THE FOLLOWING statements
concerning Poland and Mon
tenegro, and statements pre
viously written concerning
the needs in France, Belgium, Russia,
Armenia and Palestine are, we are as
sured, hints of the horrible pic
ture of misery and suffering that Eur
ope presents in its devastated and
liberated regions.
The Red Cross commission reached
Montengro early in February and
found pneumonia and influenza raging.
In the mountain hamlets, where
rocky goat trails are the only lines
of communication, the Austrians in
their retreat pillaged at will, driving
off sheep and cattle, stealing blankets
from sick beds and clothes from
women and children.
Montenegro is a land of no chim
neys because of an iniquitions tax on
chimneys under the old regime. Many
a man, many a woman and many a
child was found sick of pneumonia in
the earthen hallows within the
houses, enveloped in billows of smoke,
all the cooking being done near the
heap of rags that served for a bed.
In Cettinje, the capital, a city of
5,000, the children were walking bare
footed in the snow, crying at door
steps for lack of food and clothing.
In Poland the American Red Cross
commissions reached Warsaw early
in March, the first outside relief to
the land of the Poles since we entered
the war.
Warsaw declared a holiday. Pader
ewski thanked the American people
as a whole for sending their Red
Cross to Poland in its hour of great
est need. Twenty-five cars of medi
cines and supplies were unloaded the
first day. Clothing here, too, was the
greatest need.
V V. V.
One of the saddest features of the
world war has been the suffering
brought upon millions of children in
the devastated countries. One of the
glorious things in connection with
America’s particiation in the war has
been the help which the children of
the land have contributed to the win
ning of the struggle for liberty. Just
as the men and women among the
free people of the earth have been
drawn into more sympathetic touch
and understanding with one another
by the great conflict, so the children
of the whole world have been brought
into a comradeship that surely will
have its effect in the reign of the ris
ing generation.
¥ ¥ *
The following excert is from a let
ter written at Vichy, France, by Capt.
S. W. Doolittle to his family at Lan
caster, Wisconsin. In it he mentions
the receipt of a consignment of pa
jamas from Seattle, but more particu
larly he points out the part played by
our organization in speeding the ces
sation of hostilities. Among other
things the letter says:
“The only thing that discouraged
the Germans and, no doubt, was a de
ciding factor in the war, was the serv
ice of the American Red Cross to our
soldiers taken prisoners by Germany.
I love to hear these ex-prisoners tell
about it. The first two weeks they
were in prison camps they were fed
upon carrot soup and bread made
from rye, potaoo parrings and saw
dust or pulp. They soon became weak
and emaciated, but the A. R. C. were
getting busy and tearing the earth to
pieces to get food to them. They es
tablished a chain of communication
and transportation through Switzer
land and succeeded in establishing A.
R. C. headquarters in the German
prison camps. After this, every
blessed American soldier confined in
a German camp, was supplied every
week with a pine box, containing
twenty-one pounds of various kinds of
food, of which every morsel came
from the United States and was
branded U. S. A. The Germans them
selves, in a semi-starving conditions,
looked with' wonder upon such effi
ciency and offered fabulous prices for
some bits of .the A. R. C. food. And
the German officers themselves said
to our men, ‘My God! How can they
do it!’ This little part the A. R. C.
played in the war, in my opinion,
shortened the war many months and
prevented the wounding and killing of
thousands of Americans as well as
thousand of our allies and our ene
mies. Just say for me to our own Red
Cross workers .in Lancaster, God
bless you, we could not have won the
war without you. Your efforts have
reached every corner of the earth and
you have aided every individual
doughboy in the service. As I pass
down the corridors of my hospital
there hangs at the head of each bed, a
Red Cross "comfy bag,” which each
soldier guards even better than he
does his pocketbook (his pocketbook
is usually empty), but this bag always
contains some comforts. And then as
I make my rounds at eleven every
night, each patient wears a clean suit
of Red Cross pajamas, and over each
soldier’s heart is the Red Cross em
blem sewed on the pocket. We re
ceived. a big bunch of pajamas re
cently and each coat is marked Seat
tle, Wash. They came some distance,
didn’t they? They make a fellow feel
like doing his bit when Seattle and
every other city and village back
home is backing us to the limit.
"Well, I don’t know enough to stop
when I start talking of the Red Cross,
so I’ll take off my cap to them and
quit.
“I don’t know when I will get back
home, but if you keep well I really
don't care as long as I can do any
good here.
“With love,
“CAPT. S. W. DOOLITTLE.”
