Part 10

(SANITARY COLUMNS—BROSKAW.)]

_Das Rothe Kreuz_, the official organ of the German Red Cross, gives interesting accounts of the great assistance rendered by the Relief Columns of Nuremberg in the earlier part of the year and also of that given by the Relief Columns of Osterburg and Seehausen after floods in their respective neighborhoods in November, 1908, and February, 1909. The Osterburg Column had already proved its usefulness after a railroad accident in 1903. Since then it had established an alarm system and by means of this it was quickly called into active service. Provided with boats placed at its disposition for this work, its members rescued many, and to others, who were cut off from the outside world by the flood, carried food and other supplies until the waters subsided. In some cases persons who were ill were carried in wheel ambulances on the boats and then transferred to the hospital at Osterburg. In February the Seehausen Column proved of service in its neighborhood. Its wheel ambulance stands always at the market place near the bridge, its station being marked by a Red Cross flag. These facts are a new proof of the value of these columns to any community and that they can provide faithful and capable assistance in every kind of accident.

[Illustration: METHOD OF TRANSPORTING WOUNDED FROM THE BATTLEFIELD. (SANITARY COLUMNS—KONIGSHUTTER.)]

GREAT BRITAIN

[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.

_Details of the Scheme._

Every voluntary aid detachment will be so arranged as to admit of dividing into two complete half detachments, thus:

Men—Commandant, medical officer, quartermaster, pharmacist, assistant pharmacist, under officer and 12 men; assistant commandant, medical officer, quartermaster, pharmacist, assistant pharmacist, under officer and 12 men.

Women—Commandant (medical officer), quartermaster, lady superintendent, ten women (including one trained nurse); assistant commandant (medical officer), assistant quartermaster, lady superintendent, ten women (including one trained nurse).

Under the commandant will be two sections, each commanded by an officer, who ought to be the village doctor. Their under officers will again be the chemist and his assistants. The men of the sections will be made up of tradesmen and workmen. Each will have an assigned duty. The carpenter and the smith would train to convert the church and the school into a hospital, make ready carriages and carts to convey wounded and sick, and fit up railway wagons, coal trucks, and the like for a similar use.

Others would prepare in peace time, so that when mobilized they could go to a house here or a house there, obtain beds promised beforehand, and fit them up in the temporary hospital, procure tables for operations, lay in the necessary food and fuel. Under the lady superintendent is to be the trained nurse, and her associates are to include those who have volunteered as cooks, and others who will look after the cleanliness of the hospital, wash clothing, and do all those thousand and one tasks which make for the comfort and the restoration to health of ailing men. In the larger towns and cities there may be dozens of these splendid organizations for making less terrible the dreadful results of war.

The Red Cross detachments have no place in our regular service. Because our forces serve over seas the War Office itself provides the necessary chain of hospitals and communications for bringing the wounded to the base. But the Territorial Forces are created only for service at home, and the hope is that those who can not for any reason join its ranks may at least render valuable assistance as members of their local Red Cross detachment.

The Central Council of the Red Cross Society will superintend the scheme, and the local Branches in the counties will cooperate with the various Territorial Associations in carrying out arrangements. The main object will be the base hospital, which is even now part of the Territorial Force organization. Beyond that, however, it is hoped that the Red Cross organizations and the general public may provide a convalescent hospital, where the men wasted by war may recruit before, if necessary, returning to the fighting line.

In time of war the organization would be: Fighting line, Territorial Army Medical Service, field ambulances, clearing hospitals, voluntary aid detachment, rest stations, ambulance trains, general hospital, convalescent depot, and homes.

NOTES

CALIFORNIA.

[Illustration: PALMA COGLIANDRO (4 YEARS OF AGE), AN ORPHAN, BROUGHT FROM MESSINA AND DELIVERED TO HER UNCLE IN SAN FRANCISCO BY THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.]

