Clara Barton     Speeches & Writings File      Speeches & Lectures      "International and National Relief in War, " Sept. 6 1882[*R-11
1882   A Happy New Year
                           from Clara—*]

INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL 
RELIEF IN WAR.

A PAPER READ BY

MISS CLARA BARTON,
(President of the National Association of the Red Cross)

BEFORE THE AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION, AT ITS
ANNUAL MEETING IN SARATOGA, SEPT. 6, 1882.INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL RELIEF IN WAR.
(Read by Miss Clara Barton, of Dansville, N.Y., Wednesday, September 6, 1882.)
When the official invitation was given, eight months ago, to prepare 
this paper, the world slumbered in unwonted peace. That a 
scientific and philanthropic association, devoted to Social Science, 
was then busied with thoughts of "International Relief in War," 
now seems to clothe that Association with the mantle of wise and 
prophetic foresight. If the official recognition which has since 
been given had existed at the time, this interest would have been 
less remarkable, but it is to be remembered that no action had 
then been taken by the government, the press, or the people, 
to any extent, in relation to the matter. True, a treaty pertaining 
to this subject, which had slept at our doors for seventeen 
years, had been stirred a little, but this only by individual action, 
and that of very little strength. Within that short space, that 
slumbering treaty has aroused and walked unquestioned through 
the halls of our Legislature, clasped friendly hands with every 
grave senator of our land, been recognized by every branch of 
the government, proclaimed by our President to the nations of the 
earth, become a law and taken its active place among the living 
statutes of our country; and when a few weeks ago the same 
lightning wire that flashed to us the terrible news of the bombardment 
of Alexandria, told us also that among the fire and the 
smoke of battle, above the wounded and the slain, floated out full 
and clear, the brave, peaceful, Samaritan folds of the Red Cross 
of the Treaty of Geneva, every paper in the land hastened to proclaim 
it, and every heart heaved a sigh of relief. We learned at 
that moment that no step towards the right can be premature, and 
that it is possible for the wisest even to build better than he knows. 
In the consideration of this subject, as of all others, indeed, we 
can only arrive at any profitable, or even just conclusions, by 
tracing it back to its beginning, and determining from the history 
of its past existence and action, the demands and prospects of its 
present. But, unfortunately, we find the field of research barren
and unsatisfactory; overrun, through all the ages by a wild growth 
of ignorance, barbarity and misconception, which has choked out 
all wholesome fruit of humane effort. From the earliest historic accounts2
counts, the soldier who has fallen in battle "with his face to the foe" 
has been regarded as rather the subject of envy than sympathy;
he has been supposed to die painlessly, gloriously, with an immediate 
passport to realms of bliss immortal; if wounded, and surviving, 
the honor of his scars had been cheaply purchased, though 
he strolled a limping beggar; and he who suffered himself to be 
captured alive, was worthy of, and merited little less else than the forgetfulness,
imprisonment and hardship which his condition entitled 
his captors to inflict.  
Although war has been the rule, if not largely the occupation of 
the peoples of the earth from their earliest known history; though 
the slaughter and privations of its victims in battle, the sacking 
and burning, famine and pestilence, of its sieges, and the captivity,
enslavement, torture and degradation of its captives have crowded
the literature of the world; only a small portion of the thought of the
generations of the past have been devoted to the subject of devising 
or affording any means of relief for the wretched conditions resulting 
from the methods of national or international warfare; 
and even that which has been given, seems to have been so lightly 
regarded as to have found little or no place with the historian. 
One searches wearily through volumes of international law to 
find in Wheaton a few pages upon the exchange of prisoners; and 
the conditions are not easy. Grotius gives little more comfort, or 
throws little more light upon the subject; and although the original 
rule of war is laid down in rude ferocity in the sacred pages of 
the Old Testament, even to the extermination of neighbors, there 
appears to have been no thought beyond this. The ancient Hebrews 
seem not to have taken any steps toward migration. 
Among the military preparations of King Uzziah, in which are 
enumerated shields, spears, helmets, bows, and slings, for a host 
of three hundred and seven thousand and five hundred men, there 
is no mention of relief, nor any provision whatever for the sick or 
disabled.  King Ahab died in battle for want of the simplest care; 
the slaughter of thousands upon thousands is carefully chronicled, 
but no hint of migration appears, till the command, "Love your 
enemies," lights up the banner of Christ. 
Profane histories are three-fourths filled with the details of battles 
and sieges, and are almost silent as to any provisions for the 
sick and wounded. 
There are only hints, as it were, dropped by accident. 
3
We are not to suppose that former races were more hardy than 
we, and did not suffer; from their greater ignorance and lack of 
cleanliness it is likely they suffered more than the modern armies. 
When pestilence and malaria struck the Greek hosts before Troy, 
"The frequent pyres of the dead kept burning ever,"
and neither man nor beast was spared.  
The plague of Athens has acquired an eternal ill fame.  
The Expedition to Syracuse was almost annihilated by disease;
and when the Emperor Servius invaded Scotland, although he encountered 
no enemy in battle, he lost fifty thousand men.  We 
may be sure it was not by desertion, in a land of naked savages 
who ate the bark and roots of trees. 
There is good reason to believe that some art of healing has 
arisen among every people of any intelligence, and developed 
itself in common with all other arts.  It is probable that the first 
practitioners in common life were women; but there is little 
room for doubt that the first surgeons were warriors to whom aptitude 
or experience gave special skill in treating wounds. Such, 
were Machaon and Podalirius extolled by Homer,- men who could 
inflict wounds, as well as heal them, and of whom Idomeneus could
say,            
"A wise physician skilled our wounds to heal, 
Is more than armies to the public weal."
It is to be inferred that this system continued for a long time 
among the armies of the Greeks. 
Thus Xenophon in his celebrated "Retreat of the Ten Thousand," 
after the battle of Cunaxa, about 400 B. C, says that he appointed 
eight doctors because there were many wounded. His 
manner of stating it indicates that they were selected from the 
other soldiers. 
Homer and Plato were so struck with Egyptian science and skill 
that they declared that the Egyptians were all doctors. 
Alexander was accompanied in his march of conquest by the 
most famous physicians of the age, one of whom extracted an 
arrow from his shoulder and cured him of a dangerous fever, and 
another showed great nerve and skill in cutting the barbed head of 
a javelin from the conqueror's breast; and when Ptolemy Philometer 
received a fracture of the skull in battle, 146 B. C., the surgeons
immediately performed the operation of trepanning.4
Their scattered examples indicate a very considerable progress
in surgical skill, both in Greece and Egypt, at that early day. And
as the Romans excelled in political and military organization, they
might be expected to develop and reduce to practice some system
of treatment, "wise or otherwise," of the sick and wounded in
their vast and populous armies. If they did, it lies, like their
millions of slain, their magnificent cities, their monuments of
greatness and glory, deep buried in the gathering mold of ages,
and the pen of history is silent and sad.
It has been inferred from the story of Archagathus, related by
the elder Pliny, that the healing art was unknown in the early days
of the Republic. But, notwithstanding the silence of the historians,
it is a curious fact that monuments, discovered in modern
times, disclose that under the Empire there were surgeons of cohorts,
and surgeons of legions - which would correspond roughly to
regimental and brigade surgeons. About fifty years ago a handsome
monument was unearthed at Housestead in Northumberland,
close to the wall of Hadrian, erected in honor of a surgeon of a 
cohort, who had died at the early age of twenty-five. He must
have acquired his position by education and not by the slow process
of individual observation.
The incentive to help and heal another in distress is spontaneous;
generally the result of sympathetic impulse and kindness, - a thing
of the feelings and consequently of sudden growth. But the
faculty to organize and reduce to system and practice these spontaneous
emotions is quite different, - a thing of reason rather than
impulse. Thus there were probably surgeons and nurses, long
before they were any military hospitals, or special places for the
care of the disabled.
Polybius, who served in the Roman armies after the second
Punic war, has left a minute account of their military organization,
of their equipment, encampment, and exercises, but says not a 
word of a hospital, or the smallest provision for the care of the
sick or wounded.
That these omissions were not the result of indifference nor inhumanity
on the part of the great chiefs, is shown by Tacitus, who
represents Germanicus as "going round" among his wounded
soldiers and speaking words of cheer to them; and after a defeat,
when they had lost, among other things, their medical stores, the
faithful and brave Agrippina, the wife of the General, distributed
clothing and dressings to the wounded.
5
Alexander Severus, in the third century, is related as having
visited the sick in their tents. This beautiful and Christ-like act
in that pagan emperor and general is well accounted for in his
chosen and oft repeated motto, "Whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye so also to them."
Livy tells that after a battle with the Etrurians, in the fifth century
before our era, the Roman general distributed the wounded
among the houses of the patricians.
Tacitus, describing the fall of the amphitheatre at Fidenae, in
the reign of Tiberius, when fifty thousand spectators were killed
or maimed, says that the injured were taken and treated in the
houses of the citizens, according to the custom of the ancients who
maintained those wounded in war by their contributions and care.
But a writer of the second century B.C., Hyginus Grammaticus,
who lived under Trajan and Hadrian, in an essay on the construction
of camps, actually assigns a place to the hospital or "valetudinarium."
It is comforting, in our reflections upon the past, to know that
the idea of humanity to an enemy in distress is not entirely modern;
for Xenophon in Cyropaedia about 400 B.C. represents Cyrus
the Great as ordering his surgeons to attend the wounded prisoners.
This is, of course, romance and not history, but it shows the existence
of the idea even at that early day.
Through the Middle Ages the search is weary and fruitless, and
but for the ephemeral light which burst out and rested like a 
shekinah on the banners of the Hospitaller Knights in the terrible
wars of the Crusades, the darkness would remain nearly unbroken
until less than three centuries ago, when the growth of civilization
had led the nations to comprehend the grave responsibility resting
upon them as the creators of armies, and the promulgators of war.
The result was the creation of an official sanitary service, - the
foundation of the present military medical service and staff of
armies; and this, in comparison with all that had gone before it,
was considered so great a step towards supplying the sanitary
necessities of soldiers that nothing further could ever be required.
As the governments took the initiative, it was naturally left to
them to do all that was needful. The medical service gradually
developed and improved, thus justly gaining confidence among the
people, who naturally, not averse to shifting responsibility, became
accustomed to consider themselves incompetent to deal with questions6
questions of humanity relating to war. The lines of demarkation,
strong as the iron of their guns, between the military and the
people, not only favored this conclusion on the part of the latter,
but rendered it a seeming necessity.
     Thus the pitiable neglect of men in war appears to have constituted
one of the large class of misfortunes for which no one is to
blame or even accountable, assuming that wars must be. The
military acted up to the measure of its regulations, if not at times
overstepping; its surgeons, humane and noble, have been the first
to pity, and the bravest to proclaim the necessities and destitution
of their wretched patients. It has been one of the evils and wants
which the march of human progress alone could reach and supply.
     Of the hospital or relief work in the wars of Napoleon I. there
is little recorded. His method was swift marches, overwhelming
slaughters, new levies, and great wretched heaps of misery suddenly
left where they fell like the wrecks of a tornado.
     But we do discover that the women of Germany found time to
move in the formation of relief societies; and in 1813 the ladies
of Frankfort united together to found the Frauenvereine of that
city, with the express object of ensuring more complete arrangements
for the care of the sick and wounded, and to assist in providing 
for the wants of the military hospitals of Frankfort without
distinction of friend or foe. The appeal for help was made by
three ladies, and a society was actually constituted on the 2d of
July, 1814. Relief was indiscriminately afforded by this self-constituted
and noble society, alike to the volunteer soldiers of Frankfort,
to Spaniards returning from captivity; and to the French
prisoners who were freely received into its hospitals; and after
the terrible war had passed, it labored through an epidemic of
typhus, which the war had left in its wake. It is a happy fact to
possess, that this society has never lost its existence, and has
promptly come to the front with every uprising of the Fatherland
from that day to this.
     In the comparatively bloodless campaign of the Sonderbund in
Switzerland, in 1847, a society sprang up in Zurich for the transport
of soldiers seriously wounded.
     The year 1854 brought the ever-memorable war of the Crimea, and
the world looked on with trembling heart and bated breath whilst the
great allied powers of Western and Southern Europe pitted themselves
against the Emperor of all the Russias. Once more the old

