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Show RED GROSS ROLL CALL Membership Campaign Opens November No-vember 2d, ClOSeS llth-President llth-President Wilson, in Message Prepared Before Illness, Makes Appeal for Generous Response. Washington, D. C. In a request to the people of the United States to generously gen-erously ri'spond to the Third Red Cross Roll Call the following message was dictated by ('resident Wilson before be-fore his present illness: As president of the United States and as president of the American Red Cross I recommend and urge a generous gen-erous response to the Third Red Cross Roll Call, which opens on November te second with the observance of Red Cross Sunday and appropriately closes on November the eleventh, the first anniversary of the signing of the armistice. ar-mistice. Twenty million adults joined the lied Cross during the war, prompted by a patriotic desire to render service to their country and to the cause for which the United States was engaged In war. Our patriotism should stand the test of peace as well as the test of war, and it is an intelligently patriotic program which the Red Cross proposes, pro-poses, a continuance of service to our soldiers and sailors, who look to it for many things, and a transference to the problems of peace at home of the experience ex-perience and methods which it acquired ac-quired during the war. Stress on Membership. It Is on membership more than money contributions that the stress of the present campaign is laid, for the Red Cross seeks to associate the people in welfare work throughout the land, especially in those communities where neither official nor unofficial provision has b,een made for adequate public health and social service. It is in the spirit of democracy that the people should undertake their own welfare activities, and the National Red Cross wisely Intends to exert upon community action a stimulating and co-ordinating influence and to place the energies of the organization behind be-hind all sound public health and welfare wel-fare agencies. The American Red Cross does not purpose indefinite prolongation of its relief work abroad, a policy which would lay an unjust burden upon our own people and tend to undermine the self-reliance of the peoples relieved, but there is a necessary work of completion com-pletion to be performed before the American Red Cross can honorably withdraw from Europe. The congress of the United States has imposed upon the Red Cros a continuing responsibility responsi-bility abroad by authorizing the secretary secre-tary of war to transfer to the American Ameri-can Red Cross such surplus army medical med-ical supplies and supplementary and dietary foodstuffs now in Europe as shaP; not be required by the army, to be used by the Red Cross to relieve the distress which continues in certain countries of Europe as a result of the war. Program Deserves Support. Tq finance these operations, to conclude con-clude work which was bgUn during the Wai', and to carry out some comparatively com-paratively Inexpensive constructive plans for assisting peoples In eastern Europe to develop their own welfare organizations, the American Red Cross requires, in addition to membership fees, a sum of money small in comparison compar-ison with the gifts poured Into Its treasury by our generous people during dur-ing the war. Both the greater enduring domestic program and the lesser temporary foreign for-eign program of the Red Cross deserve de-serve enthusiastic support, and I venture ven-ture to hope that its peace-time membership mem-bership will exceed rather than fall below its impressive war membership. WOODROW WILSON. |
