Yet the first half of 1918 was not entirely spun into history before the Red Cross in France was beginning its reorganization. The third Commissioner for France, Harvey D. Gibson, had been appointed and by June was on his way to Paris. One of the first of the huge tasks that awaited him—for it then seemed as if the war was to last for years instead of but four or five months longer—was this very problem of reorganization. Without delay he set upon it, and with the help of his Deputy Commissioner and assistant, George Murnane, evolved an entirely new plan, which gave far larger opportunities for the development of the American Red Cross in France and was, in fact, so simple and so logical in its workings as to become the permanent scheme of organization.
Let me emphasize and reiterate: the old plan, with its two great separate departments of military and civilian affairs, was not only not essentially a bad plan, but it was the only plan possible with the conditions of great stress and strain under which our Red Cross began its operations in France. But it was quickly outgrown. It did not and could not measure up to the real necessities of the situation.
"The double program of the Red Cross, under two large departments of military and civilian affairs," wrote Elizabeth Shipley Sergeant, of this older plan in The New Republic, "... followed a good Red Cross tradition and seemed to be based on a genuine separation of the problems involved. The great crisis in France a year ago was a civilian crisis, and the distinguished American business men who directed the Red Cross were wise enough to associate with themselves specialists in social problems and to give them a free hand. The chiefs of the military bureau, some of whom, like the doctors, were also specialists, had no less a free hand. Indeed the situation was so complex and the necessities were so immediate that every bureau chief and every field delegate was practically told to go ahead and do his utmost. The result was great vitality, great enthusiasm, genuine accomplishment...."
In the twelve months that the American Red Cross had been established in France its work had multiplied many, many times; in but six months the size of the American Army there had quadrupled, and the end was by no means in sight. To plan an organization that would measure up to meet such vast growth and meet it adequately was no child's play.
To begin with, he decided that the great functional workings, such as those of which we have just spoken—transportation, supplies, personnel, construction, and the like—should be centralized in Paris and the great duplications and overlappings of the old system avoided. This, in turn, thrust far too great responsibilities and far too much detail upon those same Paris headquarters. So in turn he took from it its vast overload and divided the organization into nine zones, of which more in good time. If these zone organizations had been situated in the United States instead of in France it is quite possible that the functional activities might have been very largely concentrated at their several headquarters. For in our own land such things as personnel, transportation, supplies, and construction could be readily obtained at headquarters points—Boston, New York, Chicago, New Orleans, or San Francisco, for instance. In France they not only were not readily obtainable, but rarely obtainable at any cost or any trouble. Think of the difficulties of obtaining either motor trucks or canteen workers which confronted the zone manager at Neufchâteau, just back of the big front line! It was well that the plan of organization under which he worked provided definitely he was to requisition Paris for such supplies—human or material—and that in turn Paris might draw upon the great resources of America.
Such in brief was the plan. It was simplicity itself; yet was builded to measure to the necessities of the situation. And so it did measure—to the necessities of the situation. Time and experience proved that; also they proved the value of central bureaus, but did not segregate them as before under the separate headings of Military and Civilian. Instead there proved necessary seven "functional departments"—to be responsible for plans and programs and instructions for carrying on the work. The directors of those seven departments served as assistants to the administrative head of the American Red Cross, the Commissioner to France. Considering him as the commander in chief and his seven directors as his staff officers, the Red Cross in France began to take on a distinctly military form.
The seven departments were as follows:
Department of Requirements: Bureau of Supplies; Transportation; Personnel; Permits and Passes; Construction; Manufacture.
Medical and Surgical Department: Bureau of Hospital Administration; Tuberculosis and Public Health; Children's Bureau; Reëducation and Reconstruction; Nurses.
Medical Research and Intelligence Department.