THE RED CROSS SPIRIT 



467 



of those who cannot go to the front, to 

 help in behalf of their country and the 

 world. Every country has a Red Cross, 

 and every country must have it, because 

 no army can furnish the instrumentali- 

 ties adequate to meet the proportion of 

 wounded that this war furnishes. 



SIX MILLION BEDS OF PAIN 



Think of it! Forty million at the 

 colors, seven million dead, six million on 

 beds of pain, and the whole of Europe 

 taken up with hostilities ! 



You cannot exaggerate the function 

 that our Red Cross will have to perform 

 merely in attending to the wounded of 

 our army and other armies in carrying 



on this fight. Therefore, one hundred 

 million dollars, great as the sum seems, is 

 inadequate ; but the first hundred million 

 dollars will be the hardest hundred mil- 

 lion to raise ! 



And we must leave no doubt about it. 

 I thank God that the organization is in 

 such competent hands to do the great 

 work that has to be done. 



And now, my friends, the one thing 

 for which we ought to be grateful is that 

 in this great war, in this war in which we 

 shall have to make sacrifices — oh, such 

 sacrifices, so great that they wring tears 

 from us as we think of them — we should 

 be grateful that we have a cause worthy 

 of all the sacrifices that we can make ! 



THE RED CROSS SPIRIT 



By Eliot Wadsworth 



IT IS a most satisfactory fact that the 

 Red Cross was able to call into the 

 field and send to Europe the first 

 actual help that we have extended to our 

 allies, in the form of those six base hos- 

 pital units which were called and sailed. 

 Inside of three weeks the whole six units 

 were on the water going to Europe, where 

 they will take over existing hospitals and 

 relieve the overworked staffs who have 

 been struggling with their problem of 

 caring for the wounded for nearly the 

 last three years. 



SACRIFICES THAT COUNT 



The sacrifice these people make who 

 go, particularly the doctors, is one that 

 we cannot forget. When a busy doctor 

 answers the call, such as Dr. Brewer in 

 New York, it is something "we should 

 never forget. Dr. Brewer received his 

 telegram that he was to go. 



He was here the next morning to make 

 the arrangements, and I met him, talked 

 with him a minute, and he said : "My ' 

 house is to rent. I have performed my 

 last operation in this country. I am go- 

 ing to use every bit of my time from now 

 on to enlist the balance of the personnel, 

 getting my uniforms, and getting the men 



ready and everything in good order so 

 that we can go." 



Such a sacrifice by a busy doctor, with 

 a tremendous practice, cannot be meas- 

 ured in money. Any business man could 

 afford to give a check for a year's income 

 and be allowed to stay at home and go on 

 with his business far better than any one 

 of those doctors can afford to go over 

 there and practically disappear from view 

 for how long he does not know ; it may 

 be six months, it may be a year, it may 

 be five years. 



Not a single one of them begged off. 

 They all went, unless there was some 

 very pressing family reason, such as a 

 serious illness, and in all cases they ex- 

 pressed a desire to go just as soon as they 

 could possibly.get away. 



A HUNDRED PER CENT OE GIVERS 



It is a tremendous power for good that 

 is ■now spread in every hamlet, in every 

 cross-roads in the country. It is in guid- 

 ing that power and giving it something to 

 do, in pointing out ways in which it can 

 help more and more as the war goes on, 

 that the headquarters has been occupied. 



The Red Cross of this country has a 

 problem that no Red Cross has ever had 