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sad story, - the relentless war of races, - the Anglo Saxon, the
Celt, and the Latin, against the wild and myriad hordes of the
Sclave. Scarcely had they met when the allied hospitals reeked
with death. But the times had changed; human progress had
evolved a "Press," whose lever moved the world. The newspaper
correspondents threw back upon astonished England the terrible
fact of the entire inadequacy of her military medical field service.
Facts are stubborn, and figures true. Both government and people 
awoke as from a dream; and when the letters of Lord Sidney
Herbert, the British Minister of War, and Florence Nightingale,
crossed in transit, the one begging civil help for military distress,
the other begging leave to render it, they marked an era never
before reached in the progress of the world; and when, two weeks
later, Miss Nightingale, with her forty faithful attendants, sailed
from the shores of England, it meant more for the advancement of
the world, more for its future history, than all the fleets of armies
and navies, cannon and commissary munitions of war and regiments
of men, that had sailed before her in that vast campaign.
This unarmed pilgrim band of women that day not only struck a
blow at the barbarities of war, but they laid the axe deep at the
root of war itself.
     Upon the details of this mission one scarce need enter; the
world knows by heart the story of Scutari and the Barrack Hospitals,
and how, under the intelligent direction and labors of this
civil volunteer corps, disease lessened, gangrene disappeared, and
pestilence fell away, as the moth and mildew and poisonous vapors
of night flee before the purifying rays of the morning sun; and
how, under the strong support of the military head, and England's
gracious Queen, this work went on until the hospitals of the entire
British armies in the Crimea, from awful depths of misery became
types of what military hospitals ought to be.
     The great example had been given. The slow but willing world
had learned its lesson at the cost of its teacher; for when Florence
Nightingale, covered with the praises and honors of the world,
bending under the weight of England's gratitude, again sought
her green island home, it was to seek also a bed of painful invalidism
from which she has never risen, and probably never will. At
such cost is the good work of the world accomplished.
     But this seed of costly sowing had taken root, and would not
die.8
     In 1859 the Italian wars of Napoleon III. added the names of
Magenta and Solferino to the military historic record of the world.
Again the oft-repeated story of insufficiency of medical supplies
and personnel, and in a day, as it were, the garden cities of Northern
Italy, Milan, Turin, Brescia, burst into bloom with civil hospitals
for the nursing and care of military wounded, and their
committees of relief were the wonder of the hour. But, like all
important movements without previous and thorough organization,
they were impulsive and lacked perseverance; thus unfortunately
rendering it possible for Dr. Evans, in his Sanitary History of the
United States to say of the movement that, "sincere as it was,
for want of an efficient organization to control its efforts, its first
enthusiasm died away beneath the weight of difficulties which the
general inexperience had accumulated."
     Ten years more of desultory observation brings us to the brink
 of our own war, of which it is scarcely necessary to speak. Most
of the persons present lived then, and need no reminders of the
distressing inadequacy of medical and hospital field service to the
emergencies of active warfare, nor of its utter inability to cope with
the difficulties by which it found itself confronted within one
month after the firing upon Sumpter. Neither need they be reminded
of the uprising of the Sanitary Commission, of its struggles
for existence, its strife for military recognition, even under
all the evidences of its great humane necessity; of its thirty-two
thousand relief committees dotting all our land, its contributions,
its fairs and bazaars, its ingots of gold and its widows' mites; its
expansion in scope, until it included not only the wants of the
soldier in the field, but the home he had left; its growth in military
recognition and privileges of access, till its huge four-horse wagons
were galloped and halted on the very edge of battle, and its fearless
bands, with young, strong life and blood to give if need be,
uncalled, and unexpected, like messengers from Heaven, sprang
from them under the very guns, and hour by hour, through the
thickest of the fight, bore their rescued and bleeding burdens
through the rain of shot and shell to the place of safety and care
provided for them.
     It is probable that no other act of our country ever won for it
the amount of moral credit and respect from other nations which
has resulted from this unparalleled display of active humanity. It
has taken the acknowledged precedence of all that went before it.

9

     Translations from the highest French and German authorities
upon this subject, bring to light expressions like the following:
     "The Sanitary Commission of the United States was an exhibition
of unofficial relief, the most vast, the most energetic, and the
most persevering the world has ever seen."
     From another author: "The Sanitary Commission of the United
States marks a new era in the world's history. It is the greatest
act of philanthropy which humanity has ever meditated and accomplished.
Through its influence the whole social system of the
United States was modified."
     Yet this Commission did not extend beyond its own country,
and only half over that, and ceased to exist with the occasion
which called it into being.
     Whilst the great American conflict, and its immediate momentous
questions were occupying the entire attention of the people,
Europe found its swords again drawn, and bayonets crossed in the
Schleswig-Holstein and Austrian wars of 1864-66, with the same
experience of insufficiency of official medical service in time of
war, and the ever-increasing manifestations of unofficial relief,
timely, useful, welcome.
     The people had by this time gained some confidence, and commenced
to consider themselves not altogether incompetent to deal
with questions of humanity in war, if wars must be.
     The statements contained in the foregoing pages, although disconnected,
and scattered through the entire area of historic record,
all go to establish three important facts:
      1st. That the official army medical staff and provision for the
sick and wounded of armies have never been adequate to the necessities
and emergencies of active service; that no instance of a 
battle of importance can be cited where needless suffering and
death have not been the direct results of this inadequacy; and that
international law in regard to the treatment and exchange of
prisoners of war, and the protection of medical and hospital supplies,
and attendants designed for the sick and wounded, has been
proportionally inadequate.
     2nd. That individual humanity and ingenuity have been untiring
in efforts to meet and supply this costly deficiency; and
     3d. That through lack of that concerted action and organization,
which alone can supply the power and strength to meet and
overcome great obstacles, the best of these efforts have nearly


