Читать книгу With the Doughboy in France: A Few Chapters of an American Effort - Edward Hungerford - Страница 11

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At No. 5 Rue François Premier stood the American Relief Clearing House. It was a veritable lighthouse, a tower of strength, if you please, to an oppressed and suffering people. To its doors came the offerings of a friendly folk overseas who needed not the formal action of their Congress before their sympathies and their purse-strings were to be touched, but who were given heartfelt American response almost before the burning of Louvain had been accomplished. And from those doors poured forth that relief, in varied form, but with but one object, the relief of suffering and misery.

Until the coming of the American Red Cross and its kindred organizations, this Clearing House was to Paris—to all France, in fact—almost the sole expression of the real sentiment of the United States. It was organized, and well organized, with a definite purpose; on the one hand the avoidance of useless duplications and overlappings, to say nothing of possible frictions, and upon the other the heartfelt desire to accomplish the largest measure of good with means that were not always too ample despite the desire of the folk who were executing them. More than this, the American Relief Clearing House had a practical purpose in endeavoring to meet the everyday problems of transportation of relief supplies. This phase of its work we shall see again when we consider the organization of the transportation department of the American Red Cross in France. It is enough to say here and now that it possessed a very small number of trucks and touring cars which were worked to their fullest possibilities, and seemingly even beyond, in the all but vain effort to keep abreast of the incoming relief supplies.

In fact the American Relief Clearing House in its largest endeavors was in reality a forwarding agency and, although possessing no large transportation facilities of its own, made large use of existing commercial agencies and those of the governments of the Allies, to forward its relief supplies to their destination; whereupon it advised America not only of the receipt of these supplies but of the uses to which they were put. The main framework of the organization consisted of a staff of clerks who kept track of the movements of shipments and who saw to it that no undue delay occurred in their continuous transit from sender to recipient.

J. H. Jordain was the chief operating manager of this Clearing House, while Oscar H. Beatty was its Director-General. Closely affiliated with the success of the enterprise were Herman H. Harjes, the Paris representative of a great New York banking house, a man whom we shall find presently at the head of one of the great ambulance relief works which preceded the coming of the American Red Cross, J. Ridgely Carter, James R. Barbour, and Ralph Preston. Mr. Preston crossed to France on the Lorraine with the preliminary party of survey and was of very great help at the outset in the formation of its definite plans.

The most dramatic feature perhaps of the American Relief Clearing House was the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Service, which was closely affiliated with it. This organization was founded in the early days of 1914 by two men, each acting independently of the other, who, by personal influence and a great amount of individual activity, succeeded in forming ambulance sections of the French Army maintained by American funds and manned by American boys and nurses who could not wait for the formal action of their government before flinging themselves into Europe's great war for world democracy. These two sections first were known as Sections Sanitaire Nu. 5 and Nu. 6 of the French Army. At a later day it was found better policy, as well as more convenient and more economical, to merge these two sections. This was done, and the merged sections became known more or less formally as the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Service.

At the time of the arrival of the American Red Cross in France this organization actually had in the field five sections of twenty cars each, two men to a car and two officers to a section. The men who offered themselves for this work were all volunteers and were, for the most part, college graduates and men of a disposition to give themselves to work of this sort. A spirit of self-sacrifice and self-denial was represented everywhere within the ranks of the organization. To have been identified with the Norton-Harjes service is to this day a mark of distinction comparable even with that of the ribbon of the Croix de Guerre.

The Red Cross in the United States, long before our actual entrance into France, had been helping this service with both money and supplies. It was quite natural therefore that it should take over this unit, which immediately assumed the name of the American Red Cross Ambulance Service. Between that time and the day on which responsibility for ambulance transport was taken over by the American Army, it organized, equipped and put in service eight additional sections. Before disbanding, the number of men had been brought to over six hundred, five hundred and fifty of them at the front and the remainder in training camp.