Mr. Steinmetz, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Branch, who has lately been in California, writes: “It was my desire to study carefully the design of the wood houses issued to the refugees. Mr. Dohman very kindly put me in the hands of Mr. McLaren, Superintendent of the Golden Gate Park, and I went with him in his automobile, accompanied by one of the active workers of their Organized Charities, and visited a great many of the little houses. These wooden houses have been carried away to different permanent sites, where they now form the permanent homes of their owners. As a rule they have been somewhat rebuilt, have been raised off of the ground, front porches and rear kitchens added, and they have been shingled and painted and set in the midst of gardens of blooming plants and shrubs, forming beautiful little suburban homes in which anyone would be content and happy. The woodwork, as far as I observed, was in a good state of preservation. There does not seem to be any rotting of the sills, the roofs seemed taut and, altogether, the wisdom of issuing these houses has more than been proved, showing that really your Central Committee builded better than it knew.”

Palma Cogliandro, the little girl who was brought from Italy by the Red Cross, and who, during an attack of measles, was most kindly cared for by officers of the Massachusetts Red Cross, has safely reached her destination and is with her uncle in California.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

The District of Columbia Branch of the National Red Cross Society has finished equipping its relief station in the old Pierce mill, Rock Creek Park, and in the future all accidents occurring in the park will be given emergency treatment at this station.

A complete outfit of first aid to the injured has been installed. No regular attendant will be stationed at the building, but the equipment will be available to all who may need it at any time, day or night. The keys to the room in which the outfit is located, and which will be used as an accident ward until the arrival of one of the city ambulances, have been placed under the glass at the side of the door of the mill. Telephone connection with the city hospital has been made.

INDIANA.

A request was received at Red Cross headquarters from the Railroad Commission of the State of Indiana for some ten thousand of the Red Cross railroad posters, of which some sixty thousand have been distributed. The Commission was informed that the railroads had already asked and received thousands of these posters. The following reply to this communication was later received from the Commission, which also issued a special circular to all the railroads in the State urging them to apply for these posters:

DEAR SIR: Your favor of June 7th was received and carefully noted.

I agree with you that your system of distribution of the Red Cross warning posters is adequate, and you will allow me to say that it is my opinion that they are doing a great deal of good.

Our Commission has been so impressed with the value of these posters that we desire to go further than you have done in their distribution, if it can be satisfactorily arranged. We wish to post them in the schoolhouses of this State. We think that children ought to be instructed, especially those who, in the country, ride over unprotected highway grade crossings, as to how serious is the danger that they constantly incur.

There are 11,000 unprotected highway grade crossings of the railroads in this State. A great many people, and very often children, are killed by the trains on these crossings. We think that the attractiveness of your poster, its large letters and its colors would strike the attention of the children in the public schools.

If you can arrange in some way to supply this Commission with the quantity mentioned in my letter of the 7th, I believe the result would be satisfactory to your Association.

Yours, very truly,

W. J. WOOD, _Chairman_.

The posters were sent as requested.

MASSACHUSETTS.

The Secretary of the Massachusetts Branch writes National Headquarters as follows:

“Mr. Richard M. Saltonstall, a lawyer and member of the Massachusetts Branch, has been successful in stopping the use of the Red Cross as an advertisement on several occasions, notably in connection with the offices of quack doctors.”

MINNESOTA.

ST. JAMES, MINN., May 31, 1909.

Mr. ERNEST P. BICKNELL, _Of the American National Red Cross, Washington, D. C._

SIR: I got your address from clipping herewith from our _Minneapolis Journal_. I write for a copy of the last report of your organization.

I am, so far as I know, the sole survivor of the original “Auxiliary Relief Corps” of the U. S. Sanitary Commission, a corps organized by the commission in the winter of 1863-64, and taking the field with Grant’s movement on Lee, May, 1864, its first entry into the personal relief work.

In January, 1865, I put the Geneva Cross, now the Red Cross, on our corps of some fifty young men attached to the base hospitals of the armies of the Potomac and the James, its first display upon any organized body of men on any field in the world. The “San. Com.” had already been sufferers from lack of this protective emblem of neutrality.

Such reports, etc., as may give me a notion of the present condition of this now assured success, the Red Cross of America, I shall be grateful for.

I am, sir,

ANSON M. SPERRY.

NEW HAMPSHIRE.

Mr. Leighton, President of this State Branch, has sent to the editor of the BULLETIN a copy of an excellent essay on the Red Cross, written by a young man of the Antrim High School, and suggests that local Red Cross Divisions offer prizes for the best essay written on the Red Cross in their respective high schools, which seems to us an excellent idea. We regret that lack of space prevents our printing the essay referred to above.