10
failed. The greatest success in that direction ever recorded, is
that of the American Sanitary Commission, which, in operation
only five years, lives only in story and example; and, of whose
almost death-struggles with the government for legal existance at
first, Captain Henry Brackenbury, Professor of Military History
at Wollwich, makes the following sad record:
     "Their scheme was looked upon as a cunning device to gain
power for selfish ends. One secretary asked the delegates sent to
him, to state frankly precisely what they did want, since it was
evident they could not want only what they seemed to be asking
for."
     President Lincoln thought they would be only "adding a fifth
wheel to the coach."
     At length, after repeated discouragements, they obtained, on
the 13th of June, 1861, the appointment of a "Commission of
Inquiry and Advice in Respect to the Sanitary Interests of the
United States Forces," to serve without remuneration, and to be
officially recognized within the limits of their authority.
     "It is impossible," Professor Brackenbury goes on to say, "to
overestimate the noble exertions of these men, who, with unselfish
zeal, begged in ante-chambers, under rebuffs and insulting insinuations,
for favors for the nation, which they would have scorned to
ask for themselves."
     It is easy to perceive that this inequality between human necessity 
and suffering on the one side, and human ability to meet and
provide against it on the other, has always laid a burden heavy
and sore on the hearts of the best of the world; only the blood-thirsty,
mercenary,  barbarous, cruel, or cruelly thoughtless, have
escaped it. Still, their individual and transient efforts were accumulative
and left their impress. Society ripened under the march
of progress; the times changed.
     Again, quoting from Professor Brackenbury, as recently as 1868,
he says, "Whilst for the last few years the pages of the press
have been devoted to chronicling the giant strides made in the art
of destruction, but little notice has been taken of a movement that
has been steadily progressing for the relief of the misery of battlefields."
     It was true, joyfully true, that amidst all the din and clash of
war in both hemispheres, with the stars and stripes and the banner
of secession in the West, and the battle flags of Prussia, Austria

11

and Italy in the East, all afloat, and whilst the most wonderful and
distracted efforts at promiscuous relief the world had ever seen,
were going on, the great key-note had been struck in little Republican
Switzerland; a master hand had touched the keys which
were to bring music out of discord, to gather all these wild and
fugitive strains into one grand harmony, one great international
anthem of humanity and cooperation, in which all the nations of
the earth could unite.
     The times, they tell us, produce the men; and thus, when Monsieur 
Henry Dunant, inspired by the memories of Solferino, stood
before the learned "Genevese Society of Public Utility," in
Switzerland, and asked it to consider the question of organizing
permanent volunteer relief societies in time of peace, whose aim
should be to afford relief to the sick and wounded in time of war,
by supplementing the regular military establishment of surgical
assistants by voluntary aid; and also asked that a system of
neutrality between belligerents be instituted for the protection of
hospitals, official and volunteer nurses, hospital supplies, surgeons,
and the wounded themselves, and an international convention for 
that purpose was successfully convened by the members of that
society; the chord was struck that spanned the world. From this
movement emanates the present great and certain system of
neutral and international relief in war, - the Treaty of Geneva,
and the societies of the Red Cross; and it is scarcely too much to
predict, nay, one fondly hopes, and firmly believes, that it marks
the coming of, and points the way to that blessed era of peace on
earth and good will to man, when men shall know each other, and
reason together, and the nations shall war no more.
     After what has been said, the interesting details of this important
movement can be quickly related.
     It was to the direct influence of the work published by Monsieur
Henry Dunant, entitled, "Un Souvenir de Solferino," as well
as to the personal exertions of that gentleman, that the movement
which led to the International Congress of 1864, and its results,
were immediately due.
     Monsieur Dunant, a Swiss gentleman, was traveling in Italy on
his own account, in the year 1859, and was in the neighborhood of
Solferino on the day of the great battle of the 24th of June. The
aspect of the battle-field, the sufferings of the vast numbers
scattered over it, and the occurrences which he afterwards observed12
in the hospitals, where he remained some days assisting as a volunteer
in attending upon the wounded, deeply impressed him.
     Notwithstanding the liberal provisions which had been made by
the French army, in surgeons, means of transport, surgical stores,
and sick dietary, and in addition, the aid afforded by the inhabitants
of the places to which the wounded were first brought,
Monsieur Dunant saw, that owing to the vastness of their numbers,
the wounded were left for days without attention or surgical relief;
and he was led to consider whether there were any means by
which this superadded suffering in time of war might be obviated.
This led to the publication of the "Souvenir de Solferino," in
1862, containing descriptions of what he had observed on the
battle-field, and in hospitals, as well as numerous arguments in
favor of a proposition for founding in every country permanent
societies for relief of the wounded. This work created a great
sensation, and was quickly translated into several European
languages, and the "Genevese Society of Public Utility,"
appointed a committee, of which General Dufour, the General-in-chief
of the Swiss Confederation, accepted the Presidency, for the
purpose of supporting and encouraging the dissemination of the
proposals of Monsieur Dunant. This led to an international conference
held at Geneva, in October, 1863, which was attended by
delegates from sixteen governments, including Great Britain,
France, Spain, Prussia, Austria, and Italy. This conference sat
four days, framed important resolutions, and resulted in the calling
of an international congress, known as the "International Convention
of Geneva," of 1864, for the purpose of considering the question
of neutralization of the sick and wounded soldiers of belligerent
armies. This Congress was assembled in accordance with a request
from the Supreme Federal Council of Switzerland. The invitation
was accepted by sixteen powers, and the Congress opened on the
eighth of August, 1864, at the Hotel de Ville, Geneva, provided
or the occasion by the federal government. There were present
twenty-five members of the diplomatic, military and medical staff of
various nations and armies. The deliberations lasted nearly a
fortnight, and resulted in a code of nine articles agreed upon by
the convention, and signed on the twenty-second of August by the
representatives of those governments which had previously accredited
their delegates with sufficient power for signing a treaty.
     This is considered a most remarkable instance of a general

13

treaty brought about by the exertions of an individual in private
life.
     It will be borne in mind that the aim of the Congress of 1864,
was to obtain the neutralization of the wounded in belligerent
armies, and of the personnel and materiel necessary for their care
and treatment, and to determine whether the humane principles
which had from time to time been applied exceptionally, might
not, under certain limitations be rendered consistent with military
necessities on all occasions, and be established as a rule.
     The conference of 1863, less official in character, had aimed at
the foundation of a system of Relief Societies for all countries, 
and its resolutions are to this end.
     A word in regard to the nine articles of the Treaty, formed by
the Congress or Convention of 1864, may not be out of place.
     The first naturally provides for the security of the hospitals in
which the wounded might happen to be collected, that they shall
be held neutral, and be respected by belligerents so long as sick
or wounded remain in them.
     Articles 2 and 3 provide for the neutrality and safety of all persons
employed in the care of the wounded in hospitals, - surgeons,
chaplains, nurses, attendants, - even after the enemy has gained
the ground; but when no longer required for the wounded, they
shall be promptly conducted under escort to the outposts of the
enemy to rejoin the corps to which they belong, thus preventing all
opportunity to roam free and make observations under cover of
neutrality.
     Article 4 settles the terms on which the material of hospitals, -
field and general, - shall be regarded, and that field hospitals shall
not be subject to capture.
     Article 5, with the view to quiet the fears of the inhabitants in
the vicinity of a battle, who often flee in terror, as well as to secure
their assistance, and the comfort of their homes for the care
of the wounded, offers military protection, and certain exemptions
to all who shall entertain and care for the wounded in their
houses.
     Article 6 binds the parties contracting the Treaty not only to
give the requisite care and treatment to all sick and wounded who
shall fall into their hands, but to see to it that their misfortunes
shall not be aggravated by the prospect of banishment or imprisonment;
they shall not be retained as prisoners of war, but if circumstances14
circumstances admit, may be given up immediately after the action,
to be cared for by their own army, or if retained until recovered,
and found disabled for service, they shall be safely returned to
their country and friends, and also that all convoys of sick and
wounded shall be protected by absolute neutrality.
     In order to secure the neutralization of hospitals and material,
and the nurses engaged in the service of the wounded, it was 
necessary to fix upon some common sign by which they could be
recognized by all parties and all nations uniting in the treaty. Thus,
     Article 7 provides a flag for hospitals and convoys, and an arm-badge
for persons. The design proposed was a red cross upon a 
white ground. The reasons for this selection were two-fold:
First, it was typical of the Christian principle of the international
charity embodied in the articles of the Convention. Second,
it was a compliment to the country in which the Congress was
sitting, this being the national flag of Switzerland with the
colors reversed, - her flag being a white cross on a red ground.
     In order to show that the parties carrying this flag have a right
to it by treaty as well as to indicate the country to which they belong,
it must be always accompanied by the national flag, and in
order to guard against wrongful use of thearm-badge, or brassard,
it is left to the military authorities to issue them.
     Articles 8 and 9 provide for the details of execution being left
open for the subsequent admission of other governments.
     This treaty received the signatures of twelve governments at
first, which were soon increased to sixteen, and subsequently to
double that number.
     The International Conference of 1863 dealt with the subject of
the National Relief Committees, so warmly urged by Monsieur
Dunant. Its resolutions provided for the formation of central
committees in each country, with power to form sub-committees, to
establish relations with the government, to make themselves acquainted
with all improvements in the means of helping wounded
soldiers, to train volunteers for hospital service, to collect materials
for sick and wounded when necessary, to keep up friendly
relations and intercourse with each other, in order that any improvements
or inventions in field transport, likely to be serviceable
in campaign, made in one country, might be made known in other
countries, just as improvements in the implements of destruction
are mutually observed, and generally without much reserve communicated
between nations on friendly terms with each other.