A third facility of the American Relief Clearing House which is worthy of passing note was the American Distributing Service, organized and financed by Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. Bliss of our embassy in Paris. It was first put in operation to furnish supplies to French hospitals throughout and behind the fighting areas. It operated a small warehouse in which many specialties—surgical instruments for a particular instance—were received and in due turn distributed.

For a short time after the arrival of the first Commission from America, the possibility of affiliating the American Red Cross with the Clearing House was seriously considered. It became quite evident, however, that this would not be a feasible plan, but that the American Red Cross, just beginning to come into the fullness of its strength as a war-time organization, in order to attain its fullness of efficiency, would have to become the dominating factor of relief in France. This meant that the short but useful career of the American Relief Clearing House would have to be ended and its identity lost in that of the larger and older organization. This was done. The plant and the equipment and personnel as well of the Clearing House were formally turned over to the Red Cross Commission and its first headquarters offices established there in the Rue François Premier, while Mr. Beatty's title changed from Director-General of the Clearing House to that of Chief Executive Officer of the American Red Cross in France.

The offices in the Rue François Premier almost immediately were found too small for the greatly enlarged activities of the Red Cross, and so the large building on the corner of the Place de la Concorde and the Rue Royale, known as No. 4 Place de la Concorde, was engaged as headquarters. These premises were rented through Ralph Preston for $25,000 a year and, although it was not so known at the time, this rental was paid by Mr. Preston out of his own pocket as his personal contribution to the work of the American Red Cross. Seemingly the new quarters were large indeed; yet what a task awaited the secretary when he was compelled to install a force of three hundred people in eighty-six rooms! The executive of modern business demands his flat-top desk, his push buttons, his letter files, his stenographer, his telephone, and "Number Four" was a club building—originally a palace with crystal chandeliers and red carpets and high ceilings and all the things that go ordinarily to promote luxury and comfort, but do not go very far toward promoting business efficiency.

Yet the thing was managed, and for a time managed very well indeed. But as the work of our Red Cross in France progressed, "Number Four" grew too small, and from time to time various overflow, or annex offices were established near by in the Rue Bossy d'Anglais, the Avenue Gabriel, and the Rue de l'Elysée.

Yet in time these, too, were found insufficient. The army and the navy in France kept growing, and with them, and ahead of them, the work of the American Red Cross. Moreover, it was found in many ways most unsatisfactory to have the work of a single headquarters scattered under so many different roofs. So in June, 1918, these many Red Cross activities were brought under a single roof. With the aid of the French government authorities it was enabled to lease the six-story Hotel Regina on the Place de Rivoli and directly across from the Louvre. Into this far more commodious building was moved the larger portion of the American Red Cross offices in Paris, with the exception of the headquarters of the northeastern zone, which remained for a little longer time at No. 4 Place de la Concorde. Upon the signing of the armistice and the appointment of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, the United States government, through the French, requisitioned both No. 4 Place de la Concorde and the Hotel Crillon for its peace headquarters. The headquarters of the northeastern zone of the Red Cross, much smaller with the coming of peace, were moved into the upper floor of the Hotel Regina.

In the meantime there were many, many changes in the American Red Cross in France other than those of mere location. Major Grayson M.-P. Murphy resigned as head of the French Commission early in September, 1917, leaving behind him a record for expertness and efficiency that has never been beaten. He was, in reality, merely borrowed from the United States Army, and to that organization, which then stood badly in need of both expertness and efficiency, he was returned, while his place as captain of our American Red Cross overseas was taken by one of his associates, Major James H. Perkins. Later this Red Cross chief attained the army rank of lieutenant colonel; yet with Perkins, rank did not count so very much at the best. To most of his fellow workers he was known as Major Perkins; yet, to many of them, "Jim Perkins" was the designation given to this much-loved American Red Cross officer. For if Major Murphy left behind him a splendid reputation for expertness and efficiency, Major James H. Perkins left his monument in Paris in the great affection which he gained in the hearts and minds of each of his associates. He won the love and respect of every man and woman in the organization. For here was a real man; a man who, if you please, preferred to gain loyalty—the quality so extremely necessary to any successful organization, whether of war time or of peace—through his own personality, his kindliness, and his fairness rather than by the authority vested in his office.

