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shipment
of hospital equipment and a small assortment of surgical instruments came
to them.
Russia
was starving, and could furnish only the most wretched and meagre
supplies. But the Red Cross Commission got what it could from Odessa,
from Moscow, even from Petrograd, despite the broken transportation
system and the heart - breaking disorganization 0 f eve r y accustomed
thing in all t hat world. One of its agents made his way to frozen
Archangel and brought back many tons of salted herrings. Some way, some
how, the Red Cross brought into Rumania tons of food, thousands of barrels
of fish, tens of thousands of articles of clothing.
In the
districts of Putna, Tekuchiu, and Bacau crowded with refugees—the Red
Cross Commission managed in that bare land to feed nearly 40,000 people a
day.
In its
hospital at Roman, sixty miles from Jassy and thirty miles from the
Rumanian battlefront, twelve doctors and eleven nurses attended to the 400
or 500 beds, which were full all the time. All manner of substitutes had
to be found or devised to take the place of needed instruments and drugs.
A
canteen in Jassy ministered daily to 2,000 people, giving them food,
clothing, and medical attention. From material obtained in Moscow and
Petrograd, garments were made by Rumanian refugees at minimum cost. The
utter lack of shoes was overcome by making moccasins from canvas and
burlap. The requests for help ranged all the way from petitions for
garments in which to bury the dead, to requests for flannels in which to
wrap the new-born.
Ragged
Rumanians often waited in front of the canteen through whole nights.
Crowds gathered as early as two o'clock in the morning, in order to be the
first in line. It was found that the canteen could provide a substantial
meal of soup, fish, bread, butter and tea for a cost of little more than
five cents for each person.
Never
could contributors to the Red Cross fund in the United States feel that
their money was better given than among the starving women and children of
Rumania. A mother with a tiny baby in arms and a husband mortally wounded
at home would apply for a pound of cornmeal or a kilogram of black flour.
A mite of a girl would ask for a pint of cod-liver oil for her dying
mother. A soldier with one leg and his face cruelly mutilated by shrapnel
sought a few garments in which to bury his wife who had died from typhus.
A boy of twelve, acting as father and guardian for three smaller brothers
and sisters left motherless while their father served at the front, begged
a few herrings.
The Commission gave with an open hand. No request was
denied. Yet, though supplies had to be gathered from regions apparently
stripped, and double and triple prices had to be paid, when the Red Cross
Commission left Rumania it had the record of having succored hundreds of
thousands of people at an expenditure of less than one-third the amount
appropriated for the purpose by the War Council in Washington. Less than
half a million dollars had fed a great part of the Rumanian nation for a
period of six months, without a pound of food from America.
When at last the Commission was forced to go, it left
behind at the canteen enough food to feed 2,000 people for three months,
enough bandages and medicines for the same time, and garments and food
for the orphanage.
And it was the realization of this work well done under
heavy handicaps and often under almost |
