dence expressed in such humble but convinc- 
 ing terms as surgical dressings and instru- 
 ments for field and base hospitals, shirts and 
 drawers and stockings for shivering limbs in 
 asili and refuge trains, condensed milk for 
 hungry babies, blankets and beds and stoves 
 for homeless families in lodgings in the north- 
 ern cities, in vacant villas along the seacoast, 
 in country villages in Umbria, in old convents 
 and monasteries in the south. 
 
 There was a very genuine statesmanship 
 in the call sent out for combs which came from 
 a Red Cross worker in Leghorn, and in the 
 good sense of the American women in Flor- 
 ence who got together and made sanitary 
 napkins far into the night. The sober officials 
 
 [6 
 
 of one Elyrian town were hopeless of provid- 
 ing bedding for the 10,000 refugees in their 
 prefecture, but in the midst of their quandary 
 they sent two visiting Red Cross inspectors on 
 their way to a neighboring city in the muni- 
 cipal motor car, the firemen in brass-bound 
 helmets on the drivers' seat, and the siren 
 sounding as they scattered dogs and children. 
 The Red Cross men caught the spirit of the 
 new diplomacy when they sent the car back 
 filled up with blankets from their stores at 
 Bologne from the people of America to the 
 people of Italy. 
 
 America Expressing Itself 
 
 Moreover, the President of the United 
 States is the head of the Red Cross; it is a 
 semi-official organization, and it is quickly 
 recognized in such international work as a 
 natural channel for American resourcefulness 
 and good will. It is hailed not only as a piece 
 of American enterprise, but as America 
 expressing itself. It was in truth a cable from 
 the American Ambassador to Italy that 
 brought the first Red Cross men to Rome, 
 and it was at the American Embassy that 
 they met with the committee of the American 
 Relief Clearing House and mapped out 
 together the first steps to be taken. 
 
 Around Ambassador Page all the early 
 operations swung, and his penetrating judg- 
 ment of men, of organizations and cities; his 
 swift strokes in portraying the main elements 
 in the situation — his Southern talent for 
 establishing cordial relations for the new- 
 comers with the Roman community and the 
 forces of the National Government gave an 
 unanticipated speed and precision to the 
 rapidly expanding work. And it was from the 
 Ambassador's office, at that first day's con- 
 ference, that dispatches went off to American 
 Consuls throughout Italy for information as 
 to numbers and conditions of refugees. 
 
 Money was sent that afternoon to Consuls 
 in cities known to have pressing need. Within 
 a week the ten consular districts had become 
 in a sense the natural framework for the 
 development of the civilian work outside 
 Rome, and the Consuls themselves the pio- 
 neer American relief workers. 
 
 1 
 
Consuls, the Pioneer Workers 
 
 Their efforts, naturally, took different 
 forms in different districts. Consul Carroll, 
 at Venice, found that the Posto di Conforto 
 at Mestre, which was giving food and help 
 to refugees and wounded soldiers, had reached 
 its last day of operation due to lack of means 
 and arranged for its continuance under the 
 American flag. 
 
 Next, he opened a Red Cross canteen at 
 Chioggia, as a first step in cooperating in that 
 orderly evacuation of Venetian civilians, 
 which will be described later and into which 
 he threw himself with characteristic Texan 
 energy. Consul Dumont had enlisted a fellow 
 countryman as the representative of the 
 American colony in Florence in collecting 
 money and clothing for the refugees, the 
 Italian Red Cross established him as head of 
 the clothing distribution service at the prin- 
 cipal shelter near the station, and the consul 
 next commissioned him to carry American 
 Red Cross moneys to other cities in the dis- 
 trict. 
 
 Consul Winship, of Milan, lent his experi- 
 ence in Petrograd in aiding Polish refugees at 
 the time of the great Russian retreat of 1915. 
 He became chairman of an active American 
 Red Cross committee made up of American 
 business men, which has opened a popular 
 kitchen near the station (where 200 resident 
 refugees are fed), turned a clubhouse into an 
 infirmary and rest home for women and chil- 
 dred, is equipping and managing a dormitory 
 for allied soldiers and is cooperating with the 
 central city committee in promoting better 
 housing and employment for refugees. 
 
 Acting Consul Roberts at Genoa cooper- 
 ated in organizing a similar committee there, 
 which erected a chalet in the station, first for 
 the service of refugees and now for that of 
 troops in transit. 
 
 Consul Grace in Leghorn organized the 
 distribution of clothing, milk and cocoa at 
 two asili, sheltering 900 people, and by per- 
 sonal inspection trips expanded the scope of 
 Red Cross activities to Pisa and other towns 
 in his district. 
 
 Consul Haven at Turin, at the north; 
 Consul Honey at Catania and Consul Sh»nk 
 
 at Palermo, at the far south, gathered infor- 
 mation and established connections for the 
 Red Cross representatives on their arrival, as 
 did Consul White in Naples, who, from the 
 first, was an active participant in local under- 
 takings for the refugees. 
 
 In the course of November 460,835 lire 
 were placed by the Red Cross in the hands of 
 American consuls either for direct use or 
 transmission to local agencies which their 
 activity had helped create or their judgment 
 sanctioned. 
 
 Former Red Cross Work 
 In Italy 
 
 This is not the first emergency in which the 
 American Red Cross and the representatives 
 of the United States State Department in 
 Italy have jointly served the purposes of 
 humanity. At the time of the Messina earth- 
 quake the American Ambassador, Mr. Gris- 
 com, headed the American Red Cross com- 
 mittee which handled a million dollars con- 
 tributed for relief and rehabilitation, and 
 constructed the American barrack villages at 
 Messina and Reggio. The American consul 
 at Messina lost his life in that disaster, and 
 the American consul at Genoa died from the 
 results of exposure in the course of the relief 
 work. 
 
 Regional Organization 
 
 The promptness and efficiency of the Ameri- 
 can consuls in the present emergency will 
 leave its impress on the whole trend of Red 
 Cross development in Italy. It has been a 
 factor in the decentralized scheme for civilian 
 work which the temporary staff will turn over 
 to the permanent commission. This calls for 
 regional representatives, responsible to and 
 receiving instructions from the headquarters 
 in Rome, but capable of carrying a large 
 measure of responsibility and to deal with 
 details under very general instructions. 
 
 In general, the old regional divisions of 
 Italy have been followed as they have been 
 combined in the American consular districts, 
 and as these in turn must be modified for an 
 organization for relief rather than for com- 
 merce. The American consuls will be recog- 
 
 [7] 
 
nized as bearing an advisory or honorary 
 relation to the work in their districts, and their 
 cooperation will be enlisted in making con- 
 tracts with local officials and in matters in 
 which intimate knowledge of the community 
 will be useful. 
 
 The districts, as experimentally organized, 
 follow : 
 
 1. The War Zone, headquarters at Padua. 
 
 2. Lombardy, headquarters at Milan. 
 
 3. Piedmont, headquarters at Turin. 
 
 4. Liguria, including the Mediterranean 
 shore of Tuscany, headquarters in Genoa. 
 
 5. Tuscany and Emilia, except the two 
 coastal regions, headquarters in Florence. 
 
 6. Venetian Colonies along the Adriatic, 
 headquarters in Rimini. 
 
 7. Central Italy and Sardinia, headquar- 
 ters in Rome. 
 
 8. Campania, Basilicata and Puglia, head- 
 quarters in Naples. 
 
 9. Sicily and Calabria, headquarters in 
 Palermo. 
 
 Another factor which made for this decen- 
 tralized scheme of development, was the 
 division of labor effected at the outset with 
 the American Relief Clearing House, on the 
 presumption that the latter would be merged 
 with the American Red Cross. The Clearing 
 House had been formed for a very definite 
 purpose, that of organizing and transporting 
 supplies for hospitals. 
 
 When the line gave way, it was suddenly 
 called on for supplies to help care for the 
 double stream of refugees, civilians and 
 wounded soldiers. ]t cleared out its ware- 
 house the first week, ran out of funds, and 
 wired to the Red Cross. The division of 
 labor was simple; in relief work the Red Cross 
 was to plunge into work in the provinces; the 
 Clearing House, with its conmiittee of local 
 Americans, and with a prompt appropriation 
 of 100,000 lire from the Red Cross, for the 
 immediate purchase of clothing, blankets, 
 food, etc., was to work in Rome. 
 
 Working in Rome 
 
 Reference has already been made to the 
 canteen the Clearing House opened at the 
 
 [8 
 
 Portonaccio station, out on the Campagna, 
 through which the southbound stream of 
 refugees first passed. In little more than a 
 week, lest refugees should congregate in great 
 numbers at the capital, the line of transport 
 was switched to the route south along the 
 Adriatic, and this canteen was transferred 
 under Red Cross auspices, to Ancona. 
 
 Refugees assigned to Rome, or to be dis- 
 tributed in the neighborhood, came into the 
 Termini station. The Government had 
 requisitioned nearby hotels, and gave them 
 a small allowance for food, but they had diffi- 
 culty in obtaining it. 
 
 The very first night, the Clearing House 
 Canteen here fed 700 persons, and in four 
 days the number eating its evening meals had 
 reached 1,200. The Giornale d' Italia, one of 
 the leading newspapers of Rome, had a popu- 
 lar subscription going and in conjunction with 
 the municipal committee was providing 
 breakfasts and, through a ticket system good 
 at certain shops, giving out clothing. The 
 subscription had reached 350,000 lire when, 
 that first week, the American Red Cross 
 shipped in 100,000 lire to the fund. 
 
 That — for such is the psychology of news- 
 papers and newspaper readers the world 
 over — put America "on the map" and inci- 
 dentally jumped the subscriptions from 
 Italian sources to many times the Red Cross 
 gift. 
 
 More Gifts of the Red Cross 
 
 Two weeks later the Red Cross made a 
 third and still larger gift to Roman activities — 
 one of one million lire to the Comitato 
 Romano Organizacione Civile, which has 
 been carrying on widespread relief work for 
 the benefit of soldiers' families and stood 
 ready to bring refugee families within the 
 scope of its activities. 
 
 These include creches and maternal 
 schools for children whose mothers are at 
 work— one of them tucked picturesquely 
 under the shadow of the old wall— an asylum 
 for children whose mothers are not living and 
 whose fathers are at the front; a workroom, 
 employing four or five hundred women on 
 tents and army clothing; popular kitchens for 
 serving meals (many of them free, on a 
 
 ] 
 
ticket system) and higher grade economic 
 kitchens for the distribution of cooked meals 
 at cost or less — all of them so many points 
 of attack on the problems of livelihood which 
 the war, the stopped earnings of the men, the 
 high cost of living and now the coming of the 
 refugees have rendered acute. 
 
 Nothing, as the leaders in these activities 
 saw it, would count for more in maintaining 
 morale at the front than for the men in the 
 trenches to be sure that their families, 
 whether refugee or merely left behind, are 
 not suffering this winter. 
 
 II 
 
 Organizing 
 Departments 
 
 MEANWHILE the work in the pro- 
 vinces and the organization of a 
 temporary headquarters staff had 
 gone forward. Under a deputy commis- 
 sioner, who had helped shape the development 
 of Red Cross work in France, its three main 
 divisions were rapidly duplicated here — mili- 
 tary affairs, civil affairs and administration. 
 
 The military department was put in the 
 hands of an American who, since the first 
 year of the war, has been one of the seven 
 engineers of a medical supply service reaching 
 between three and four thousand French 
 hospitals and entering into every sphere of 
 army activity from the advanced dressing 
 stations to sanateria in the south of France. 
 