* * *
“For extraordinary heroism against
an armed foe,” Miss Beatrice Mary
MacDonald, an American Red Cross
nurse assigned to the army nurse
corps, has been decorated with the
distinguished service cross by Secre-1
tary of War Baker. Miss MacDonald, ]
whose home is in New York city, is
said to be the first woman to receive
the highest award for bravery outside
of the congressional medal which the
government has to bestow.
She was in an evacuation station
immediately behind the lines when
the place was bombed by German air
planes on the night of August 17,
1917 'until a fragment of shell struck
her in the face and destroyed the
sight of her right eye.
¥ ¥ ¥
American Red Cross headquarters,
has officially denied a story printed
recntly under a Paris date to the ef
fect that it had agreed to accept $500,
000 from the Russian Bolsheviki Red
Cross to help defray the expense of
relief work among the Russian pris
oners in German camps. The state
ment says the American Red Cross
has no relation of any kind with any
Bolsheviki organization. The Ameri
can Red Cross alone, the statement
continues, is providing the money and
mission which has been sent to Ger- J
supplies for the special Red Cross
many to relieve the distress of Rus
sian prisoners in that country.
* * *
The American Red Cross has ar
r: nged for the immediate shipment to
its Siberian commision of 389,696
yards of bathrobing and 29,740
blankets, the whole valued at $520,810.
Recent communications from the Red
Cross mission in Siberia have em
phasized the need of warm clothing
and cloth material in that country.
* * *
American boys have lost arms and
leg and health on the fields of France,
but few of them have lost their sense
of humor. For that reason the recep
tions given them by the Red Cross
workers when they debark often im
press them more than formal wel
comes. A smile, a cup of coffee and a
cigarette mean more to the average re
turning hero than remarks which be
gin something like this, “Conquer
ors! This ' is the proudest mo
ment
* * ♦
Jefferson County, Idaho, promoted
the success of its used clothing col
lection by holding a bundle dance, ad
mission being twenty-five cents and a
bundle per person.
People came by dozens and scores,
everyone having a gunny sack or a
sugar sack full of clothing. More than
a ton of clothing was collected at this
one party; in addition $54.00 was tak
en in at he door which was used for
the purchase of additional clothing to
be used in the collection.
The day after the party the clothing
waB collected on small wagons and pa
raded through the streets of the town
of Rigsby to the place from which it
was shipped. This constituted excel
lent publicity and resulted in a<}di
tlonal contributions of clothing,
y 9
Sewing machines in great number
must be sent abroad for the use of
refugee women in making up the
great quantities of raw materials that
the Red Cross is sending to the relief
of the stricken populations of the dev
astated and liberated areas.
Any chapters which have sewing
machines no longer needed but in
good condition, can make direct con
tributions of them by' shipping them
to the division warehouse, marked
"For Shipment Abroad.”
The Red Cross must purchase or se
cure by donation from sewing ma -
chine companies the greater number
of the machines needed. Every ma
chine donated will lessen the burden
pn the Red Cross treasury by just
that much.
* * *
Lieutenant Colin V. Dyment, who
for the past year has acted as Red
Cross searched with the 91st division
in France, is now attached to the
Northwest division staff, at Seattle,
where he wil meet and talk personal
ly with members of the families of
those brave men from the northwest
who fell in the three hard battles that
placed the 91st division in the fore
front among Uncle Sam’s fighting
forces.
With the divisions dead numbering
1302 and with total casualties of all
kinds reaching to between 5,000 and
6,000, Lieutenant Dyment’s records
enable him to give intimate informa
tion as to the circumstances under
which many of these casualties oc
curred. It is for the purpose of giv
ing these personal observations to
relatives that Lieutenant Dyment is
prolonging his leave of absence from
the University of Washington, where
he holds the chair of dean in the
school of journalism, and giving his
services to the Red Cross until every
father, mother, sister, brother or wife
in this division has learned each and
every detail of the casualty in which
he is most deeply interested.
* * #
Personal observation of Red Cross
work among the soldiers will suggest
that one of its finest features is the
all-the-time readiness to meet the
wants—all the reasonable wants—of
ti e men in uniform. There is a differ
ence between “wants” and “needs.”
When the fighting was in progress,
and when the boys were in camp,
training for the great adventure, the
main thing in mind from the Red
Cross point of view, was to supple
ment the government in looking after
the needs of the troops. Wants were
incidental, to a large degree. With
the fighting over and thousands of the
youth of the land lying on hospital
cots or slowly convalescing from
wcunds and disease, the opportuntiy
for service finds its most striking ex
pression in satisfying wants that go
beyond actual needs.
