station is usually done by combatants.  A man has to live continually under shell-fire to acquire the immunity to fear which passes for courage.  The bravest man is likely to get “jumpy,” if he only faces up to a bombardment occasionally.  There are other reasons why combatants should do the stretcher-bearing which do not need elaborating.  The combatants have an expert knowledge of their own particular frontage; they are “wise” to the barraged areas; they are “up front” and continually coming and going, so it is often an economy of man-power for them to attend to their own wounded in the initial stages; they are the nearest to a comrade when he falls and all carry the necessary first-aid dressings; the emblem of the Red Cross has proved to be only a slight protection, as the Hun is quite likely not to respect it.  What I am driving at is that the Red Cross has had to adapt itself to the new conditions of modern warfare, so that very many of its most important present-day functions are totally different from what popular fancy imagines.

The American Red Cross has its French Headquarters in a famous gambling club in the Place de la Concorde.  It is somewhat strange to pass through these rooms where rakes once flung away fortunes, and to find them industriously orderly with the conscience of an imported nation.  By far the larger part of the staff are business men of the Wall Street type—­not at all the kind who have been accustomed to sentimentalise over philanthropy.  There is also a sprinkling of trained social workers, clergy, journalists, and university professors.  The medical profession is represented by some of the leading specialists of the States, but at Headquarters they are distinctly in the minority.  The purely medical work of the American Red Cross forms only a part of its total activities.  The men at the head of affairs are bankers, merchants, presidents of corporations—­men who have been trained to think in millions and to visualise broad areas.  Girls are very much in evidence.  They are usually volunteers, drawn from all classes, who offered their services to do anything that would help.  To-day they are typists, secretaries, stenographers, nurses.

The organisation is divided into three main departments:  the department of military affairs, of civil affairs and of administration.  Under these departments come a variety of bureaus:  the bureau of rehabilitation and reconstruction; of the care and prevention of tuberculosis; of needy children and infant mortality; of refugees and relief; of the re-education of the French mutiles; of supplies; of the rolling canteens for the French armies; of the U.S.  Army Division; of the Military, Medical and Surgical Division, etc.  They are too numerous to mention in detail.  The best way I can convey the picture of immense accomplishment is to describe what I actually saw in the field of operations.