reports its activities in detail to one of the fourteen Division
Headquarters; that it must be a complete miniature Red
Cross with a committee in charge of every line of authorized
Red Cross activity, so that the line of communication
may remain unbroken from Washington to the members of
the tiniest branch and none fail to respond to a national
call for help.

Dry as dust it seems on paper, with its analysis of adminis-
trative committees (Development, Publicity, Finance) and
productive committees (Chapter Production, Military Relief,
Home Service, Nursing Activities, Junior Membership), with
its provision for dividing membership and subscription
between local and national activities, yet the perfected
machine is the triumph of hard work. It is a skillful com-
promise between elasticity to local conditions and control
from headquarters, and it was evolved under the tremendous
pressure of war conditions, while new Chapters were being
installed and veterans were running at top speed.

Let it not be thought, however, that a Red Cross Chapter
is merely a sublimated sewing circle. It is the applied
humanity of its community. It represents the organized
forces of friendliness and it applies them in ways as varied
and as colorful as human need. Let me select as an example
a call for supplies that was flashed underseas from a Red
Cross outpost in some No Man's Land of want! Divided
and subdivided it sped unerringly along the familiar lines
from Headquarters to Division, to Chapter, to Branch, to
Auxiliary until in the folds of a hundred hills, along mar-
shaled city blocks, at village cross-roads each item of that
order busied the hard-earned leisure of a woman's hands.
Or, a depot-master who reported a troop-train headed east
and four hours late; though it was in the weary dead of
night the Motor Corps brought the Canteeners to the tracks
on time to hand out coffee and sandwiches, postal cards, and
words of cheer. Under cover of laconic entries in the pro-

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