NEW YORK.

A large and enthusiastic meeting in the interest of the American National Red Cross was held in Florence Nightingale Hall, Presbyterian Hospital. Miss Mary E. Gladwin, Superintendent of the Woman’s Hospital, presided, and addresses were made by B. O. Satterwhite, Mrs. W. K. Draper, Mrs. Charles C. Stevenson, and Mrs. F. J. Brockway.

The purpose of the meeting was to enlarge the general membership and to increase the number of nurses enrolled. The speakers especially urged nurses to enroll now, because of the approaching Hudson-Fulton celebration, during which the American National Red Cross expects to maintain twenty-one relief stations, six army tents, and an automobile ambulance service, with nurses in attendance.

It was announced that the Mills Training School had decided to affiliate with the Red Cross nurses’ organization, and the announcement was received with much applause, for, as the chairman explained, there had been a dearth of good male nurses in the Red Cross.

RHODE ISLAND.

The American National Red Cross and the Rhode Island Branch have sustained a great loss in the death of Mr. John C. Pegram, of Providence, a member of the Central Committee of the American Red Cross and the President of the Rhode Island Branch. The Red Cross in this country has had no more loyal and faithful supporter than Mr. Pegram since its reorganization in 1905. At the next meeting of the Central Committee appropriate action will be taken to express the deep appreciation of the Red Cross of Mr. Pegram’s services and its sincere sympathy with the members of his family and the Rhode Island Red Cross Branch.

John Combe Pegram, a member of the Providence bar since 1868, a former Representative in the General Assembly, and prominently known throughout the city and State because of his activities in benevolent and civic work, died at the Hope Club at 6 o’clock on the morning of August 11. His death resulted from an attack of cerebral hemorrhage.

[Illustration: JOHN COMBE PEGRAM.]

John Combe Pegram, son of William B. and Charlotte Combe Pegram, was born August 26, 1842, at Owensborough, Ky. He was a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, of Annapolis, in the class of 1863, and served in the south Atlantic blockading squadron from July, 1863, to October, 1864, on the U. S. S. _Wachusett_ in 1865-66, on various other vessels during the civil war, and on the staff of Admiral Dahlgren. He resigned from the navy in 1866, when he went to Cambridge. He was graduated from the Harvard Law School in the class of 1868. He was admitted to the Rhode Island bar in 1868, and had been the senior member of the firm of Pegram & Cooke since 1885, though he had not been in active practice recently.

Mr. Pegram had always been active in public affairs and had held many offices testifying to his interest in hospitals of the community. He was a trustee of the Rhode Island Hospital, and for several years was Secretary of the Board of Trustees. He was, until last year, a Trustee of the Rhode Island State Sanatorium at Wallum Lake, and President of the Rhode Island Branch of the American National Red Cross.

The Providence _Journal_ says of Mr. Pegram:

“There was a fine blending of Southern chivalry and New England rigor in John C. Pegram, who died suddenly yesterday. His Annapolis training and naval service during the civil war were marked by the same sense of public responsibility as his interest in our local hospitals and charities. He was the leader of the Red Cross movement in Rhode Island, and the Rhode Island Hospital and the State Sanatorium especially profited by his loyal and valued cooperation. Independent in politics, fearless in denunciation of everything unwholesome, refined in thought, cultivated in speech, a gentleman of pleasing address, he gave to this community willingly of his time and labor and leaves it in his debt for forty years of good citizenship.”

INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE.

Monsieur Moynier, President of the International Committee since its foundation in 1864, has collected in a cabinet all the souvenirs, orders, and testimonials of gratitude he has received during his long connection with the universal Red Cross. The idea of Christian charity is represented by an engraving of Christ dying upon the cross. Photographs of the founders of the Red Cross in different countries fill one album, and the publications of the International Committee form in themselves quite a library. The University of Tomsk, on the 350th anniversary of its foundation, unanimously conferred honorary membership of the university upon Monsieur Moynier, the highest academic honor that can be given in Russia. The Grand Duchess of Baden, in the name of the Baden Women’s Union of the Red Cross, has sent to Monsieur Moynier, with a personal letter, a medal and an illuminated address. The medal bears the indication of the 50th jubilee of this union, which was actually formed before the Red Cross, with a red cross in the center on the one side of the medal and on the other the grand ducal arms and the motto of the society, “Gott mit uns.”

