American Red Cross work among the French people

Front matter

Book ^li— ^

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Introduction

IX

It was impossible, even if it had fallen within its province, for our busy Embassy to undertake the task of regulating and distributing the gifts from America, but something had to be done and under the initiative of Ambassador Myron T. Herrick, an organization called the American Relief Clearing House was formed at Paris, " to bring order out of a tangle of good intent.'' This was the first seed of organized American relief work on French soil and the French immediately perceived in it that energy of growth so typical of American affairs. JSTor was it long before they realized that the generous motives animating it were equally characteristic of our national spirit.

The task confronting the Clearing House, though relatively much simpler, had many aspects in common with the greater work later undertaken by the people of the United States through their official agent, the Red Cross. Its list of patrons was imposing, but actually it was always short of working personnel — the majority of whom were volunteers serving without pay — and its own transportation facilities were exceedingly meager for an organization which was in the main an agency for forwarding relief supplies from America to their various destinations in France. By keeping closely in touch with the French authorities it was able to inform its 'New York branch, and other war relief societies at home, as to the quantity and kind of supplies most needed. It also visited the wounded in the hospitals and aided destitute refugees. These are but samples of its activities. In spite of never-ending difficulties it steadily enlarged its field of usefulness until it had built up a schedule of operation that touched almost every phase of war relief. Its well-earned repu»tation for benevolence and efficiency rests upon the fine pluck and perseverance of a handful of men.

The work of the Clearing House deserves a more extended mention than can be given here. When the Red Cross came it turned over to that organization its franchise for crossing the ocean, granted it by the French Govern-

X INTRODUCTION

ment; all its supplies and personnel, and its assets; and there was not one debt. The leader of the Red Cross Commission said of this action : '^ The Red Cross could never have accomplished what it did — in the time it did — without this aid." If France had reason for being grateful to the American members of the Clearing House, and she has often expressed her gratitude, it is equally certain that our country has a right to feel proud of them.

Germany^s failure to see others as they really were was, perhaps, particularly gross, but she was n'ot the only country that studied the rest of the world through its own spectacles. Prior to the war few of us perfectly understood the workings of the Teuton mind, and it might be added that the United States has been the object of an almost universal misconception, some foreigners regarding us as a shrewd, eccentric, and crude people, finance mad, hard as nails and quite lacking in any cohesion or national consciousness, while others looked upon us less seriously as the land of the ready revolver, the bucking bronco, and the sinister millionaire with the romantic daughter. Europe commonly believed that we steered a carefully neutral course through those first years of war because such a course meant money in our pockets. On the other hand we were guilty of equally grave mistakes in our estimates of the peoples of the Old World.

The attitude of the United States at the beginning of hostilities was not the result of deliberate choice. It was the most sacred of our few political legacies. There is nothing to be gained by a detailed discussion of the subject here, but our geographical isolation from the Old World and our mental aloofness from its politics had made of us a self -centered people. The governments of Europe had been content to leave us out of their round-table conferences. To the great majority of the citizens of the United States the world politics of Europe represented something undesirable and oppressive from whose influence they or their

INTRODUCTION xi

ancestors had had the energy happily to escape. The roots of most European " questions '' or alliances seemed to be sunk in the selfish, reactionary, or sinister aims of the various governments, aims which had little to do with the will of the governed whose welfare appeared to be considered only incidentally, if at all.

Such, at least, was the opinion of the average citizen of the United States who saw in the breaking out of the war merely another and bolder move than usual in that intricate political game round which the diplomats of the Old World had always warily sat. Our first instinctive feeling was one of repulsion and indignation at the brutal climax. We were too far away, too alien to the situation, to see the real factors hidden under the net-work of intrigue. It was only when the German government had completely torn off her mask that we could trust ourselves to sit in the seat of judgment.

Complex though the physical mass of our population is, it is united in its love of liberty and its self-confidence. A race of men who have boldly broken away from their original environments to hue ouj; a new life in a remote land, either from ambition, from devotion to abstract principles, or a desire for adventure cannot be otherwise than self-confident. Tear of what Germany might do to us after she had conquered Europe had little weight in our decision. It is not easy to inject the virus of fear into such a nation as the United States. On the other hand it is a nation readily receptive to sentiment.

