The French Red Cross the day after the Italian disaster and as soon as the news reached Paris decided to send to Italy Red Cross nurses.
The French Red Cross report says: “The question arose whether the immensity of the disaster did not justify its intervention in the way of aid. The Italian Red Cross was mobilized. Was it not the occasion to give proof of the solidarity which exists outside of all boundaries uniting the members of the universal Red Cross?” As the syndicate of the French press agreed to take charge of the raising of a national fund for the expense of this relief work, the society proceeded with its preparations. On the 30th ten nurses with two Red Cross delegates. Viscount Harcourt and Viscount Nantos, left for Naples. The following day a second detachment of nurses from one of the Red Cross branches, the Union of the Women of France, was sent, and a few days later a third detachment from another branch, the Association of French Women, followed. Within a few hours after their arrival at Naples they began active work in the hospitals filled with injured refugees.
The Neapolitan Red Cross had erected a temporary hospital in a municipal school building—a large and airy situation. Doctors there were in plenty, but there was a great lack of nurses, so that those sent by the French Red Cross, three of whom spoke Italian, arrived at a most opportune time and their services won the confidence and gratitude of the physicians.
In the meantime the delegates of the French Red Cross were occupied in the distribution of money and supplies. Two special trainloads of clothing, hospital materials, etc., were sent from Paris, the first in charge of Count de Vogue, son of the president of the French Red Cross. Some of the supplies were given to the city government for distribution and some to the Italian Red Cross to be sent to Sicily and Calabria. The delegates wore a blue coat, with the Red Cross brassard on the arm.
At the termination of the active service of the French Red Cross the nurses were presented with the Italian Red Cross diploma of merit and with gold medals by the Duchess D’Aosta in the presence of many members of the Italian Red Cross.
The hospital school of the French Red Cross was opened in Paris on the 14th of November, 1908, with simple ceremonies. The president of the French Red Cross, the Marquis de Vogue, presided. Sixty-two of the nurses who were in active Red Cross service in Morocco were in attendance and added greatly to the interest of the occasion. One pavilion is devoted to men nurses and the other to women. This is the crowning result of the 44 dispensary schools of the society.
GERMANY.
The German Red Cross sent to Italy a complete hospital equipment, with five doctors, thirteen nurses and relief column men, which was established at Syracuse. Money, clothing and supplies of all kinds were forwarded from all over Germany to the main receiving station in Berlin. Large quantities of tents, a dozen wooden barracks from the Rhine Provinces and a hundred beds for orphans were among the gifts.