ORGANIZING FOR WORK
At No. 5 Rue François Premier stood the American Relief Clearing House.
It was a veritable lighthouse, a tower of strength, if you please, to an
oppressed and suffering people. To its doors came the offerings of a
friendly folk overseas who needed not the formal action of their
Congress before their sympathies and their purse-strings were to be
touched, but who were given heartfelt American response almost before
the burning of Louvain had been accomplished. And from those doors
poured forth that relief, in varied form, but with but one object, the
relief of suffering and misery.
Until the coming of the American Red Cross and its kindred
organizations, this Clearing House was to Paris--to all France, in
fact--almost the sole expression of the real sentiment of the United
States. It was organized, and well organized, with a definite purpose;
on the one hand the avoidance of useless duplications and overlappings,
to say nothing of possible frictions, and upon the other the heartfelt
desire to accomplish the largest measure of good with means that were
not always too ample despite the desire of the folk who were executing
them. More than this, the American Relief Clearing House had a practical
purpose in endeavoring to meet the everyday problems of transportation
of relief supplies. This phase of its work we shall see again when we
consider the organization of the transportation department of the
American Red Cross in France. It is enough to say here and now that it
possessed a very small number of trucks and touring cars which were
worked to their fullest possibilities, and seemingly even beyond, in
the all but vain effort to keep abreast of the incoming relief supplies.
In fact the American Relief Clearing House in its largest endeavors was
in reality a forwarding agency and, although possessing no large
transportation facilities of its own, made large use of existing
commercial agencies and those of the governments of the Allies, to
forward its relief supplies to their destination; whereupon it advised
America not only of the receipt of these supplies but of the uses to
which they were put. The main framework of the organization consisted of
a staff of clerks who kept track of the movements of shipments and who
saw to it that no undue delay occurred in their continuous transit from
sender to recipient.
J. H. Jordain was the chief operating manager of this Clearing House,
while Oscar H. Beatty was its Director-General. Closely affiliated with
the success of the enterprise were Herman H. Harjes, the Paris
representative of a great New York banking house, a man whom we shall
find presently at the head of one of the great ambulance relief works
which preceded the coming of the American Red Cross, J. Ridgely Carter,
James R. Barbour, and Ralph Preston. Mr. Preston crossed to France on
the _Lorraine_ with the preliminary party of survey and was of very
great help at the outset in the formation of its definite plans.
The most dramatic feature perhaps of the American Relief Clearing House
was the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Service, which was closely affiliated
with it. This organization was founded in the early days of 1914 by two
men, each acting independently of the other, who, by personal influence
and a great amount of individual activity, succeeded in forming
ambulance sections of the French Army maintained by American funds and
manned by American boys and nurses who could not wait for the formal
action of their government before flinging themselves into Europe's
great war for world democracy. These two sections first were known as
_Sections Sanitaire Nu. 5_ and _Nu. 6_ of the French Army. At a later
day it was found better policy, as well as more convenient and more
economical, to merge these two sections. This was done, and the merged
sections became known more or less formally as the Norton-Harjes
Ambulance Service.
At the time of the arrival of the American Red Cross in France this
organization actually had in the field five sections of twenty cars
each, two men to a car and two officers to a section. The men who
offered themselves for this work were all volunteers and were, for the
most part, college graduates and men of a disposition to give themselves
to work of this sort. A spirit of self-sacrifice and self-denial was
represented everywhere within the ranks of the organization. To have
been identified with the Norton-Harjes service is to this day a mark of
distinction comparable even with that of the ribbon of the _Croix de
Guerre_.
The Red Cross in the United States, long before our actual entrance into
France, had been helping this service with both money and supplies. It
was quite natural therefore that it should take over this unit, which
immediately assumed the name of the American Red Cross Ambulance
Service. Between that time and the day on which responsibility for
ambulance transport was taken over by the American Army, it organized,
equipped and put in service eight additional sections. Before
disbanding, the number of men had been brought to over six hundred, five
hundred and fifty of them at the front and the remainder in training
camp.
A third facility of the American Relief Clearing House which is worthy
of passing note was the American Distributing Service, organized and
financed by Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. Bliss of our embassy in Paris. It was
first put in operation to furnish supplies to French hospitals
throughout and behind the fighting areas. It operated a small warehouse
in which many specialties--surgical instruments for a particular
instance--were received and in due turn distributed.
* * * * *
For a short time after the arrival of the first Commission from America,
the possibility of affiliating the American Red Cross with the Clearing
House was seriously considered. It became quite evident, however, that
this would not be a feasible plan, but that the American Red Cross, just
beginning to come into the fullness of its strength as a war-time
organization, in order to attain its fullness of efficiency, would have
to become the dominating factor of relief in France. This meant that the
short but useful career of the American Relief Clearing House would have
to be ended and its identity lost in that of the larger and older
organization. This was done. The plant and the equipment and personnel
as well of the Clearing House were formally turned over to the Red Cross
Commission and its first headquarters offices established there in the
Rue François Premier, while Mr. Beatty's title changed from
Director-General of the Clearing House to that of Chief Executive
Officer of the American Red Cross in France.
