The diagram shows the stages of removal of the wounded from the firing line, and the means of communication between the various zones. The theatre of operations is divided into three main zones: the zone of advance, the line of communication, and the zone of the interior or home territory. In the first zone are situated the field dressing stations and the field hospitals; in the second, the evacuation hospital and the base hospital, and in the third, the general and home hospital A "ROLLING CANTEEN" Through the cooperation of the French Red Cross and the American Red Cross a rolling canteen" is to be provided for every corps of the French Army. It is used to keep hot or cold the refreshing drinks which are served to the soldiers on their way to and from the first-line trenches crowded six and seven in a single room, are thousands of refugees. Throughout France there are probably a million and a half persons uprooted from their own homes. The Red Cross is coöperating with official and unofficial agencies to find and fill better lodgings in Paris, to complete unfinished apartments, and to assure these unhappy families at least a tight roof and a minimum of furniture and equipment. Behind the lines, in the devastated zone, which has been carefully districted for relief, are four warehouses. Each is stocked with food, clothing, bedding, beds, household utensils, and agricultural implements, which are distributed widely to French families who, as the Commission reports, "have to begin again where North American Indians would begin." Under the guidance of the Woman's Bureau, in America, Red Cross women are making specially prepared garments for these refugees-babies, children, parents and all. There are four little villages -where 235 inhabitants remain out of 3,387 before the war, and where many houses have become heaps of rubble-in good wheat country, where the Red Cross is centering its experimental work of reconstruction so that the returning refugees can do something toward getting a spring crop. AT A RAILROAD STATION IN PARIS The blow against Italy fell just after a Red Cross preliminary commission of inquiry had left the country. Immediately an emergency fund of $250,000 was put at the disposal of the American Ambassador, Mr. Page; Major Murphy, Commissioner for Europe, hurried from Paris to Rome; the relief fund was tripled; and Red Cross supplies began pouring into Italy. Forty-six carloads of assorted material were speedily shipped from France. A warehouse was established in Rome with supplies of mattresses, sheets, pillow cases, hospital clothes, blankets, ether, sweaters, women's and children's clothing. Condensed milk was distributed to children and the sick from Genoa and Milan. Carload lots of relief materials were also despatched to Florence, Bologna, Naples, Catania, Leghorn, Genoa, and Milan. Twenty-three ambulances with experienced personnel set out overland from Paris. Contracts were let for fifty more. Distribution of hospital supplies and systematic visits to the Italian military hospitals were immediately begun. Soup kitchens were organized in Rome, Ancona, Ravenna, Genoa, and Milan. The Red Cross financed a crèche for 100 refugee children in Rome under the direction of Garibaldi's grand-daughter. A million lire ($200,000) was appropriated to aid the needy families of soldiers at the front. 66 THE BLAKE EXTENSION' Used at American Red Cross Military Hospital No. 2 in Paris. This device of Dr. Joseph A. Blake's is used with great success in the treatment of particularly distressing fractures. The Red Cross is making this and other apparatus in workshops in France which reinforce the work of the hospitals This was the work of something less than three weeks. Such a response to an emergency would have been impossible without thorough organization. It requires machinery that does not break down, and competent engineers, to maintain relief work on an international scale. Major Grayson M.-P. Murphy, who headed the original Red Cross mission to France, is in general charge of all the work in Europe. He is a West Point man, and so fitted to work harmoniously with the Army. He has, indeed, been made a member of General Pershing's staff. He is also senior vice-president of the Guaranty Trust Company of New York, and is equipped to handle the tremendous problems of finance and general administration that are involved in his task. His colleagues on the French Commission, and on the others which went to Russia, Italy, Rumania, and Serbia, include not only industrial, financial, and professional leaders similarly qualified to analyze large needs and administer large remedies, but also many experts in special fields of relief. The spirit of the organization which Major Murphy has built up, largely on a volunteer basis, may be judged from the results it has accomplished, and from such a message as this from Major Murphy in regard to a man who wanted to serve: "If FOR FRENCH CIVILIAN RELIEF A load of mattresses leaving a Red Cross warehouse in Paris for refugees outside the city. Two hundred tons of relief supplies arrive in Paris every day for distribution throughout France The American Red Cross was quick to respond to the suffering in Halifax after the recent explosion of the French munitions ship, Mont Blanc, when it collided with the Imo. On the day of the disaster the Red Cross started relief trains to Halifax from New York and Boston he is willing to do any work assigned to him and go wherever may be necessary, he can be of great value.' The whole great enterprise is directed from Washington by the War Council, men of large vision and sure-footed