Appointment

Whenever U. S. citizens are asked to contribute to the Red Cross by whoever at the time happens to be U. S. President, the prestige of his great office has usually been enough to turn the trick. U. S. citizens have responded to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's appeal that they give the Red Cross $1,000,000 for the succor of the Chinese people by contributing to date some $120,000.

One reason for this apathetic response was that the President's appeal in January was soon blanketed by subsequent world headlines. Another reason was that the chairmanship of the Red Cross has been vacant since the death of Admiral Grayson. Last week President Roosevelt persuaded his grey and graceful Ambassador-at-Large, Norman Hezekiah Davis, to take the vacant post.

The Japanese Red Cross has saved charitable U. S. citizens large sums since the beginning of the war in China by answering in the negative a question by the American Red Cross as to whether it needed money. Japanese gratefully accepted $10,000,000 from the American Red Cross at the time of the Tokyo 'earthquake, but in their present emergency they feel able to stand on the feet of the Japanese Red Cross.

The Chinese Red Cross, ever since China was invaded, has been thankfully accepting from the American Red Cross sums which now total $370,000. Of this $100,000 was appropriated by the American Red Cross from its general fund before the Roosevelt appeal, and another $100,000 was added from the same source early this month. Private donations prior to the appeal amounted to about $50,000. Chairman Davis keeps hearing from U. S. friends of China that, whereas Japan got $10,000,000 after her earthquake, the American Red Cross in the last three decades has sent only about $3,000,000 to succor Chinese flood and famine victims, and only one eighth as much has gone to China in her present hour of need. Already the British Red Cross and the Lord Mayor of London's fund have raised and sent $500,000, and various U. S. organizations including church groups have sent $1,000,000, so that the American Red Cross is very much upon its mettle. It is handicapped by the fact as a matter of long policy it never itself initiates formal drives for foreign causes, depending on appeals like the President's to bring in the funds.

Thus far the civil war in Spain has been no major problem to the Red Cross, for the reason that both Leftists & Rightists have so many well-organized, passionate, money-collecting friends. U. S. citizens have donated just $1,054 to their Red Cross specifically for Spain. The International Red Cross has received $57,000 from the American Red Cross for Spanish succor, dispassionately divided between Rightists & Leftists. The American Red Cross spent $41,000 repatriating U. S. citizens caught in Spain by the war and unable to escape by their own efforts. Some of the very ablest mercy work of the Spanish civil war has been done by the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker organization to which Mrs. Roosevelt gives her radio earnings. The Friends have spent $50,000 in Spain for non-combatants on both sides of the line, giving and doing wherever the need arises.

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