The offices in the Rue François Premier almost immediately were found
too small for the greatly enlarged activities of the Red Cross, and so
the large building on the corner of the Place de la Concorde and the Rue
Royale, known as No. 4 Place de la Concorde, was engaged as
headquarters. These premises were rented through Ralph Preston for
$25,000 a year and, although it was not so known at the time, this
rental was paid by Mr. Preston out of his own pocket as his personal
contribution to the work of the American Red Cross. Seemingly the new
quarters were large indeed; yet what a task awaited the secretary when
he was compelled to install a force of three hundred people in
eighty-six rooms! The executive of modern business demands his flat-top
desk, his push buttons, his letter files, his stenographer, his
telephone, and "Number Four" was a club building--originally a palace
with crystal chandeliers and red carpets and high ceilings and all the
things that go ordinarily to promote luxury and comfort, but do not go
very far toward promoting business efficiency.
Yet the thing was managed, and for a time managed very well indeed. But
as the work of our Red Cross in France progressed, "Number Four" grew
too small, and from time to time various overflow, or annex offices were
established near by in the Rue Bossy d'Anglais, the Avenue Gabriel, and
the Rue de l'Elysée.
Yet in time these, too, were found insufficient. The army and the navy
in France kept growing, and with them, and ahead of them, the work of
the American Red Cross. Moreover, it was found in many ways most
unsatisfactory to have the work of a single headquarters scattered under
so many different roofs. So in June, 1918, these many Red Cross
activities were brought under a single roof. With the aid of the French
government authorities it was enabled to lease the six-story Hotel
Regina on the Place de Rivoli and directly across from the Louvre. Into
this far more commodious building was moved the larger portion of the
American Red Cross offices in Paris, with the exception of the
headquarters of the northeastern zone, which remained for a little
longer time at No. 4 Place de la Concorde. Upon the signing of the
armistice and the appointment of the American Commission to Negotiate
Peace, the United States government, through the French, requisitioned
both No. 4 Place de la Concorde and the Hotel Crillon for its peace
headquarters. The headquarters of the northeastern zone of the Red
Cross, much smaller with the coming of peace, were moved into the upper
floor of the Hotel Regina.
* * * * *
In the meantime there were many, many changes in the American Red Cross
in France other than those of mere location. Major Grayson M.-P. Murphy
resigned as head of the French Commission early in September, 1917,
leaving behind him a record for expertness and efficiency that has
never been beaten. He was, in reality, merely borrowed from the United
States Army, and to that organization, which then stood badly in need of
both expertness and efficiency, he was returned, while his place as
captain of our American Red Cross overseas was taken by one of his
associates, Major James H. Perkins. Later this Red Cross chief attained
the army rank of lieutenant colonel; yet with Perkins, rank did not
count so very much at the best. To most of his fellow workers he was
known as Major Perkins; yet, to many of them, "Jim Perkins" was the
designation given to this much-loved American Red Cross officer. For if
Major Murphy left behind him a splendid reputation for expertness and
efficiency, Major James H. Perkins left his monument in Paris in the
great affection which he gained in the hearts and minds of each of his
associates. He won the love and respect of every man and woman in the
organization. For here was a real man; a man who, if you please,
preferred to gain loyalty--the quality so extremely necessary to any
successful organization, whether of war time or of peace--through his
own personality, his kindliness, and his fairness rather than by the
authority vested in his office.
"It is impossible to exaggerate the whole-heartedness which Major
Perkins gave to the upbuilding of our work here (France)," wrote Henry
P. Davison, chairman of the War Council of the Red Cross at the time
when the army, following its example in the case of Major Grayson M-P.
Murphy, reached out and demanded Major Perkins's services for itself. He
continued:
"We can understand the appeal that the army service makes to him, but we
greatly regret the loss of his guidance and association. Whatever we
have accomplished or may accomplish, it must never be forgotten that
Major Perkins and Major Murphy were the pioneers who showed the way, who
interpreted in practical fashion the desire of a whole nation to help
through the Red Cross in the greatest cause to which a people ever gave
their hearts and their resources. They, and we who carry forward the
work of the Red Cross, will always be keenly sensible of what we owe to
the energy, resourcefulness, and devotion which Major Perkins put into
the task of developing from its beginning the mission of the Red Cross
in the war."
And while I am quoting, perhaps I can do no better than to quote from a
report of Major Perkins, himself, in which he summed up the work of the
American Red Cross after its first year in France. He wrote:
"It is impossible for any one who has not had the experience of the last
year in France to realize the difficulties which stood in the way of
organizing an enormous quasi business, quasi relief organization;
personnel was hard to get from America, supplies were hard to get,
transportation was almost impossible, the mail service was bad and the
telephone service was worse; but in spite of all these troubles the
spirit with which the men of the organization undertook everything,
carried things through in the most wonderful manner."
