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.