Hunting the Hun

by James Belton; E. G. Odell

There are two distinct phases of Red Cross relief work for soldiers on duty. The operating of rolling canteens and the maintaining of stationary canteens back of the fighting line is one. It is a most daring yet essential work, this of operating rolling canteens. Often a soldier leaves the trench utterly exhausted. The rolling canteen goes right down to the communicating trenches, where the soldiers passing in and out receive their quarts of steaming bouillon or coffee in winter, and cold drinks in summer.

At junction points on the French railroads troops going on leave from the battle front often have to spend hours waiting for trains. Since there are probably not more than half a dozen important junctions and an average of 20,000 men pass each one per day, only a small fraction of them could be accommodated. Formerly thousands had to sleep in the open, often in the rain. These men come from the fighting zone tired, hungry and infected. It is for such emergency that the stationary canteen is conducted. At the canteen the men can obtain at cost price substantial hot meals that have been prepared by the ladies. They can have hot baths and get their clothes cleaned and sterilised, so that they take the train refreshed in body and spirit. As the number of soldiers in France grows, the canteen will necessarily become a greater factor and will be most potent in maintaining the morale of our army.

If you can't go to war, you can pay to alleviate the sufferings of those who are fighting. I want you to take an imaginary journey over the battle front with me.

We are now in the midst of the most fierce fighting of this great war. Think of the worst earthquakes and floods that would shock you at home, multiply the horror of your impressions a hundredfold, and you will come near to the horrors of the Marne. Multiply this a thousandfold and you have the ferocity of the battles of the Ancre and Somme. At the present time we are in the midst of the great big battle of the war.

Think of the devastation by fire in France, where villages and woods and pasture lands are completely wiped out of existence. Not a house, church or tree is left standing where once there were thousands of families living in a condition as prosperous and happy as anywhere in the world. Think of the ruins by floods and shell fire in Flanders, and think of the stench of thousands of carcases, human and animal, poisoning the atmosphere for miles around for those who must stay in the trenches. Then turn your mind to some great engagement and try to realise long trenches of men, writhing in torture from poisonous gas or liquid fire, of soldiers smashed and disfigured by shell wounds, their lacerations as indescribable as their heroism is undaunted. If you think of these things, you will not refuse to pay your contributions to the Red Cross. For the Red Cross relieves this suffering.

Now leave the trenches, and retire behind the firing line with me. Here we are on roads that are lined with men on stretchers—some dead, scores mortally wounded, hundreds and hundreds of casualties in all states of collapse. The middle of the roadway is filled with dozens of ambulances after every action. There is perhaps a mile's length of hospital trains waiting in the siding to convey the wounded to base hospitals.

And all this purgatory of pain is dependent for relief upon the skill of our doctors, the tenderness of our nurses, the efficiency of our equipment; all of which means is dependent upon the generosity of the public.

May I not take it for granted that, just as the fighting manhood of the United States is soon to be with us in the trenches, so you of the Red Cross who have done so much for us in the past are now eager to be mobilised in the Allied Army of Mercy. I assume that your organisation is coming with us in increased numbers, and with increased equipment, if necessary to the mountains above and around Salonika, to the Plains of Egypt, to East Africa, to the waterless waste of Mesopotamia, to France, Flanders, and Italy.

I have left untouched all the work of caring for the homeless and starving population now being daily released from the bondage of over three years' servitude. It is, of course, for your great hearted public to decide whether and when and how they can best intervene in this area of human desolation. I can, however, specify in detail a few of the objects in which your money can usefully be spent. We have base hospitals running into hundreds in France and England, advance base hospitals and special hospitals for convalescents, for cripples, or the blind, for face cases and homes for the permanently disabled. We have hospital ships on the English Channel, in the Mediterranean, on the Adriatic and on the Tigris. We have hospital trains in England, France and Egypt; hundreds of motor ambulances in all our theatres of war, with repair cars and other necessary equipment. There are thousands of doctors, nurses, orderlies, etc., to be clothed and fed. There are canteens of Red Cross men, rest homes for nurses, worn out by hard work and ceaseless activity. We provide, of course, hospital clothing, drugs, dressings all in enormous quantities for equipment and reserve. These reserves are for ever being replenished at an ever rising price and cost.