Spirit! That was Major Jim Perkins. His was a rare spirit; and the Red
Cross men who had the pleasure and the opportunity of working under and
with him will testify as to that. Spirit was one of the big things that
made this captain of the Red Cross in the months when the difficulties
of its task overseas were at high-water mark carry forward so very well
indeed. Another was his rare breadth of vision. He, himself, still loves
to quote an old French priest, whose parish children had been greatly
helped by the work of our Red Cross among them.
"The American Red Cross is something new in the world," once wrote this
venerable curé. "Never before has any nation in time of war sought to
organize a great body to bind up the wounds of war, not only of its own
soldiers but of the soldiers and peoples of other nations. Never before
has so great a humanitarian work been undertaken or the idea in such
terms conceived, and the result will be greater than any of us can now
see."
So it was that Major Jim Perkins "saw big"--much larger, perhaps, than
some of his associates at the time when the press of conflict was hard
upon all of them. Some of these might have thought his plans large or
even visionary; one or two frankly expressed themselves to that effect.
Yet these were the very men who, when the Perkins ideas came into use,
saw that they did not overshoot the mark.
It was under the régime of this Red Cross captain that the American Red
Cross established a service to the French army in the form of canteens,
hospitals, supplies, and money donations that led many of its commanders
as well as several prominent French statesmen to remark that its steps
along these lines were of inestimable value in maintaining the morale of
the _poilu_ and so in the final winning of the war. In later chapters of
this book we shall describe in some detail the first canteen efforts of
our Red Cross in France, and find how they were given to the faithful
little men whose horizon blue uniform has come to designate tenacity and
dogged purpose.
One of the very typical actions of the Military Affairs Department under
Major Perkins was the help given to General Pétain's army, which had
suffered acutely. His assistance came at a time which rendered it of
double value to the French commander. In fact that was a trait of very
real genius that Major Perkins displayed again and again throughout his
management of the Red Cross--the knack of extending the aid of his
organization at a time when its work would be of the greatest assistance
to the winning of the war. In fact, it was upon his shoulders that there
fell the task of directing our American Red Cross in meeting its two
greatest military emergencies--the great German offensive in the Somme
in March, 1918, and the bitter fighting in and about Château-Thierry
some four months later. The official records of both the French and the
American armies teem with communications of commendation for the efforts
of the American Red Cross on those two memorable occasions.
[Illustration: SO THIS IS PARIS
A. E. F. Boys, guests of our A. R. C. in its great hospital at St.
Cloud, look down about the "Queen City of the World"]
Once in stating his policy in regard to the direction of the Red Cross
Department of Military Affairs, of which he had been chief before
succeeding Major Murphy as Commissioner to France, Major Perkins laid
down his fundamental principles of work quite simply: they were merely
to find and to develop the quickest and most effective way of helping
the soldiers of the allied armies, and, particularly in the case of the
United States Army, to put the Red Cross at the full service of every
individual in it, not only in succoring the wounded but in making a
difficult life as comfortable as was humanely possible for the well, and
to perform these duties in the most economical and effective manner
possible.
Here was a platform broad and generous, and, with the greatest armies
that the world in all its long centuries of fighting has ever known,
affording opportunities so vast as to be practically limitless. One
might have thought that in a war carried forward on so unprecedented and
colossal a scale that the Red Cross--or, for that matter, any other
relief organization--might have found its fullest opportunity in a
single activity. But seemingly that is not the Red Cross way of doing
things. And in this particular war its great and dominating American
organization was forever seeking out opportunities for service far
removed from its conventional activities of the past, and of the things
that originally might have been expected of it. Count so much for its
versatility.
Consider, for instance, its activities in the field with the American
Army--we also shall consider these in greater detail farther along in
the pages of this book. The field service of the Red Cross in
France--the distribution of such homely and needed man creature comforts
as tobacco and toilet articles to the troopers in the trenches or close
behind them--was a work quite removed from that started by women such as
Florence Nightingale or Clara Barton. But who shall rise to say that, in
its way, it was not nearly if not quite as essential?
It was this field service that Major Perkins inaugurated, then urged,
and, in its earliest phases, personally directed. In addition he had
charge of the first developments of the canteen or outpost services at
the front. This consisted of the establishment of more or less permanent
stations by the Red Cross as close to the front-line trenches as was
either practicable or permissible. Open both day and night, these
outposts took, at night under the cover of darkness, hot drinks and
comforts to the men holding the trenches and at all hours took care of
them as they came and went to and from the lines of advanced fighting.