 The civil department was put in the hands 
 of a former member of Mr. Hoover's staff in 
 Belgium, now chief of that bureau in the 
 French organization of the Red Cross which 
 deals with relief and rehabilitation in the war 
 zone. Stores and transportation were put in 
 the hands of the organizer of the Red Cross 
 warehouse system in France; purchase in 
 those of the Italian buyer for a large American 
 house doing business throughout Europe; 
 accounting and finance in the hands of the 
 treasurer of the Red Cross organization in 
 France, controller of a New York Trust 
 Company; and general administration in 
 those of a Detroit business man whose years 
 of experience in the management of chemical 
 
 industries has latterly been translated into 
 building up for the Red Cross a supply and 
 furniture-making center in the heart of 
 devastated area recovered by the French 
 last spring. 
 
 Passport, cable, railroad, employment, 
 filing and other services were rapidly set in 
 motion in offices in the Palazzo Doria turned 
 over to the Red Cross by the Banca Conuiier- 
 ciale, through an American member of its 
 Board of Directors. 
 
 Help from Americans 
 in Rome 
 
 Other Americans in Rome were quick to 
 volunteer their services and English speaking 
 Italians were equally cooperative. Certain 
 members of the Clearing House Committee 
 proved invaluable as traveling inspectors. 
 Within a month a temporary staff of sixty-five 
 people were at work. This included the dele- 
 gates in the field, who were mustered from 
 whatever quarters they could be obtained 
 and sent out as rapidly as they could be 
 mustered — officers and students of the 
 American Academy, the secretary of a sugar 
 company, a Pennsylvanian who has been 
 farming it in Umbria; artists, architects, men 
 of leisure from Florence and Sicily, a doctor of 
 letters from the Sorbonne, a physician, a 
 teacher of philosophy and one of sociology 
 from the Civil Affairs Department at Paris, a 
 social worker and a clergyman resident in 
 Rome, a sanitary engineer back from Red 
 Cross work in the Balkans, and so on. 
 
 Knowledge of Italy and Italian, executive 
 experience and acquaintance with civil or 
 military relief work they had in combination, 
 this scratch organization, but scarcely one 
 of them possessed all three qualifications; 
 few two; yet they pitched in with spirit 
 and were quick to respond to the promptings 
 of the picked men sent out to organize the 
 work. 
 
 Early in the first week, two American 
 business men from the industrial district in 
 Northern Italy, met with the Red Cross rep- 
 resentatives in Rome and together drafted 
 a scheme for a citizens' committee in Milan. 
 That night they left for Genoa, where they 
 
 [9] 
 
organized a similar committee in the morning, 
 met with their Milan group in the afternoon, 
 and on Wednesday, or two days after the Red 
 Cross opened work in Rome, full-fledged 
 American Red Cross committees were at 
 work in these two important northern centers. 
 
 Program for 
 Civilian Relief 
 
 Meanwhile reports were coming in by wire 
 and letter from the consuls, asking for money; 
 saying how they could use it, showing the 
 need for personnel. On the civilian relief 
 with a staff to be created out of thin air, with 
 the railroads congested and with no man 
 knowing how long the stream of refugees 
 would keep up, the administrative problem 
 was one of limiting effort. 
 
 The director of civilian relief got down a 
 railroad map and built his early programme 
 on the transportation centers in that belt 
 through which the stream was flowing south 
 and west — Genoa, Milan, Florence, Bologna, 
 and after them, Rome, Ancona and Naples. 
 He decided to limit the civilian work to 
 emergency relief to what could be carried on 
 at the stations, and not to attempt anything 
 with respect to the care and lodgment of 
 refugees at the points of settlement until 
 their needs in transit had lifted. Moreover he 
 ranked the wants of the spirit quite as real as 
 those of the body, and the railroad stations 
 offered vantage ground from which to fly the 
 Stars and Stripes and Red Cross flags and 
 show that Americans were here and helping. 
 
 At the end of two weeks, the director could 
 report that teams of Red Cross workers had 
 established soup kitchens at or near the sta- 
 tions in Rome, Ancona, Genoa and Milan; 
 that the Red Cross had sent clothing and 
 bedding for refugees to Florence, Leghorn, 
 Ancona, Catania, Genoa, Bologna, Ravenna 
 and Naples; that it had contributed funds for 
 the purchase of clothing to local committees 
 of the Italian Red Cross at Florence, Bologna, 
 Ancona, Genoa, Naples, Palermo and Bari; 
 that it had provided funds for relief work to 
 American consuls at Florence, Venice, Milan, 
 Genoa, Leghorn and Catania; that in addi- 
 tion to the large gifts mentioned earlier, it 
 had authorized the equipment and mainten- 
 
 ance of a 150-bed refuge home in Milan and a 
 chalet at the railway station in Genoa, organ- 
 ized committees as noted at those two cities 
 and established resident delegates in Florence, 
 Bologna, Ancona, Milan, Rome and Naples. 
 
 Shipments of Money 
 and Supplies 
 
 The following shipments of moneys or sup- 
 plies to three cities will illustrate the type of 
 help that was going out from Red Cross head- 
 quarters up to December 1. 
 To Ancona: 
 
 November 10, Lire 5,000 for refugee cloth- 
 ing. 
 
 November 12, 100 cases condensed milk. 
 November 14, Lire 5,000 for refugee 
 clothing. 
 
 November 15, Lire 2,000 for refugee 
 clothing. 
 
 November 20, 100 cases condensed milk; 
 Lire 5,000 for refugee food. 
 
 November 21, 1,395 blankets, 25 mattresses 
 To Florence: 
 
 November 9, Lire 50,000 for refugee, 
 clothing. 
 
 November 10, Lire 10,000 for refugee 
 clothing. 
 
 November 20, 502 mattresses, 1,000 blan- 
 kets; Lire 100,000 for refugee relief. 
 
 November 27, 3 flags. 
 
 November 29, 17,262 articles of clothing. 
 
 November 30, Lire 25,000 for relief. 
 To Leghorn: 
 
 November 10, 1,190 articles clothing; 2,000 
 blankets. Lire 50,000 for refugee relief. 
 
 November 12, 100 cases condensed milk. 
 
 November 20, 100 cases condensed milk. 
 
 November 24, 16,996 articles clothing; 
 1,007 blankets. 
 
 November 26, Lire 18,000 for purchase of 
 blankets. 
 
 By the first week in December, the stream 
 of refugees, which had been dwindling, prac- 
 tically stopped; but with no certainty as to 
 when it might come again in flood, provision 
 for refugees in passage and in the larger cities 
 continued for ten days longer as the major 
 
 110] 
 
concern at headquarters. At the same time, 
 as public attention in the large cities shifted 
 from the needs of those passing through to 
 those who were to remain, as the refugees 
 were spread out in every province from the 
 provincial centers to the smaller places, and 
 as the great residue was shipped and settled 
 in the south, clothing appeals began to reach 
 the Red Cross from all directions and the 
 questions of hospital provision, of shelter and 
 employment pressed in in countless local 
 embodiments. 
 
 Survey of 
 Relief Needs 
 
 This had not been unanticipated, and on 
 November 20 the Commissioner for Europe 
 had despatched a committee of three to make 
 a quick survey of relief needs throughout 
 Italy, as a basis for permanent organization 
 and program. 
 
 Here again the resources of the Red Cross 
 organization in France and Belgium were 
 drawn on, the senior members of the commit- 
 tee being the two executives and social 
 workers who set the standards for American 
 emergency relief in the San Francisco and 
 Ohio flood disasters, one of them now chief 
 of the Bureau of Refugees in the Department 
 of Civil Affairs, at Paris; the other the direc- 
 tor of the Red Cross Department for Belgium. 
 
 The committee visited Venice, Vicenza, 
 Padua, Verona, Milan, Turin, Genoa, Mo- 
 dena, Rimini and Florence in the north; 
 Naples, Messina, Palermo and Catania in the 
 south; spending ten days on the north trip 
 and five days in the south, inspecting asili, 
 kitchens, lodgings, work rooms; interviewing 
 members of the cabinet, prefects, mayors, 
 relief-workers, bishops, generals, consuls, 
 physicians — all that personnel which, because 
 of official duty or private good will, or both, 
 had been thrown in contact with the south- 
 bound stream of fugitives or were facing with 
 them the immediate problem of taking up 
 the burden of life in their new surroundings. 
 
 A Record in 
 Human Help 
 
 Perhaps no such mission for human help 
 has ever seen the duplicate of this, from the 
 
 half deserted quays of N'enice to the cluttered 
 tenement streets of Naples, from the low 
 farms back of the armed banks of the Piave 
 to old monasteries turned refuges on a Sicilian 
 mountain top. But rapid as the trip was, and 
 picturesque, its distinction lay in that com- 
 bination of investigation and action on the 
 spot which has been characteristic of Red 
 Cross development in France since last June. 
 
 The committee carried with them over 
 500,000 lire. It put sufficient money in the 
 hands of Consul Carroll to enable him to con- 
 tribute in a large way to the orderly evacua- 
 tion of Venice; contributed to the emergency 
 relief fund needed to tide over an unemploy- 
 ment crisis in Padua, from which city various 
 industries had been removed, gave quick help 
 to a provincial committee at Vicenza which 
 was caring for a large number of destitute 
 mountain folk who had come down to the 
 neighboring farms; turned over a sufficient 
 sum to the American Red Cross Committee 
 in Milan to enable it to work out a general 
 program, founded a Red Cross hospital and 
 health center among the new Venetian 
 colonies at Rimini; made a gift to the Italian 
 Red Cross at Catania to enable it to succor 
 refugees destitute of clothing and bedding in 
 the small Sicilian villages, and left working 
 funds at Naples and Palermo to promote 
 better lodgings and employment for refugees. 
 
 On December 8 the committee submitted 
 its report, giving in brief compass, for the 
 benefit of the new commission, a general 
 survey of conditions, the urgency of needs 
 scarcely less bitter than those of the refugees 
 in transit, and the constructive lines of work 
 which, on the basis of experience in France 
 and Belgium, might stave off and prevent 
 some of those persisting ills which beset 
 fugitives even among their own people. Of 
 these more later. 
 
 Italy's Disaster 
 and Her Hospitals 
 
 There has been one sweeping challenge for 
 help in the Italian experience this fall which 
 had no counterpart when France was invaded 
 in 1914. The French retreat had no such 
 wreckage of hospital equipment, for such 
 equipment did not exist, nor was there a 
 
 [11] 
 
great hospital population of wounded men in 
 the area swept over. 
 
 The Italians had put their hospitals well up 
 behind the line, with no thought of a break. 
 They managed to get out many patients — 
 how many is not stated. Roads were so 
 choked that ambulances, like other lighter 
 vehicles, could not take advantage of their 
 speed and get away. Stories are told of men 
 with leg wounds who tramped fifteen kilo- 
 meters, of wounded men riding astride the 
 retreating guns, of an orderly who got a 
 typhoid patient out on his back, and so on. 
 
 But at thisdatea general idea of the supreme 
 effort exerted by the Italian Sanita Militare 
 and the Italian Red Cross to care for the 
 wounded back of the new front, and of the 
 need for unstinted help from America, can 
 be conveyed only by rough estimates of the 
 losses in equipment. These are placed at not 
 less than 100 hospitals and two of the princi- 
 pal magazines of hospital supplies. They lost 
 all their first and second line base hospitals in 
 the sector through which the retreat ran and 
 about a quarter in the adjoining sector. Alto- 
 gether they lost between a third and a half, 
 nearer a half than a third, of their medical 
 equipment in the army zone. 
 
 The tenacious Italian habit of holding 
 things in reserve has been the subject of 
 frequent comment in connection with vol- 
 cano and earthquake disasters in the past. 
 As a matter of whimsical interest, some of the 
 goods sent by the American Red Cross at the 
 time of the Messina earthquake were dis- 
 tributed this last month to refugees in the 
 neighborhood of Catania. This habit stood 
 the nation in good stead in the present crisis, 
 for its reserves in medical supplies have been 
 sufficient to make good the gaps. This, how- 
 ever, leaves them depleted, and to make good 
 these reserves and build up new equipment 
 was the immediate need. 
 
