Appropriations from the Red Cross war fund to March 1, 1918, including
those to cover budgets to April 30, totaled $77,721,918.22. Of this
amount sums aggregating $30,936,103.04 were for relief work in France. A
chain of warehouses has been established behind the lines all the way
across France, from the coast to Switzerland. The greatest motor
transport organization there is in the world, outside of those actually
operated by the armies, also has been developed. The workers actually
engaged in the organization in France number more than 3,000, a large
percentage of them being volunteers who are serving without financial
compensation, and most of them paying their own expenses as well.
Relief work in France is divided between a Department of Military
Affairs and a Department of Civil Affairs. The former department, in
addition to maintaining a hospital supply service that provides for
3,800 hospitals, a surgical dressings service that turns out and
distributes hundreds of thousands of dressings every week, and three
American Red Cross military hospitals, has concentrated a large amount
of attention on canteen work, in the interest of both the American and
French Armies.
Twelve canteens at the front have been in operation for the French Army,
and recently the same service was installed to supply coffee and
refreshments to American soldiers in the trenches. It is likely that the
twelve canteens will be increased to forty. The record of the front line
canteens for a five month period was 700,000 soldiers served. In line of
communication canteens, located at railroad junction points,
eighty-eight American women workers have served an average of 20,000
soldiers daily. At the metropolitan canteens, in Paris, more than
3,000,000 soldiers have been served since the American Red Cross entered
this field of work.
Preliminary to the arrival of the American expeditionary force in
France, the American Red Cross did important work in improving the
sanitary conditions in the zone which the United States troops were to
occupy. This work is constantly kept up to meet the situation as the
army abroad increases in size.