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Show Red Cress Needs $125,000,000 To Finance Wartime Program WASHINGTON. D. C Faced with the greatest wartime program in history, the American Red Cross will launch its 1943 War Fund appeal ap-peal for $125,000,000 on March 1. Chairman Norman H. Davis has announced. an-nounced. Pointing out that the bulk of the fund will be used to expand Red Cross services to the men of the armed forces and their families. Chairman Davis urged every American Amer-ican man and woman to contribute to the fund. With the approval of President Roosevelt, who also is President of the American Red Cross, the month of March is being observed as Red Cross Month. Walter S. Gifford, president of the American Telephone Tele-phone and Telegraph Company, is chairman of the Red Cross 1943 War Fund. "Red Cross services to our armed forces and to the needs of distressed dis-tressed civilians on the buttle and home fronts can be supplied only by great expenditures and sacrifices," sacri-fices," Chairman Davis said. "We are exerting our utmost efforts to accomplish these tasks with the least possible drain upon the resources re-sources of the people in funds, time and energy. We must never falter In our determination to meet these definite obligations. The Red Cross is confident that all our people will be generous in their support of the 1943 War Fund." More than 65 percent of the fund received by the national organization organiza-tion will be devoted to meeting Red Cross responsibilities to the armed forces. These include the Red Cross overseas club program, recreation and hospital program, the stationing station-ing of field directors at all foreign and domestic military camps and bases, the huge surgical dressing productijn program, and the blood plasma project which recently was expanded to a total of 4,000,000 pints at the request of the Army and Navy. Chairman Davis pointed out that the 1943 program will be vastly greater than the accomplishments of last year, in which the Red Cross aided millions of war victims through Its foreign war relief program: pro-gram: gave aid to thousands of prisoners of war; collected 1,500,-000 1,500,-000 pints 'of blood for the armed forces; produced 520,000,000 surgical sur-gical dressings, and aided more than 1,500,000 servicemen and their families. The $125,000,000 quota, he said, will finance the local,' national and International work of the Red Cross for the entire year, barring unforeseen unfore-seen emergencies. |