 Here it is in point to mention the excellent 
 use the Italian Sanitary Service made in the 
 emergency of the million lire left in its hands 
 by the American Red Cross Commission 
 which visited Italy in August. This sum, 
 following the national bent, had been kept 
 unspent. It was at once devoted to making 
 good losses in important and costly medical 
 installations. 
 
 And here should be mentioned the prompt 
 help offered by the American Poet's Ambu- 
 lance, which was organized in early Septem- 
 ber, and which had orders placed in Italy in 
 the early fall enabling it to put fi\ e barrack 
 hospitals and thirty tent hospitals in the 
 hands of the Intendonza for immediate 
 service when the Italian line fell back to the 
 Piave. 
 
 It thus got American help through in the 
 earliest crucial days, and as we shall see, 
 thereafter enabled the Red Cross to carry out 
 a demonstration in the field of ambulance 
 service on a scale and with a speed which 
 would have been otherwise impossible. 
 
 Italy's Medical 
 Service 
 
 Each nation at war has had a distinctive 
 development of its army medical system, and 
 the Italians who have had to carry wounded 
 by aerial railways and mule-back in their 
 mountain fighting, and who have hewn 
 dressing stations out of solid rock on the high 
 peaks, have shown originality in the develop- 
 ment of their medical service throughout. 
 
 To work helpfully, as well as promptly, the 
 director of military affairs of the American 
 Red Cross, as soon as he reached Italy, set 
 out to learn the general characteristics of the 
 Italian hospital units and to concentrate on 
 them, to find the particular needs created by 
 the crisis and to make immediate purchase of 
 instruments and supplies which he knew from 
 experience in France would be called for. 
 
 The Clearing House had practically 
 emptied its medical stores. Swift purchases 
 were made of bedding for 3,000 beds- 
 mattresses, sheets, pillows, blankets— and 
 such smaller instruments and rubber goods 
 as could be picked up in Rome, in view of the 
 heavy purchases by the army and the Italian 
 Red Cross. 
 
 The urgency of the need was illustrated in 
 a third line base hospital visited in mid 
 November. This was of SCO beds and housed 
 in a chateau. Normally it had been handling 
 a flow of 25 to 40 incoming patients a day and 
 caring for them from a week to four or five 
 months. This had been transformed in the 
 emergency into what the French call an 
 
 [12] 
 
evacuation hospital, and big trucks were 
 coming in with twelve to sixteen wounded in 
 each, at an interval of three minutes and a 
 half. They were handling a current of 600 
 patients a day and of course the equipment 
 was tragically inadequate. 
 
 Eight days later, complete new equipment 
 for half their beds and such surgical instru- 
 ments as could be had, left the Red Cross 
 headquarters in Rome for this hospital. 
 
 Italian Hospitals 
 Stripped 
 
 But, in general, the hospitals back of the 
 new front, in order to salvage any possible 
 further losses, were being stripped of beds and 
 blankets, and the patients were lying on 
 mattresses. Obviously, in such a situation, 
 the part of the Red Cross was not to attempt 
 to replace things for the moment in individual 
 hospitals, but to give to the central authori- 
 ties who could place supplies where they 
 could use them best. 
 
 A lump gift of 175,000 lire worth of sup- 
 plies was ordered for the Sanita Militare — 
 disinfecting wagons, auto-claves for steriliz- 
 ing dressings, surgical sets, 500 complete beds, 
 quantities of gauze, cotton, drugs, iodine, 
 anaesthetics, etc. 
 
 Plans thereafter rapidly took shape for a 
 very considerable gift of ten complete field 
 hospitals — one direct to the Sanita Militare 
 and nine through the Italian Red Cross, the 
 first to be delivered by mid January. Each 
 will consist of 50 beds, with an overload 
 capacity of 150, or even of 350. They will 
 fly the American Red Cross and the Italian 
 flags. Some will be tent hospitals, others 
 with tents merely for the special uses, the 
 wards being farm buildings or other shelters 
 requisitioned for the purpose, as is the 
 Italian custom. 
 
 Aided by 
 Volunteers 
 
 The distinctive feature of the Hospital 
 Supply Service in France, as it was developed 
 in the early years of the war by the American 
 Distributing Service and as it has been ex- 
 panded under the American Red Cross in the 
 last six months has been a corps of voluntary 
 
 inspectors operating in conjunction with an 
 independent stores centre. From this in- 
 formally and directly, the surgeons in charge 
 would receive prompt consignment of sup- 
 plementary supplies which because of routine 
 delays in government material are slow in 
 reaching them, needed equipment, drugs out- 
 side the army lists, or exceptional instru- 
 ments. 
 
 There has been no corresponding society 
 in Italy for distributing hospital supplies. A 
 semi-military bureau, under the Quarter- 
 masters' Department, known as the Uflicio 
 Doni, has acted as intermediary between 
 private donors and the army. The American 
 Red Cross has established relations with the 
 supreme command, which permit of develop- 
 ing a group of volunteer inspectors and a 
 shipping system along the lines of the service 
 in France, bringing the Red Cross into direct 
 contact with the hospitals and the patients 
 in them so as to make the help from America 
 self-revealing and thus bring out the oral and 
 sentimental values inherent in it. 
 
 Deliveries of 
 Hospital Supplies 
 
 On November 30, the hospital supply ware- 
 house had been open three weeks and even 
 without its permanent organization the show- 
 ing of deliveries to individual hospitals had 
 been striking. 
 
 No less than 19,000 articles had gone out. 
 These went to hospitals all over the country 
 through which the service got in touch 
 through the reports of the Red Cross com- 
 mission of last summer, through the Clearing 
 House, through the visits of members of the 
 staff of the Military Affairs Department, and 
 as result of inspections made by the head of 
 Medical and Surgical Division of the Military 
 Affairs Department of the Red Cross in 
 France, who in early November made a tour 
 covering many points in northern Italy, re- 
 porting to the Commissioner for Europe. 
 
 Hospital supplies shipped from Red Cross 
 stores in France, no less than purchases in 
 Italy, made this emergent work possible, and 
 for the winter's needs, 750 tons of hospital 
 supplies have been ordered in America for 
 immediate delivery. 
 
 13] 
 
These include anaesthetics (some Italian 
 hospitals have been performing minor opera- 
 tions without them), surgical instruments, 
 rubber goods, enamel ware, gauze, absorbent 
 cotton and drugs. Just what such a ship- 
 ment means is difficult for a layman to grasp. 
 
 The quantities would leave a druggist 
 gasping. For example, the order includes 250 
 pounds of quinine. Since the war quinine has 
 been difficult to get at any price and the price 
 has jumped from 12 to 16 francs a pound in 
 France to 400 francs. Quinine is badly 
 needed in Italy, and such a Red Cross con- 
 signment would be nothing short of a boon. 
 
 Other items which give a better idea in 
 terms of the things which mean most to the 
 wounded, are fifteen tons of chloroform and 
 25 tons of ether. These again are beyond the 
 layman to visualize. He can come nearer to 
 picturing 2,000 bales of absorbent cotton — the 
 item asked for. 
 
 Workrooms 
 in Rome 
 
 Back of this service, and supplying it with 
 hospital apparel, will be a system of work- 
 rooms in Rome, the organization of which has 
 already gone forward. In the early days of 
 the war numerous centres of this sort were 
 started in Rome, four of tliem in the hands of 
 American women married to Italians. 
 
 Moreover, the official residence of the 
 American Ambassador in the Palazzo Drago 
 has been a redoubtable centre of activity 
 under Mrs. Page, with its guest room stacked 
 high with boltsof cloth and finished garments. 
 These fair owners have all been enlisted in a 
 common enterprise, in which the Red Cross 
 will maintain central cutting agencies, supply 
 the materials and wages for the soldiers' 
 wives and refugee women employed, the Red 
 Cross taking over and distributing the output; 
 hospital supplies and undergarments for its 
 medical and relief bureaus. 
 
 Paralleling the distribution service for 
 hospital supplies in France has been that for 
 surgical dressings, as developed by the 
 Surgical Dressings Committee of America. 
 Here a beginning was already under way, for 
 the American social worker who founded the 
 French work had, in September, started 
 similar workrooms in Rome, which by Novem- 
 
 ber were turning out 30,000 dressings a week. 
 The Red Cross agreed to back them up to 
 put out a million dressings by January 1, 
 and a second million by January 15, and 
 with work-rooms already employing 200 
 women, volunteers and paid, the dressings 
 will be ready for delivery through the hospitals 
 supply service of the Red Cross. 
 
 Improving Hospital 
 Practice 
 
 Not only will these dressings help fill the 
 gap due to lost supplies, but they will open 
 up a new standard of practice in Italian 
 hospitals, which have been in the habit of 
 receiving gauze, linen, etc., and making up 
 dressings in the hospitals, with result that 
 nurses were at work in the wards all day. 
 Many spend half the night rolling bandages. 
 
 On the other hand the American innovators 
 have found another practice in vogue in the 
 Italian hospitals (as it is in the American 
 Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly), which they 
 feel might well be copied on other fronts. 
 This is to wash dressings and to use them over 
 again. One hospital in Rome even washes 
 and sterilizes its raw cotton in this way, with 
 economy and good results. 
 
 In conjunction with these activities, engag- 
 ing the time and energies of women of all 
 social groups, another development shoulc^be 
 set down — the organization of an informal 
 auxiliary committee of Italian women by two 
 leaders in the development of the Women's 
 War Relief Corps of the American Red Cross 
 in Paris, who came on to Rome for this mis- 
 sion. The members of the Rome group in 
 turn undertook to enlist two fellow-country- 
 men in each of the Italian cities as a nucleus 
 to build on in the development of any phases 
 of Red Cross work in which such Italian 
 allies would be of help. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Gift of Three 
 Ambulance Sections 
 
 THE outstanding event in the military 
 side of the Red Cross work in Italy 
 has yet to be set down — the turning 
 over to the Italian Medical Service of the 
 
 [14] 
 
Third Army, five weeks after the Red Cross 
 reached Rome and less than five days after 
 the United States declared war against Aus- 
 tria, of three complete ambulance sections. 
 Each section is made up of 20 ambulances, a 
 staff car, a kitchen trailer, a motorcycle and 
 two camions. Each section comprises 3H 
 men, veterans of the Norton-Harjes and 
 American Field Service in France, who come 
 in as volunteers with the rank of commis- 
 sioned officers. 
 
 The nucleus of this service was a fleet of 
 something over 20 cars, which left Paris on 
 November 18, and did not reach Milan until 
 December 8. They came by a long route 
 through Marseilles and Ventimiglia. Some 
 day, in lighter times, the full epic of their 
 transit will be written. They were the 
 recipients of demonstrations in Marseilles 
 and other French and Italian cities. 
 
 But ambulances are scarce in France; 
 these were veterans no less than their drivers, 
 and had pounded over shell-torn roads all 
 the way from the British sectors to Verdun. 
 Cars chose the south of France to go on re- 
 pose or permanent sick leave, and only 12 
 came through to Milan in shape to be of use. 
 But here they were met by new recruits, 50 
 Fords, the gift of the Red Cross of the 
 American Poets Ambulance, which, with 
 active members both in Italy and the United 
 States, had made a still earlier gift of another 
 50 ambulances direct to the Italian army. 
 These had gone into first-line service between 
 November 1 and 20. 
 
 Poets-Red Cross 
 Section 
 
 The presentation of the combined Poets- 
 Red Cross section took place on December 13 
 in the yard of an old Milan palace used by the 
 military as a garage. Crossed Italian and 
 American flags decked the walls of the ancient 
 quadrangle. The cars of the first two sec- 
 tions, 40 of them, were arranged in a horse- 
 shoe, with the camions in the middle, before 
 a raised platform at one end. 
 