None of the other world powers were conscious of the apparently paradoxical fact that sentiment and idealism can flourish in a land where practicality and business efficiency are supposed to be the great gods of mundane affairs. But when President Wilson on April 6, 1917, declared a state of war against Germany, the United States, as one man, received the call to arms in a spirit of exaltation somewhat analgous to that which animated the contenders in the religious wars of the past. There was no xii INTRODUCTION

thought of material gain, no national pride to flaunt, or injury to avenge. The country declared itself ready to give even to its last man and its last dollar, because it believed that the might of Germany threatened the existence of those abstract principles in which America has put its abiding faith.

When General Joffre visited the United States in the spring of 1917, he said : " Give us credit for food and shells and our army can hold out forever; give us something to show the French people that America is really with us, something they can see and understand, and they will back up our army to Berlin and beyond." It was an acknowledgment that the morale of the civil population was as important a factor in the war as the valor of the men at the front. The struggle was too tremendous for its issue to depend merely upon a matter of rations and ammunition and fighting men.

President Wilson, setting in motion all the immense economical, financial, and moral machinery of the country, began the raising of that army whose vigorous growth, enthusiasm, and marvelously rapid, effective trans-shipment will always be considered one of the most vital and extraordinary factors of the great war. The mass of German citizens undoubtedly knew little or nothing of these preparations, but their Government, through its drag-net system of espionage, must have realized it was beholding the metamorphosis of that possibility so disdainfully dismissed by Admiral Yon Tirpitz as a mere " phantom," into an actuality of the most formidable proportions. With characteristic cunning they caused their agents to spread abroad an insidious fog of peace propaganda while at the same time they hastened their plans for the crushing of the Entente before the weight of American interference could overwhelmingly manifest it^ self upon the actual field of war.

There was good cause to fear that they might succeed

INTRODUCTION xiii

in doing this. Russia, disorganized, tottering to its chaotic fall, was out of the conflict ; the wreck of Belgium was under the heel of the enemy and crippled France had lost her richest industrial regions while hundreds of thousands of her fighting men — the flower of her army — lay in their bloody graves, and hundreds of thousands of her women, children, and old men were destitute and homeless, exposed to the ravages of those diseases apt to follow in the wake of war. Great Britain, fearfully depleted in man power, money, and shipping, had already strained her sinews almost to the cracking point. Serbia and Eoumania had been struck to the ground and despoiled, their peoples little better than the serfs of their conquerors.

It was for these grim reasons that General JofPre had said to the United States : " Give us something to show the French people that America is really with us, something they can see and understand.^' Something other than an official pledge — assurance enough between governments — was necessary in this crisis. The artisan in the factory, the wife and mother trembling in her home, the old peasant toiling in his threatened fields, the soldier interposing his body as a bulwark against the thrusts of the enemy, these were in need of more tangible aid than any promise however solemn. Their need was pressing. They could not wait for the full materialization of our military plans.

Though we had not perceived it at the time the principles for which we were eager to fight in 1917 had been at stake in 1914. The knowledge of this wrought in the United States an almost passionate appreciation of what our new Allies had done and endured, and a determination to make every effort possible and every sacrifice necessary to compensate for our late entry into the war. The feverish desire to co-operate immediately and to the full extent of our power led to some mistakes, but they were trifles compared to the great results achieved. Government and people united in practical examples of generosity.

xiv INTRODUCTION

Our citizens voluntarily denied themselves wheat, meat, and other forms of food that our Allies might be better fed. In the face of impending heavy war taxes and the swiftly rising cost of living the people still had money to give out^ right for the relief of the war sufferers abroad. In the brief space of seven days they contributed the sum of one hundred million dollars to the Red Cross that it might begin at once its work of mercy in France. Before its activities in that country were closed the organization received from the citizens of the United States subscriptions and voluntary contributions amounting in all to more than four hundred million dollars.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I In Paris 1

n Beginnings and Outlines 10

Chapter II Beginis^ings And Outlines

TWO months after the United States made its declaration of war against Germany the Red Cross Commission, composed of eighteen men, was on its way across the Atlantic. It reached France on June 13, 1917, the same date which saw the landing of General Pershing. Its arrival had not the same power to fire the popular imagination as the presence of the commander-in-chief, who was the physical symbol of our military cooperation. The broad character of the work which the American Red Cross had come to perform was not at the outset realized by the French, who took it for granted that the organization was merely supplementary to -the medical department of our coming expeditionary forces.

Such was in truth the duty of the American Red Cross ; but though it was its first, it was not its sole duty. It had a second which was to serve the sick and wounded of the Allied Armies. It had assumed also a third obligation, to give as much assistance as it could to the civil sufferers of the war. It is because of this self-imposed third duty, so little comprehended at first, that the work of the American Red Cross in Prance will remain forever an imperishable monument to the high ideals of the people of the United States.