When, slowly but surely, the American Army began to be a formidable
combat force in France, the already great problems of Major Perkins were
vastly increased. Up to that time the allied soldiers had been receiving
the bulk of the assistance of our Red Cross. Now the balance of the work
had to be changed and its preponderance swung toward our own army. Yet
Perkins did not forget the grateful words and looks of thanks that he
had received so many, many times from the _poilus_ and all of their
_capitaines_.
"Not less for the French, but more for the Americans," he quietly
announced as his policy.
So it was done, and so continued. The sterling qualities of leadership
that this man had shown from the first in the repeated times of great
stress and emergency stood him in good stead. He already had instilled
into the hearts and souls of the men and women who worked with him that
consecration of purpose and enthusiasm for the work in hand which
rendered so many of them, under emergency, supermen and superwomen. I
have myself a high regard for organization. But I do believe that
organization, without the promptings of the human heart to soften as
well as to direct it, is as nothing. How often have we heard of the man
with the hundred-thousand-dollar mind and the two-cent heart. And how
well we all know the fate that eventually confronts him.
To Harvey D. Gibson, who succeeded him as Commissioner to France in the
summer of 1918, Major Perkins turned over an organization whose heart
was as big as its mind, and then wended his own way toward the army,
where he repeated so many of his successes in the Red Cross. But, as we
have said, left behind him in this last organization enduring memorials
of great affection.
Eventually there came other big chiefs of our American Red Cross in
France. Colonel Gibson returned to the United States in March, 1919,
with the satisfaction of having done a thorough job thoroughly. He was
succeeded by Colonel George H. Burr, as big-hearted and as broad in
vision as Perkins. At the same time that Burr came to the seat of
command in Paris, Colonel Robert E. Olds, whom Gibson had brought to
Paris, became Commissioner for Europe. Between Burr and Olds there was
the finest sort of teamwork. The period in which they worked was far
from an easy one. With the armistice more than three months past, with
the constantly irritating and unsettling effect of the Peace Conference
upon Paris and all who dwelt within her stout stone walls, with the mad
rush of war enthusiasts to get back to the peace days in the homeland,
with the strain and overwork of long months of the conflict finally
telling upon both bodies and nerves, the necessity of maintaining the
_morale_ of the Red Cross itself, to say nothing of the men it served,
was urgent. The dramatic phases of the work were gone. So was the glory.
There remained simply the huge problem of orderly demobilization, of
bringing the structure down to its original dimensions. A job much more
easily said than done; but one that was done and done very well indeed.
We have digressed from the days of the war. Return once again to them.
In all that time there were many, many changes in our American Red Cross
in Paris--one might fairly say, "of course." Men came and men went and
plans and quarters were changed with a fair degree of frequency. But far
more men--women, too--came than went, and moving days and plan changings
grew farther and farther apart; for here was a definite and consistent
planning and upbuilding of organization. If there is any one material
thing upon which we Americans pride ourselves to-day more than another
it is upon our ability to upbuild our efficiency through organization.
And I think it is but fair to say if it had not been thoroughly
organized much of the effort of the American Red Cross in France would
have been lost. Commissions and commissioners might come and commissions
and commissioners might go, but the plan of organization stood, and was
at all times a great factor in the success of the work overseas.
* * * * *
The original plan of organization was simple. It did not, in the first
instance, comprehend more than a Commissioner for Europe, with the bare
possibility of other commissioners being appointed for the separate
countries--if there should be found to be sufficient need for them. With
the Commissioner for Europe was to be directly affiliated an advisory
council, a bureau of legal advice and general policy, and various
administrative bureaus and standing committees. The chief plan of the
organization, however, divided the work of the American Red Cross in
Europe into two great divisions: the one a department of civil affairs,
which would undertake relief work for the civilian population of France,
which in turn embraced the feeding, housing, and education of refugees,
_répatries, réformes, and mutilés_, reconstruction and rehabilitation
work in the devastated districts, and both direct and coöperative work
in the cure and prevention of tuberculosis; and the other the
department of military affairs, which undertook, as its province,
military hospitals, diet kitchens, relief work for the armies of the
Allies, medical and surgical and prisoners' information bureaus, medical
research and nursing and hospital supply and surgical dressings
services, canteens, rest stations and infirmaries, nurses' homes,
movable kitchens, and the relief of _mutilés_. It is of the work of this
latter department as it affected the boys of our army in France that
this book is written.
* * * * *
Before Major Murphy, the first American Red Cross Commissioner to
France, had proceeded very far with his work, he found that he would
have further to divide and subdivide its activities. In connection with
his deputy, Major James H. Perkins, he held several conferences with
General Pershing who, day by day, was becoming better acquainted with
the situation and the opportunities it offered. General Pershing stated
quite frankly that in all probability it would be many months before his
army would be an effective fighting force and that the Red Cross must,
during those months, carry the American flag in Europe.