 Here were the prefects of the province and 
 the Sindace of Milan, the Colonel of the 
 Sanita Militare and the representative of the 
 French Mission, the commander of the 
 
 British flying corps, the president of the local 
 Italian Red Cross and the American consul, 
 chairman of the American Red Cross com- 
 mittee of Milan. More important here were 
 the 100 members of the American Red Cross 
 Ambulance Corps for Italy, in khaki, six of 
 them wearing Croix de Guerre, standing at 
 salute as a bugle sounded, and the general 
 sent to receive them in the name of the 
 Third Army swung into the yard with a 
 bodyguard of plumed Bersaglieri. 
 
 The presentation was made by the acting 
 director general of the Red Cross in Italy, 
 who pointed out that they were the first 
 American units to reach the Italian front; 
 that they had volunteered for the service in 
 Italy, and that it was a service in a war 
 against a common enemy. The general 
 responded in kind, and the French com- 
 mander introduced him to the ambulance 
 men who had won the war cross for acts of 
 bravery in caring for the wounded in France. 
 
 An hour later the first section left the yard 
 with American flags flying. They drew up in 
 the Piazza de Duomo, where the Mayor of 
 Milan bid them farewell. It was a gala day 
 in the city. Square and streets were thronged 
 with crowds that did not stop to ask by what 
 magic carpets the "Americana" had been 
 whisked in four days' time to the doors of the 
 old Gothic Cathedral, but accepted them for 
 a fact bound up in one determination of war, 
 and cheered them unremittingly until they 
 had streamed through the city gate that led 
 off to the old battle-ground of Solferino on 
 the way to the Piave front. 
 
 The second and third sections followed 
 during the succeeding fortnight, and the Red 
 Cross is under commitment to bring the 
 corps to a total of 200 cars. 
 
 Working with 
 the Army 
 
 In the face of the staggering need for 
 hospital supplies and equipment, those things 
 were the first concern of the Red Cross men in 
 Italy charged with laying the groundwork for 
 a Military Affairs Department; but beginning 
 had been made in two other directions, follow- 
 ing precedents established in France, in gift 
 
and canteen work for the men in the field and 
 cnroiite to and from their homes. 
 
 Here it may be permitted again to depart 
 from the rule of this writing and mention by 
 name. Recall, if you will, the bold signatures 
 that, in the school histories stand below the 
 Declaration of Independence, and among 
 them, so that there might be no mistaking 
 who was putting his head in the halter, 
 Charles Carroll of Carrollton. That same 
 name, so signed, is the one appended to Red 
 Cross field reports from the Piave front in 
 mid-November. No lean, cantankerous rebel 
 is its present-day bearer, but a well-known 
 member of the American colony in Paris, no 
 longer young, the owner of a stud farm. 
 None of the three figures in the familiar 
 picture of the Spirit of 70 suggests him, but 
 their spirit is his, and at Montello, Nervesa 
 and San Donna di Piave, through mud and 
 under shell fire, he skirted the trenches and 
 the parapet river bank. 
 
 He accompanied the lad of the Opera 
 Federale d'Assistenze e Propagande Nazion- 
 ale, who spoke with every man they passed 
 and addressed knots of them. If two tons of 
 chocolate and a scattered fire of cigarettes and 
 mufflers could have routed the enemy, he 
 would have long since been back at the 
 Isonzo; but these things at least put in a war- 
 time vernacular, understandable across bar- 
 riers of language and distance, the fact that 
 Americans were coming to Italy to help. 
 
 Need for a 
 Million Blankets 
 
 Those physical needs of the Italian troops, 
 which mean the difference between sickness 
 and health, reach, of course, much deeper. 
 When the line was solid the soldiers had built 
 winter quarters and had gathered wood to 
 heat them. Now they have lost these 
 shelters, and have little wood to warm their 
 improvised dugouts. It is estimated that 
 three times as many blankets will be needed 
 to prevent suffering this winter; blankets are 
 all but unpurchasable in Italy, and the 
 Italian Red Cross has started a house-to- 
 house collection throughout all Italy to get 
 together a million blankets. 
 
 Back in August an investigator of the 
 
 1 
 
 American Relief Clearing House, who made 
 a tour of inspection in advance of the 
 coming of the first Red Cross commission, 
 wrote as follows: 
 
 "The material aid which we might render 
 to the Italian soldiers at the front is covered 
 pretty fully in the word 'wool.' The Italian 
 Government does not provide the greater part 
 of the woolen garments which are needed on 
 all the fronts during the winter and on the 
 high mountain positions the year round. It 
 provides woolen undershirts, but has ceased 
 to provide underwear, and it provides woolen 
 socks, but not in numbers adequate to the 
 need, seeing that they are so soon worn out. 
 To the bounty of the civil population is left 
 the provision of supplementary socks, and all 
 of the footless long stockings, mittens, neck- 
 scarfs, helmets and sweaters never have been 
 adequately supplied." 
 
 There is a dearth of wool in Italy, and this 
 condition has been accentuated by the events 
 of the past three months, as evidenced by the 
 condition in some of the hospitals which has 
 come to the knowledge of the Red Cross, 
 where wounded soldiers and convalescents 
 have been quite without woolen underwear. 
 
 If wool can be brought from America — 
 yarn and cloth — and made up in workrooms, 
 giving employment to soldiers' wives and 
 refugees, it will prevent a repetition along the 
 Piave of experiences bordering on those at 
 Valley Forge, and at the same time give oc- 
 cupation and earnings to thousands of needy 
 families. 
 
 For Recreation 
 and Refreshment 
 
 Equally real was the need pointed out in 
 the report referred to for the development of 
 recreation and refreshment activities, both at 
 the front and along the lines of communica- 
 tion. Several commanders were quoted as 
 regretting that "the soldiers are given only 
 fifteen days' leave in the course of the year, 
 which is made almost abhorrent to them by 
 the long rides in the cattle cars of a convoyed 
 train, which may take them as many as four 
 days to bring them from the front to Rome, 
 and that little rest and almost no recreation 
 
 >] 
 
is given them when they return after a month 
 of duty in the front line positions." 
 
 Several commanders had built Case del 
 soldate (recreation barracks), but, even be- 
 fore the retreat, these were inadequate in 
 numbers, in equipment and supervision, and 
 the suggestion was made that the American 
 Knights of Columbus might be enlisted to 
 develop a work similar to that of the Ameri- 
 can Y. M. C. A. in the French army. Poste 
 di comforto have been maintained by the 
 Italian Red Cross and by individual organi- 
 zations at railroad stations, but here again 
 the provision is inadequate, and there is 
 opportunity for the Red Cross to inaugurate 
 a large work. 
 
 Its Genoa committee has turned its chalet 
 into a canteen for the British, French and 
 Italian soldiers, and the Milan committee has 
 undertaken to equip and maintain a rest 
 room, canteen and reading room in barracks 
 erected in the station yard by the municipal- 
 ity for the service of allied troops passing 
 through the city. 
 
 The Military Affairs Department of the 
 Red Cross has gone into the work which the 
 Italian Red Cross is doing in canteens as well 
 as their systematic provision of first-aid 
 rooms at the railroad stations, studied the 
 troop movement in Italy, and outlined for the 
 consideration of the permanent commission 
 a project for installing canteens and rest 
 rooms at eight important junctions along the 
 railroad lines running up both coasts from 
 Reggio and Messina to the front. 
 
 Bringing the Red Cross 
 Train to Rome 
 
 All these activities fall back on the supply 
 service, serving both civil and military de- 
 partments, and here again the story of No- 
 vember is one of rapid engineering in the face 
 of almost impossible obstacles of distance, 
 rail congestion and depleted markets. With- 
 in thirty-six hours from the time word came 
 from the Red Cross Clearing House confer- 
 ence at the Embassy in Rome on November 
 5, twenty-four cars had been loaded at the 
 Red Cross stores center in Paris. The old 
 cab stables on the Chemin Vert had never 
 known such activity, and 20,000 blankets. 
 
 10,000 mattresses, pillows and clothing made 
 up the consignment. 
 
 The main lines of rail into Italy were laden 
 with a freightage of troops and army para- 
 phernalia, and the train was held up for an 
 entire week. The superintendent of the ware- 
 house was detailed to accompany it, slept on 
 the cars and brought his train into Rome five 
 days later — remarkable time under the cir- 
 cumstances. It was plastered with Red 
 Cross labels, and decked with American and 
 Italian flags which were stripped by souvenir 
 hunters enroute. 
 
 Once in Rome the cars were trans-shipped 
 without being unloaded to points designated 
 by the civil and military affairs departments 
 Bologna, Florence, Palermo, Naples, Rimini, 
 Catania. In cases where a carload lot did 
 not fit the needs, one car was run alongside 
 another in the yards, half the goods were re- 
 moved, the empty half filled from the next 
 car or from stores gotten together in Rome, 
 and off it would go. A second shipment of 
 ten cars of food, and a third of sixteen of food 
 and blankets which reached Rome in early 
 December, were handled in like manner. 
 
 Purchasing 
 Supplies 
 
 Meanwhile purchasing was going forward 
 in Rome, Milan, Genoa and other points — 
 condensed milk in thousands of cases, hun- 
 dreds of thousands of lires' worth of women's 
 and children's underwear (much of which did 
 not come to the warehouses at all or was 
 rammed into new gunnysacks and shipped 
 poste haste from the warehouse floor), 
 25,000 shirts, 13,000 blankets, 50,000 woolen 
 drawers, 60,000 jerseys, 150,000 drawers and 
 vests, socks, thermometers, medical supplies 
 of all sorts. 
 
 In Rome the Red Cross secured through 
 the Italian Government two of the top floors 
 of the Magazzini Generali, served by direct 
 rail and water, with electric cranes and 
 carriers. Agents were despatched to arrange 
 for storage at ports of entry and the two top 
 floors of the Magazzini Generali at Naples 
 were secured, with direct rail and water con- 
 nections, electric hoists from boats into the 
 warehouse or into cars. 
 
 '1 
 
Similar facilities liave been secured in 
 Genoa, and planned in Palermo. At the 
 same time storage space was taken over at 
 centers of need — in Florence a building given 
 by the Custom House; in Bologna the base- 
 ment of a large Palazzo; in Milan, a ware- 
 house lent by an American firm; and lesser 
 provisions elsewhere. 
 
 Within one month from the start the Red 
 Cross had 50,000 tons of warehouse space in 
 Italy, and had it practically empty, so rapid 
 had been the movement of shipments and 
 purchases, but ready for the large invoices 
 under order by its purchasing department, 
 for further and longer shipments enroute 
 from its stores center in France, and for 
 15,000 tons of shipping space, sailing from 
 America prior to January 1, arranged by its 
 Washington headquarters, and to be filled in 
 line with cabled instructions sent late in 
 November from Rome, giving the approxi- 
 mate nature of the articles desired, and the 
 kinds and quantities needed most. 
 
 Caring for 
 the Homeless 
 
 But while this Red Cross adventuring was 
 going forward with the zest which comes of 
 accomplishing things in the face of difiiculties, 
 weeks compacted of a very different sub- 
 stance of experience were the portion of the 
 homeless and shattered families, filtering 
 singly or in masses from the war-wrecked 
 north to their abiding places throughout Italy. 
 And it remains to cast the relation of the Red 
 Cross work to the great body of effort that 
 reached out to succour them and to what lies 
 in the months ahead. 
 
 Of the stuff of which that experience was 
 compounded, the Red Cross workers north 
 and south had no lack of evidence. A young 
 Italian officer came to the office in Bologna, 
 shared by the Clearing House with the Red 
 Cross. He had himself been a volunteer 
 worker at the station when the crush came 
 through. The story was told of a baby born 
 at night on one of the trains. The mother 
 had no clothes for it and this young Italian 
 had taken off his shirt to wrap it in. He now 
 brought with him to the office a young 
 woman and a boy of ten. 
 
