Hong Shui Hui

The American Red Cross is a recurring institutional presence in the novel’s postwar European scenes, linking Americans in Paris and Rome through offices, uniforms, and employment. The book offers no account of the organization’s structure or relief programs; instead, it shows how its name and workplaces intersect with the characters’ uncertain transitions from wartime service to civilian life.

A Paris Workplace and Point of Contact

In Paris, the American Red Cross is part of the daily geography of the characters’ work. Eveline Hutchins, wearing her Red Cross uniform, appears at a gathering at the Hôtel de Crillon, where she joins a conversation about Chartres, the devastated regions, and the public welcome given to Woodrow Wilson. Her uniform identifies her with an institution still active in the aftermath of fighting, even as the scene places her among staff officers, business figures, and people discussing the peace conference.

The organization also figures as a destination in Eveline’s ordinary movements through the city. After lunch with Don Stevens and Paul Johnson, she says she is going to the Red Cross, while Don walks with her before leaving for Vienna and Paul returns to change into his uniform. The office is not described in detail; its importance in this scene is practical and social. It gives Eveline a work-related destination amid conversations about politics, military discipline, and the postwar future.

Employment and the Afterlife of Service

Ed Schuyler’s connection to the American Red Cross is more explicitly professional. When he meets Dick Savage in Rome, Ed has an apartment, travels, and appears to have enjoyed a comfortable life. Yet he is in trouble: the husband of an Italian woman with whom he has been involved threatens to challenge him to a duel, and Ed fears the resulting scandal could cost him his Red Cross job. His private conduct therefore has a potential institutional consequence, making employment a constraint on the seemingly freewheeling life he has built abroad.

Ed also says he is tired of Italy and the Red Cross and wants to return home. At the same time, he is tempted to stay because he expects a revolution in Italy and wants to see it. The contrast makes his next step uncertain: the job he resents is also part of the life that keeps him in Europe, while the upheaval he hopes to witness competes with his stated wish to leave. His situation presents Red Cross employment not as a complete account of humanitarian work but as one strand in the unsettled lives of Americans who remain overseas after the war.

Rome, Absence, and Civilian Futures

The Red Cross also helps shape Dick’s relationships through the movement of its workers between cities. After returning to Paris, Dick learns that Eleanor Stoddard will be away for a couple of weeks, doing work at the Red Cross office in Rome. Their parting is warm, and Dick remarks that it is a shame they could not have been in Rome at the same time. Her assignment thus creates a concrete separation that he feels in the weeks that follow: March is lonely for him, and he misses both Eleanor and the afternoons he spent at her apartment.

The office does not resolve the characters’ postwar uncertainty. Rather, its work takes Eleanor away from Paris while Ed considers abandoning his Red Cross position, and Eveline moves between her own work and the surrounding social world. Across these episodes, the American Red Cross is less a fully depicted organization than a durable framework of employment and travel. It gives the novel a way to show how wartime affiliations persist into peace, while the people attached to them weigh work, attachment, scandal, and the possibility of going home.

Narrative Significance

The novel’s glimpses of the American Red Cross are deliberately personal and partial. It is encountered through a uniform at a Paris gathering, a job at risk in Rome, and an office assignment that carries Eleanor away from Dick. These distinct appearances keep the institution grounded in the characters’ circumstances rather than turning it into an abstract account of relief work.

That limited treatment also sharpens the contrast between the end of formal fighting and the continuation of wartime networks. The characters still travel, work, and form social ties through organizations associated with the war, but peace has not settled what they should do next. The American Red Cross remains present in that interval: a workplace and point of connection, but not an answer to the personal and professional dislocation surrounding it.