One of the very typical actions of the Military Affairs Department under Major Perkins was the help given to General Pétain's army, which had suffered acutely. His assistance came at a time which rendered it of double value to the French commander. In fact that was a trait of very real genius that Major Perkins displayed again and again throughout his management of the Red Cross--the knack of extending the aid of his organization at a time when its work would be of the greatest assistance to the winning of the war. In fact, it was upon his shoulders that there fell the task of directing our American Red Cross in meeting its two greatest military emergencies--the great German offensive in the Somme in March, 1918, and the bitter fighting in and about Château-Thierry some four months later. The official records of both the French and the American armies teem with communications of commendation for the efforts of the American Red Cross on those two memorable occasions. [Illustration: SO THIS IS PARIS A. E. F. Boys, guests of our A. R. C. in its great hospital at St. Cloud, look down about the "Queen City of the World"] Once in stating his policy in regard to the direction of the Red Cross Department of Military Affairs, of which he had been chief before succeeding Major Murphy as Commissioner to France, Major Perkins laid down his fundamental principles of work quite simply: they were merely to find and to develop the quickest and most effective way of helping the soldiers of the allied armies, and, particularly in the case of the United States Army, to put the Red Cross at the full service of every individual in it, not only in succoring the wounded but in making a difficult life as comfortable as was humanely possible for the well, and to perform these duties in the most economical and effective manner possible. Here was a platform broad and generous, and, with the greatest armies that the world in all its long centuries of fighting has ever known, affording opportunities so vast as to be practically limitless. One might have thought that in a war carried forward on so unprecedented and colossal a scale that the Red Cross--or, for that matter, any other relief organization--might have found its fullest opportunity in a single activity. But seemingly that is not the Red Cross way of doing things. And in this particular war its great and dominating American organization was forever seeking out opportunities for service far removed from its conventional activities of the past, and of the things that originally might have been expected of it. Count so much for its versatility.