During the period of the Spanish American War Miss Delano served as a Red Cross volunteer in the recruiting of nurses. Thus began an interest in Red Cross nursing that became paramount in her life.

In 1909 Miss Delano was appointed superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps. For so dynamic a woman, one challenge was not enough. The same year, she was named chairman of the National Committee on Red Cross Nursing Service and worked simultaneously as president of the Ameri-can Nurses' Association and as chairman of thc board of directors of the American Journal of Nursing. Twenty years of innovative nursing had given Miss Delano an understanding of the country's need for more trained nurses, particularly for service in isolated areas and in emergencies. She urged a plan that would place responsibility for recruiting nurses for emergency service with the Red Cross entirely in the hands of nurses themselves. State and local committees were set up under the plan, which worked so well that by 1911 there were 1,300 nurses enrolled.

From 1909, when the Red Cross Nursing Service was founded, until 1917, when the United States entered the First World War, Miss Delano created programs of powerful significance in American life. The Red Cross course in elementary hygiene and home care of the sick, for which Miss Delano and Isabel McIsaac wrote the first textbook, gained great popularity. Classes in home dietetics followed. In 1912 the Red Cross Town and Country Nursing Service was established to provide skilled nursing care and health instruction in remote rural regions. The same year, Miss Delano resigned from the Army Nurse Corps to devote full time, as a volun-teer, to the Red Cross.