5,000,000 was spent by the joint committee on hospitals and stores,
excluding local expenditure on the auxiliary home hospitals. The
stores department covered a great variety of items under general
headings, such as textiles, provisions, tobacco, furniture, medical
requirements, etc., and involved extensive business arrangements,
with warehouses, buyers, and all the machinery of a large commercial
establishment. Speed in delivery was a distinguishing feature, and
the services of this department were on many occasions invited by
the War Office. It was claimed with justice that no reasonable
request which it was possible to comply with was ever refused.
A kindred department to the stores was the Central Prisoners of War Committee. The necessity for sending food to prisoners of war had resulted in various efforts which required coordination. The Government, as such, being prevented by Germany from supplying food to British prisoners of war, approved the formation of a com- mittee under the Red Cross, which, by resolution of one of its in- ternational conferences, was entitled, and was consequently allowed by the enemy, to regard prisoners as coming within its duties. The committee administered a sum of over 4,000,000 and regularly dispatched parcels of bread, other food and clothing to the prison camps. Enquiries for wounded and missing, undertaken by the Red Cross from early in 1915 onwards, were also a much appreciated effort, resulting in over 384,000 reports being obtained at a total cost of less than 33. 6d. each. Work for interned prisoners in Switzer- land and Holland was another undertaking of high character, one of its chief objects being educational and industrial training. Much attention was bestowedby the Red Cross on the after-care of dis- abled men, both in connexion with accommodation for convalescents, and institutional treatment for patients suffering from neurasthenia, epilepsy, tuberculosis, paralysis and the results of wounds. It is obvious that medical or surgical treatment in such cases may be prolonged and yet not be inconsistent with some form of employment. The Government, realizing this, was prepared to maintain the pa- tients, but difficulties arose on the question of capital outlay: " In any case," says the report of the joint committee, " as far as the Government was concerned, we were faced by delay in circum- stances where promptitude was of vital importance to the success of the work. Being ourselves unhampered by restrictions other than the broad objects for which the public had subscribed to the Red Cross, and our funds being immediately available, we were able to obtain the sanction of the Joint Finance Committee for grants which met the necessities of the case. Thus, once again, was demonstrated one of the most valuable uses of such a fund as that administered by the Joint War Committee."
The report from which the foregoing extract is taken deals in detail with Red Cross activities in the various theatres of war, at all of which the joint committee was represented by a commissioner and staff suited to the circumstances. The most extensive work, of course, was that carried out in France and Belgium. There the first commission was sent in Aug. 1914, while the last of many proceeded to Vladivostok a fortnight before the Armistice in 1918. Some idea of the number of people employed by the joint committee will be gained from the fact that the total staff at home and abroad on Oct. 20 1918, was 9,234. Of these 1,353 worked at headquarters in Lon- don, 850 of whom were paid and 503 were honorary workers. It is only possible in this article to mention some of the efforts which were specially associated with the Red Cross during the war and have not already been alluded to. The supply of provisional limbs was a useful measure; invalid diet kitchens at Malta, Salonika and Egypt were a new and very successful experiment; and in Italy the ambu- lance units, among which may be mentioned one devoted to X-ray work, attained some remarkable results. Wherever it was possible to set up recreation rooms or to entertain the wounded, especially at Christmas time, the Red Cross undertook to do so; and at the conclusion of the war, after assisting in repatriation at Berlin and elsewhere, it continued, as it will continue for some years, to look after and help wounded men, particularly while they are waiting for final decisions as to pensions. Although the general direction of Red Cross business was in the hands of men, it is not too much to say that its outstanding feature was women's work. By hospital nursing and organization at home and abroad, motor-driving, rest- station attendance, and general service including the humblest domestic occupations, to which ladies turned their hands for long periods British women established a lasting claim to national gratitude ; and it may be said that the example they set did more to gain for them their present place in the constitution than several decades of propaganda.
At the end of the war the joint committee was left with a consider- able surplus, which approximated roughly to the amount received from the " Our Day " collection taken a few weeks before the Armis- tice. An Act of Parliament enabled such part of this balance as might not be required for the sick and wounded to be applied to 'indred objects. A sum of 1,339,700 was given to civil hospitals
nd other institutions in England and Wales, and 544,300 to similar
'urposes in the dominions and colonies.