 The former was of about the appearance of 
 Maud Adams, the actress, and both were 
 nicely dressed. They were of noble family, 
 from Udine, and with their father of 70, their 
 mother some years younger, and a nurse, 
 were stranded in Bologna. They left Udine 
 about 2 o'clock in the morning in the midst of 
 disorder. They had to walk and were 
 drenched with rain. They were in the great 
 ruck of soldiers, contadini, mules, camions, 
 ambulances, all the dishevel of an army and 
 a province in mad retreat. They made 
 twenty kilometres or more by the afternoon 
 of that day. 
 
 Here they got on a train, but this was 
 wrecked by a bomb which hit one of the cars 
 and killed the refugees within. Then this 
 family was able to get a camion and reach 
 Spilimbergo, on the western bank of the 
 Tagliamento, where an officer looked after 
 them and gave them a place to sleep. They 
 had been resting for two hours when the 
 town was shelled by the advancing Austrians. 
 They got up and again found places in cam- 
 ions. Later they obtained a wagon and con- 
 tinued their journey, sometimes going for two 
 days without being able to get food. It took 
 them seven days to reach Bologna and they 
 were able to bring nothing with them but the 
 clothing on their backs. 
 
 Stories of 
 Refugees 
 
 A relief worker at Naples tells of a woman 
 who was standing at her farmyard door when 
 the order came to run. They had their house- 
 hold goods in a wagon to which they had 
 hitched their horse and an ox, sturdy animals 
 but slow. Her husband told her to take the 
 children and run and he would come on. 
 
 In the crush she had become separated from 
 the children and here she was in Naples, with 
 no knowledge of the whereabouts of husband 
 or children. Another woman arrived with 
 three children, the fourth baby had been 
 drowned. The bridge on the Tagliamento 
 they had thought to cross was down and, as 
 the mother tried to get the other children 
 over, the baby was swept from the basket in 
 which she had carried it on her back. 
 
 When the American, later a Red Cross 
 worker, took charge of the clothing distribu- 
 
 [18] 
 
tion for the Italian Red Cross at the chief 
 asili in Florence, the church and cloisters of 
 Santa Maria Novella, there were 9,000 people 
 lodged there, all but perhaps 50 of them 
 women and children, for these families of 
 northern peasantry are rich in children. 
 
 One woman of 28 brought nine, and an 
 annual baby from 19 would seem to be the 
 general rule. The people were without 
 clothing other than those they wore, and 
 almost none of them had a complete outfit. 
 Inside of two days the American colony had 
 raised 6,000 francs for purchase and collected 
 10,000 used garments. Before coming in the 
 line the families were first interviewed by 
 volunteers, the orders turned in and the 
 mothers given duplicate slips of paper with 
 their needs indicated. 
 
 Here a woman would come with five or six 
 children, among them only one pair of shoes, 
 with perhaps no child with a complete set of 
 underclothes, and the mother herself still wet 
 from the rain from the waist down. Among 
 them were women who had walked for 60 or 
 70 kilometers, and their feet and legs were 
 swollen so badly that they had to be sent to 
 the infirmary. 
 
 As many as 80 women and children had 
 been packed in a cattle car, and for 24 and 
 sometimes 48 hours they had gone without a 
 chance to get out to get food or water or 
 respond to a call of nature. At Santa Maria 
 Novella their numbers were such while wait- 
 ing to be sent on that not only were there not 
 beds enough for them, but the straw gave out, 
 and many slept with nothing between them 
 and the stone floor but the empty ticks. 
 
 IV 
 
 Needs of the 
 Fugitives 
 
 TWO reports reaching the Red Cross 
 from Leghorn on different dates illus- 
 trate both the particular needs of the 
 fugitives, the marshalling of sympathy which 
 made great practical gains in each locality as 
 the month advanced, and incidentally the 
 way Americans dovetailed into the situa- 
 tion. Here, by mid-November, the number 
 of refugees were such that the last lot had 
 
 been put on the floor of the Goldoni Theatre. 
 
 Like refugees reaching Leghorn, each had 
 a straw mattress and a blanket. Food was 
 very short, and work for the refugees had, 
 much of it, been done at random. 
 
 To make American help count and at the 
 same time help organize the situation, the 
 American consul undertook the distribution of 
 clothes, milk and cocoa in two refuges shel- 
 tering 900 people. . 
 
 Report from 
 Inspector 
 
 The first report is from a Red Cross inspec- 
 tor on November 17: 
 
 "Great need for condensed milk, rice, sugar 
 for babies. Most needed in way of clothing: 
 Men's and boys' suits and underwear, 
 women's underwear, blouses, hygienic linen, 
 handkerchiefs, shoes (big sizes). The amount 
 of clothes needed required cannot be found on 
 the place, the shops having been exhausted 
 by the first rush. Suggest purchase combs 
 for the women, who are in neglected state, 
 also thread and needles. The lot of clothes 
 sent from Rome has arrived; the blankets, not 
 yet. The consul has written today to the 
 manufacturer. He will have 500 of them. 
 The pregnant women, whom I counted up to 
 40, will be in due time taken care of by the 
 maternity. Layettes needed, the maternity 
 giving only medical assistance. Disinfecting 
 soap and insect powder needed." 
 
 A Report 
 
 Six Days Later 
 
 The second is from the consul, six days 
 later, on November 23: 
 
 "Yesterday we distributed over 100 
 packages to men and women at Borgo Capuc- 
 cini. When the distribution was over a 
 shout went up from all the refugees. It was 
 like applause in a theatre after an excellent 
 rendition of music— a lull for a minute, and 
 then the outburst. It came after each woman 
 had received her package and examined the 
 contents. She realized that great care had 
 been taken to give her just what suited her. 
 There was no confusion. The number on 
 each package corresponded to the number of 
 
 [191 
 
the card. In the packages for women were 
 two undershirts, an underskirt, a blouse, a 
 small shawl, a bandana for the head, an apron, 
 woollen yarn and needles for making stock- 
 ings. 
 
 "The ideal way would be to have a package 
 contain a complete outfit and then send the 
 refugees in groups of twenty to the baths. 
 Have them take a hot bath using plenty of 
 soap, put on the new clothes and leave the 
 old to be disinfected and washed and returned 
 to them. I have arranged with the hospital 
 here for baths, disinfecting and washing. I 
 could not wait to do this with the refugees at 
 the Borgo Capuccini. However, when I shall 
 have completed their outfits, I will send them 
 for a bath as above stated. 
 
 "I have cards ready for Cantiere Galinare 
 (now about 500 refugees, expect 300 more 
 
 there). Miss R (English) and Miss 
 
 S (American) are there now examin- 
 
 ing each woman and child and making 
 notes as to the size of each woman, etc., so 
 that in connection with the card system, a 
 complete outfit may be packed suitable for 
 each personand distributed without confusion, 
 Have supplied large and small combs to all 
 women and also 600 cloths, six to each. 
 They were in great need of same. Just re- 
 ceived invoice for 1,000 shirts. Will go to 
 Pisa tomorrow." 
 
 The Red Cross committee which traversed 
 the belt through which this stream of refugees 
 was yet in process saw the varying provisions 
 for them and carried their inquiries into 
 points of destination in the south, recorded 
 first of all their "deep and lasting impression 
 of the magnitude, the seriousness and the 
 heart-rending tragedy of the refugee problem 
 with which Italy has had to deal." From the 
 refugees themselves they heard the story after 
 story of what befell them after they left their 
 homes in the Friuli and these they summed up 
 as follows: 
 
 Tales of 
 Terror 
 
 "Women with young children and the 
 sick, like others, came away suddenly, fami- 
 lies often separated, usually with no time 
 whatever to gather even things needed for the 
 
 I 
 
 journey. They tramped in the mountains or 
 along the roads from two days to four days, 
 sometimes a week, before reaching a railway 
 station where they could be taken on trains or 
 before being picked up by camions. In these 
 first days they were subjected to every priva- 
 tion conceivable. Even after reaching the 
 railways they were supplied with food irregu- 
 larly and suffered from hunger as well as from 
 cold. What is even worse, perhaps, they often 
 had no chance to wash and often had no 
 change of clothing and the condition in which 
 some of those who had been ten days or two 
 weeks on their journey arrived in southern 
 Italy is indescribable. After the first rush, 
 arrangements were, of course, made in the 
 cities through which they passed to supply 
 food and in some instances blankets and 
 clothing; but even as far south as Naples 
 many infants were found who had no changes 
 and whose bodies were in a shocking condition 
 from a lack of necessary attention. 
 
 Health of 
 Refugees 
 
 "In view of all the hardships and privations 
 it is notable that the general health of the 
 refugees in every city which we have visited 
 is reported at present to be on the whole very 
 good. Probably a more thorough medical 
 examination might disclose more serious re- 
 sults, but careful inquiry of physicians, 
 officials and relief workers has indicated that, 
 with few exceptions, there is no marked 
 prevalence of digestive, nervous or infectious 
 disease. 
 
 "To appreciate the suffering and hardships 
 involved in the sudden dislodging of perhaps 
 a half million people, it is necessary to bear in 
 mind the loss of their homes and possessions, 
 the breaking up of families, the tenforced 
 journey to distant and unknown places, where 
 people eat different food and speak dialects so 
 different from their own as sometimes to be 
 scarcely intelligible, where the occupations 
 are different and where the charitable re- 
 sources are likely to be already overtaxed by 
 the needs of the families of soldiers, and other 
 local conditions resulting from the war. 
 
 "Intensifying this terrible picture of mis- 
 fortune is the fact that the whole population is 
 
 ] 
 
suffering from a scarcity of food and of fuel, 
 from abnormally high prices, and from other 
 disturbances with which the war has made the 
 Red Cross familiar in every country, but 
 which are nowhere, perhaps, more serious at 
 the present time than in Italy." 
 
 The Work of 
 the Italians 
 
 To have cared for such a dislodged popula- 
 tion would have taxed the ingenuity and re- 
 sourcefulness of any country, could it have 
 devoted itself to it with singleness of purpose; 
 but it must be remembered that this was only 
 the third of the tremendous responsibilities 
 engaging Italy in November. It had to sal- 
 vage an army and turn back an invasion with 
 its remaining organized forces. "Although 
 inevitably," to quote the committee, "there 
 has been much confusion and suffering, 
 nevertheless an enormous amount of effective 
 and systematic assistance has been given from 
 the beginning to the end of the long and 
 painful journey which these thousands of re- 
 fugees have had to take, and plans have been 
 inaugurated for incorporating them into the 
 communities to which they have come or are 
 on the way." 
 
 In its national railways and its prefectorial 
 system, Italy had agencies through which 
 to work, which without doubt lent themselves 
 to the emergency better than any governmen- 
 tal machinery we possess in the United States. 
 The prefectos are the executive heads of the 
 provinces into which Italy is divided. In 
 function they correspond somewhat to the 
 governors of our States, in responsibility to 
 central authority and in the size of the areas 
 they are assigned to, the United States dis- 
 trict attorneys may afford a better analogy. 
 
 The prefectos who were met by the Red 
 Cross Committee on its travels impressed 
 them as men of ability, character and intelli- 
 gence. They have facilities at their disposal 
 and, as representatives of the Ministry of the 
 Interior in the Central Government, they 
 form a well-knit and unified system of admin- 
 istration through which the problem could 
 be dealt with nationally. 
 
 The Transportation 
 Problem 
 
 The first element in that problem was that 
 of transportation. A secretary general for 
 civil affairs, asili, attached to the supreme 
 command, and hitherto charged with admin- 
 istering those districts in the Trcntino and in 
 the neighborhood of Trieste, which had been 
 wrested from Austria earlier in the war, 
 acted as the connecting link between the 
 military and civil authorities in getting the 
 refugees out. The major decisions as to 
 where they should be taken were made by the 
 Ministry of the Interior in Rome, which com- 
 municated with the prefects and learned how 
 many each province could care for. 
 
