This poster encouraged women to join the American Red Cross Nursing Service. In 1917 and 1918, President Woodrow Wilson recognized the American Red Cross as the nation’s official humanitarian organization. He appointed new wartime leaders and charged them with coordinating the foreign relief efforts of all other American charities and aid agencies. The American Red Cross thus functioned as a quasi-governmental organization—privately funded and primarily reliant on volunteer labor, yet connected to the state in important ways. Among the Red Cross’s many wartime activities was the organization of a Nursing Service to recruit trained nurses and assign them for service. During the war, 19,877 women volunteered to be Red Cross nurses. Most were appointed to serve as part of the Army and Navy Nurse Corps, but a few worked directly for the American Red Cross. About half stayed at home; the remainder deployed to Europe. Most of those who were stationed abroad cared for American and Allied soldiers and sailors, but some provided nursing care to women, children, and other civilians. Although the Nursing Service enrolled only trained, professional nurses, millions of other American women volunteered for the American Red Cross in other capacities. Women knitted socks and bandages, collected food and money for Red Cross drives, and served donuts and coffee to soldiers. Although they could not join the military, American women thus found their own avenues for wartime service.

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