Appropriations for relief work in Italy have totaled $3,588,826.
Emergency relief work, rendered at a time when no permanent commission
had been established in Italy, stands among the most notable of the Red
Cross achievements of the first year of the war. When the Teuton hordes
swept into the plains of Northern Italy in October, 1917, driving
thousands of panic-stricken men, women, and children before them,
American Red Cross veterans from France rushed into the breach, helped
to stop the rout, relieved the acute distress, and contributed in no
small measure to the saving of the country from complete subjugation.
What the American Red Cross did for Italy in this crisis was made the
subject of official commendation on various occasions, and elicited
thanks from the King, Prime Minister, and other dignitaries. A most
important result accomplished was the cementing of friendship for
America on the part of the Italian people, who previously, largely
through German propaganda, had been skeptical of the good faith of the
United States in the war.
At the outset the American Consuls throughout Italy were supplied with
money to afford emergency relief. Forty-eight carloads of supplies were
dispatched to the scene from storehouses in France. Several sections of
ambulances also were started from France. Soup kitchens were opened,
from which the refugees were given the first food they had received
since the flight from their homes. Transportation for the refugees was
arranged from the north, warehouses were opened at central points,
manufacture of surgical dressings was undertaken on a mammoth scale,
hospitals for the concentration of contagious diseases were opened, and
then, four days after the United States declared war against Austria,
the first Red Cross ambulances left Milan for the Italian front, cheered
by thousands of persons there and at all towns through which they
passed.
By the time the permanent commission reached Rome, in the early Winter,
a complete survey of the whole Italian situation had been made by
experts and all the more serious emergencies had been met. The American
Red Cross was able to supply great quantities of equipment to replace
the stores that were lost when the Teuton drive destroyed upward of a
hundred hospitals. The present relief work is being continued along the
lines of the work in France.