 The main stream came down through 
 Padua and Modena. The railroads direct to 
 the west were engrossed by the army and 
 refugees were sent by a roundabout way to 
 Milan, which became the general clearing 
 station for Turin, Genoa, Leghorn and the 
 northwest. The main funnel, however, was 
 through Bologna and Florence and thence 
 through Rome to the south, until the stream 
 was switched to the Adriatic coast lines. 
 Perhaps 7.5,000 were sent to Naples and be- 
 yond, 25,000 of them to Sicily; many Vene- 
 tians were gotten out by ferry to Chioggia 
 and then down the east coast. In this scheme 
 of things, the road which parallels the Ap- 
 penines, crossing Italy from the southeast to 
 the northwest, on the route of the old Emilian 
 way, became an important carrier. 
 
 Thousands of refugees left towns or coun- 
 trysides of their own volition and at their own 
 expense, by rail or wagon. The government's 
 responsibility was for those carried by special 
 train, and these were confined to the cars or to 
 the wholesale lodging places arranged at such 
 general clearing stations as Florence and 
 Milan, where they were cared for until they 
 were sent on under instruction from Rome, to 
 the provincial capitals. Certains regions with 
 special facilities for housing refugees, such as 
 the Italian Riviera and the Adriatic coast 
 with their empty resort buildings, were 
 large receivers. Distributions within a 
 province, as between towns and villages, was 
 in the hands of the local prefects, each of 
 whom went through somewhat the same pro- 
 
 [21] 
 
cess in their districts as was carried out 
 nationally. This was the system, but in the 
 rush of the early days it did not always work 
 smoothly, and there was confusion and clog- 
 ging at various points. 
 
 Funds for 
 Refugees 
 
 The second element in the problem of the 
 care of refugees is that of income. To the 
 prefects also the central government sent 
 funds to feed the refugees while enroute, or in 
 asile, and to provide daily allowances of, on 
 the average, one lira a day per person (the 
 figure differed indifferent localities and accord- 
 ing to the number of children in a family) 
 once they were settled in houses or rooms 
 requisitioned for the purpose. At that point 
 also responsibility for their supervision was 
 generally shifted to the mayors of the com- 
 munes, but the national government con- 
 tinues to provide the allocation and to be 
 responsible for broad measures for meeting 
 their needs, under a specially created High 
 Commission. 
 
 Supplementing and co-operating with this 
 government activity, many voluntary Italian 
 agencies have worked with devotion and an 
 intelligent grasp of the situation. Especially 
 should be mentioned the Italian Red Cross, 
 which threw open to the refugees its rest and 
 first aid rooms in the stations; ran asile as at 
 Florence; drew on its supplies for blankets, 
 bedding, etc., as at Milan; and in some dis- 
 tricts, as at Catania, has been the agency 
 most concerned with providing for the refu- 
 gees away from the main urban centers. 
 And especially also should be mentioned the 
 Comitatos Civile, a loosely federated group of 
 local organizations, created to develop 
 various forms of aid for the families of 
 soldiers. 
 
 These have in many local centers developed 
 a wide range of social work; and, in some 
 localities, at once expanded their scope to care 
 for refugees. Usually, however, a distinct 
 committee, called by some such name as 
 Comitato del Profughi, has been formed under 
 the auspices of prefetto or sindaco (mayor) to 
 raise a relief fund and to carry on work through 
 sub-committees on housing, employment and 
 
 the like. Apart from these general organiza- 
 tions, personal leadership or group action has 
 brought special activities into play or gave 
 them color — such as a sculptor, in Rome, who 
 has scarcely touched chisel since the war 
 began; a bishop in Vicenza, the active chair- 
 man of a provincial committee for the protec- 
 tion of profughi driven down from the moun- 
 tains; members of the old nobility in Sicily, 
 and a Scotch Salvation Army adjutant, who 
 for four days with the knot of people she 
 could gather about her, ministered single- 
 handed to the mothers and babies coming 
 through Naples. 
 
 It was to a granddaughter of Garibaldi, who 
 had served throughout the war as a nurse, 
 that the Red Cross gave funds to open a creche 
 and playroom in Rome, so as to enable some 
 refugee mothers to work; and to a daughter of 
 Lombroso funds to care for refugee orphans 
 in Turin. 
 
 Work in 
 Naples 
 
 In Naples an active Friulian committee 
 came into being through members of the local 
 university faculty, themselves natives of 
 Friuli; and an energetic committee of citizens 
 of Venice, under the lead of a professor of 
 international law at the University of Padua, 
 also a Venetian, followed their refugee towns- 
 folk to the sea coast colonies and opened 
 offices at Rimini. 
 
 The single organization which bore the 
 brunt of the largest emergent demand and 
 which in its systematic provision was out- 
 standingly first, is the Umanitaria of Milan, 
 with 60 per cent, of its members made up of 
 working people. The Umanitaria doubled the 
 capacity of its dormitories for immigrants at 
 the station, erected tents in the yards, ran a 
 large restaurant which handled thousands 
 every day, served as many as 3,000 refugees at 
 four o'clock in the morning, opened an in- 
 firmary with doctors and nurses, organized 
 100 students into four shiftsof six hours each, 
 to serve as aides on the station platforms, and 
 co-operated with the municipal housing and 
 employment bureaus, the labor exchange and 
 agricultural society in a well-conceived scheme 
 of placement and distribution. 
 
 [22] 
 
The Three Stages 
 of the Flight 
 
 THE first stage — the sudden rush of ref- 
 ugees from farmhouse and village and 
 town, afoot, in wagons, in camions, to 
 such points on the railroads as they could 
 get passage — was passed when the American 
 Red Cross entered the field. Its participation 
 began in the second stage, the transport of 
 trainloadsof refugees to the great distribution 
 centers and thence to the provincial capitals, 
 but such was the congestion that by no means 
 all of its larger consignments of supplies, 
 however rapidly gotten together and shipped, 
 reached their destinations while the flood 
 tide was in transit. 
 
 Had the stream doubled or trebled — and of 
 that there were tense forebodings — they would 
 have been ready to hand. As it was, they 
 were employed at once to help meet the no 
 less emergent needs of the third stage, the 
 immediate care of great bodies of refugees in 
 the first shelters provided for them. And, as 
 it was, though such supplies as got through, 
 such canteens as could be opened, as at 
 Rome, Chioggia, Genoa, Ancona; such helpers 
 as could be sent out, or mustered individually 
 or in committee as in Genoa and Milan; and 
 more especially through rapid advances of 
 moneys to consuls and field delegates and 
 Italian agencies, who laid their hands on 
 things to be done locally (as in the example 
 cited in Leghorn) the Red Cross played a 
 spirited, if scattered, part from the first. 
 
 This has afforded acquaintanceship and 
 momentum in organizing its more systematic 
 work now in progress. Of the need of that 
 work every day's mail, every report from field 
 delegates and traveling inspectors adds to the 
 weight of testimony, as this is written— from 
 Sicilian towns, where work is difficult to 
 obtain and local milk is unobtainable for 
 mothers and children, from vUlages where 
 people are sleeping on the ground and whole 
 families are sick of fever and rheumatism; 
 from farming communities in the Appenines 
 where the corn crop failed last year; from 
 towns in Elyria where refugees are still 
 sleeping without beds on the damp straw; 
 
 from seacoast \'illas, fair to the eye but void of 
 blankets; from crowded tenements in Naples 
 — from industrial districts in the northwest, 
 where work is plenty but where there are none 
 the less great numbers of broken families, 
 sick or infirm, or without breadwinners, and 
 where fuel is scarce to be had; from wherever 
 throughout Italy refugee families are williout 
 adequate footwear and underwear, with scant 
 bedding and without the rudiments of house- 
 hold life; where food was short before the 
 refugees came and the people form in long 
 queues for their meager daily allotments. 
 
 Future 
 
 Red Cross Work 
 
 In addressing itself to the future, two main 
 lines of procedure present themselves to the 
 American Red Cross: (a) The establishment 
 of distinctive relief agencies of its own, such 
 as a hospital, a refuge, a popular kitchen, a 
 station canteen, a housing conmiittcc; or (b) 
 work through existing Italian agencies, 
 through grants of financial assistance supple- 
 mented, wherever possible, by appropriate 
 forms of personal service. In general, the 
 committee of investigation believed that more 
 permanent work will come by the latter 
 method, although recognizing that local 
 conditions may require direct action and not 
 wishing to recommend any policy which 
 would make it impossible or even difficult 
 when the conditions require it. 
 
 The system of responsible regional dele- 
 gates for consular work recently outlined, 
 working closely in conjunction with American 
 consuls and Italian prefects and agencies, will 
 afford a framework flexible enough to serve 
 both co-operative and direct action. 
 
 In this connection a statement issued in 
 mid- November by the High Italian Commis- 
 sioner for refugees is significant. He said: 
 
 "The work of the American Red Cross in 
 favor of the war refugees is full of goodness, 
 pity and sagacity. The prefects must second 
 it and put the delegates of that most provident 
 institution in friendly relations with all our 
 committees. Any hesitation would be harm- 
 ful politically and practically. I beg you to 
 give me continual information regarding this 
 cooperation with the Americans, permitting 
 
 [23] 
 
them freely to expand their activity without 
 bureaucratic hindrances. The Commissioner 
 is most desirious that the cooperation may be 
 full of straightforward and open benevolence. 
 I have seen the representatives of the Ameri- 
 can Red Cross and am persuaded that their 
 goodness equals their competency for good." 
 
 Statement of the 
 Italian High Commission 
 
 Turning from the questions of organization 
 to the substance of the relief problem, the 
 committee took up the challenge of circum- 
 stance, now that the first emergency calling 
 for assistance in leaving home and in transit 
 had passed. Its findings follow: 
 
 " If for any reason there should be a further 
 retirement — for example, to the line of the 
 Adige — several large towns, including Verona, 
 Vicenza, Padua and Rovigo, would be affected. 
 We are informed that definite orders have been 
 issued against the evacuation of this new 
 territory, even in case of invasion. The 
 inhabitants have been officially advised to 
 remain where they are, chiefly, no doubt, for 
 the reason that with the present limited supply 
 of food it would be impossible to care for so 
 great an influx of population in the remaining 
 part of the country, and also because property 
 would be sacrificed which might be preserved 
 by the owners if they remained to look after it. 
 
 "While these reasons are valid, it must be 
 anticipated that in case of retirement there 
 would certainly be a great exodus on the part 
 of those who would not wish to remain within 
 the enemy lines, and this retirement would be 
 accompanied, like that from the Friuli, by all 
 the more confusion and hardship because not 
 included within the plans of the authorities or 
 even contrary to their policy. The American 
 Red Cross should be ready to cooperate in 
 meeting any such second emergency. The 
 first came without warning; but for any pre- 
 ventable hardships resulting from further 
 possible retirement there would be no such 
 excuse. 
 
 "Ample supplies of blankets, clothing and 
 food should be collected as far north as 
 Bologna, in greater quantities in Florence 
 and in the larger centers to which the refugees 
 will be sent — to the west, to the south and the 
 
 southeast, tor those who move westward 
 the natural place for the storehouse would be 
 Milan, where the Umanitaria, to which we 
 have referred; the Bonomelli, a smaller or- 
 ganization with similar facilities, and our 
 American relief committee would all be ready 
 to help the official authorities. For those who 
 go down the east coast the stores and hospital 
 facilities established for the Venetian refugees 
 at Rimini, and food and clothing stations at 
 Ravena and Ancona, would come into play. 
 The main stream, however, would come 
 through the central funnel at Florence, and 
 we would emphasize the great importance of 
 having extensive stores at Bologna and 
 Florence available for instant use by the 
 proper agencies in those places on the in- 
 itiative of our representative in Florence. 
 Further west and south a relief program 
 could be worked out more deliberately at 
 Turin, Genoa, Naples and in Sicily, but at 
 each place we should be ready to give as- 
 sistance at the very moment of arrival. 
 