15

     In time of war these committees become the agents of the public
at large for affording aid, through the proper authorities, to the
sick and wounded.
     There is, it is believed, no civilized nation which has not, today,
its central committee, existing and acting in accordance with the
resolutions of that conference.
     In monarchical governments these committees or societies are
generally under the patronage of members of the royal families.
Of their work of unparalleled activity, unselfish devotion, and
holy beneficence in all wars, among all peoples, from their institution
to the present moment, there is neither time nor space for me
to speak. The work of the International Relief Committees of 
Europe during the Franco-German war could no more be portrayed
in this paper than could the four years' work of the Sanitary
Commission of the United States be represented here. It
would be historic mutilation to attempt it.
     It is something, however, to know that the needless sufferings
of that terrible conflict were almost entirely averted; that no
record of military abuse or cruelty stains the annals of its history;
that wounded captives were nursed in the same hospitals with
wounded of their captors; that prisoners of war were well treated
and faithfully returned; that the national committees and societies
under the treaty vied with each other in the munificence of their
gifts, and their promptness of relief; that true to the magnanimous
and holy spirit of Christianity, there was no respect of persons
in that great gala of charity. The jewelled fingers of 
the princess, and the hard hand of the peasant woman met and
labored side by side, unquestioned and unquestioning in their
God-given mission. Ay! side by side they wrought, as side by
side their dead lay on the fields.
     Empress Augusta became the active head of the Society of
Germany, which position she still continues to honor. The
beloved Grand Duchess, Louise of Baden, only daughter of
the Emperor and Empress of Germany, was untiring in the conduct
of the noble society she had already formed and patronized.
Her many and beautiful castles, with their magnificent grounds,
throughout all Baden, were at once transformed into military hospitals,
and her entire court, with herself at its head, formed into
a committee of superintendence and organization for relief. I
have seen a wounded Arab from the French armies, who knew16
no word of any language but his own, stretch out his arms to her
in adoration and blessing as she passed his bed.
     Switzerland, which received the entire fleeing fugitives of Alsace-Lorraine,
and the outcomers of Strasbourg after bombardment,
and into which Bourbaki threw his whole army in defeat, not
only nourished and sheltered these, but gave of her money and
materiel as from a bottomless well. There was no end of her
bounty.
     The Committee of England, under the direction, I believe, of
the Duke of Sutherland, made more than good her great record of
English philanthropy. No higher praise could be bestowed.
     For the Treaty itself, it is all important to know that it stood
every test of military trial; that no instance of infraction of its
regulations or of advantage having been taken of its privileges is
recorded. From that time there has been no expression of doubt
or fear. The harness had been tried.
     Of the part taken by the United States in the work of relief in
this great conflict, unfortunately, one is not able to speak in this
connection, as she was not a party to the Treaty, and had no
national society; consequently she must make her contributions
in her own way, and run her own risk of their safe reception and
proper distribution. If her supply ships, under only a single flag,
sailed into foreign ports held by the enemy, - who could not recognize
them, and would not permit them to land, - and being chartered
only for the voyage, must return, and if the perishable portion of their
valuable stores were spoiled, and found a reception in the dock, and
the more permanent part was unloaded and sold to the highest bidder;
the little money it brought, being distributed with the best and most
conscientious judgment of the disappointed, tired, sore-perplexed
and baffled agents, - it was only the natural result and oft repeated
experience of unorganized and unsystemized charity the world over.
If this were so, it is past, let us bury it with the past, and be
thankful it can never happen to us again.
     The question naturally arises in every mind, why were we not a 
party to the treaty, and why had we no societies? Although, the
fact seems singular and painful, it is still capable of explanation.
     It will be remembered that the Conference and Congress of Geneva
were held during the years of 1863 and 1864. The United
States, having been invited with all other nations to send delegates,
was officially represented at the latter by Mr. Bowles, then a resident

17

of Paris, and by him the resolutions and articles of both assemblies
were officially transmitted to our government for action. It was not
unnatural that our renowned Secretary of State, William H. Seward,
should then have declined on the officially stated ground that we
were in the midst of, and embarrassed by, a relentless and barbarous
war.
     Some years later another convention, known as "The Convention
of 1868," was held in Paris, and another set of articles, including
the wounded of maritime wars as well as those of land
forces, was submitted to the nations. In this convention the
United States was most fitly represented by its noble and world-renowned
philanthropist, Rev. Dr. Henry W. Bellows, who was appointed
its representative in this country; and by that honored
gentleman the articles of the original treaty, including the additions
of 1868, were again presented to the United States Government,
and were again declined, most likely for the reason that they had
once before been declined. Yet through the faithful endeavors of
Dr. Bellows, a society was actually formed during that year; but
the subject as well as its literature was foreign to our people, who,
knowing little or nothing of it, felt no interest; besides a society
formed for purposes of "International Relief in War," lacking an
"International Treaty" to that end, and lacking all the privileges
and powers to be conferred by the treaty, was simply "Hamlet
with Hamlet left out," and like a sapling planted without a root, it
naturally withered away.
     It is not singular that the International Committee of Geneva
became perplexed by the repeated declinations and apathy of a
nation which had given to the world the examples of Sanitary
and Christian Commissions, and sought explanations from such
sources as it could reach.
     Notwithstanding all that had been done, the subject slept till
1877, when it was again presented during the administration of
President Hayes, and a committee was formed, consisting of four
persons, three ladies and one gentleman, styling itself the "American
National Committee or Society of the Red Cross, for the Relief
of Sufferings by War, Pestilence, Famine, Fire, Flood, and other
calamities, so great as to be regarded as national in extent."
     In the following year, 1878, a small, pamphlet entitled the "Red
Cross of the Geneva Convention," was issued, explaining the subject
and its objects.18
     This society of 1877 devoted itself to the dissemination of a 
knowledge of the subject among the people, and the creation of a 
sentiment favorable to the adoption of the treaty by the government.
In this effort, it was aided by the strong and willing pens
of other persons who had come to understand and appreciate the
cause, and whom it would be a pleasure to name. But it was
not until almost four years later, with the incoming of the administration
of our martyred President, who was himself to die a wounded
soldier, that any favorable response was made, any audience
gained, or the slightest echo returned to the faithful and persistent
rappings of humanity through seventeen weary years.
     It will not, perhaps, be inappropriate to name some of the persons,
no less than the measures, to whose active exertions and
philanthropic natures, the accession of our country to the Treaty
of Geneva is at length due.
     Its first official advocate, and its tireless friend from its presentation
in 1877, when Hon. Omar D. Conger, now Senator from
Michigan, then a member of the House.
     Hon. Secretary Windom, as a member of President Garfield's
cabinet, laid it before the President in cabinet session. It was
cordially received and responded to by the President and his cabinet.
     Hon. Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, wrote a cordial
letter of approval, and President Garfield promised to recommend,
in his first annual message to congress, the accession of the United
States to the Treaty.
     Upon receipt of this information, the original American society
of 1877, reorganized, and became incorporated under the name of
the "American Association of the Red Cross," with the same
objects and scope as first included.
     Scarcely was this accomplished, when the assassin's shot palsied
the great heart and strong hand on which its first hopes had grown.
     Then followed the weary eighty days of national agony, when
hope seemed once more smothered in the pall and the bier. But a
great-hearted and strong-handed successor came to the rescue, and
nobly took up the work where it had been left; and the first general
message of President Arthur carried out the plan, and faithfully
performed the promise of his lamented predecessor. This act
brought the subject before the Hon. Committee on Foreign Affairs
in the Senate, and there is again met its early friends, Senator

