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AMERICAN RED CROSS IN NORTH RUSSIA

American Red Cross On Errands Of Mercy Precede Troops--Summary Of Aid Given People--Aid And Comforts Freely Given American Troops --Summary--Commendatory Words Of General Richardson--Our Weekly "Sentinel" Put Out By Red Cross--Returned Men Strong For American Red Cross Work In North Russia.

Even before the question of American participation in the Allied expedition to North Russia had been decided upon, the American Red Cross had dispatched a mission of thirteen persons, with four thousand two hundred tons of food and medicine, for the relief of the civilian population. When, shortly thereafter, a considerable detachment of American doughboys, engineers and ambulance corps troops were landed, the Red Cross had the nucleus of an organization to provide for the needs of our soldiers as well as for the civilian population.

A report, made public here by the American Red Cross on its work in North Russia, gives an interesting picture of conditions on our Arctic battle front during the war. The food situation among the civilian population was acute. With the city swollen in population through a steady influx of refugees, few fresh supplies were coming in and hoarded supplies were rapidly diminishing. Coarse bread and fish were staple articles of food, and there was a grave shortage of clothing.

The desperate need for foodstuffs in the regions far north along the Arctic shores was brought sharply to the attention of the Allied Food Committee when delegates from Pechora arrived by reindeer teams and camped at the doors of the committee urging assistance. They brought samples of the bread they were forced to eat. It was made of a small quantity of white flour mixed with ground-up dried fish. Other samples which were shown were made from immature frostbitten rye grain, and a third was composed of a small quantity of white flour mixed with reindeer moss. A small quantity of rye flour mixed with chopped coarse straw, was the basis of a fourth example.

Much attention was devoted by the Red Cross to caring for school children and orphans. Over two million hot lunches were distributed, during a period of a few months, to three hundred and thirty schools with twenty thousand pupils. Every orphanage in the district was outfitted with the things it needed and received a regular fortnightly issue of food supplies. Over twenty thousand suits of underwear were given out to refugees. To provide for the many persons separated from their families or from employment on account of the war, the Red Cross established a regular free employment agency.

The writer recalls having seen in Pinega in February men who had left their Petchora homes eight months before to go to Archangel for the precious flour provided by the American Red Cross. The civil war had made transportation slow and extremely hazardous.

Expeditions were constantly sent out from Archangel to various points with supplies of food, clothing, and medicaments. The most extensive of the civilian relief enterprises undertaken by the Red Cross Mission to Russia was the sending of a boat from Archangel to Kern with a cargo of fifty-five tons. This was distributed either by the Red Cross officials themselves or by responsible local authorities.

Food rations and clothing were given to three hundred destitute families in Archangel which, upon careful investigation, were found to be deserving. Housing conditions were improved and clothing, which had been salvaged from sunken steamers and lay idle in the customs house, was dried and distributed.

Besides supplying all Russian civilian hospitals in and around Archangel regularly with medicine, sheets, blankets, pillows and food rations, the Red Cross opened up a Red Cross hospital in Archangel, which was finally turned over to the local government to be used as a base hospital for the Russian army. Red Cross medicines are credited with having checked the serious influenza epidemic and with having worked against its recurrence.

Medicaments worth one million roubles were sent by the Red Cross to the various district zemstvos. Russian prisoners of war, returning from Germany through the Bolshevik lines to North Russia, were also taken care of.

Work among the American soldiers in North Russia was thorough and effective. The daily ration was supplemented and many American soldiers received from the Red Cross quantities of rolled oats, sugar, milk, and rice, besides all the regular Red Cross comforts, including cigarettes, stationery, chewing gum, athletic goods, playing cards, toilet articles, phonographs, sweaters, socks, blankets, etc.

Supplies were sent as regularly as possible to the troops on the line, generally in the face of apparently insurmountable transportation difficulties. Units of troops, even in the most inaccessible and out of the way places, were visited by Red Cross workers, occasionally at great danger to their lives.

With the assistance of the Red Cross The American Sentinel, a weekly newspaper, was printed and distributed among the troops and did much to keep up their morale. One of the last acts performed by the Red Cross for the American Expeditionary Forces in Archangel was to help and speed to their new homes eight war brides.

The veteran of the North Russian expedition will never look at his old knit helmet or wristlets, scarf, or perhaps eat a rare dish of rolled oats, or bite off a chew of plug, or listen to a certain piece on the graphaphone, or look at a Red Cross Christmas Seal without a warm feeling under his left breast pocket for the American Red Cross.

[Illustration: City street with several large buildings.] PRIMM
View of Archangel in Summer

[Illustration: Soldiers at attention with rifles.] U S. OFFICIAL PHOTO
General Ironside Inspecting Doughboys

[Illustration: Many soldiers standing at grave.] U S OFFICIAL PHOTO
Burial of Lieut. Clifford Phillips

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