 The Venetian , 
 Colonies 
 
 "Aside from the possibility of a second 
 great emergency there are certain special 
 movements of population in which the 
 American Red Cross has a legitimate interest. 
 The most important of these is the present 
 continuing evacuation of Venice. Apart 
 from any question of a nearer approach by 
 the enemy it has been thought advisable to 
 evacuate the civilian population of Venice. 
 
 "Fortunately, it has been possible to do 
 this all deliberately and in such a way as to 
 prevent the indiscriminate scattering of the 
 population, although many inhabitants of 
 Venezia were, of course, included in the 
 original rush of refugees to the south and 
 west. The gradual removal which has since 
 been going on, in contrast to what happened 
 in the first days of the invasion, is more like 
 an orderly migration. It has, in fact, been 
 compared with the swarming of a hive. Up- 
 wards of ten thousand colonists have thus 
 been taken to certain villages selected for the 
 purpose in the neighborhood of Rimini. 
 Many of those people were employed in 
 Venice in workshops established for the pur- 
 
 [24J 
 
pose of giving needed employment to women, 
 and tlie equipment of tliese shops has been 
 transferred bodily to the new locality. 
 
 "With Red Cross funds supplied by us a 
 hospital has been established for the benefit 
 of this colony in Rimini in charge of a Vene- 
 tian physician who formerly directed a hos- 
 pital in Venice. The Italian Red Cross pro- 
 vides the nurses. This is an extraordinary 
 interesting experiment to which the American 
 Red Cross can wisely give further assistance, 
 as may be necessary, in the hope that it will 
 influence the handling of the refugee problem 
 elsewhere. We found, in fact, several in- 
 stances in which the authorities were attempt- 
 ing to keep together neighbors from the same 
 village, and naturally every attempt was made 
 to enable refugees to find relatives and 
 friends. Extensive use is made of the news- 
 papers in printing notices of this kind. 
 
 Children in the 
 War Zone 
 
 "Another special problem to which we have 
 sought to call the attention of local author- 
 ities is that of the children in the actual fight- 
 ing zone. In our visit to the Piave front we 
 saw scores of such children near enough to be 
 under shell fire and evidently in great danger 
 even if there should be only the slightest re- 
 tirement. By some plan, such as which has 
 been adopted behind the fighting lines in 
 Belgium, for gathering up these children and 
 caring for them at points not too distant 
 from their homes where schooling facilities 
 could be provided and their parents kept in- 
 formed as to their whereabouts and welfare, 
 the reproach of exposing children of tender 
 years to the physical dangers of the actual 
 front could be avoided. 
 
 "A third task which we believe should re- 
 ceive immediate attention, and which we 
 discussed with General Diaz and with the 
 local authorities of Padua, is the removal of 
 the aged and the sick from the fighting zone 
 and from the towns immediately behind the 
 front, so that at least those who are unable to 
 move and who cannot be moved without 
 obvious suffering and hardship might be 
 cared for in time in case fighting should 
 sweep through the district. Our understand- 
 
 ing is that no objection would be made to 
 this, notwithstanding the general policy 
 above mentioned that in case of invasion the 
 civilian population would remain. 
 
 The Period of 
 Transition 
 
 "The first emergency has passed. The 
 larger constructive work lies ahead. At the 
 present moment we are in a transitional 
 period which may be described as the period of 
 arrival and first settlement, or as the period 
 of distribution. Our information is that there 
 are still many refugee families in every part 
 of Italy who are sorely in need of blankets, 
 mattresses, underclothing, warm suits and 
 shoes, and food. Therefore, although the 
 first emergency is past it is stilt essential that 
 the American Red Cross, both at its central 
 head<iuarters and in its local organizations, 
 should bend every effort to get supplies of 
 these things as rapidly as is humanly possible, 
 actually delivered to the suffering families and 
 individuals. 
 
 "This should be a first responsibility — to 
 supplement what the official and voluntary 
 Italian agencies are doing and to see to it as 
 far as our resources go that every refugee 
 actually has these essentials. Responsibility 
 as to just how to do it sht)uld be decentralized, 
 but emphatic and repeated insistence that it 
 should be done should go persistently from 
 headquarters to every locality where we are 
 or can be represented. The general problem 
 of food is of course one for the government, 
 but condensed milk for babies and other 
 kinds of special diet can be included in our 
 supplemenatry relief measures. 
 
 The State 
 of Health 
 
 "The first of the more permanent problems 
 of resident refugees is that of health. Hun- 
 dreds of these people have gone through 
 suffering and privation which have left their 
 mark. We have taken steps in several places 
 to set going different forms of medical help 
 and these should be further developed where- 
 ever existing agencies are not sufficient to 
 cope with the abnormal conditions created by 
 the influx of refugees. 
 
 2.51 
 
This work may take various forms, as for 
 instance, establishing a special refuge for sick 
 and infirm, as has been done by the American 
 committee in Milan; taking a certain number 
 of beds in an existing hospital with an Italian 
 staff, as has been done in Rimini; organizing 
 a traveling dispensary especially for children, 
 as has been done by the American Red Cross 
 in France, at Nesle, and as may be developed 
 in Rimini; a systematic inspection of refugee 
 families to discover persons in need of medical 
 care or nursing, such as Miss Gunn wishes to 
 undertake in Naples and the physicians of the 
 prefecture are carrying on at Messina, or, 
 better than any of these, a well-rounded 
 health center with various special services by 
 American doctors and nurses who could 
 familiarize the communities in which they 
 work with the methods and ideas of American 
 preventive health work. 
 
 "This again would be in line with plans 
 which the American Red Cross has already 
 worked out in Paris and other French com- 
 munities, and if such health centers could be 
 established with the cordial approval and 
 cooperation of sanitary officials and physi- 
 cians of the local community they might 
 become|the most important lasting contribu- 
 tion which the American Red Cross could 
 make in Italy. No doubt local Italian in- 
 stitutions could be found around which such 
 Red Cross activities could be organized. 
 
 The Housing 
 Problem 
 
 "Next to health the most urgent refugee 
 problem is that of housing. We find refugees 
 living in hotels, hospitals, convents, schools, 
 all kinds of converted buildings, some admir- 
 able as far as physical comfort is concerned, 
 others leaving much to be desired even in 
 this respect. This manner of life is one which 
 should be ended as soon as possible. Even if 
 clean and warm and commodious, they 
 seldom afford possibility for a normal home 
 life, for privacy, for natural employment. In 
 one city, for example, some four hundred men, 
 women and children were living in the wards 
 of a hospital under conditions as institutional- 
 ized as those of an almshouse, as promiscuous 
 as those of the steerage of an ocean liner. 
 
 "They had excellent beds, comfortable 
 mattresses and the constant attention of a 
 doctor. Men, women and children were liv- 
 ing, eating and sleeping in the same large 
 ward. If they had been in need of hospital 
 care it was immediately forthcoming; but 
 they were quite well and ablebodied. Here 
 they had been for more than three weeks with 
 nothing to do except to make their beds and 
 keep the ward in order. This is only an ex- 
 treme instance of the refuge life from which 
 it is obviously desirable to distribute the 
 refugees into houses or tenements as soon as 
 they can find suitable employment and a 
 place to live selected with reference to their 
 employment and other considerations which 
 should naturally be taken into account. 
 
 Conditions in 
 Tenements 
 
 "Of course the worse conditions are not to 
 be found in the refuges, but in overcrowded 
 rooms in private tenements or in old and 
 filthy hotels. We have frequently seen eight 
 or ten, and in once instance as many as fifteen, 
 persons in a single living-room, and it is an 
 urgent part of the housing problem to enable 
 such families to move from their congested 
 and unsanitary "furnished" rooms into decent 
 dwellings. We must bear in mind that the 
 refugee families have in many instances been 
 accustomed to very much higher standards of 
 living than those even of the self-supporting 
 working people in the communities where 
 they now are. Many of them own property 
 and all of them household goods which they 
 have had to leave behind. They are in the 
 position of people who have lost everything 
 by a fire or a flood. They are not in danger of 
 being injured by prompt and generous as- 
 sistance in such an emergency. 
 
 "They are in danger of demoralization from 
 being left in their destitute condition without 
 employment, without the privacy and whole- 
 some atmosphere of family life, and without 
 the social environment'of the neighborhood, 
 to which they have been accustomed. The 
 best form of relief, therefore, would seem to 
 be assistance with furniture such as would 
 enable them to take suitable accommodations 
 in a place whereby their own labor, supple- 
 
 [26] 
 
mented by the government allowances, they 
 can become self-supporting. To make good 
 some part of their war losses in this way, 
 would be analogous to social insurance. 
 
 Cost of 
 Refurnishing 
 
 "Various estimates made for us by practical 
 people have put the cost of supplying beds, 
 tables, chairs, cooking utensils, etc., at from 
 two hundred and fifty to five hundred lire per 
 family. In two cities, Naples and Palermo, 
 we appropriated fifty thousand lire each to be 
 used in this way in aiding refugees to become 
 established in their own homes. We think 
 that some such work as this should be de- 
 veloped in every community in which the 
 refugees are likely to remain. In some 
 localities an intermediate step is necessary — 
 from ■congregate shelters, cheap hotels and 
 barracks in the neighborhood of stations into 
 better class hotels or other buildings. 
 
 "While there is some objection, it does im- 
 prove immediate conditions and as carried on 
 by an active committee of hotel men in 
 Naples the considerations in favor of it are 
 convincing. Appreciation should be ex- 
 pressed of the action of the American Radiator 
 Company in Milan in helping to meet the 
 need for beds for refugees by turning a part 
 of its factory in Brescia into a furniture 
 factory for this purpose. 
 
 VI 
 
 The Problem 
 
 of Unemployment 
 
 IN general, the housing problem is closely 
 associated with that of employment, 
 which has thus far received compara- 
 tively little attention. We have referred to 
 the Venetian plan of holding groups of workers 
 together and moving the industrial unit as a 
 whole. In several communities work-rooms 
 have been established ranging from very in- 
 formal attempts to enable women to make the 
 clothing for their own families to the large and 
 well equipped factory in Rome conducted un- 
 der the auspices of the Roma Committee, to 
 which the Red Cross contribution of 1,000,- 
 000 lire was made. 
 
 "In connection with such workrooms, or 
 even independently of them, where women 
 are regularly employed, there have been 
 established in some instances day nurseries or 
 maternal schools, where young children are 
 cared for during the working hours. All such 
 plans give rise to the familiar problem as to 
 whether women should not be aided to remain 
 with their own children rather than helped by 
 means of such agencies for the care of their 
 children. 
 
 ".\ special question arises with the refugees 
 as to whether the governmental subsidy 
 should be discontinued when wages are earned. 
 We are informed that while some latitude is 
 given prefects in this regard, it is the general 
 policy to continue one-half the subsidy after 
 the refugee has taken employment. We have 
 m two cities given money to aid in maintain- 
 ing workrooms. 
 
 Finding Work 
 for Refugees 
 
 "In a few instances as at Milan and 
 Turin, employment agencies, official' or 
 voluntary, have been attempting to find work 
 for refugees and probably a great deal more 
 has been done in this direction than was 
 brought to our attention. We were informed 
 at Messina that inquiries had been set on foot 
 by the prefect among the various towns of 
 his province, which would enable the refugee 
 population to be distributed in accordance 
 with opportunities for suitable employment. 
 
 "From the Ministry of the Interior in 
 Rome it was learned that this whole subject, 
 which was necessarily ignored during the 
 first great rush of refugees, is now receiving 
 serious consideration, and that the ministry 
 is relying on the prefects to organize local 
 employment agencies or other means of plac- 
 ing people according to their aptitudes and 
 experience. An inter-ministerial advisory 
 committee has been appointed, but as yet no 
 national scheme for dealing adequately with 
 the subject has been put in operation. If 
 some plan could be worked out by which the 
 American Red Cross could cooperate in 
 hastening such an organization, this would, in 
 our opinion, be a very wise and appropriate 
 use of our funds. 
 