Of the American Red Cross Text-Book on First Aid, by Major Charles Lynch, U. S. A., Dr. Ferriere speaks most highly in the _International Bulletin_, saying that it merits being translated and adopted by other Red Cross Societies.

The _International Bulletin_, in referring to the international relief work done by the Red Cross, says: “The international solidarity is developing and may well some day crystallize into a convention like that of Geneva, for the purpose of organizing specially for international assistance at times of great calamities.”

The American Red Cross ventures respectfully to suggest that this international assistance after great calamities needs no special convention, that the Red Cross Societies of the world, originally organized to render volunteer aid in time of war, have, almost without exception, so broadened their scope of work as to include the assistance necessary after great calamities. The American Red Cross, since its reorganization in 1905, has rendered assistance after some eighteen serious disasters, eleven of which were in foreign lands. If the American Red Cross shall have the honor and pleasure of receiving the Ninth International Red Cross Conference at Washington, it will ask that special attention be paid to this question of international assistance at times of great calamities. Such international cooperation in relief measures would not only bring the financial assistance that does so much to relieve the sufferings of the victims and gives them new courage because of the consciousness of brotherly sympathy the world over, but the experience and knowledge of each and all as to methods of relief after various kinds of calamities, such as fires, earthquakes, famines, floods, and epidemics, could be available for the benefit of those in need of such aid. Much time, money, and supplies are often wasted and unnecessary suffering caused because of lack of experience in how best to proceed with relief measures.

BULGARIA.

The annual meeting of the Bulgarian Red Cross was held at Sofia on May 1. The reports show that the society possesses, in funds and value of supplies, about $336,200. It will soon open a new hospital for the instruction of its nurses. In 1908 it took energetic measures to prevent an invasion of cholera from Russia. Funds were also raised for the benefit of the victims of the fire at Uscub, Macedonia.

CHILI.

The International Committee of Geneva has sent out Circular 123, announcing the receipt of the statutes of the Chilian Red Cross, which are in accordance with the Red Cross international regulations, and therefore the Chilian Red Cross is declared duly accredited to the Central Committees of the Red Cross.

CONGO.

As the Congo has now become a colony of Belgium, the Congo Red Cross, which has done much good work for the amelioration of the sufferings of the victims of the sleeping sickness at Boma and Leopoldville, has been dissolved.

CUBA.

[Extract.]

_Decree No. 406._

HABANA, CUBA, May 10, 1909.

The Cuban Red Cross Society will enjoy in Cuban territory all privileges accorded, or which may hereafter be accorded, charitable institutions.

The statutes and by-laws of the International Society of the Cuban Red Cross, adopted by the Supreme Assembly of the society on March 10, 1909, are approved by the government.

Dr. Diego Tamayo y Figueredo, elected on March 10, 1909, President of the Supreme Assembly and of the Executive Committee of the society, is officially recognized in such capacity and is appointed delegate of the Cuban government, as provided in article 36 of the by-laws of the society.

Mrs. Dulce Maria Perez Ricart de Sanchez Fuentes is officially recognized as President of the Central and of the Provincial Executive Committees, to which she was elected on March 13, 1909.

The insignia, uniforms, banners, etc., of the society, provided for in articles 5, 6, 7, 21, 23, 178, 179, 182, 184, and 196 of the by-laws, are similarly recognized.

Gen. Armando Riva y Hernandez, E. P., and Gen. Gerardo Machado y Morales, Inspector General of the Armed Forces, and Dr. Arturo Sonville, Major Medical Corps, R. G., are appointed commissioners of the government for the purpose of drawing up, together with commissioners designated by the society, the regulations contemplated by article 31 of the by-laws for the government of relations between members of the Red Cross and of the official medical corps in time of war.

Dr. Florencio Villuendas y de la Torre is, in accordance with article 13 of the by-laws, designated to represent the Secretary of government in the Supreme Assembly of the society.