Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1917-08-31
WAR COUNCIL OF THE RED CROSS
Announces Sending a Commission To
Serbia For Immediate Relief

The War Council of the American
Red Cross announces the sending of
a commission 10 Serbia TO begin i'm
mediately relief work in that stricken
country and TO help its scattered
population in the struggle against
privation and disease. Two hundred
thousand dollars has been appropri-
ated by the War Council to buy medi-
cal and other supplies for use among
refugees on the Macedonian front.
Cordenio Arnold Severance, an
eminent lawyer of st. Paul, Mimi,
heads the mission as Commissioner
Deputy Commissioners are: Dr.
Severance Burrage. Sanitarian, for
merly Of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology; DR.. Frederick t.
Lloyd. physician, of Boston; DR. Eu-
gene a. Crockett, surgeon. of Boston;
Eater Francis jaeger. University of
Minnesota. Minneapolis; Edwin ID.
Haskell, Secretary, Minneapolis.
Two other members of the Commits
sion, w. A. w. Stewart, of New York,
and L. D. Wishard. of Pasadena, Cal,
left some time ago for Salonika.
The fifth of the Red Cross Commits
sions goes to study a problem ac-
knowledged as one of the most
formidable in Europe. There is
hardly family in Serbia that has not
been uprooted and torn from its
home, and none that has not lost
some member on the battlefield
What have been the nations losses
during the past five years of blood
shed cannot be estimated From an
army of nearly a half million at the
beginning of the war; over a hundred
and fifty thousand men are estimated
to have been taken prisoners by the
Central Powers and are suffering
from malnutrition in prison camps
Many thousands were lost in the re-
treat through Albania OF the army
of one hundred thousand now on the
Salonika front, about sixty thousand
are actual fighting men.
The civilian population has suffer-
ed as greatly as the army. 1t has
been harried over the face of Europe.
fatherless families, it is estimated,
are facing destiution in various coun-
tries. Refugees in Russia, Roumania,
Greece, Italy, France, and Switzer-
land number over thirty thousand.
Fifty thousand families are interned
in Austrian camps. After the massa-
cres at Nish last February, when 90
5000 Serbians died in revolt, upwards
of thirty thousand of these unhappy
people were deported by the Bull
garians into Asia Minor.
The pressing needs of Serbia have
been laid before the Red Cross War
Council by Dr. Edward Ryan, Red
Cross representative at Salonika,
and by Miss Emily Simmonds, gradu-
ate of Roosevelt Hospital. New York,
who enlisted in the Serbian Red
Cross in 1914 and has since then as
sisted in the relief of thousands of
refugees.
Miss Simmonds urges the dispatch
of food, clothing, bandages, blankets,
seeds, agricultural tools, as well as
of doctors and nurses. In her in
formal report to the Red Cross, she
said:
There were only four hundred doc
tors in all Servia at the beginning of
the war, and the death rate has been
high Sixty died of typhus alone in
January and February, 1915 There
are 116 doctors now in the army, but
only one dentist. Women doctors are
especially needs for maternity work
in the villages. One doctor in a small
car could furnish medical super
of soup kitchens in the villages is an
absolute necessity if famine is not to
make good its threats this winter"