Before I am done with this book I am going to describe the Atlantic crossing of one of the final Red Cross parties. I belonged to one of those parties myself and so am able to write from first-hand knowledge. But between the original expedition and the one in which I sailed were many others; others of far greater import. For our Uncle Samuel was aroused, and, once aroused, and having resolved that having entered the great fight he would give his all, if necessary, toward its winning, he began pouring overseas not only his fighting legions but his armies of relief, of which the Red Cross is part and parcel. CHAPTER III ORGANIZING FOR WORK At No. 5 Rue François Premier stood the American Relief Clearing House. It was a veritable lighthouse, a tower of strength, if you please, to an oppressed and suffering people. To its doors came the offerings of a friendly folk overseas who needed not the formal action of their Congress before their sympathies and their purse-strings were to be touched, but who were given heartfelt American response almost before the burning of Louvain had been accomplished. And from those doors poured forth that relief, in varied form, but with but one object, the relief of suffering and misery. Until the coming of the American Red Cross and its kindred organizations, this Clearing House was to Paris--to all France, in fact--almost the sole expression of the real sentiment of the United States. It was organized, and well organized, with a definite purpose; on the one hand the avoidance of useless duplications and overlappings, to say nothing of possible frictions, and upon the other the heartfelt desire to accomplish the largest measure of good with means that were not always too ample despite the desire of the folk who were executing them. More than this, the American Relief Clearing House had a practical purpose in endeavoring to meet the everyday problems of transportation of relief supplies. This phase of its work we shall see again when we consider the organization of the transportation department of the American Red Cross in France. It is enough to say here and now that it possessed a very small number of trucks and touring cars which were worked to their fullest possibilities, and seemingly even beyond, in the all but vain effort to keep abreast of the incoming relief supplies.