Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... The American Red Cross in France -- First Request -- Pioneer Work to / Find Families and Keep Them Together -- Belgians in France -- Cooperation with the French Government -- Cooperative Union with English and American Society of Friends -- Cooperation with Other Relief Organizations -- Dispensaries -- Purchasing in France -- Warehouses Secured -- Assistance to the French Army -- Acknowledgment to the French Government and French Officials. / NE of the first things I was told when I arrived at our headquarters in Paris was that the French people had said that the American Red Cross came to France so silently that they did not know it had come. It was a particularly graceful way, wholly French in its subtlety, of paying a compliment to the newly arrived Commission and, needless to say, was much to the liking of men almost overwhelmed with the magnitude and strangeness of their mission. For, although men may have gone on greater missions, -- and even that is doubtful, -- surely none could have been stranger than that which left the United States in June, 1917, -- two months after the declaration of war, -- with only the vaguest idea of what they would be able to do in the way of all kinds of relief. Nor was the full meaning of their undertaking revealed to them until they touched French soil and had become eye-witnesses of the great havoc caused by three years of valiant wrestling with the huge and, at times, all but overwhelming labor of maintaining an unbroken front against the invader. That the ranks of soldiery had been terribly depleted, there were signs on every hand; nor were there evidences lacking of the acute suffering among the civilian population, where whole families found themselves separated: fathers were in the trenches, ..