"It is impossible to exaggerate the whole-heartedness which Major Perkins gave to the upbuilding of our work here (France)," wrote Henry P. Davison, chairman of the War Council of the Red Cross at the time when the army, following its example in the case of Major Grayson M-P. Murphy, reached out and demanded Major Perkins's services for itself. He continued:

"We can understand the appeal that the army service makes to him, but we greatly regret the loss of his guidance and association. Whatever we have accomplished or may accomplish, it must never be forgotten that Major Perkins and Major Murphy were the pioneers who showed the way, who interpreted in practical fashion the desire of a whole nation to help through the Red Cross in the greatest cause to which a people ever gave their hearts and their resources. They, and we who carry forward the work of the Red Cross, will always be keenly sensible of what we owe to the energy, resourcefulness, and devotion which Major Perkins put into the task of developing from its beginning the mission of the Red Cross in the war."

And while I am quoting, perhaps I can do no better than to quote from a report of Major Perkins, himself, in which he summed up the work of the American Red Cross after its first year in France. He wrote:

"It is impossible for any one who has not had the experience of the last year in France to realize the difficulties which stood in the way of organizing an enormous quasi business, quasi relief organization; personnel was hard to get from America, supplies were hard to get, transportation was almost impossible, the mail service was bad and the telephone service was worse; but in spite of all these troubles the spirit with which the men of the organization undertook everything, carried things through in the most wonderful manner."

Spirit! That was Major Jim Perkins. His was a rare spirit; and the Red Cross men who had the pleasure and the opportunity of working under and with him will testify as to that. Spirit was one of the big things that made this captain of the Red Cross in the months when the difficulties of its task overseas were at high-water mark carry forward so very well indeed. Another was his rare breadth of vision. He, himself, still loves to quote an old French priest, whose parish children had been greatly helped by the work of our Red Cross among them.

"The American Red Cross is something new in the world," once wrote this venerable curé. "Never before has any nation in time of war sought to organize a great body to bind up the wounds of war, not only of its own soldiers but of the soldiers and peoples of other nations. Never before has so great a humanitarian work been undertaken or the idea in such terms conceived, and the result will be greater than any of us can now see."

So it was that Major Jim Perkins "saw big"—much larger, perhaps, than some of his associates at the time when the press of conflict was hard upon all of them. Some of these might have thought his plans large or even visionary; one or two frankly expressed themselves to that effect. Yet these were the very men who, when the Perkins ideas came into use, saw that they did not overshoot the mark.

It was under the régime of this Red Cross captain that the American Red Cross established a service to the French army in the form of canteens, hospitals, supplies, and money donations that led many of its commanders as well as several prominent French statesmen to remark that its steps along these lines were of inestimable value in maintaining the morale of the poilu and so in the final winning of the war. In later chapters of this book we shall describe in some detail the first canteen efforts of our Red Cross in France, and find how they were given to the faithful little men whose horizon blue uniform has come to designate tenacity and dogged purpose.

One of the very typical actions of the Military Affairs Department under Major Perkins was the help given to General Pétain's army, which had suffered acutely. His assistance came at a time which rendered it of double value to the French commander. In fact that was a trait of very real genius that Major Perkins displayed again and again throughout his management of the Red Cross—the knack of extending the aid of his organization at a time when its work would be of the greatest assistance to the winning of the war. In fact, it was upon his shoulders that there fell the task of directing our American Red Cross in meeting its two greatest military emergencies—the great German offensive in the Somme in March, 1918, and the bitter fighting in and about Château-Thierry some four months later. The official records of both the French and the American armies teem with communications of commendation for the efforts of the American Red Cross on those two memorable occasions.