The first organization scheme comprehended several American commissions
for the various countries in the zones of military activities, each
independent of the other, but all in turn reporting to the Commissioner
for Europe at Paris, who was responsible only to the War Council of the
Red Cross at Washington. As a matter of actual and chronological fact
the Commission to Belgium antedated the coming of the first Red Cross
party to France. Long before even that stormy and historic April evening
when the United States formally declared war upon the Kaiser and all the
things for which the Kaiser stood, the American Red Cross was in Europe,
helping to feed and clothe and comfort ravished Belgium. And its
Commissioner ranked only second in importance to Herbert C. Hoover, who
was in entire charge of the situation for America.
So, with its activities increasing, the Red Cross further divided its
work. In the fall of 1917, Major Perkins became Commissioner for France
and a short time afterwards separate commissioners were appointed for
Great Britain, for Italy, for Switzerland, for Belgium, and for other
countries. And these in turn appointed their own individual
organizations, complete structures erected for business efficiency and
to get a big job done quickly and well.
All this sounds simple, but it was not; for it is one thing to
accomplish business organization, and accomplish it quickly, here at
home in a land which has barely been touched by the ravages of war and
not at all by invasion, and quite another to set up such a structure in
a land shell-shocked and nerve-racked and man-crippled by four years of
war and actual invasion. Poor France! The war smote hard upon her. By
the time that the Murphy Commission reached her shores she had even
abandoned the smiling mask which she had tried to carry through the
earliest months of the conflict. In Paris the streets were deserted. By
day one might see an omnibus, or might not. Occasionally an ancient taxi
carriage drawn by an ancient horse, too decrepit for service of any sort
at the front, might be encountered. By night the scene was dismal
indeed. Few street lights were burning--there was a great scarcity of
coal and street lights meant danger from above, from the marauding raids
of the great airships of the _boche_. The few street lamps that were
kept alight as a matter of safety and great necessity had their globes
smeared with thick blue paint and were but faint points of light against
the deep blackness of the night. So that when the glad day of armistice
finally came and the street lights blazed forth again--if not in their
old-time brilliancy at least in a comparative one--Paris referred to the
hour as the one of her "unbluing."
The difficulties of obtaining materials, even such simple office
materials as books and blanks and paper, to say nothing of typewriters
and the more complicated paraphernalia, the problem of service of every
sort--clerical, stenographic, telephone, repair--can easily be imagined.
There were times when to an ordinary business man they would have seemed
insurmountable; but the Red Cross is not an ordinary business man. It
moves under inspiration--inspiration and the need of the moment. And so
it does not long permit difficulties, either usual or abnormal, to block
its path.
To reduce all of this to organization was a distinct and difficult
problem. Our Red Cross which had jumped into the French civilian and
military situation while it awaited the coming of the first troops from
America, first organized in practically the only way that it was
possible for it to organize. It found men in big jobs--some of those
very activities that we found more or less correlated in the work of the
American Relief Clearing House--and told other men to take other big
jobs and work them out in their own way.
This was far from ideal organization, of course. It meant much
duplication and overlapping of functional work--in purchasing, in
transportation, personnel, and the like. But it was the only sort of
organization that was possible at first, and for a considerable time
afterward. By the fall of 1917, when Commissioner Perkins had settled
down to the details of his big new job and was ready to take up the
reorganization of the Red Cross activities in France, there came the
great drive of the Austrians and the Germans against the Italian front,
with the direct result that the American Red Cross organization in Paris
was called upon to bend every effort toward rushing whole trainloads of
workers and supplies southward toward Italy. And in the spring of 1918
came the last great drive of the Germans in France--that supreme hour
when disaster hung in the very air and the fate of the democracy of the
world wavered.
Yet the first half of 1918 was not entirely spun into history before
the Red Cross in France was beginning its reorganization. The third
Commissioner for France, Harvey D. Gibson, had been appointed and by
June was on his way to Paris. One of the first of the huge tasks that
awaited him--for it then seemed as if the war was to last for years
instead of but four or five months longer--was this very problem of
reorganization. Without delay he set upon it, and with the help of his
Deputy Commissioner and assistant, George Murnane, evolved an entirely
new plan, which gave far larger opportunities for the development of the
American Red Cross in France and was, in fact, so simple and so logical
in its workings as to become the permanent scheme of organization.
Let me emphasize and reiterate: the old plan, with its two great
separate departments of military and civilian affairs, was not only not
essentially a bad plan, but it was the only plan possible with the
conditions of great stress and strain under which our Red Cross began
its operations in France. But it was quickly outgrown. It did not and
could not measure up to the real necessities of the situation.
"The double program of the Red Cross, under two large departments of
military and civilian affairs," wrote Elizabeth Shipley Sergeant, of
this older plan in _The New Republic_, "... followed a good Red Cross
tradition and seemed to be based on a genuine separation of the problems
involved. The great crisis in France a year ago was a civilian crisis,
and the distinguished American business men who directed the Red Cross
were wise enough to associate with themselves specialists in social
problems and to give them a free hand. The chiefs of the military
bureau, some of whom, like the doctors, were also specialists, had no
less a free hand. Indeed the situation was so complex and the
necessities were so immediate that every bureau chief and every field
delegate was practically told to go ahead and do his utmost. The result
was great vitality, great enthusiasm, genuine accomplishment...."
