It is true, however, that without our army, and certainly without our moral prestige and our resources, the fight for democracy might have been lost at this time, and for many years hereafter. Count that for organization--for real American achievement, if you please. We builded a machine, a huge machine, a machine not without defects and some of them rather glaring defects as you _come_ close to them, but it was a machine that functioned, and, upon the whole, functioned extremely well. It took raw materials--men among them--and fashioned them into fighting materials; fighting materials which flowed in one channel or another toward the fighting front overseas. And with one of these channels--the work of the American Red Cross with the Army of the United States in France--this book has to do. CHAPTER II OUR RED CROSS GOES TO WAR On the day that General John J. Pershing first came to Paris--it was the thirteenth of June, 1917--the American Red Cross already was there. It greeted the American commanding general on his arrival at the French capital, an occasion long to be remembered even in a city of memorable celebrations. For hours the historic Place de la Concorde was thronged with patient folk. It was known that General Pershing was to be quartered at the Hotel Crillon--since come to a new fame as the headquarters of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace--and it was in front of the doors of that establishment that the crowd stood thickest. There were many, many thousands of these waiting folk, close-packed upon the pavement, and only giving way to a dusty limousine in which sat the man who was to help bring salvation to France and freedom to the democracy of the world. After the doors of the hotel had swallowed General Pershing and his French hosts, the crowd refused to disperse; also, it became less patient. A long swinging chant began--the typical chant of the Paris mob. "_Balcon, balcon, balcon_," it sang in rhythmic monotony, and 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.