The members of the Red Cross Commission were specialists, men picked for their broad knowledge of the lines of endeavor along which their campaign was to be directed. They were experts on banking, on welfare work, and building; on transportation and organization. They had not come merely to investigate and report to the War Council

BEGINNINGS AND OUTLINES 11

at home, but with the intention and, thanks to the generous size of their budget, the power to operate at once.

Their first act was to get in touch with the French authorities and relief societies and through them to ascertain what the organization could do to carry out the mission entrusted to it by the American people in the speediest and most effective manner. In addition to the relief work it hoped to accomplish among the French, the Red Cross had to prepare plans for hospital and canteen formations against the time when the American Army should be in force upon the soil of France. It therefore naturally divided itself at once into the three main departments of Military Affairs, Civil Affairs, and Administration, each of which was sub-divided into a number of bureaus to facilitate the handling of various phases of the different activities.

In adapting itself to the shifting conditions in France the organization of the American Red Cross went through a number of changes from first to last. Bureaus were abandoned as the need of their services ceased and others were merged for the sake of efficiency or transferred from one department to another. In general, however, though several new departments were ultimately added, the three formed at the outset continued to the end to be the central seats of the main activities. The work of the Military Department, except that part which had to do with French military affairs, and the relief work especially concerned with the situation in Belgium, are fully described in other volumes, the present one dealing only with the aid given directly to the French people.

The work that lay in front of the Commission could not be fully visualized even with the counsel of the French authorities. It had to be approached more or less tentatively, the first steps being to ascertain the greatest needs and how the organized aid sent by the American people could be applied to meet them.

After three years of the bloodiest warfare of history the combined power of France and England had proved unequal to the task of driving Germany back to her boundaries. A huge stretch of the richest portion of France was devastated or still in the hands of the enemy who at any moment threatened to sweep down upon and capture the capital itself. The ultimate victory still hung in the balance. ^N'ot only had France to put her all into the scale to save herself from a military defeat^ but behind the lines she was confronted by conditions that seriously affected her welfare. Several millions of refugees from the War Zone were in urgent need of proper housing, of food, clothing and medical care. Tuberculosis was spreading rapidly among the people, and thousands of children, deprived of suitable nourishing food, were drifting toward a state of ill health from which many could not hope to recover.

This in brief was the situation. As a result of suggestions from the French government and its own investigations the American Eed Cross decided to assist France in meeting the problems concerned with : First — The refugees and other displaced populations outside of the War Zone. Second — The devastated area and the War Zone. Third — The reeducation of the mutiles, or disabled soldiers. Fourth — The care and prevention of tuberculosis. Fifth — Child welfare. An equal number of bureaus were established under the Department of Civil Affairs to deal with these problems respectively.

At the same time, under the Department of Military Affairs, a bureau of French Military Affairs was created to cooperate with the French in canteen and hospital work. The Eed Cross decided to engage in this work by special request of the French authorities. 'Not only was such assistance needed, particularly by the canteens, but the Government had in view the great moral effect that visible American cooperation would have among the French troops and the importance of making it evident at once.

These several activities upon which the Eed Cross was

BEGINNINGS AND OUTLINES 13

about to embark entailed a vast amount of preliminaryorganizing. All tbe existing private American relief agencies and societies working in France were, according to tbe express wish of the French government and the President of the United States, invited to merge their interests as thoroughly as possible with that of the Red Cross which was henceforth to act as the official distributor of America's funds and supplies for war relief in France. A personnel sufficient in size and capability to handle the work had to be engaged in the United States and shipped to France without delay; a Headquarters for the executive established in Paris ; arrangements made whereby the thirteen ports of France would receive goods destined for the American Red Cross; main and subwarehouses bought, hired or built; hospital and canteen formations created and, as the French government held control of all railways, devoting them first and foremost to the use of its army requirements, a transportation system had to be built up that would serve the needs of the Red Cross.

Starting with a personnel of about twenty, by January, 1919, there were over six thousand men and women work- ' ing for the American Red Cross in France. The first 1 ecomm endation of the Transportation Department for one hundred and fifty motor cars was considered by some at that time as absurdly large, but when the armistice was declared there were two thousand Red Cross cars in use. It might be added that in spite of these impressive figures the organization was frequently called upon to do emergency work that required a larger personnel and more means of transportation than it possessed.

