[From Daily Mail (Great Britain), August 18, 1909.]
The Red Cross in Every Home.
We are enabled to give to-day full details of one of the most remarkable developments of the voluntary principle in English life. It is a scheme which makes a great and comprehensive effort to enlist the patriotic services of all classes for a humane purpose—the succor of the sick and wounded in war. Further, the scheme will associate with the Territorial Force thousands, including women, who can not themselves serve in our army for home defense.
The War Office, the County Association, and the British Red Cross Society are all engaged in the appeals which will be put forward from to-day to members for the general purpose of urging them to join the new Red Cross detachments which are to train for the assistance of the Territorial Army Medical Corps in war. No one need be left out. In the detachments may be included peers, peeresses, landowners, ladies of the manor, squires, squires’ wives, local doctors, trained nurses, chemists, chemists’ assistants, carpenters, women cooks, joiners, smiths, drivers, mechanics, grocers, and butchers.
Many other occupations could be named whose everyday knowledge would be of special utility in war. All will be welcomed in the new “organization of voluntary aid in England and Wales,” the proposals for which were yesterday submitted to the County Associations and the Branches of the British Red Cross Society.
Famous Surgeons Aid.
Its details were the work of Sir Alfred Keogh, Inspector-General of the Army Medical Service at the War Office, backed by the enthusiastic assistance of Sir Frederick Treves, the famous surgeon, whose experiences in South Africa have given him an unequalled expert knowledge, and Sir Richard Temple. Already there exists an organization which would come into active operation the moment war is declared, and which provides for the manning of general hospitals throughout the kingdom.
To these, scattered all over the country, in Cambridge, Brighton, London, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and elsewhere, are attached all the best medical men in Great Britain. There are, to name only a few, Sir Watson Cheyne, Sir T. Barlow, Sir T. C. Allbut, Sir T. Oliver, Dr. Norman Moore, Dr. Gibson (Edinburgh), and Sir Hector Cameron (Glasgow). The names of these voluntary officers of the force, colonels, majors, and captains, who only assume their rank in war time, fill twenty-four columns of this month’s Army List.
To them would fall the task of succoring the sick and wounded who were brought to them from the field hospital and the ambulances. Unlike France and Germany, we have no line of communication by which the victims of war can be passed from the fighting line to safety in the hospital far in the rear. The Red Cross Society and the English people are now asked to meet the want. The scheme is so to train the inhabitants of our towns and villages that they can render first aid after a battle, convey the wounded to the nearest hospital, and forward them on through a chain of similar units from rest house to rest house till the base hospital is reached.
Sir Alfred Keogh has so planned his proposals that no one in future will be able to say that he or she can not assist in the duties of the Territorial Force. He takes the village as a unit. In each he places a Red Cross detachment, in which both men and women may share. The commandant may be some one of leading in the place, and the women’s portion of the detachment will have a lady superintendent, a position which, it is hoped, some one of note will always be ready to fill.