In the hospitals, for instance, the
needs of the patients, so far as med
ical attention and nursing care are
concerned, are well taken care of by
the military establishment of the gov
ernment. It is the province of the
Red Cross to supply the home
touches, run the errands, and perform
a hundred and ot»e services that the
government agencies or personnel
cannot render. It is a labor of love
that exists entirely apart from the
service which doctors, nurses, and
paid attendants are able to give.
There is a heart in the work not only
cheering to the men themselves, but
to the families of the soldiers,
through their knowledge that willing
hands are constantly ministering to
their dear ones.
V V. V.
There are 400,000,000 people in
Europe and most of them are suffer
ing for lack of food. The menace of
starvation extends over into Siberia,
Armenia and Syria in Asia. It is from
America that help is expected, from
America where harvests are plentiful,
where beef steak and potaoes are a
dinner* for a working man instead of
bruised garlic with salt, or raw onion
without bread.
It is hard for the average well-fed
American to realize what four years
of underfeeding means to the women
and children of Poland or Rumania,
and it would be still more difficult if
he could picture the scanty food
which serves even in normal times for
the poorer classes of these countries.
The diet of the Rumanian peasant
shepherd, who knows scarcely any
food but the milk and eheese from his
herd, would seem so simple that only
starvation would drive a healthy man
to subsist upon it And yet the Ru
manian has lost his herds, is driven
from his home, and would consider
himself blessed beyond his deserts if
he could go back to his old round of
cheese and milk and cheese again.
Bread for the Rich
The last harvest in Rumania was
sixty per cent failure. This means
that even the very rich will probably
find it hard to get bread. Perhaps the
wealthier homes will have saved
something of their large flocks of
chickens and ducks and geese, but
there will be few that have not given
up those luxuries to the hungry in
vader. The soup, made of fermented
meal in water, the occasional mutton,
the fish, the bread of Indian meal, the
inevitable cheese, all these will be
hard to get, even for those who can
pay a fortune for one good break
fast. To the millions they are well
nigh impossible. In the poorer homes
even “mojdei”—crushed garlic with
salt and water—will be very scarce.
The English and the French and
the Italians have 120,000,000 people
on rations and they are doubtless un
happy under that restraint, but few
in those countries are suffering as are
the Armenians or those in Syria who
have felt the hands of the Turk.
Many of them have known good
living in days before the war but now
they have been driven far from their
homes, homes where they had rice and
olives, grapes—the greatest of luxur
ies to a dweller in the East, and all
the luscious fruitB that dried on the
flat roof in the sun. They have wan
dered through the deserts and some
of them have come to Jerusalem. But
Palestine, too, and all Syria are short
of food supplies and a spoonful of
lentil soup or a handful of ripe olives
is recived with heartfelt gratitude.
There is a peasant’s proverb in
Palestine that if a wife should say to
her husband, "I know not what to
cook for dinner,” he should divorce
her, for there are always new ways to
cook an egg-plant. There is grim
humor now in that saying, for only
the Syrian wife who can find new
ways of cooking over again the same
scant supply of vegetables can hope
to vary the menu of her family.
uaiKans t-ace hamine.
In the starvation map of the food
administration, these Asiatic territor
ies are marked as suffering from
serious food shortage while Rumania
is marked as approaching the starva
tion point and some of the Balkan
states are marked with the dead black
that means famine.
The American Red -Cross is sending
into these Balkan states every kind of
food that can be safely transported
and economically purchased. The
Rumanian peasant is being taken care
of as far as is possible with good
American beef, with dehydrated vege
tables, with beans and barley, figs
and flour, oatmeal and rice. Molasses
and sugar have been sent in quanti
ties as well as chocolate in cooking
bars and in vanilla flavored slabs such
as are common to the patrons of
American drug stores and have become
the solace of soldiers all over the
world. Besides the beef, packed sar
dines and salmon have been sent in
large quantities. Fat has been pro
vided in lard and butter and in pork.
Tea and coffee, particularly coffee,
have been urgently needed and plenti
fully supplied. It is difficult to send
fruit, but dried apriots and prunes as
well as preserves go as far as poss^le
to meet the need.
Altogether the diet which the Red
Cross is giving to the people whom it
is helping in the Balkans and other
starving regions is the sort that an
American would consider simple and
satisfactory. . Out of American plenty
a short is being given to save, if pos
sible, a few of the lives that famine
and disease have undermined and
threaten now to extinguish.
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