19

Windom, as chairman of the committee, and Judge Edmonds,
Hon. Senator Morgan, of Alabama, who had been one of the first
to comprehend its true character, and Hon. Senator Lapham, of New
York, who assumed special charge over it in committee, and who
has given to is his watchful care and strong legal ability upon all
occasions.
     The dark days of the long-neglected treaty began to brighten,
and its lines to fall in pleasant places. After able discussion, the
accession of the United States to the articles of the conventions of
both 1864 and 1868 was agreed upon, and the treaty received the
signature of President Arthur on the first day of March, 1882.
     It was ratified by the Senate on the sixteenth of the same
month, and the stipulations were exchanged at Berne, Switzerland,
on the ninth of June, and on the twenty-sixth of July, the Treaty
was proclaimed by the President to the people of the United
States.
     Thus this first great movement towards the neutralization of
nations, and international relief in war, became to this country
an accomplished fact and a law of the land.
     Although we have been the thirty-second and last nation to
accede to the original and first Treaty of 1864, it is consoling to
know that we are the first to have affixed a signature to the treaty
of the second congress of 1868, covering maritime wars, no
other nation having yet fully acceded thereto. Although late in
the one, we lead in the other.
     Some very brief remarks relative to the Relief Committees,
their origin, purpose, and methods of activity, may not be out of 
place.
     First of all is the International Committee of Geneva, known
as the "Comite International de secours aux Militaires blessees"
and co-existent with the conference and congress of 1863 and '64.
It will be remembered that these assemblies were convened at the
instance of a committee selected by the "Society of Public Utility
of Geneva." The efficient and accomplished president of that
society, Monsieur Gustave Moynier, was also president of the
Congress of 1864. At the close of that Congress, the nations
which had become party to the Treaty, finding it desirable that
some centre of action should be recognized, invested the Committee
which had thus far constituted the soul of the work, with
full power to act in the capacity of Central Committee, making it20
the legal and high source through which the exchange of communications
between the committees of different nations should be
made. It thus became international in character, and is today
the world-honored "International Committee of Geneva." With
what fidelity, wisdom and unanimity it has fulfilled its important
and peaceful mission, its vast work of almost twenty years has
conclusively shown.
     Its presidency has never been changed.
     The committees and societies formed in the several States are
national, and are free to institute and administer their own systems
of relief, but never neglecting to communicate them to other
nations through the legal medium, "The International Committee
of Geneva."
     Under these, national societies exist in every country, and in
some countries in almost every town, subordinate societies, corresponding
almost perfectly to the Relief Societies of the Sanitary
Commission, with, however, this important distinction, that these
are permanent societies. It was these small tributaries, to a great
extent, that poured out the inconceivable amount of supplies
which so promptly found their way to the hospitals in the Franco-German
war.
     Of the American Society, which in reorganization took the title
of an "Association," mention has been already made. Up to the
present time it is not known that any other national society has
extended the scope of its labors or supervision beyond the original
idea of relief in war; but in view of the geographical position,
and greater consequent security of America from the frequent
outbursts of war, - that scourge and terror of the more crowded
nations of the Eastern hemisphere, - it was believed that she might
not only well perform the duties, national and international, expected 
of her by the conditions of the Treaty, but still have in
reserve abundant means and energy to devote to the sufferings
caused by the great revulsions and accidents to which the peculiar
characteristics of her vast territory, and divers conditions, render
her painfully liable. The American Society felt itself sustained
in making these important extensions in its field of action, by the
text of Article 20, of the Berlin Conference of 1869, which
recommends that the societies established under the Treaty of
Geneva, extend relief in time of peace to public calamities, which
require, like war, prompt and well organized help. It has been

21
recently stated that Russia, whose Red Cross Societies are among
the most advanced and active of all the nations, has extended
their field of usefulness.
     It was with this view that the American Association organized,
as has been before stated, to include the relief of calamities so
great as to be, by general estimation, regarded as national in their
extent and demands, and to hold itself, with its auxiliaries, both
State and town, in readiness for immediate action in such emergencies,
as well as for war - the same constitutional regulations
serving alike for all.
     It is needless to add that the success of this untried theory was
a problem of no small moment. Experiment alone could solve it.
     The National Society of 1877 had, from the first, steadily declined
the taking of any steps towards the formation of societies,
until it should have assurance of the accession of the United
States to the Treaty.
     This assurance came by the promise of the government in June,
1881, that it would move in that direction.
     Directly following this, another publication of a hundred pages,
entitled the "Red Cross of Geneva." was issued for the purpose
of making the subject better known to the people and urging the
accession of the government to the Treaty.
     It is interesting and significant to read from the pages of that
publication of last year the following:
NEW HAVEN, CONN., Oct. 20, 1882.
To the President of the United States:
     The undersigned would respectfully recommend to your favorable
consideration the adoption, by the government of the United
States, of the provisions of the International Treaty of Geneva,
for the care of the sick and wounded in war.

THEODORE D. WOOLSEY.
H.B. HARRISON.
JOHN E. TODD.
EDWIN HARWOOD.
JOSEPH SHELDON.
FRANCIS WAYLAND.
     In July and August, 1881, following the assured action of the
government, societies were formed in Dansville, Rochester and 
Syracuse, N.Y., just in time to send back their bountiful supplies
and liberal contributions in money through the smoke that rolled
over them from the blazing fields of Michigan.22
     This was fighting fire at a distance, but they did it bravely and 
well.
     The recent overflow of the Mississippi afforded subjects for still
further and more extended trial, and it is a pleasure to add, with
results equally gratifying and assuring to the National Association.
It is a fact worthy of mention that the munificent contribution of
one eminent citizen. through the Rochester society, of ten thousand
dollars in seeds for planting the desolated district was rendered
doubly, trebly valuable, by the rapidity and precision with which
it was distributed through the organized societies of the Red Cross.
The slow decline of the water having delayed the planting, great
haste was necessary in order to secure any return from the land
the present year. A call from the National, to the Rochester Society,
to meet this new emergency was promptly responded to, and
within three days the seed was on its way to the Red Cross Society
of Memphis, which society being notified of its transit, made
the necessary provisions for its immediate distribution, and within
twenty-four hours after its arrival in Memphis, it was assorted,
and reshipped to the proper points in five different States with full
instructions for final distribution.
     It is a comfort today to know that thousands of acres of that so
recently desolated valley are rich with ripening vegetation, and
that thousands of persons are subsisting upon the results of that
one well arranged act of generosity.
     The Red Cross Society of Rochester, with less than a year of
existance, has contributed over fourteen thousand dollars in material
and money to the relief of sufferers by calamity. It should
be said that the incipient movement towards the formation of this
magnificent society, as well as that of Syracuse, was made by
Rev. Dr. Gracey, the noted missionary to India, now Presiding
Elder of the Methodist Diocese of the District of Rochester, and
one of the earliest and most efficient friends of the Red Cross. So
much may the timely efforts of one person accomplish.
     Their is neither teacher nor preacher like necessity, and the late
lesson of the Mississippi valley has resulted in the formation of
societies in most of the cities of importance from Chicago to New
Orleans, all organized under a general constitution, as auxiliary to
the American Association of the Red Cross at Washington, and
all affiliated with the national and subordinate societies of thirty-two
nations, acting in concert in the grand work of humanity, and
the practical furtherance of good will among mankind.

23
     My task is done. I have endeavored to submit to the judgment
of this high assemblage such facts and observations in regard to
the practical utility of a system of national and international relief
in great emergencies, as some years of attention to the subject
and some little experience have given me. If your honorable
body shall find the subject matter of sufficient importance to
attract its further attention, and elicit from it such suggestions and
counsel, as from time to time it may be pleased to bestow, the
object of my coming will have been attained.AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION
GENERAL MEETING AT SARATOGA
September 4-8, 1882.
The date for the Saratoga meeting of 1882, is from the 4th to the 8th of
September, inclusive. The General Sessions will be held only in the evening;
the Department Meetings in the morning, with liberty to adjourn to the afternoon, 
if the business requires it. One hour will be the limit of Addresses,
except the Annual Address of the President, and thirty minutes the limit of
each Paper in reading. The Addresses and Papers will be as follows:
IN GENERAL SESSION.
Monday Evening, September 4th, 8 P.M., Opening Address of the President
9.30, P.M , Annual Report of the Secretary.
Tuesday Evening, September 5th, 8, P.M., Addresses and Reports from
the Department of Education; [including an Address by Governor Hoyt, of
Wyoming.]
8.30, P.M., An Address on National Aid for Education, by Rev. A.D.
Mayo, D.D., of Boston, followed by a Debate.
Commemoration of CHARLES DARWIN.
Wednesday Evening. September 6th, 8, P.M., Annual Election of Officers.
8.30, P.M., An Address by Miss CLARA BARTON, on International Relief
Associations.
Thursday Evening, September 7th, 8, P.M., An Address by President
ANGELL, of Michigan University, on The Relations between China and the 
United States.
9, P.M., An Address by Rev. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, of Springfield,
Mass., on Unsocial Forces.
Friday Evening, September 8th, 8, P.M., An Address by CARROLL D.
WRIGHT, Esq., of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, on The
Factory as an Element of Civilization.
DEPARTMENT MEETINGS.
Tuesday, September 5th.
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.
9.30, A.M., An Address by the Chairman, W.T. Harris, LL.D.
10, A.M., A Paper by F.J. CAMPBELL, Esq., of London, on The Education
of the Blind in England.
12, M., A Paper by Miss ALICE C. FLETCHER, of Washington, on The
Civilization of the American Indian.
1, P.M., A Report by Rev. H. L. WAYLAND, of Philadelphia, on The
Progressive Spelling.

Wednesday, September 6th.
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH.
9.30, A.M., Address by the Chairman, WALTER CHANNING, M.D., of
Boston, on Boards of Health, etc., with communications from Dr. HENRY B.
BAKER, Secretary of the Michigan Board of Health, and others.
10, A.M., A Paper on Health Care of Households, with special reference
to House Drainage, by E.M. HUNT, M.D., of the New Jersey Board of Health.
11, A.M., A Paper on The Management of Chronic Inebriates and Insane
Drunkards, by A. N. BLODGETT, M. D., of Boston, followed by a debate.
12, M., A Paper on The Sanitary Condition of Boarding Schools, by D.
F. LINCOLN, M. D.,  of Peekskill, N.Y., formerly Chairman of the Department.
12.30, P.M , A Paper on The Health of Criminal Women, by ELIZA M
MOSHER, M. D., Secretary of the Department, and Superintendent of the
Massachusetts Reformatory for Women at Sherborn. The Debate following
this Paper will be opened by Mrs. CLARA T. LEONARD, of Springfield, Mass.
Thursday, September 7th.
DEPARTMENT OF JURISPRUDENCE.
9.30, A.M. Address by the Chairman
10, A.M., A Paper on Professional Ethics, by THEODORE BACON, Esq.,
of Rochester, N.Y.
11, A.M., A Paper on Disfranchisement for Crime, by JAMES F. COLBY,
Esq., of New Haven, Conn.
12, M., A Paper by HAMILTON ANDREWS HILL, Esq., of Boston, on The
Penalties for Crime against Property;.
1, P.M., A Paper by EDWARD W. BEMIS, Esq., of Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore, on Local Self Government in the Northwestern States
Friday, September 8th
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL ECONOMY.
9.30, A.M., Address by the Chairman.
10, A.M., A Report on Hours of Factory Labor for Women and Minors.
11, A.M., A Report by Mr. CARROLL D. WRIGHT, Mrs. H. H. ROBINSON,
and Miss LUCY LARCOM, on Early Factory Labor in New England.
12, M., A Report by JOSEPH D. WEEKS, Esq., of Pittsburg, Pa., on The
Labor of Railroad Employees.
The September meeting of the Council will take place at Saratoga Sept. 5,
at 4, P.M.; the election of officers for the year 1882-3 on Wednesday Evening,
Sept. 6, at 8 o'clock. Members proposing to attend the Saratoga meeting
will please notify the Secretary. The headquarters of the Association will be
at the United States Hotel during the Saratoga meeting, where members will
be received at reduced rates; the Sessions will be held in Putnam Hall.
F. B. SANBORN, Secretary.
CONCORD, MASS., August 5, 1882.File 1882 - 18

AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION.