judgment, led by Mr. Henry P. Davison. In every country to which they extend the work of the Red Cross, they put full reliance on the service of experts. Abroad and at home, the strategic places in the organization are filled by volunteers. It is always a definite need that governs the work of the Red Cross. A foreign commission sees what must be done. It reports to the War Council, which decides what the Red Cross can do. The General Manager instructs fourteen Division Managers accordingly, if the call is for supplies which the chapters can furnish. They pass the instructions on to more than 3,000 chapters, and the work is done by millions of women. The chapters ship the finished articles to division warehouses at thirteen central points; the division officers forward them to a shipping point as the National Clearing House directs. Every ship chartered by the Government, and many others, carry Red Cross material to Europe. In France the supplies are picked up by Red Cross motor trucks, carried to one of sixteen Red Cross warehouses, and then distributed to the hospitals or refugee colonies or military camps where they are needed. At Rome, Moscow, Saloniki, Jassy, London, and Havre there are similar centres from which relief apparatus can be efficiently operated. If, in carrying out its programme, the Red Cross had done no more than pour through existing channels of relief the great flood of physical and financial and personal reinforcements which American aid has made possible, that service alone would justify its existence. Instead of that, the Red Cross is playing the dual rôle of pioneer and reservist, entrepreneur and underwriter. It establishes its own canteens, hospitals, infirmaries, refuges, warehouses. Also, it works side by side with other societies. And in other cases it simply backs up existing organizations with its money, its supplies, and its executive coöperation. It seeks only to secure the most effective application of American aid to the bitter need which dwarfs all aid. MUST PANAMA COME TO SEA LEVEL? War-time Reasons for Transforming the "Panama Lock Canal" into the "Straits of Panama" BY PHILIPPE BUNAU-VARILLA [Mr. Bunau-Varilla is a distinguished French engineer who has made a life study of the Panama Canal. His plan for digging it was one of the three or four most widely discussed before the present plan was adopted. The following article is a restatement of this plan in the light of war-time conditions and of the rapid increase in the size of ships.—The Editors.] T HE huge conflict which has scattered terror broadcast over the whole earth, must, indeed, have already revealed, in its perspective, to many thoughtful Americans the character of the problem now confronting the United States at Panama. More than one American must have shuddered at the thought that this essential artery of military navigation is dependent on the proper working of delicate lock-gates, on the stability and maintenance of a mass of masonry walls! More than one American will have trembled at the thought of the American Pacific fleet being for months separated from the Atlantic fleet simply because a bomb had been dropped at just the right place from an airplane or from a dirigible balloon! More than one American will have been meditating over the fact of the incapacity of the present Lock Canal to give passage to warships of more than 110 feet beam, the dimensions which may be to-morrow a necessity for the "capital ships" of 200,000 horsepower now contemplated! So long as this link established by the genius of man between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans depends upon the perfect preservation of a cubic yard of concrete or of a ton of steel, no assurance can be had that it will certainly survive in time of war. The enormous advantage for the enemy to compass its destruction, given the relative facility of such destruction, renders this verity something more than a plausible hypothesis. How render the Panama Waterway invulnerable? The Panama Waterway will not cease to be vulnerable until it assumes the form of an open and free channel between the two The Canal will then have been converted into a big river flowing between the two continental masses with a velocity determined by the state of the tide at Panama. Who would ever dream of destroying, by explosives, or otherwise, the bed of a big river? Who would imagine a Zeppelin trying to make navigation permanently impossible between London and the sea by dropping any number of bombs at a given place in the bed of the Thames? I insist, therefore, that in order to render the Panama Canal invulnerable it must be transformed into a "Straits." When the French Company undertook, in 1881, under the leadership of De Lesseps, to cut the Canal without governmental aid, the Culebra Summit was 300 feet above the average level of the two oceans. When, in 1904, the successors of the French Company transferred their property to the American nation, this summit had been lowered from the 300-foot level to the 160foot level, except for a few hundred yards that had been preserved for the convenience of the passage of trains used for the removal of refuse to the dumps. The depth of the French excavation had been 140 feet. When the American Government opened the Canal to traffic, the Culebra Summit had been further lowered from 160 feet above the sea level to 40 feet above the sea level. The American excavation had been 120 feet. In order to transform the "Panama Lock Canal" into the "Straits of Panama," a still further deepening of the excavation by 100 feet is necessary. No one will be likely to contest the fact |