thorized officer of the National Red Cross Society, affiliated with that organization. The wisdom of this step was demonstrated a few weeks later, when the government gave transportation to Manila to two Oregon nurses, Dr. Frances Woods and Miss Lena Killiam. These nurses were selected, outfitted and sent forward supplied with funds by the Oregon Emergency Corps and Red Cross Society. In August the society sent its president, Mrs. Henry E. Jones, and Mrs. Levi Young to San Francisco to investigate the conditions reported to exist at Camp Merritt.
(As a result of their visit there such active measures were brought to bear by an indignant public as went far toward improving the situation of the soldier at this unhappy camp.—Editor.)
The formation of a state Red Cross Society speedily grew to be a necessity of the times, and on the 23d of September, in a convention called for the purpose by the mother corps, the state organization was effected. Delegates were present from the auxiliary and other patriotic relief societies throughout Oregon. Mrs. Henry E. Jones, president of the Portland corps, was elected to that office in the state society; Mrs. Levi Young became vice-president; Mrs. F. E. Lownsbury, secretary, and Mrs. E. C. Protzman, treasurer. The Oregon Emergency Corps, organized to meet an exigency, thus became a permanent society, incorporated under the laws of Oregon, and endowed with full power to act at all times in the larger interests of humanity, at the same time preserving its right to perform in the manner that seems best any local work that comes within its reach.
What strength! what strife! what rude unrest!
What shocks! what half-shaped armies met!
A mighty nation moving west,
With all its steely sinews set
Against the living forests. Hear
The shouts, the shots of pioneer.
The rended forests, rolling wheels,
As if some half-check'd army reels.
Recoils, redoubles, comes again,
Loud sounding like a hurricane.
So tower-like, so Gothic built!
A kingdom won without the guilt
Of studied battle, that hath been
Your blood's inheritance. . . . Your heirs
Know not your tombs: The great plow-shares
Cleave softly through the mellow loam
Where you have made eternal home,
And set no sign. Your epitaphs
Are writ in furrows. Beauty laughs
While through the green ways wandering
Beside her love, slow gathering
White starry-hearted May-time blooms
Above your lowly level'd tombs;
And then below the spotted sky
She stops, she leans, she wonders why
The ground is heaved and broken so,
And why the grasses darker grow
And droop and trail like wounded wing.
Has gather'd you from wood and plain.
We call to you again, again;
The rush and rumble of the car
Comes back in answer. Deep and wide
The wheels of progress have passed on;
The silent pioneer is gone.
His ghost is moving down the trees,
And now we push the memories
Of bluff, bold men who dared and died
In foremost battle, quite aside.
—Joaquin Miller.
