In these weeks and months of the first half of 1918, Burlingame found much of his work divided into several of the functions of the Department of Civil Affairs--particularly among such sectors as the Children's Bureau, the Bureau of Tuberculosis, and the Bureau of Refugees. This was organization business. It took strength from that very arm of the Red Cross which soon was to be called upon to accomplish so very much indeed. And when, on the twenty-fourth of August, 1918, the Gibson reorganization plan divorced the Medical and Surgical Section entirely from the work of the Department of Civil Affairs and combined its entire activities into a Medical and Surgical Department, Burlingame and his fellows had a free hand for the first time, a full opportunity to put their tripartite policy into execution. For a time Colonel Fred T. Murphy was director of this newly created department. On January 6, 1919, however, he was succeeded by Colonel Burlingame, who had been so instrumental in framing both the policies and carrying out the actual operations of the department. On that same day the former Medical and Surgical Section of the Department of Military Affairs became the Bureau of Hospital Administration. The Bureau of Tuberculosis was transferred as such to this new department, as was also the Children's Bureau. The Women's Bureau of Hospital Administration which, under the old organization, was reporting to the general manager, became the Bureau of Nurses, while the work for the _mutilés_, which was being conducted by both the departments of Military Affairs and Civil Affairs, was relegated to a new bureau. I have given these changes in some detail not because they were in themselves so vastly important, as because they tend to show how firm a grasp Burlingame gained not only on the operations but upon the very organization of his work. He did not reorganize; he perfected, and finally was able to perfect even the Gibson general plan of organization for our Red Cross in France which was recognized as the most complete thing of its sort that had been accomplished. For the purpose of better understanding the activities of this bureau, it may be well to divide its activities into four great classes. The first of these would group those activities conducted directly by the Surgeon General's office of the United States Army, but to which our Red Cross gave frequent aid in the line of supplies, supplementing those normally furnished through the usual army channels. Sometimes not only supplies but personnel was furnished. Such aid was given upon request of army officers.