Annual Report of Immense Work Done Washington, Oct. 30., Fourieen million dollars, covering the cost of distribution, of articles ranging from auto-am-balances to safety pins, has been expended by the American Red Cross in its relief in Russia, according to figures taken from the forthcoming annual report of the organization.
Service was extended to millions of men, women and children and ranged from hospital care for the sick to food and clothing for the starving and ill clad. The work was carried on through commissions sent to Siberia, Western Russia, Southern Russia and the Baltic' States, a total of 2,667 persons including 503 Americans were employed. In Siberia alone Red Cross trains distributed 8,000 tons of supplies and 18 hospitals with a total of 6,596 Beds were operated.
One of the most difficult tasks of the organization, according to the report, was in helping the people of Esthonia where there was no ambulance service and very little in the way of hospitals when the Americans arrived. The army was retreat and disorganized and the combined force of soldiers and civilians to the number of 20,000 described as a hungry, suffering, panic-stricken mob. In December typhus broke out and for months the Red Cross workers fought the disease amid great difficulties.
At one time the dead were piled in the corners of the rooms with the sick and no effort at decent burial was made. In a hospital at Reval consisting of a single barrack with 460 beds in one room, there were 600 deaths in one week.
Much of the relief work in Western Russia consisted in aid to more than 250,000 Allied Soldiers held in prison camps.—Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.