In the twelve months that the American Red Cross had been established
in France its work had multiplied many, many times; in but six months
the size of the American Army there had quadrupled, and the end was by
no means in sight. To plan an organization that would measure up to meet
such vast growth and meet it adequately was no child's play.
To begin with, he decided that the great functional workings, such as
those of which we have just spoken--transportation, supplies, personnel,
construction, and the like--should be centralized in Paris and the great
duplications and overlappings of the old system avoided. This, in turn,
thrust far too great responsibilities and far too much detail upon those
same Paris headquarters. So in turn he took from it its vast overload
and divided the organization into nine zones, of which more in good
time. If these zone organizations had been situated in the United States
instead of in France it is quite possible that the functional activities
might have been very largely concentrated at their several headquarters.
For in our own land such things as personnel, transportation, supplies,
and construction could be readily obtained at headquarters
points--Boston, New York, Chicago, New Orleans, or San Francisco, for
instance. In France they not only were not readily obtainable, but
rarely obtainable at any cost or any trouble. Think of the difficulties
of obtaining either motor trucks or canteen workers which confronted the
zone manager at Neufchâteau, just back of the big front line! It was
well that the plan of organization under which he worked provided
definitely he was to requisition Paris for such supplies--human or
material--and that in turn Paris might draw upon the great resources of
America.
Such in brief was the plan. It was simplicity itself; yet was builded to
measure to the necessities of the situation. And so it did measure--to
the necessities of the situation. Time and experience proved that; also
they proved the value of central bureaus, but did not segregate them as
before under the separate headings of Military and Civilian. Instead
there proved necessary seven "functional departments"--to be responsible
for plans and programs and instructions for carrying on the work. The
directors of those seven departments served as assistants to the
administrative head of the American Red Cross, the Commissioner to
France. Considering him as the commander in chief and his seven
directors as his staff officers, the Red Cross in France began to take
on a distinctly military form.
The seven departments were as follows:
Department of Requirements: Bureau of Supplies; Transportation;
Personnel; Permits and Passes; Construction; Manufacture.
Medical and Surgical Department: Bureau of Hospital
Administration; Tuberculosis and Public Health; Children's
Bureau; Reëducation and Reconstruction; Nurses.
Medical Research and Intelligence Department.
Department of Army and Navy Service: Bureau of Canteens; Home
and Hospital Service; Outpost Service; Army Field Service.
Department of General Relief: Bureau of Refugees; Soldiers'
Families; War Orphans; Agriculture.
Department of French Hospitals.
Department of Public Information.
So much for the general, or staff, organization. It covered, of course,
all France. Yet for practical operations France was divided into nine
great geographical zones which in turn were subdivided into districts.
Each zone possessed its own warehouses and supply and transportation
organization, and in each the entire operating organization came under a
single head, the Zone Manager, whose responsibility for his own
particular area was similar to that of the Commissioner's authority for
all France. The Zone Manager had on his staff representatives of any of
the headquarters departments which might function in his area.
The scheme was simple, and it worked. Correspondence was free between
headquarters at Paris and the individual workers in the field, but
copies of all instructions were also sent to the Zone Managers--in some
cases to district managers also--so that they might be properly informed
and all the operations coördinated.
The nine zones of military operations with their headquarters were as
follows:
Northern Havre
Northwestern Brest
Western St. Nazaire
Southwestern Bordeaux
Southern Marseilles
North Intermediate Tours
South Intermediate Lyons
Northeastern Paris
Eastern Neufchâteau
Now consider, if you will, the workings of the seven great central
bureaus, in so far at least as they concern the province of this book.
The scheme for the Department of Requirements, as you may see from the
table that I have just given, included not only the Bureau of Supplies,
Transportation, Construction, and Manufacture--which we will consider in
separate chapters--and Permits and Passes, but a section of General
Insurance, to be responsible for all insurance matters except life
insurance for Red Cross workers, which fell within the province of the
Bureau of Personnel. The Medical and Surgical Department had its
functions definitely outlined. It was stated that it was to be in charge
of all the medical and surgical problems of the American Red Cross in
France (except those specifically assigned to the Medical Research and
Intelligence Department); that it was to formulate policies and to
undertake a general supervision of medical and surgical activities.