Moral 
 
 Hazards 
 
 "Still another problem to which our at- 
 tention has been called in more than one 
 community is the moral hazard to young 
 girls arising from the enforced movement of 
 population. Attractive young girls from 
 country districts in the far north are to be 
 found in the streets of Naples, exposed to the 
 dangers to which they are wholly unac- 
 customed and against which they have not 
 been protected by their education or their 
 previous experiences of life. 
 
 "Not only ordinary dangers inevitably re- 
 sulting from separation from their kindred 
 and friends and the safeguards of their own 
 home neighborhoods, but the actual menace 
 of the white slave traffic must be taken into 
 account. We learn that a committee of 
 , Italian women has been formed in Naples for 
 the protection of these refugee girls, and in 
 Palermo we gave 1,000 lire to aid in the in- 
 stallation of a building formerly used as a 
 monastery, which has been taken for a home 
 for orphan refugee girls of from 12 to 18 years 
 of age. It is earnestly to be hoped that some 
 American women may see their way to an 
 active participation in this movement, either 
 by committees formed especially for this 
 purpose or through some e.\isting organi- 
 zation. 
 
 The Families 
 of Soldiers 
 
 "Because of the limits of our time and be- 
 cause of the prominence at the present 
 moment of the refugee problem, we have 
 given only incidental consideration to the 
 question of assisting the families of soldiers 
 or to that of aiding other civilian victims of 
 the war, such as the widows and orphans of 
 soldiers, and soldiers disabled by wounds or 
 discharged because of tuberculosis or other 
 disease. 
 
 "These needs exist and it is desirable that 
 the American Red Cross should help meet 
 them. Fundamental in all of these problems 
 is the amount of the allowance made by the 
 government to soldiers actively in service, to 
 discharged soldiers, to the families of soldiers 
 and to refugees. With a scarcity of food and 
 
 fuel and the constantly increasing cost of 
 both, we received frequent suggestions that 
 Red Cross funds be used to supplement them. 
 Obviously, however, neither the Red Cross 
 nor any other private agency can undertake 
 to make good the shortages in income and 
 food supply of a nation. Soldiers' families 
 and refugees — and for the most part refugees 
 belong to the families of soldiers — make up a 
 large part of the population of Italy. 
 
 The Need of 
 Food and Fuel 
 
 "If we were permitted to make only a 
 single recommendation (in the hope that it 
 would be adopted) this would be that the 
 American Red Cross should use its utmost 
 influence to secure the importation of food 
 into Italy during the next few weeks and 
 months. Fuel is also needed but above all 
 wheat and corn, corn meal being especially 
 acceptable in large part of Italy. 
 
 "The food supply is short for the whole 
 population, but the refugees, whose needs we 
 have been asked to investigate, are naturally 
 at the very margin and their needs in this re- 
 spect may therefore be taken as the ultimate 
 need of the country. We have frequently 
 been told by Italians in responsible positions 
 that food is more important in seeing Italy 
 through the present crisis than either men or 
 munitions from America. 
 
 Clothing is also needed, especially under- 
 clothing of all sizes and materials which can 
 be made up into clothing. Fuel is urgently 
 needed — for cooking the meals of the poor as 
 well as for running trains and factories. But 
 the elementary food supplies should be gi\ en 
 precedence. For the most part these supplies 
 must of course come through the commercial 
 and governmental channels. 
 
 "We are moreover of the opinion that 
 although the American Red Cross must leave 
 the vital question of a general food supply to 
 governmental and commercial agencies, we 
 should ask for the largest permissible allot- 
 ment of cargo space for the importation of 
 condensed milk and hospital supplies (for 
 civilian relief as well as for military hospitals), 
 underclothing, warm outer clothing, shoes 
 (all sizes for men, women and children), 
 
blankets and materials to be made up into 
 underclothing and children's clothes. 
 
 "Such supplies as can be imported or pur- 
 chased in this country will be needed, as we 
 have indicated, for two main purposes: first, 
 to meet the acute needs during the winter 
 months of refugees and other civilian families 
 in the places where they are living, insofar as 
 such needs cannot be met by Italian officials 
 and voluntary agencies; and second, to be 
 stored at carefully selected places in sufficient 
 quantities to meet a second emergency if it 
 should arise or in assisting to restore refugees 
 to their homes in territory which may be 
 reconquered." 
 
 The Seven Weeks 
 
 of the Emergency Work 
 
 Inexorable circumstances not only made 
 the report of its earlier Red Cross commission 
 of inquiry out of date, but found the Red 
 Cross without a field staff in Italy when the 
 emergency came at the end of October. By 
 the swift dispatch of trained men and supplies 
 from its French organization and the prompt 
 volunteering of American residents in Italy, 
 it has recouped that situation. 
 
 The temporary staff returns to France, 
 leaving the field free to the new permanent 
 Red Cross Commission to Italy, operating 
 under the commissioner for Europe, with 
 headquarters in Paris. For in its permanent 
 organizatibn the Red Cross has entered upon 
 what the allied armies and governments have 
 seen the need for and are only now approach- 
 ing — unified action along the whole western 
 front. 
 
 This is not only desirable — so that the 
 relative needs of different areas may be seen 
 in perspective and American generosity and 
 initiative applied where and when they will 
 count for most, but it has been an accom- 
 plished thing — for the seven weeks that have 
 elapsed between the coming of the Red Cross 
 emergency men to Rome in early November, 
 and the coming in December of the perma- 
 nent commission. 
 
 The emergent work carried on in those 
 seven weeks has been set down, the physical 
 relief and the spiritual reinforcement which 
 hurled obstacles at a time when to spread a 
 
 single blanket more in an asile or stick up a 
 flag at a station counted incalculably. But 
 more important underneath that emergent 
 work has gone forward, under the Commis- 
 sioner for Europe, the laying of foundations 
 for a permanent work, kindred and compar- 
 able to that in France. 
 
 A New 
 Staff 
 
 At the enil of seven weeks the members of 
 the emergency commission to Italy turn over 
 to the new staff: — 
 
 A fabric of good- will and cordial relations 
 with the Italian Government and voluntary 
 organizations. 
 
 An office administration and procedure for 
 cables, transportation, passports, accounts, 
 records. 
 
 A purchasing service with orders placed for 
 3,000,000 lire worth of supiilies in Italy; 300 
 tons of beans, rice, corned beef and con- 
 densed milk enroute from Paris; 15,000 tons 
 of shipping space in boats sailing from 
 America prior to January 1. 
 
 Warehouses of 50,000 tons capacity in 
 Rome, at the ports of entry, Genoa and 
 Naples, and at central points of distribution, 
 such as Florence, Bologna and Rimini. 
 
 Red Cross committees in Milan and Genoa. 
 
 Under its Military Affairs Department: — 
 
 A hospital supply service with warehouses, 
 system of co-operating work-rooms and 
 program for direct inspection service from 
 dressing stations to the hospitals for con- 
 valescents. 
 
 Two hundred thousand surgical dressings 
 for delivery in January through the Surgical 
 Dressing Committee. 
 
 Ten complete field hospitals, gifts to the 
 Sanita Militare and the Italian Red Cross, 
 under contract for delivery early in the year. 
 
 The beginning of a gift service to the men 
 in the trenches. 
 
 A program, based on the study of troop 
 movement, for a string of rest stations and 
 canteens at eight junction points from the 
 front to the straits of Messina. 
 
 A going canteen for Italian and Allied 
 
 [29] 
 
troops at (ienoa, and a dormitory, rest room 
 and canteen under way at Milan. 
 
 One hundred men and, in conjunction with 
 the Poets' Committee, three complete am- 
 bulance sections — the first units of an Ameri- 
 can Red Cross Ambulance Service for Italy; 
 already at work on the Piave. 
 
 A system of nine regional districts, with 
 responsible delegates, local stores, and excel- 
 lent working relations with American consuls, 
 prefects, local authorities and agencies. 
 
 Canteens, supplies, and working program 
 under way for Red Cross cooperation in the 
 orderly migration of groups of Venetian 
 civilians to the coast towns on the Adriatic. 
 
 A Red Cross hospital and health center of 
 fifty beds, serving the Venetian colonies at 
 Rimini and adjacent towns; a similar project 
 under way at Toarmina for the service of the 
 refugees in Sicily. 
 
 A Red Cross rest for refugees, the aged. 
 
 sick, mothers, etc., and a popular kitchen in 
 Milan. 
 
 Storage centers, canteen, and district 
 delegates placed for effective help to refugees 
 in transit in case of any further emergency. 
 
 A project for the evacuation of children, the 
 sick and infirm from the immediate war zone. 
 
 A constructive program for refugee work, 
 based on French experience, covering such 
 factors as furniture, health work, employ- 
 ment and protection through which the Red 
 Cross can cooperate in preventing the 
 crystallization of those abnormal living con- 
 ditions which may be worse in their con- 
 sequences than the more spectacular ills of 
 the flight from home. 
 
 An understanding of the food and livelihood 
 problem, reaching its extreme in the case of 
 refugees and soldiers' families, and demand- 
 ing the combined action not only of the 
 Italian authorities and the Red Cross, but of 
 America and the Allied Governments. 
 
 130] 
 
American 
 Red Cross 
 
 Commissioner for Europe. 
 Grayson IVI. P. Murpliy 
 
 ISince retired to go into military service under 
 General Pershing, and succeeded by Maj. James 
 H. Perkins.) 
 
 Emergency Organization for Italy. 
 November 5— December 20, 1917. 
 Carl Taylor, deputy commissioner. 
 Charles Carroll, aid. 
 
 Bernon.S. Prentice, director of adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 A. H. Green, Jr., general manager. 
 
 B. G. Smith, director department of ac- 
 counts. 
 
 R. H. Sherman, director department of 
 
 stores 
 E. E. Darr, secretary. 
 Ernest Meadows, publicity. 
 J. Forest Reilly, assistant secretary. 
 
 A. . P Carter, director purchasing depart- 
 ment. 
 
 Department of Military Affairs. 
 H. B. Stanton, director. 
 
 G. W. Beadel, assistant. 
 R. G. Mather, secretary. 
 
 B. M. Nester, chief inspector. 
 Nicholas R. Rhodes. 
 Robertson Williams, field delegate. 
 
 H. B. Wilkins. 
 Richard Wallace. 
 
 Myron C. Nutting. 
 H. U. C. Bowdoin. 
 Charles K. Wood, inspector. 
 Department of Civil Affairs. 
 
 Edward Eyre Hunt, director, November ,5 
 
 December 10. 
 Ernest P. Bicknell, director, December 10 
 
 December 20. 
 E. O. Bartlett, assistant to director. 
 W. C. Smallwood, advisor to director. 
 Donaldson Clark, assistant. 
 A. J. Akin (Florence). 
 Albert J. Chandler (Milan). 
 O. H. Sellenings (Turin). 
 
 G. F. Laughlin (Leghorn). 
 Stanley Lathrop (Rimini). 
 
 D. S. MacLaughlain (Palermo). 
 T. H. Mason (Naples). 
 C. U. Moore (Milan). 
 
 H. W. Parsons. 
 
 Charles H. Williams, delegate. 
 Investigating Conmiittee on Refugees. 
 Ernest Bicknell. 
 Edward T. Devine. 
 Paul U. Kellogg. 
 Local Committees. 
 Milan: 
 
 North Winship, chairman. 
 Paul Allen, secretary. 
 Genoa : 
 
 Paul Groejean, chairman. 
 
 U. J. Bywater, secretary and treasurer. 
 
 [31] 
 
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