In 1905 the American Congress realized the need for an organization which should be more distinctly national in its scope and plan. The existing society was therefore disbanded, and a reorganization was effected along slightly different lines. The American Red Cross now operates under distinctly governmental supervision and authority. Its head is the President of the United States. Its chief officers are men high in governmental councils. Its accounts are audited in the War Department, and its activities in every way center in Washington. Yet it is distinctively a civil organization. Its membership is made up of the common people of the country. It accepts volunteers for medical, surgical, and nursing work behind the battle lines in time of war, but it also accepts as members all who care to enrol and pay the small annual membership fee. The average citizen is thus afforded an opportunity to have a part in the better side of war—the care of the sick, the wounded, and the distressed. It enables the last person, however far away and however lowly he may be, to do his share together with the rest. Even those who volunteer as doctors and nurses find that most of their work is at a distance from the firing line. Strict observance must be given to certain fixed rules governing the activities of Red Cross workers, but so long as these rules are observed the danger is comparatively small. The American Red Cross has, since its organization in 1884, proven its worth in a number of times of need. Its opportunity for wartime service has, thus far, been limited. Until we had been touched by the present war, our people had only been engaged in one brief struggle since the organization of the Red Cross in America. It did its work well during the Spanish-American War of 1898. It will now have an opportunity for much greater wartime usefulness in a time of much greater need. It has, however, been giving frequent service to the suffering in other times of catastrophe. It gave notable aid in the time of the yellow fever epidemic in the South, the Johnstown flood, the famines in Russia and Japan, tidal-wave floods in South Carolina and Texas, the Armenian massacre, the oppression of the Cuban people, the Mount Pelee volcanic eruption, and earthquakes in Chile, Jamaica, and California. These are but a few of the outstanding instances of Red Cross aid to stricken people. In smaller disasters almost everywhere, the same helping hand has been extended. The American Red Cross has expended about fifteen millions upon its work thus far in its history. That sum will, of course, be rapidly multiplied if the present war continues long. The whole country has been roused to a spirit of co-operation, contributing both work and money.