The Ordway new era., 1917-12-14


American soldiers must not be for
single day without all of these things
they need. The French have been. In
the early days of the war-and it has
Deen said in some later days-word
went out that the French surgeons
were operating without anesthetics be-
cause they had none. 1t is bad enough
TO lose an arm or n leg, but no one
likes to think of being tied fast to a
table and the leg or arm cut Off with
no chloroform or ether to give the suf-
ferer unconsciousness while the knife
Is welded.
Also, within the last year, word has
come from the battlefields of France
that the little Poilus had to use old
newspapers to stanch the blood from
their wounds. That was because their
supply Of gauze had run out and no
more was to be had. 1t meant infect
ed wounds, gangrene, lockjaw, and
the loss of legs and arms and lives that
might have been saved.
All America will agree that none of
these things must happen to Pershing's
boys. But 1t will happen unless the
American people get right behind the
Red Cross, and make and ship those
hospital supplies in never-ending
stream. The surgeons at the French
hospitals say that sometimes 1t takes
whole box of surgical dressings
1000 Of them-for single wounded
man. They have been so short at the
French hospitals that instead of throw
ing the dressings away after using,
they have been driven to try to clean
them and use them over and over.
That is what Maj. Grayson NJ. P.
Murphy had in mind n few weeks ago
when he cabled to the Red Cross that
nothing on earth Is now of equal I'M
portance to getting big supply of
surgical supplies into France. Unless
we do. he said, disaster and disgrace
are ahead for America-and the Red
Cross and the American people cannot
afford to incur that. No American SOL
dier must lose leg or an arm or an
eye, or give his life, when it can be
saved by anything the American peo-
pie can do. Major Murphy is the Red
Cross commissioner for France, and
knows perhaps better than any other
man in the world exactly what needs
to be done for the army in a medical
and surgical way. When he speaks
America will do well to listen.
Money Is not all the Red Cross must
have for this work-money is not even
the most important thing, though 1t
will take millions of dollars. What it
needs most of all is an immense num-
Der of members, and their personal
service. 1t needs, and has to have, the
whole American people. fathers and
mothers, sisters and daughters, and
the children, to back up the govern
ment and the Red Cross in this work.
Take, for example, the recent call Of
Major Murphy for 6,OOO 600 warm knit
ted articles for the soldiers and for
the destitute of France. If the money
had been at hand to buy the lot, there
were not that many knitted things in
the whole world of the kind wanted.
But the Red Cross appealed to its
members, and asked each chapter for
its quota, and the socks and sweaters
and muf1lers and wristlets rolled in by
carloads, and are still coming. The
mothers and sisters and daughters and
wives went to knitting, and that an
swered the call in an amazingly short
time.
The situation will be the same when
the boys begin to need bandages and
gauze dressings and hospital garments
in great numbers. Not all the stores
in all the land will have enough such
things to fill the demand. But the
American people are being enrolled as
Red Cross members, and they are
learning by tens of thousands how to
make and pack and ship these things,
and whatever the demand, they will
meet 1t in full.