Moreover, it was to maintain the necessary contact with the United
States Army and Navy authorities, so that the Red Cross could be
prepared to render prompt service in the event of medical or surgical
emergencies. It was to be responsible for the determination of all
medical and surgical American Red Cross standards; for decisions
regarding supplies and manufactures for medical and surgical purposes;
and for judgment regarding medical requisition. These things were set
down with great exactness, and it was well that they should be; for the
position of the Red Cross in regard to the medical departments of both
the army and the navy has ever been a delicate as well as an intricate
and helpful one. So it was, too, that it was determined that each of the
nine zone organizations should include a Medical and Surgical Department
representative who should report to the Zone Manager and be responsible
for executing for him all the medical and surgical instructions received
from headquarters as well as for the study and development of medical
and surgical opportunities within the zone. It was further set down that
this zone representative should be in charge of Red Cross hospital
administration within its territory and should direct its operations at
the American Red Cross hospitals, dispensaries, infirmaries,
convalescent homes, and all similar activities.
The work of the Army and Navy Department also was expanded in great
detail. And, inasmuch as all of its work comes so closely within the
province of this book, I shall follow some of that detail. For instance,
the plan of its organization set down not only the Bureaus of Canteens,
the Home and Hospital Service, Outpost Service and Army Field Service,
but also laid down the definite plans of action to be followed by each
of these bureaus. Starting with the first of them, the Bureau of
Canteens was to be responsible, through the zone organizations, for the
development of this service--always so dear to the heart of the
doughboy--throughout all France, for the inspection of its operations
including reviews of its operating costs and for all activities
regarding plans for the supplies, construction, and equipment of the
canteens. The Headquarters Bureau of this work at Paris was to develop
instructions and formulate policies for the operation of these stations,
but in the zones their actual operation was to fall under the
jurisdiction of the local representatives of the Army and Navy
Department who in turn, of course, reported direct to the Zone Manager
controlling supplies and transportation movement in and out of the
district.
The Bureau of Home and Hospital Service was divided into three
sections--great sections because of the vastness of the work that it
might be called upon to perform for an army of two million, or perhaps
even four million men. These were the Home Communication Section, the
Home Service Section, and the Section of General Service at Military
Hospitals. The task of the first of these sections--which presently we
shall see amplified--was to obtain and transmit to the United States or
to authorized army and navy officials in France and also to relatives in
the United States, such information as might possibly be obtained in
regard to dead, wounded, missing, or prisoner American soldiers or
sailors. It was to be supplemental to and not in duplication of the
service of the quartermaster of the United States Army. As a part of its
work the section was to render aid in registering and photographing the
graves of our soldiers and sailors.
At headquarters in Paris the work of the Home Communication Section was
to be concerned with general executive direction, the determination of
policies, the issuance of instructions, and the actual transcribing and
forwarding of the reports to America. In the zones its activities were
brought under the zone Army and Navy Bureau. Its actual work was planned
to be conducted through searchers in the field, in camps, and in
hospitals.
The Home Service work, while in a sense similar to that of the Home
Communication Section, in another sense was quite the reverse. For while
the first of these two services concerned itself with supplying the
anxious mother back home with information regarding the boy from whom
she had not heard for so long a time, it was the task of the Home
Service also, through its representatives in the field, camps, or in
hospitals (in many instances the selfsame representatives as those of
the Home Communication) so far as possible to relieve the anxieties of
soldiers regarding affairs at home.
The third section of the Home and Hospital Service bore the rather
imposing title of Section of General Service at Military Hospitals. Its
task was to assist in furnishing medical and surgical supplies to army
and navy hospitals in accordance with the plans of the Medical and
Surgical Department, to distribute general comforts to our sick and
wounded, to erect and operate recreation huts at the hospitals, and even
to develop gardens at the hospitals for furnishing fresh vegetables to
patients--a part of the program which, because of the sudden ending of
the war, was never quite realized. Furthermore, the work of this Section
contemplated the operation of nurses' homes and huts. All of these
activities were to be under the chief representative at the hospital
whose task it was to correlate and direct all the operations.
Alongside of Home and Hospital Service in the army and navy stood the
Bureaus of Outpost Service and of Army Field Service. In the plan for
the first of these, the American Red Cross would endeavor to maintain at
as many points as was consistently possible outposts at which supplies
would be kept and comforts and necessities distributed to men in the
line. From these points, as well as from points even in advance of their
locations, emergency sustenance and comforts were to be given men at
advanced dressing stations and at every other point along the front
where our troops might actually be reached.
In the Army Field Service, the American Red Cross was to have, with each
army division, a representative to coöperate with the Army Medical Corps
to furnish supplementary medical and surgical supplies, to distribute
supplies and comforts to troops, to perform such canteen service as was
possible in emergencies, and for a general coöperation with the men
working in the Home Communication and the Home services.
* * * * *
If I have taken much of your time with the rather lengthy details of
this final war-time plan of organization of the American Red Cross in
France, it is because one cannot well understand the results of a great
machine such as it became--with more than six thousand uniformed workers
in the field, the hospitals, the canteens, and the headquarters of
France--without looking a little bit beneath its hoodings and its
coverings and seeing something of the actual working of its mechanism.
