The great thing was to make the demoralised Italians feel that America was on the spot and helping them.  The sending of troops could not have reused their fighting spirit.  They were sick of fighting.  What they needed was the assurance that the world was not wholly brutal—­that there was some one who was merciful, who did not condemn and who was moved by their sorrow.  This assurance the prompt action of the American Red Cross gave.  It restored in the affirmative with mercy, precisely the quality which Hun fury and propaganda had destroyed with lies.  It restored to them their belief in the nobility of mankind, out of which belief grows all true courage.

As the work progressed, it branched out on a much larger scale, embracing civilian, military and child-welfare activities.  In the month of November upward of half a million lire were placed in the hands of American consuls for distribution.  One million lire were contributed for the benefit of soldiers’ families.  A permanent headquarters was established with trained business men and men who had had experience under Hoover in Belgium in charge of its departments.  Over 100 hospitals and two principal magazines of hospital stores had been lost in the retreat.  The American Red Cross made up this deficiency by supplying the bedding for no less than 3,000 beds.  Five weeks after the first two representatives had reached Rome three complete ambulance sections, each section being made up of 20 ambulances, a staff car, a kitchen trailer and 33 men, were turned over to the Italian Medical Service of the third Army.  By the first week in December the stream of refugees had practically stopped.  Italy had been made to realise that she was not fighting alone; her morale had returned to her.  This work, which had been initially undertaken from purely altruistic motives, had proved to possess a value of the highest military importance—­an importance of the spirit utterly out of proportion to the money and labour expended.  Magnanimity arouses magnanimity.  In this case it revived the flame of Garibaldi which had all but died.  It achieved a strategic victory of the soul which no amount of military assistance could have accomplished.  The victory of the American Red Cross on the Italian Front is all the more significant since it was not until months later that Congress declared war on Austria.

The campaign which the American Red Cross is waging in every country in which it operates, is frankly an “out to win” campaign.  To win the war is its one and only object.  What the army does for the courage of the body, the Red Cross does for the courage of the mind.  It builds up the hearts and hopes of people who in three and a half years have grown numb.  It restores the human touch to their lives and, with it, the spiritual horizon.  Its business, while the army is still preparing, is to bring home to the Allies in every possible way the fact that America, with her hundred and ten millions of population, is in the war with them, eager to play the game, anxious to sacrifice as they have sacrificed, to give her man-power and resources as they have done, until justice has been established for every man and nation.