GENERAL MEETING AT SARATOGA,
September 6-8, 1882.

Wednesday, September 6th.
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH,
9.30, A. M., Address by the Chairman, WALTER CHANNING,
M.D., of Boston, on "Boards of Health," etc., with communications
from Dr. HENRY B. BAKER, Secretary of the Michigan Board of
Health, and others.
10.30, A. M., A Paper on "The Management of Chronic Inebriates
and Insane Drunkards," by A. N. BLODGETT, M. D., of
Boston, followed by a debate.
11.30, A. M., A Paper on "Health Care of Households, with
special reference to House Drainage," by E. M. Hunt, M. D., of
the New Jersey Board of Health.
12, M., A Paper on "The Sanitary Condition of Boarding
Schools," by D. F. LINCOLN, M. D., of Reading, Pa.
12.30, P. M., A Paper on "The Health of Criminal Women,"
by ELIZA M. MOSHER, M. D., Secretary of the Department, and
Superintendent of the  Massachusetts Reformatory for Women at
Sherborn. The Debate following this Paper will be opened by
Mrs. CLARA T. LEONARD, of Springfield Mass.
8, P. M., Annual Election of Officers.
8.30, P. M., An Address by Miss CLARA BARTON, on "International
Relief Associations."
Thursday, Sept. 7th.
DEPARTMENT OF JURISPRUDENCE.
9.30, A. M., Address by the Chairman.
10, A. M., A Paper on "Professional Ethics," by THEODORE
BACON, Esq., of Rochester, N. Y.
11, A. M., A Paper on "Disenfranchisement for Crime," by
JAMES F. COLBY, Esq., of New Haven, Conn.
12, M., A Paper by EDWARD W. BEMIS, Esq., of Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore, on "Local Self Government in the
Northwestern States."
1, P. M., A Paper by HAMILTON ANDREWS HILL, Esq., of
Boston, on "The Penalties for Crime against Property."
8, P. M., An Address by President ANGELL, of Michigan
University, on "The Relations Between China and the United
States."
9, P. M., An Address by Rev. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, of
Springfield, Mass., on "Unsocial Forces."
Friday, Sept. 8th.
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL ECONOMY.
9.30, A. M., Address by the Chairman.
10, A. M., A Report on "Hours of Factory Labor for
Women and Minors."
11, A. M., A Report by Mr. CARROLL D. WRIGHT, Mrs. H.
H. ROBINSON, and Miss LUCY LARCOM, on "Early Factory Labor
in New England."
12, M., A Paper by Miss ALICE C. FLETCHER, on "The Civilization
of the American Indian."
8, P. M., An Address by CARROLL D. WRIGHT, Esq., of the
Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, on the "The Factory
as an Element of Civilization."


Cut out leaves from the original
draft of address for Saratoga
others substituted in the copying[*Substitute abstract*]
[*Insert after "assuring on page 78.*]
[*8*]

79
This generous and well regulated society 
of Rochester with less than a year of existence has contributed
 over fourteen thousand dollars
 in material and money to the relief of sufferers
 by calamities. To show the expedition
 and [??h??y] resulting from system in relief work 
one fact will suffice. The slow decline of 
the water delayed the planting, until the greatest
 haste was necessary, in order to secure any
 return from the land the present year. 
a call from the National to the Rochester
 society, to meet this emergency was responded
to, and within three days the seed wasThe American Association of the Red Cross,
FOR THE RELIEF OF SUFFERING BY
WAR, PESTILENCE, FAMINE, FIRE, AND OTHER NATIONAL CALAMITIES.
Washington, D. C.  March 27, 1882.

To
My Dear     Feeling assured that it will be your pleasure to co=operator in
the good work which engages us, we herewith transmit to you a publication explaining 
the objects of our Association, together with an appeal in behalf of the sufferers from 
the floods in the Mississippi valley.  You will perceive how effectual in labors of 
love have been the methods of work pursued by our numerous associate Societies of the
Red Cross abroad.  Our organization will employ like instrumentalities in sending 
aid to the afflicted in the Southwest.
The rations at present furnished by the Federal Government prevent, momentarily, 
a scene of starvation from blotting the annals of our land.  There will yet be need
of all the people can do.  Their help will be wanted in those pestilent bayous long
after appropriations have become exhausted and found an end.  Medicines, wearing
apparel, bedding, shelter, implements to work with, and seed to plant, must be supplied. 
 The Trustees named in our appeal, and who fully understand the scope and ability 
of the Red Cross organizations, constitute an ample guaranty that whatever is contributed 
will be wisely applied.
Will you, dear present the matter of our appeal to your       ,
with such explanation of the subject and such effective words of commendation as your 
own heart shall dictate.
We would respectfully suggest that you designate some suitable person or persons
in your to take the matter in charge, receive; and transmit contributions
of money and material as indicated in our appeal.
We remain very respectfully yours,
The Central Committee of the 
American Association of the Red Cross
Clara Barton,
President.

(* 9 Substitute abstract-*)
80
[on its way to the Red Cross society of 
Memphis, which society being notified of 
its transit, made the necessary provisions for
immediate [[reshipment]] distribution, and 
within twenty four hours after its arrival
it was properly assorted and reshipped to 
the needed points in five different states
with full instructions for final disposition,]
It is a comfort today, to know that
thousands of acres of that so recently
desolated valley, is rich with ripening vegetation,
and that thousands of persons are
subsisting upon the results of that one wellThe American Association of the Red Cross,
FOR THE RELIEF OF SUFFERING BY
WAR, PESTILENCE, FAMINE, FIRE, AND OTHER NATIONAL CALAMITIES.
Washington, D. C.  March 27, 1882.

To
My Dear     Feeling assured that it will be your pleasure to co=operator in
the good work which engages us, we herewith transmit to you a publication explaining 
the objects of our Association, together with an appeal in behalf of the sufferers from 
the floods in the Mississippi valley.  You will perceive how effectual in labors of 
love have been the methods of work pursued by our numerous associate Societies of the
Red Cross abroad.  Our organization will employ like instrumentalities in sending 
aid to the afflicted in the Southwest.
The rations at present furnished by the Federal Government prevent, momentarily, 
a scene of starvation from blotting the annals of our land.  There will yet be need
of all the people can do.  Their help will be wanted in those pestilent bayous long
after appropriations have become exhausted and found an end.  Medicines, wearing
apparel, bedding, shelter, implements to work with, and seed to plant, must be supplied. 
 The Trustees named in our appeal, and who fully understand the scope and ability 
of the Red Cross organizations, constitute an ample guaranty that whatever is contributed 
will be wisely applied.
Will you, dear present the matter of our appeal to your       ,
with such explanation of the subject and such effective words of commendation as your 
own heart shall dictate.
We would respectfully suggest that you designate some suitable person or persons
in your to take the matter in charge, receive; and transmit contributions
of money and material as indicated in our appeal.
We remain very respectfully yours,
The Central Committee of the 
American Association of the Red Cross
Clara Barton,
President.

