Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 182, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 August 1917 — What Can We Do? [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

What Can We Do?

The department of military relief of the American Red Cross has organized a Red Cross supply service, with a chain of warehouses in the principal cities of the country. This supply service, with branch headquarters in New York, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New Orleans and San Francisco, will co-operate with patriotic and relief societies in the forwarding of all soldiers comforts and hospital supplies made by volunteer workers throughout the country. Agents of Red Cross supply service are to be stationed in every military training camp and at every army base. “These men will supervise the distribution of supplies arriving from Red Cross depots," says the circular released for publication April 30, by the Red Cross. When Red Cross chapters or auxiliaries have made hospital suppttes, surgical dressings; hospffar garments, comfort a*nd ’saving bags, or whatever they have elected to make for the men of the army and navy, these supplies are to distributed through the Red Cross supply service, and should be forwarded to the warehouse nearest the point of their production. The necessity for such a service is very evident. When supplies are

needed in any quarter a call for them will be sent to one of these warehouses and promptly filled just as an order for goods is filled when received at a factory. To insure promptness and efficiency all these supplies must be made according to specific standards and shipped through authorized channels. Profiting by the experience of Europe, the Red Cross and military officials have worked out a system by which all these matters of supply and distribution are put on an effective and systematic basis. Even the packing of supplies must be done according to regulations, so it is evident that any organization wishing to make Itself useful to the Red Cross must do its work, from beginning to end, in the way stipulated by that great society. The work of women, which is a very large factor in Red Cross activities, becomes quickly effective through these established agencies of supply and distribution. There are many branches of the work in which women concern themselves. They raise money, supply nurses and nurses’ aids, provide surgical and medical supplies, make surgical dressing, hospital garments and supplies and comforts of ail kinds for the soldiers. It is work in which they are very much at home.