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Show RED CROSS NEWS ...NOTES... When George F. Oxley, one of the i organisers for the Mountain divi- j sion of the Red Cross, arrived In the town he discovered that no work whatever for the good of the organization was being done. The women hardly knew of the Red Cross and its great humanitarian endeavors. It didn't take Mr. Ox-ley Ox-ley long to eqplaln. An auxiliary was organized. The members, comprising the female population of the place, wanted to get to work at once. It was ascertained that the one small general store in the town had yarn, but there wasn't a knitting needle in town. The auxiliary was about ready to postpone its knitting knit-ting campaign until needles for the workers could be obtained. At this juncture one of the women was seized with a inspiration. "The butcher, the butcher! "she exclaimed "He can solve the problem." prob-lem." The other woman' didn't understand under-stand what she meant, until she explained ex-plained that they might all obtain a "set" of knitting needles from him just ordinary, wooden skewers, with which roasts and the like are bound together. Every woman in the chapter was working on her knitting with her emergency needles before the organizer or-ganizer left town. The meat sticks turned out a ssubstantlal amount of work before the arrival of regular needles. The American soldier is one of the best fighters in the world, but when it comes to the comparatively tame, civilian occupation of shopping, shop-ping, he doesn't loom so large, according ac-cording to a letter from a Paris representative rep-resentative of the American Red ' Cross, received at the Mountain division di-vision headquarters in Denver. So ; he is "convoyed" by an American woman Red Cross member when he ventures forth in the linet-of-com-munication canteen village to do a bit of shopping. Thus chaperoned -,e is placed on an equal footing with the nimble-witted, money-getting French shopwoman who, until the innovation was inagurated, had things all her own way. " The letter describing the new function of the American Red Cross woman is as follows: "The American soldier in France is a good fighting man. But when he faces the French shop-keeper, that quick-tongued, sharp-eyed lit-fle lit-fle woman who keeps the till as full as she can while her husband fights, he is glad enough to have American woman beside him. "So the Red Cross woman at the line of communication canteens have a new job. They take the boys out shopping. "There is a string of towns along the railroad where it is a common sight to see a hundred American soldiers sol-diers hurrying about the streets, using us-ing their precious quarter of an hour or so, while they wait for train connections, in laying in a stock of tobacco, food or sweets . And "heading the group of a dozen here, a dozen there, will be seen an American Am-erican woman sheepherding the whole crowd like a new kind of non com, marching them into shops, translating their wants into shopkeepers' shop-keepers' French, counting their change for them, and generally serving ser-ving as guide, interpreter and guardian. There Is usually a troop of youngsters bringing up the rear, chattering, giggling and scrambling scramb-ling for the coppers that the soldiers sol-diers throw among them." Thousands of soldiers at the front and in camps and cantonments are now wearing garments made for them. Three thousand four hundred hun-dred hospitals have received some part of the things sent to France by the Red Cross. Thousands of j the wounded soldiers have been |