(* 10 Substitute abstract-*)
81
- arranged act of generosity.
There is neither teacher nor preacher
like necessity, and the lessons of the 
Mississippi Valley went far towards awakening
the thinking portion of the people
to the importance of some permanently
organized system of relief; and has
resulted in the formation of societies
either state or town. in most of the cities
of importance from Chicago to New Orleans.
all organized under a general constitution
as auxiliary to the American Associations
of the Red Cross at Washington. [and
all affiliates with the National and subordinate Io cities
of thirty two nations acting in concert in a [?] work of charity and it
practical [?] of goodwill among mankind.[*substitute abstract page 13 from memo
"my ask is done"-]
 82
I have no preparation to make at the
close of these long [somewhat lengthy] and
I fear somewhat tedious remarks.  My object was
simply to bring to my subject all the light-
both in the past, and present which the
limited time that could be devoted to it
would permit.  I have endeavored to
be strictly faithful to facts, even at the 
expenses of many possible flights of [fancy]
imagination, and beauties of rhetoric, often
so tempting to both speaker and listeners
I have endeavored submitted to the judgment of this
high assemblage, such facts and observations

83
in regard to the practical utility of a 
system of International and national
relief in the great emergencies to which
mankind are liable, as some years of 
attention to the subject, and some little experience
have given to me.  and to point out as well as I am able the methods
I have thus far found acceptably proven
by practical application and actual success
If your honored body find the subject
matter of sufficient importance to attract
its further attention, and above all, to 
elicit from it such wise suggestions and
84
counsel as it may from time to time be
pleased to bestow, the object will have been 
richly gained - (secured)


Introduce from abstract

[It might at first thought appear singular
that a civil and scientific body like the Social
Science Association of America, convening only
at long intervals, always with limited time for
the consideration of the various and interesting
topics pressing upon to attention at a moment
when prosperity and unprecedented peace spread over the
earth (for eight months ago even the Eastern horizon
showed no threatening speck) should have felt justified (if incumbent
upon its self or even) justifiable to devote an
evening out of its small number to the consideration of
International Releif in War.] If the later official
action which has since transpired had existed at that time,R-11
[Sept 6, 1882] 
INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL RELIEF IN WAR.
When the official invitation was given eight months ago,
to prepare this paper the world slumbered in unwonted peace. For
a scientific and philanthropic association, devoted to social science
to have them been busied with thoughts of International Relief
in war, now seems to clothe that Association  with the mantle
of wise and prophetic foresight.  If the later official action which
has since transpired had existed at that time, this interest and
decision would have been less remarkable, but it is to be remembered
that no action had then been taken by the government, the press or
the people, in relation to the matter. True, a treaty pertaining
to this subject, which had slept at our doors for seventeen years,
had been stirred a little, but this only by individual action and
of very little strength.  Within that short space, that slumbering
treaty has aroused and walked unquestioned through the halls
of our legislature, clasped friendly hands with every grave senator
of our land, been recognized by every branch of the government, proclaimed 
by our President to the nations of the earth, become a law
and taken its active place among the living statutes of our country;
and when a few weeks ago the same lightning wire that flashed to us
the terrible news of the bombardment of Alexandria, told us also
that among the fire and the smoke of battle, above the wounded and
the slain, floated out full and clear the brave, peaceful, samaritan
folds of the Red Cross of the Treaty of Geneva, every paper in the
land hastened to proclaim it, and every heart heaved a sigh of relief.
We learned at that moment that no step towards the right can
be premature, and that is is possible for the wisest even to build
better than he knows.
In the consideration of this subject like all others, indeed,
we can only arrive at any profitable, or even just conclusions, 
by tracing it back to its foundation, and determining from the history
of its past existence and action, the demands and prospects of 
its present.  But unfortunately we find the field of research lament-
ably limited although war has been the rule if not largely the occupation of the peoples of the earth from their earliest history, though the slaughter and privations of its victims in battle, the sacking and burning, famine and pestilence of its seige, and the captivity, enslavement, torture and degredation of its captives have crowded the literature of the world, but a small portion of the thought of the generations of the past has been devoted to the subject of devising or affording any means of relief or amelioration of the wretched conditions resulting from this system of national or of international welfare; and even that which has been, seems to have found little or no place with the historian.
        One searches wearily through volumes of international law to find in Wheaton a few pages upon the exchange of prisoners, and the conditions are not easy.
         Grotius gives little more comfort or throws little more light upon the subject; and although the original rule of war is laid down in rude ferocity in the sacred page of the Old Testament, even to the extermination of neighbors, there appears to have been no thought beyond this.
         The ancient Hebrews seem not to have taken any measure to that end.
         Among the military preparations of King Uzzial in which are enumerated shields, spears, helmets, bows, and slings, for a host of three hundred and seven thousand, five hundred men, there is no mention of relief, nor any provision whatever for the sick or disabled.
         King ahab died in battle for want of the simplest care.
         But no hint of mitigation appears till the command
"Love your enemies" lights up the banner of Christ.
          Profane histories are three-fourths filled with the details of battles and sieges, and are almost silent as to the care of the sick and wounded even among their own.
          There are only hints, as it were, dropped by accident.
          We are not to suppose that former races were hardier than we, and did not suffer; from their greater ignorance and lack of cleanliness it is likely they suffered more than modern armies.
           When pestilence and malaria struck the Greek hosts before Troy, "The frequent pyres of the dead kept burning ever," and neither man nor beast was spread. 
            The plague of Athens has acquired eternal ill fame.
            The expedition to Syracuse was almost eternal by disease; and when the Emperor Servius invaded Scotland, although he encountered no enemy in battle, he lost fifty thousand men; we may be sure it was not by desertion in a land of naked savages who could eat the bark and roots of trees. 
            There is no good reason to believe that some sort of healing has arisen among every people, of any intelligence, and developed itself in common with all other arts.
            It is probable that the first practitioners in common life were women; but there is little room for doubt that the first surgeons were warriors to whom aptitude or experience gave special skill in testing wounds; such Machaon and Podalirius, extolled by Homer, men who could inflict wounds as well as heal them, and of whom Idomenous could say,
             "A wise physician skilled our wounds to heal is more than armies to the public weal."
             It is to be inferred that this system continued for a long time among the armies of the Greeks. Thus, Xenophon in his celebrated "Retreat of the then thousand" after the battle of Cunaxa, about 400 B.C., says that he appointed eight doctors because there were many wounded." His manner of stating it indicates that they were selected from the other soldiers.
            Homer and Plato were so struck with Egyptian science and skill that they declared that the Egyptians were all doctors. But notwithstanding this general diffusion of knowledge among the people, according to Diodorus regular surgeons were even at that day employed among the armies. Alexander was accompanied in his march of conquest, by the most famous physicians of the age, one of whom extracted an-4-

arrow from his shoulder, and cured him of a dangerous fever; and
another exhibited great nerve and skill in cutting the barbed head
of a javelin for the conqueror's breast; and when Ptolemy Philometor
received a fracture of the skull in battle 146 years B.C. the
surgeons immediately performed the operation of trepanning.

These scattered examples indicate a very considerable
progress in surgical skill both in Greece and Egypt at that early
day.  But as the Romans excelled in political and military organization,
they might be expected to develope and reduce to practice
some system of treatment, "wise or otherwise," of the sick
and wounded of their vast and populous armies.

If they did, it lies, like their millions of slain,
their magnificent cities, their monuments of greatness and glory,
deep buried in the gathering mould of ages, and the pen of the
historian is silent and sad.

It has been inferred from the story of Archagathus,
related by the Elder Pliny, that the healing art was unknown in
the early days of the Republic; but notwithstanding the silence
of the historians, it is a curious fact that monuments discovered
in modern times, disclose that under the Empire there were
surgeons of cohorts and surgeons of legions, which would correspond
roughly to regimental and brigade surgeons.

About fifty years ago a handsome monuments was unearthed
at Housestead in Northumberland close to the wall of Hadrian,
erected in honor of the surgeon of a cohort who had died at the
early age of twenty five.

He must have acquired his position by education and not
by the slow process of individual observation.

The incentive to help and heal another in distress is
spontaneous; generally the result of sympathetic impulse and kindness,
a thing of the feelings and consequently of sudden growth;
but the faculty to organize and reduce to system and practice
these spontaneous emotions is quite different, a thing of reason
rather than impulse. Thus there were probably surgeons and nurses long
before there were any military hospitals or special places for the
care of the disabled.


-5-
Polybius who served in the Roman armies after the second
Punic was, has left a minute account of their military organization
of their equipment, encampment, and exercises, but says not a word
of a hospital or the smallest provision for the care of the sick
or wounded.

That these omissions were not the result of indifference
nor inhumanity on the part of the great chiefs, is shown by Tacitus
who represents Germanicus as "going round" among his wounded soldiers
and speaking words of cheer to them; and after a defeat when
they had lost among other things, their medical stores, the faithful
and brave Agrippina, the wife of the general distributing clothing
and dressings to the wounded.

Alexander Servius in the third century, is related to
have visited the sick in their tents. This beautiful and Christ
like act in that pagan emperor and general, is well accounted for
in his chosen and oft repeated motto, "what-so-ever ye would that
men should do to you, do ye so also to them."

Livy tells that after a battle with the Etrurians in the
5th century before our era, the Roman general distributed the wounded
among the houses of the Patritians.

Tacitus, describing the fall of the amphitheater at Fidemae,
in the reign of Tiberius, when 50,000 spectators were killed or maimed
says that the injured were taken and treated in the houses of the
citizens according to the custom of the ancients who maintained those
wounded in war by their contributions and care.

But a writer of the second century B. C., Hyginus Gromaticus,
who lived under Trajan and Hadrian, in an essay on the Construction
of Camps, assigns a place to the hospital or "valetudinarium."

It is comforting to our reflection upon the past to know
that the idea of humanity to an enemy in distress is not entirely
modern.

Xenophon, in Cyropaedia, about 400 B.C. represents Cyrus
the Great as ordering his surgeons to attend the wounded prisoners.

This is of course romance and not history, but it shows
the existence of the idea even at that early day.-6-

Though the middle ages the search is weary and fruitless, and but for the ephemeral light which burst out and rested like a shekinah on the banners of the Hospitaller knights in the terrible wars of the crusades, the darkness would remain nearly unbroken until less than three centuries ago, when the growth of civilization had led the nations to comprehend the grave responsibility resting upon them as the creators of armies and the promulgators of war.