A heavy distribution of, for the most part, well-earned honours as made to Red Cross workers during and after the war, the chief
- riticism in connexion with which was that the higher grades allotted
o the honorary and paid staff at headquarters in London were out proportion to those recommended for commissioners and others xxxii. 9
who had served for long periods abroad, often under trying conditions and sometimes in no small personal danger. On the whole it may safely be said that the Red Cross war fund was managed on sound business lines which gave general satisfaction to the subscribers, the Government, and the participators in its benefits, and reflected great credit on those who carried out the work.
AUTHORITIES. Charters of Incorporation of the British Red Cross Society, 1908 and 1919; Field Service Regulations, Part II.; Organization and Administration (1905) ; Royal Army Medical Corps Training (1911). Schemes for the Organization of Voluntary Aid in England and Wales, 1909 and 1910. Reports of the Joint War Committee and the Joint War Finance Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in Eng- land on voluntary aid rendered to sick and wounded at home and abroad and to British prisoners of war, with appendices (1914-9, H.M. Stationery Office). (J. D. P.)
(2) UNITED STATES. The " American Association of the Red Cross " was organized in 1881, by the special efforts of Clara Barton (see 3.452) and with the approval of President Garfield and Secretary of State Elaine. Miss Barton was its first president. In 1905 the name was changed to National Red Cross, and the organization was incorporated and national- ized; the President of the United States became its president, and the War Department its auditor. By 1912, state relief boards operating under the National Relief Board of the Red Cross had been organized in practically all of the states in the Union as well as in the Philippine Is. and Porto Rico. In 1913 there were 60 chapters with about 12,000 members. In that year the association provided " disaster relief " in response to 13 calls in the United States and five from abroad. $3,000,000 were used in relief operations, of which sum one and a third were contributed directly through the Red Cross. In the same year steps were taken to erect a national memorial building in Wash- ington as a tribute to the heroic services, in connexion with the Sanitary Commission and other activities for the benefit of soldiers, rendered by women of the North and South in the Civil War. To an appropriation by Congress of $400,000, as much more was added by private gifts, and the corner-stone of the building was laid on March 27 1915. The building was occupied as national headquarters early in 1917.
World War Work. Early in the World War, before Ameri- ca's entry, trie Red Cross, with the consent of the Government and in conformity with the treaty of Geneva, offered through the State Department the aid of its trained personnel and con- tributions of hospital supplies to every country involved in the war. The offer was accepted by all the belligerents with the exception of Belgium, which at first desired only supplies and did not ask for personnel until the spring of 1915. Japan, at first accepting, later declined assistance, as its own Red Cross was able to meet all demands, while Italy, when it entered the conflict, asked only for certain supplies. The Red Cross called the attention of the American people to the contributions made by European Red Cross societies during the Spanish-American War, and the President made a public appeal for funds. As a result, sufficient money was soon at the disposal of the Red Cross to undertake active aid to the various belligerents. Large quantities of hospital supplies and about 200 nurses were sent to Europe and distributed in England, Belgium, France, Ger- many, Austria, Serbia and Russia. Seventy-one physicians and surgeons were also sent, and a special sanitary commission of 43 doctors and nurses went to Siberia to fight the typhus plague there. The value of the relief supplies sent to Europe by the Red Cross before the United States entered the war exceeded $1,500,- ooo, of which about $350,000 worth went to Germany and Austria. In the latter part of 1915, when the sanitary and gen- eral medical services of the belligerents had become sufficiently developed to make outside personnel aid unnecessary, the American surgeons and nurses were withdrawn from Europe.
In May 1917, a few weeks after the United States entered the war, President Wilson, as titular head of the American Red Cross, appointed a special Red Cross War Council of seven nationally known men, headed by Henry P. Davison of New York, to direct all the activities of the organization during the war. The first task of this War Council, besides effecting an expansion and elaborate reorganization, was that of obtaining