On arriving in France the American Red Cross found three existing relief organizations operating cars: the American Clearing House, the l^orton-Harjes Ambulance Service and the American Distributing Service. The latter two were distinctly and wholly devoted to carrying on hospital work, only the first named having to do with civilian service and this, mainly acting through French public channels as a sort of private express company to deliver packages from the United States. It had but six trucks and two cars of its own, nearly all in Paris. Manifestly for the plans of the American Eed Cross this was utterly inadequate. In taking over these three agencies the organization found by far the most important asset to be the long and valuable technical war experience of their leaders and men, and their knowledge of French

As stated above the first recommendation of the Director of the Ked Cross Transportation Department for one hundred and fifty trucks, ambulances and Ford cars seemed to the committee at first sight foolishly wasteful ; but comparing this with the final number — two thousand — at the end of hostilities, one realizes how the needs of the work developed and were recognized. There were only two ports, Bordeaux and Le Havre, where goods had been received by these American agencies. The transportation director saw that the Ked Cross must have arrangements in all the thirteen ports of France where American shipping entered, if it was to give effective service. These arrangements were ultimately made and for the eleven months following March 1, 1918, these thirteen ports received and handled over forty-six thousand tons of American Ked Cross merchandise.

The every-day work and main function of the Transportation Department was the movement and handling of freight. Starting at the ports, from the ship it proceeded to the port warehouse, thence to Paris (or after the departmental zone system was inaugurated to the zone central warehouse), thence to the interior sub-warehouse if not ordered directly to a hospital, canteen, etc. — and often from the last warehouse to the committee in the given departmental town or village which distributed necessities to the French refugees. All the long hauls were consigned to the French railways, but always under the care of the

BEGINNINGS AND OUTLINES 15

Transportation Department, and it required a prolonged, delicately adjusted series of negotiations with the Government authorities to obtain due recognition, on a par with war material, of American Red Cross freight and personnel. There were often eig'ht distinct handlings of freight in France before it reached its final destination. A thorough system of checking and bills of lading, requisitioning, etc., was instituted, which showed every movement throughout the situations of its career of a piece or unit of freight, fixing responsibility for the handling and safe keeping of the same. This helps to account for the large expenditure attaching to this work as compared with the comparatively small tonnage of goods handled.

In each of the thirteen ports, port-equipment and organization were built up, varying from one manager and a clerk, to a personnel of three managers or associates, office helpers, thirty chauffeurs and garage workers, besides German prisoner labor or locally hired stevedores, with three large warehouses and fourteen motor cars, such as finally existed at Bordeaux. In nearly every departmental center where a Red Cross delegate had been installed there had to be from one to three cars with competent drivers and arrangements to keep the transport work in adequate running order.

There was also the building up of the Paris freightservice, developed from small beginnings of one railway quai and -^yq cars to an extensive system of railway quais and river docks, including warehouses in all parts of the city with all their managers, clerks, typists, checkers and stevedores ; and finally there was the " Motor Transport Corps," with its large personnel of drivers. All this meant training camps both at home and in France, garages, repair-shops in and outside of Paris, an efficient corps of skilled mechanics, carpenters, painters, etc., so that by January, 1919, there was in Paris and throughout France a total personnel of all kinds in the department of eleven hundred and sixty Americans.

At first tlie Ked Cross tried to bring over all its cars in standardized parts from the United States; but ships' bottoms simply lacked room, so the organization was forced to buy in France whatever it could at any price to m.eet the first crying need.

The complicated task of getting its house in order and laying out plans of operation was undertaken with characteristic energy and pushed through speedily, but it must be said that the Red Cross built itself up with one hand while it worked with the other. Two months after the Commission landed it had begun to give assistance to the French in the form of monetary contributions to provide proper housing facilities for the refugees miserably crowded together in the poorer sections of Paris. Almost at the same time, as the workers for whom it had cabled Washington began to arrive in France, the organization embarked upon the other selected activities; cooperation with the rolling-canteens at the French front, French hospitals and schools for the reeducation of the disabled soldiers, and societies concerned with child-welfare work and the prevention of tuberculosis.

The idea at the outset was to have at least one representative of the American Red Cross in each Department of France to superintend the relief work among the refugees therein. Great difficulty was found in securing trained workers for this purpose, but little by little the staff was built up. The first relief delegates were actually sent out to the Provinces in December, 1917. By the end of the summer of 1918 the American Red Cross Bureau of Refugees was represented in every Department outside of the War Zone by a delegate clothed with broad powers and supported by a completely organized system of transport and supplies at Headquarters. A special Bureau of the War Zone was alsb created which endeavored to provide relief for the civilian population as they fled from or retu-rned to that area according to the movements of the contending armies.

