American Red Cross

The American Red Cross links frontline ambulance work, aid to civilians, and fundraising at home, but the novel also shows how its humanitarian mission operates inside wartime systems of military authority and public persuasion. Its workers transport stories and supplies across borders; their service can offer practical help, while its publicity seeks to shape what Americans understand about the war and the people carrying out relief.

Ambulance Work in France and Italy

After an ambulance section’s service with the French, the section was disbanded and its members returned to Paris as the United States Army prepared to take over the ambulance service attached to the French. The dissolution closes one stage of volunteer service rather than ending the characters’ involvement in relief work. Richard Ellsworth Savage and his companions then faced a choice about what to do next: some wanted to go home or avoid the American army, while others discussed joining different military formations.

A new opportunity came through Fred Summers, who told the group that the American Red Cross needed an ambulance section in Italy. He argued that, after the Battle of Caporetto and the Italian retreat, the Italians were in poor condition and an American section might improve their morale. Summers was temporarily in charge of recruiting and had already entered the men’s names. Richard Ellsworth Savage seized on the assignment, saying that his Italian would make him useful; the following morning the group enrolled at the Red Cross office as Section 1 of the American Red Cross for Italy. In this episode, relief work is presented as both service and a practical route into a new posting after the French section’s dissolution.

That posting proved vulnerable to military and political suspicion. After an incident in Italy, orders directed Savage, Steve Warner, Ripley, and Schuyler to report to the head office in Rome for return to the United States. The section’s other members treated them nervously, while a colleague said he had heard that the accusations involved seditious utterances and that an Italian intelligence officer had been making inquiries. They left without saying goodbye; at Vicenza, the officer driving them to the station handed over their movement orders and departed without shaking hands. The Red Cross assignment thus offered mobility, but did not insulate its workers from wartime scrutiny or abrupt removal.

Aid to Civilians and Fundraising

In Paris, Eveline Hutchins and Eleanor Stoddard worked in a Red Cross office, spending their days pasting pictures of ruined French farms, orphaned children, and starving war babies into scrapbooks to be sent home for use in Red Cross drives. The work made distant suffering into material intended to prompt contributions in the United States. Its method was concrete and visual: images of devastated homes and vulnerable children were assembled for circulation beyond the scenes they depicted.

The office also depended on the Red Cross supply system in everyday life. Eveline and Eleanor received groceries and sugar through the Red Cross commissary, while their cook, Yvonne, bartered to keep food costs low. Her defense of the arrangement invoked the privileges of generals and ministers against the deprivation of ordinary people. The scene places relief workers within the same strained wartime economy as the civilians whose suffering their scrapbooks presented: institutional supplies mattered in the household, but access to them did not erase the inequalities around them.

Publicity and the Image of Relief

As Paris filled with Americans in uniform, staff cars, and goods from the Red Cross supply store, J. Ward Moorehouse arrived from Washington to take charge of Red Cross publicity. His reputation as a New York publicity expert preceded him, and the office was anxious about what his arrival would mean. He described two aims for the department: encouraging people at home to give and keeping them informed about the work. He also argued that the public should recognize the Red Cross workers’ contribution and not be swayed by critics he characterized as pro-German, pacifist, or merely obstructive.

Moorehouse’s presentation makes publicity part of the organization’s wartime work, not an incidental addition to it. The scrapbooks converted civilian suffering into fundraising appeals; his speech sought to frame the relief workers themselves as making a sacrifice comparable, in its own sphere, to that of soldiers in the trenches. The account therefore sets practical service beside the effort to control how service and dissent would be understood. The Red Cross appears not only as a channel for aid but also as an institution whose public image had to be built and defended.

Domestic Service and the Armistice

The organization’s reach also appears in the United States. After the declaration of war, Anne Elizabeth Trent undertook Red Cross work and organized a canteen, while continuing to apply for a chance to serve abroad. The canteen was not enough to satisfy her desire to go overseas, and she refused repeated proposals from men who might have made her a war bride. Her Red Cross work thus belongs to a wider pattern in which women’s participation in the war effort could begin at home even as they sought a more direct role overseas.

In Paris, the Red Cross office became a setting for the sudden collective release of the Armistice. When rumors gave way to the announcement, Major Wood pulled Eveline and Eleanor from their desks and kissed them; the office’s disciplined workday gave way to a celebration compared to a college dormitory after a football victory. Bottles appeared and people sang. The moment does not resolve the political and personal tensions surrounding the organization, but it marks a clear change in the atmosphere of its workplace: the office that had assembled images of wartime need became, for a night, a place of shared relief at the end of fighting.