upon the balcony of the hotel in a few minutes Pershing appeared, while the crowd below him went wild in its enthusiasm.

But before the American commanding general had made his appearance upon the balcony he had been greeted in the parlors of the Crillon, both formally and informally, by the members of the first American Red Cross Commission to Europe. By coincidence that Commission had arrived in Paris that very morning from America, and were the first Americans to greet their high commanding officer in France. And so also to give him promise that the organization which they represented would be ready for the army as soon as it was ready; for back in the United States widespread plans for the great undertaking so close at hand already were well under way.

This American Commission had sailed from New York on the steamship Lorraine, of the French Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, on the second day of June. It consisted of eighteen men, headed by Major Grayson M.-P. Murphy, a West Point man of some years of active army training and also a New York banker of wide experience. The other members of the party were James H. Perkins, afterward Red Cross Commissioner for France; William Endicott, afterward Red Cross Commissioner for Great Britain; Frederick S. Hoppin, Rev. Robert Davis, Rev. E. D. Miel, F. R. King, Philip Goodwin, Ernest McCullough, Ernest T. Bicknell, C. G. Osborne, R. J. Daly, A. W. Copp, John van Schaick, and Thomas H. Kenny. They were men who had been hastily recruited and yet not without some special qualifications for the difficult preliminary work which they were about to undertake. Until the preliminary "get-acquainted" luncheon which Major Murphy gave for the party in New York on the day preceding its sailing, comparatively few of them knew one another. Yet the great task into which they were entering was to make them lifelong friends, and to develop for the Red Cross, both in Europe and in America, many executives whose real abilities had not really been attained at the time of their appointment to Red Cross service.

These men were volunteers. With a few exceptions, such as clerical workers and the like, the early members of the Red Cross served without pay. At first they had no military rank. Apart from Major Murphy, who bore the title of Commissioner to Europe—there being at the time no separate Commissioner to France or to Great Britain—there were merely deputy commissioners, inspectors, and secretaries. Major Murphy's title had come to him through his army service. It was not until some time later that the War Department issued General Orders No. 82 (July 5, 1917), conferring titles and fixing the assimilated rank of Red Cross personnel. Accordingly commissions and rank were given and the khaki uniform of the United States Army adopted, with distinctive Red Cross markings. Though it is not generally understood, American Red Cross officers have received from the President of the United States, issued through and over the signature of the Secretary of War, commissions which appointed them to their rank and held them to the discipline and the honor of the United States Army.

Before the Lorraine was well out of the upper harbor of New York on that memorable second day of June, Major Murphy called a meeting of the Commission. He explained to them in a few words that they were, in effect, even then, military officers and would be expected to observe military discipline, and as a beginning would appear at dinner that evening in their uniforms—the army regulations at that time prevented relief workers of any sort appearing in the United States in their overseas uniforms—and thereafter would not appear without their uniforms until their return to America. The grim business of war seemingly was close at hand. It began in actuality when one first donned its accouterments, and was by no means lessened in effect by the stern war-time rules and discipline of a merchant ship which, each time she crossed the Atlantic, did so at grave peril.

Yet peril was not the thing that was uppermost in the minds of this pioneer Red Cross party. It took the many rules of "lights out" and "life preservers to be donned, s'il vous plaît," boat drill, and all the rest of this particularly grim part of the bigger grim business, good-humoredly and light-heartedly, yet kept its mind on the grimmer business on the other side of the Atlantic. And, so that it might become more efficient in that grimmest business, undertook for itself the study of French—at one and the same time the most lovable and most damnable of all languages.

"I shall not consider as efficient any member of the party who does not acquire enough French to be able to navigate in France under his own power in three months."

Major Murphy laughed as he said this, but he meant business. And so did the members of the Commission. As the ship settled down to the routine of her passage, the members of the Commission settled down to a life-and-death struggle with French. For two long hours each morning they went at it. At first they gathered in little groups upon the decks, each headed by some one capable of giving more or less instruction; then they found their way to the lounge, where they grouped themselves round about a young woman from Smith College who had taught French in that institution for some years. It was this young woman's self-inflicted job to give conversational lessons to the Red Cross party, and this she did with both enthusiasm and ability. She chose to give them conversational French—in the form of certain simple and dramatic little childhood epics.

"This morning we will have the story of Little Red Riding Hood," she would say, "and after I am done telling it to you in French, you gentlemen, one by one, will tell it back to me—in French."

In order that the effect of the lesson should not be too quickly lost Major Murphy ruled that French, and no other language, should be both official and unofficial for luncheon each day. This order quickly converted an ordinarily genial meal into a Quaker meeting. For when one of mademoiselle's more enthusiastic pupils would start an audacious request for "Encore le pain, s'il vous plaît," he was almost sure to be greeted either with groans or grins from his fellows. Yet the lessons of those short ten days were invaluable. Many of the men of that party who since have attained more than a "navigating" knowledge of French have to thank the lady from Smith College for their opportunity to acquire it. The "bit" that she did for the Red Cross was perhaps small, but it was exceedingly valuable.

Afternoons, sometimes evenings, too, were given to business conferences wherein ways and means for meeting the big problem so close ahead were given attention. It matters not that many of the plans so carefully developed upon the Lorraine were, of necessity, abandoned after the party reached France. The very men who were making these plans realized as they were making them that field service—actual practice, if you please—is far different from theory, and as they planned, felt that the very labor they were undergoing might yet have to be thrown away, although not completely wasted. For the members of that pioneer Red Cross Commission were gaining one thing of which no situation whatsoever might deprive them; they were gaining an experience in teamwork that was to be invaluable in the busy weeks and months that were to follow.

Very early in the morning of the twelfth of June the Lorraine slipped into the mouth of the Gironde river; for the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, driven from Havre by the submarine menace and the necessity of giving up the Seine embouchure to the great transport necessities of the British, had been forced to concentrate its