BEGINNINGS AND OUTLINES 17

During the same period the Children's Bureau was represented bj activities in all the large centers of population such as Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Dijon, etc., comprising dispensaries, refuges, creches, schoollunches, and, more fundamentally, careful educational campaigns that put before the people in an attractive manner all the principles of child-welfare work.

Similarly, the work of the Tuberculosis Bureau was marked by extremely thoughtful surveys of the entire country, with consistent instructive assistance to existing French institutions and the establishment of four large institutions of its own.

Close collaboration with the intensive and effective work of the Friends' Unit gave the keynote to the character of much of the social work.

The activities of all these bureaus necessarily overlapped, some dispensaries existing under the management of the Bureau of Refugees and some relief work under the other bureaus. In the following chapters it was not considered necessary always to make a sharp distinction.

The outstanding feature of the entire work was the broad and comprehensive foundation upon which it was built, which was made possible by the experience and vision of the men chosen to inaugurate it and carry it on.

To help France to help herself was the thought at the back of every effort in every bureau. The delegates of the Bureau of Refugees recommended that American Red Cross clothing and furniture should be sold, at cost prices or less, rather than given to the refugee population, thus recognizing that they were not dealing with an indigent people, but with one that was temporarily suffering from causes beyond its control. America offered the hand of a friend to a friend in need and in no sense assumed the attitude of a benefactress.

Has this effort left its impress upon France? Will anything permanent remain to indicate the immense expenditure of energy and material so bountifully and gladly contributed by the men, women, and children of the United States? We are perhaps too near to see clearly the answer to these questions, but of the grateful appreciation of that portion of the French people which from personal experience knows the work accomplished and the manner in which it was done, there can be small doubt. Unquestionably also our methods of organization and directness of action, and particularly the American idea (not new in theory but actually new in practice in France) of responsibility to the community and of social service, have made a deep impression. That the men and women who have done the work of civilian relief in France will take back to the United States an appreciation of the privilege given them in carrying out the mandate of the American people, there can be no shadow of doubt whatsoever.

Chapter III

SOON" after the outbreak of the war the American Red Gross organized an expedition for relief work abroad. The S.S. Bed Cross, chartered by the association, crossed the Atlantic in September, 1914, carrying surgeons and nurses and a large amount of medical supplies for the warring nations of Europe without regard to nationality. The field was vast and the little force, broken up into its various units, was widely scattered and almost overwhelmed by the needs of the situation. They accomplished excellent work, but in most cases their existence was comparatively ephemeral. The unit dispatched to Erance equipped at Pan a hospital of two hundred beds which it operated for one year. Its personnel was then removed, part of it being transferred to Belgium. Eor eight months or so another unit assisted Dr. Eitch in his orthopedic work for the Erench Army. The American Ambulance at ^N'euilly was helped by the organization, and various Erench institutions were given aid in the form of money, supplies, or personnel for certain periods of time, but the plan of the American Red Cross was not to concentrate its activities for the benefit of any one nation, but to distribute them as impartially as possible.

With the entry of the United States into the war this plan was automatically changed. The Red Cross became the official American relief organization and made ready to put at the disposal of the A. E. F. and their allies all the resources with which the people of the United

States had. generously endowed it. Soon after its arrival in France, following upon conferences with the Government, it began among other activities its plans for hospital cooperation with the French. In accordance with these plans the Medical Department of the Eed Cross took complete control over some existing hospitals, assisted others and inaugurated new but similar activities, such as the invaluable dispensary work for the civilian population at those points which, through the exigencies of war, were most in need of medical aid.

The main object of the Medical Department was to prepare plans and collect supplies) against the future hospital needs of the American Army. Its activities with and in behalf of the French Army were secondary, but in most cases these redounded to the advantage of our own men as well. A few hospitals, such as E'os. 1 and 2, were operated with the deliberate intention of caring for the wounded of both nations. 'No. 1, originally the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly, was supported and run by the Eed Cross and the United States Army, and its -Qye hundred or more beds and its dental clinic were at the disposal of the French. In connection with this formation the Eed Cross maintained a thoroughly equipped sanitary train to bring back the French wounded from the front and an ambulance service that carried the wounded for the Paris district. Though the director was an American Army officer the Eed Cross had the entire medical and surgical management of the hospital.