I like, myself, to think first of the Red Cross in its vast humanitarian
aspects; and yet the business side of the great organization, so far as
I have had the opportunity of seeing into it, has fascinated me. To go
behind the scenes of the greatest helping hand of all time and there see
system, precision, and order, is a mighty privilege. The Headquarters
building of the American Red Cross in the city of Washington is a
monumental structure--an architectural triumph in white marble, planned
as a great and enduring memorial long before the coming of the war. Even
in the busiest days of 1918 its beautiful and restful exterior gave
little evidence of the whirl of industry within and behind, for far to
the rear of the main Headquarters building, designed, as I have just
said, with no immediate thought of war, stretched great, plain emergency
buildings, each a hive of offices and each peopled with hundreds of
clerks, with desks and typewriters and telephones--all in coördination
and all a part of the paraphernalia that goes to the making of the cogs
and wheels and shafts and cylinders of the great modern machine of
business of to-day.
Behind this building there were many other such headquarters
structures--buildings here and there across the face of the United
States and in some of the great capitals of Europe--Paris, London, Rome,
Geneva, for instance. Of these, none more important, none busier than
the headquarters of the American Red Cross in France, in the six-storied
Hotel Regina, Paris, in its turn a veritable hive of offices and peopled
with more clerks, more desks, more typewriters, more telephones, and all
this paraphernalia coördinated as we have just seen, by modern and
detailed business system.
Again behind these headquarters buildings still others; concentration
warehouses in each of America's forty-eight states, to say nothing of
her Federal capital; warehouses at ports of embarkation; warehouses at
ports of debarkation; at central points in France, and points behind the
firing line; huts, canteens, in some cases entire hospitals, motor
trucks, camionettes, supplies in the hundreds of thousands of tons to go
from the warehouses into the camions and back again into the warehouses,
and ten thousand workers, six thousand in France alone. What a mess it
all would have been without a coördinated system, definitely laid down
and definitely followed!
To have builded such a machine, to have laid down so huge and so
definite a plan in the days before the war would seemingly have been a
matter of long years. But we now know that the Red Cross is an emergency
organization. In emergency it was developed--not in years, but in
months, nay, even in weeks.
"We had to build an organization--and operate it all the time that we
were building it," one of the Washington officers of the organization
once told me. "We had to start to get actual materials and supplies for
field relief work of every sort at the very hour and minute that we were
sending our first working commission to France and were struggling to
get a competent field relief organization. In every direction raw and
inexperienced human material confronted us. We were raw and
inexperienced ourselves. And yet, as we confronted the big problem and
turned it over between us, we saw light. We began to realize certain
definite things. We realized, for instance, that when we needed an
executive to supervise the turning out of many hundreds of millions of
hospital dressings, we did not, after all, need a nurse or a doctor, but
a man or a woman who had the experience or the technique to turn out
dressings in huge quantities. We needed an executive. We found such a
man in the person of a lumberman out in the Middle West. We brought him
to Washington and there he made good on the job."
These experiences were paralleled in Paris even through the
exigencies of the situation, the extreme emergency which at
all times confronted our Red Cross there, until the fateful
eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918
had been met and long since passed. It therefore was not always
possible to pick executives with such care and discrimination
as would be possible in the United States; in fact the best results
were obtained by the more or less firmly fixed method of finding the
personnel here--generally in response to definite cable requests from
Paris--and sending it to France, but not always. Occasionally the
reverse was true. Men already overseas were thrust quite unexpectedly
into posts of great trust and great responsibility--posts requiring
broad and instant initiative--and in those posts developed abilities
which they, themselves, had not realized they possessed.
In fact it is worth stating that the zone plan of organization
contemplated this very possibility, and so gave to each Zone Manager
great autonomy and freedom of action. In no other way would it have been
possible to obtain immediate and efficient results, particularly in a
war-beset land where communication of every sort, by train, by motor
car, by post, by telegraph, and by telephone, was so greatly
overburdened. The very autonomy of the final organization plan was
largely responsible for its success. It was one of the lubricants which
made the big business machine of the American Red Cross in France
function so well.
Have you ever stood beside a fairly complex machine--a linotype or a
silk loom or a paper machine, for instance--and after examining its
intricacy of cams and cogs and shafts, wondered how it turned out its
product with such precision and rapidity? So it is with the big business
machine of the American Red Cross. You might stand close to any one of
its many, many individual activities--the sewing room of a chapter house
here in the United States, a base hospital behind the front in France, a
transport receiving its medical supplies--and wonder truly at the
coördination of such huge activities; for they did coördinate. The big
machine functioned, and as a rule functioned very well indeed. And
because it did function so very well the largest single humanitarian
effort in the history of the world was carried forward to success with a
minimum of friction and loss of precious energy.
So much, if you please, for practical business methods in an
international emergency.