Part 1 (1/2)
With the Doughboy in France.
by Edward Hungerford.
PREFACE
Six months ago I finished writing the chapters of this book. At that time the American Red Cross still had a considerable force in Paris--throughout France for that matter. It was still functioning and, after its fas.h.i.+on, functioning extremely well. In the language of the French it ”marched.” To-day its marching days in the land of the lilies are nearly over. The personnel have nearly all returned home; the few that remain are clearing and packing the records. In a short time the _Croix Rouge Americaine_ which for months was so evident in the streets of the French capital will be but a memory along the Boulevards. But a memory of accomplishment not soon to be forgotten. If there is one undying virtue of the Frenchman it is that of memory. Seemingly he cannot forget. And for years the remembrance of our Red Cross in his land is going to be a pleasant thought indeed. Of that I am more than sure.
To attempt to write a history, that should be at all adequate as complete history, of a great effort which was still in progress, as the writing went forward, would have been a lamentable task indeed. So this book makes no pose as history; it simply aims to be a picture, or a series of pictures of America in a big job, the pictures made from the standpoint of a witnesser of her largest humanitarian effort--the work of the American Red Cross.
I should feel embarra.s.sed, moreover, at signing my name to this book were any reader of it to believe that it was in any large sense whatsoever a ”one man” production. The size of the field to be covered, the brief s.p.a.ce of time allotted in which to make some sort of a comprehensive picture of a really huge endeavor, made it necessary for the author to call for help in all directions. The answers to that call were immediate and generous. It hardly would be possible within a single chapter of this volume to make a complete list of the men and women who helped in its preparation. But the author does desire to state his profound sense of indebtedness to Mrs. Caroline Singer Mondell, Mrs.
Kathleen Hills, Miss E. Buckner Kirk, Major Daniel T. Pierce, Captain George Buchanan Fife and Lieutenant William D. Hines. These have borne with him patiently and have been of much real a.s.sistance. His appreciation is great.
This picture of an American effort tells its own story. I have no intention at this time or place to attempt to elaborate it; but merely wish in pa.s.sing to record my personal and sincere opinion that, in the workings of our Red Cross overseas, there seemed to me to be such an outpouring of affection, of patriotism, of a sincere desire to serve as I have never before seen. It was indeed a triumph for our teachings and our ideals.
E. H.
New York--January, 1920.
CHAPTER I
AMERICA AWAKENS
In that supreme hour when the United States consecrated herself to a world ideal and girded herself for the struggle, to the death, if necessary, in defense of that ideal, the American Red Cross was ready.
Long before that historic evening of the sixth of April, 1917, when Congress made its grim determination to enter the cause ”for the democracy of the world,” the Red Cross in the United States had felt the prescience of oncoming war. For nearly three years it had heard of, nay even seen, the unspeakable horrors of the war into which it was so soon to be thrust. It had witnessed the cruelties of the most modern and scientific of conflicts; a war in which science seemingly had but multiplied the horrors of all the wars that had gone before. Science and _kultur_ between them had done this very thing. In the weary months of the conflict that began with August, 1914, the American Red Cross had taken far more than a merely pa.s.sive interest in the Great War overseas.
It had watched its sister organizations from the allied countries, already involved in the conflict, struggle in Belgium and France and Russia against terrific odds; it had bade each of these ”G.o.dspeed,” and uttered many silent prayers for their success. The spirit of Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton still lived--and still enthused.
It would have been odd--almost inconceivable, in fact--if anything else had been true. It would have been unpardonable if the American Red Cross had not, long before our entrance into the conflict, scented that forthcoming step, and, having thus antic.i.p.ated history, had failed to make the most of the situation. We Americans pride ourselves as a nation upon our foresightedness, and an inst.i.tution so distinctly American as the American Red Cross could hardly fail to have such a virtue imbedded in the backbone of its character.
Ofttimes, as a boy, have I read of the warriors of long ago, and how, when they prepared for battle, it was their women--their wives and their mothers, if you please,--who girded them for the conflict; who breathed the prayers for their success, and who, whether or not they succeeded in attaining that success, bound up their wounds and gave them comfort upon their return. Such is the spirit of the Red Cross. The American artist who created that most superb of all posters, _The Greatest Mother in the World_, and who placed in the arms of that majestic and calm-faced woman the miniature figure of a soldier resting upon a stretcher, sensed that spirit. The American Red Cross is indeed the greatest mother in the world, and what mother--what American mother in particular--could have failed in the early spring of 1917 to antic.i.p.ate the inevitable?
Certainly none of the mothers of the hundred thousand or more boys who antic.i.p.ated our own formal entrance into the Great War, by offering themselves--bodies and hearts and souls--to the armies of Britain, France, and Canada.
Other pens more skilled than mine have told, and will continue to tell, of the organization of the Red Cross at home to meet the certainties and the necessities of the oncoming war. For if America had not heretofore realized the magnitude of the task that was to confront her and had even permitted herself to become dulled to the horrors of the conflict overseas, the historic evening of the sixth of April, 1917, awakened her. It galvanized her from a pa.s.sive repugnance at the scenes of the tragic drama being enacted upon the great stage of Europe into a bitter determination that, having been forced into the conflict, no matter for what reason, she would see it through to victory; and no matter what the cost. Yet cost in this sense was never to be interpreted into recklessness. Her boys were among her most precious possessions, and, if she were to give them without stint and without reserve--all for the glory of her supreme ideal--she would at least surround them with every possible requisite for their health, their comfort, and their strength.
This was, and is, and will remain, the fundamental American policy.
With such a policy, where should America turn save to her Red Cross? And who more fit to stand as its spiritual and actual head than her President himself? So was it done. And when President Wilson found that the grave responsibilities of his other great war tasks would prevent him from giving the American Red Cross the detailed attention which it needed, he quickly appointed a War Council. This War Council was hard at work in a little over a month after the signing of the declaration of war. It established itself in the headquarters building of the Red Cross in the city of Was.h.i.+ngton and quickly began preparations for the great task just ahead.
For the fiber of this War Council the President scanned closely the professional and business ranks of American men. He reached out here and there and chose--here and there. And, in a similar way, the War Council chose its own immediate staff. A man from a New York city banking house would find his office or his desk--it was not every executive that could have an office to himself in those days--adjoining that of a ranch owner from Montana or Wyoming. The lawyer closed his brief case and the doctor placed his practice in other hands. The manufacturer bade his plant ”good-by” and the big mining expert ceased for the moment to think of lodes and strata. A common cause--a common necessity--was binding them together.
War!