The result was the creation of an official sanitary service, the foundation of the present Military Medical Service and staff of armies; and which in comparison with all that had goes before it, was considered so great a step towards supplying the sanitary necessities of soldiers that nothing farther could ever be required.  As the governments took the initiative, it was naturally left to them to do all that was needful.

The medical service gradually developed and improved, thus justly gaining confidence among the people who naturally, not averse to shifting responsibility, became accustomed to consider themselves incompetent to deal with questions of humanity relating to war.

The lines of demarkation, strong as the iron of their guns, between the military and the people, not only favored this conclusion of the part of the latter, but rendered it a seeming necessity; thus the pitiable neglect of men in war appears to have constituted one of the large class of misfortunes for which no one is to blame or even accountable, assuming that wars must be.

The military acted up to the measure of its regulations, if not as times over stepping; its surgeons humane and noble, have been the first to pity and the bravest to proclaim the necessity and destitution of their wretched patients.

It was been one of the evils and wants which the march of human progress alone could reach and supply.

Of the hospital or relief work in the wars of Napolean 1st there is little recorded.  His method was swift marches, overwhelming slaughters, new levies, and great wrecked heaps of misery, suddenly left where they fell, like the wrecks of a tornado.

-7-

But we do find that the women of German found time to move in the formation of relief societies; and in the 1813 the ladies of Frankfort united together to found the Frauenverine of that city, with the express object of insuring more complete arrangement for the care of the sick and wounded, and to assist in providing for the wants of the military hospitals of Frankfort without distinction of friend or foe.

The appeal for help was made by three ladies and society actually constituted on the 2nd of July 1814.

Relief was indiscriminately afforded by this self-constituted and noble society alike to the volunteer soldiers of Frankfort, to Spaniards returning from captivity and to the French prisoners who were freely received into their hospitals, and after the terrible war had passed, it labored through an epidemic of typhus which the war had left in its wake.

It is a happy fact to possess, that this society has never lost its existence, and has promptly come to the front with every uprising of the Fatherland from that day to this.

In the comparatively bloodless campaign of Sanderbund in Switzerland in 1847 a society sprang up in Zurich for the transport of soldiers seriously wounded.

1854 brought the ever memorable war of the Crimea and the world looked on with trembling heart and bated breath whilst the great allied powers of western and southern Europe pitted themselves against the Emperor of all the Russias.

Once more the old sad story- the relentless war of races, - the Anglo Saxon, the Celt and the Latin against the wild and myriad hordes of the Sclave; scarcely had they met when the allied hospitals reeked with death; but the times had changed; human progress had evolved a press whose lever moved the world; the newspaper correspondents threw back upon astonished England the terrible fact of the entire inadequacy of her military medical field of service.

Facts are stubborn and figures true.  Both government and people awoke as from a dream, and when the letters of Lord Sidney Herbert, the British Minister of war, and Florence nightingale crossed in transit, the one begging civil help for military-8-

distress; the other begging leave in the name of humanity to go and render it, they marked an era never before reached in progress of the world; and when two weeks later Miss Nightingale with her forty faithful attendants sailed from the shores of England, it meant more for its future history, than all the fleets of armies and navies, cannon and commissary, munitions of war and regiments of men that had sailed before her in that vast campaing.

This little unarmed pilgrim band of women that day struck a blow, not only at the barbarities of war, but they laid the axe deep at the root of war itself.

The world knows by heart the story of Scutari and the Barrack Hospitals, and how under the intelligent direction and labors of this civil volunteer corps, disease lessened, gangrene disappeared and pestilence fell away as the moth and mildew and poisonous vapors of night flee before the purifying rays of the morning sun, and how, under the strong support of the military head and England's gracious Queen, this work went on until the hospitals of the entire British armies in the Crimea, from awful depths of wretchedness, became types of what military hospitals ought to be.

The great example had been given, the slow but willing world had learned its lesson at the cost of its teacher, for when Florence Nightingale, covered with the praises and honors of the world, bending under the weight of England's gratitude, again sought her green island home, it was to seek also a bed of painful invalidism from which she has never risen and probably never will.  At such cost is the good work of the world accomplished.

But this seed of costly sowing had taken root and would not die.

In 1859 the italian wars of Napolean III added the names of Magenta and Solferino to the military historic vocabulary of the world; again the oft repeated story of insufficiencies of medical supplies and personnel, and in a day as it were, the garden cities of Northern Italy, Milan, Turin, Brescia, burst into bloom with civil hospitals for the nursing and care of military wounded

-9-

and their committees of relief were the wonder of the hour, but like all important movements without previous and thorough organization they were impulsive and lacked perseverance, thus unfortunately rendering it possible for Dr. Evans in his Sanitary History of the United States to say of the movement, "htat sincere as it was, for want of an efficient organization to control its efforts, its first enthusiasm died away beneath the weight of difficulties which the general inexperience had accumulated."

Ten years more of desultory observation brings us to the bring of our war of which it is scarcely necessary to speak.

Most of the persons before me lived this, and need no reminders of the distressing inadequacy of our medical and hospital field service to the emergencies of active warfare, not its utter inability to cope with the difficulties by which it found itself confronted within one month after the firing upon Sumpter.

Neither need they be reminded of the uprising of the Sanitary Commission, of its struggles for existence, its strife for military recognition even under all the evidence of its great humane necessity, of its 32000 relief committees dotting all our land, its contributions, its fairs and bazaars, its ingots of gold and its windows mites, its expansion in scope until it included not only the wants of the soldier in the field, but the home he had left; its growth in military recognition and privileges of access, till its huge four horse waggons were galloped and halted on the very edge of battle, and its fearless bands, with young strong life and blood to give, if need be, uncalled and unexpected, like hosts from heaven, sprang from them under the very guns, and hour by hour through the thickest of the fight bore their rescued and bleeding burdence through the rain of shot and shell to the place of safety and care provided for them.

It is probably that no act of our country has ever won for it the resulted from this unparalleled display of active humanity.

It has taken the acknowledged precedence of all that has gone before it.  Translations from the highest French and German authorities upon this subject, bring to light expressions like-10-

the following.

The Sanitary Commission of the United States was an exhibition of unofficial relief the most vast, the most energetic, and the most persevering the world has ever seen."

From another author, -"The Sanitary Commission of the United States marks a new era in the worlds history,- It is the greatest act of philanthropy which humanity has ever meditated and accomplished,-
Through its influence the whole social system of the United States was modified."

And yet this commission did not extend beyond its own country and only half over that, and ceased to exist with the occasion which called it into being.

Whilst the great American conflict and its immediate momentous questions were occupying the entire attention of this people, Europe found its swords again drawn and bayonets crossed in Schleswig Holstein and Austrian wars of 1864-66, with the same experience of insufficiency of official medical service in time of war, and the ever increasing manifestations of unofficial relief, timely, useful, welcome.

The people had by this time gained some confidence and commenced to consider themselves not altogether incompetent to deal with questions of humanity in war, if wars must be.

The statement contained in the foregoing pages, although disconnected, and scattered through the entire area of historic record, all go to establish three important facts, 1st That the official army medical staff and provisions for the sick and wounded of armies has never been adequate to the necessities and emergencies of active service;

That no instance of a battle of importance can be cited where needless suffering and death have not been the direct result of this inadequacy, and

That international law in regard to the treatment and exchange of prisoners of war and the protection of medical and hospital supplies and attendants designed for the use of the sick and wounded has been proportionally inadequate.

-11-

2nd That individual humanity and ingenuity have been untiring in efforts to meet and supply this agonizing and costly deficiency; and 3rd That through lack of that concerted action and organization which alone supply the power and strength to meet and overcome great obstacles, the best of these efforts have nearly failed.

The greatest success in that direction ever recorded, is that of the American Sanitary Commission which, at the end of sixteen years, lives only in the story and example, and of those almost death struggles with the government for legal existence at first, Capt'. Henry Brackenbury, Prof essor of Military HIstory at Woolwich makes the following sad record.

"Their scheme, he says, was looked upon as a cunning device to gain power for selfish ends; one secretary asked the delegates waiting upon him to "state frankly, precisely what they did want, since it was evident they could not want only what they seemed to be asking for."

President Lincoln thought they would only be adding a fifth wheel to the coach."

At last after repeated discouragements they obtained, on the 13th of June 1861, the appointment of a "Commission of Inquiry and advice in respect to the sanitary interests of the United States forces", to serve without remuneration and to be officially recognized within the limits of their authority.

"It is impossible", Professor Brackenbury goes on to say, "to over-estimate the noble exertions of those men who with unselfish zeal begged in ante-chambers under rebuffs and insulting insinuations for favors for the nation which they would have scorned to ask for themselves."

It is easy to perceive that this inequality between human necessity and suffering on the one side, and human ability to meet and provide against it on the other, has always lain a burden heavy and sore on the hearts of the best of the world; only the bloodthirsty, mercenary, barbarous, cruel, or cruelly thoughtless have escaped it.

Still these individual and transient efforts were accumulative and left their impress, society ripened under the march

-12-

of progress.  The times changed.

Again quoting from Professor Brackenbury as recently as 1868, he says, while for the last few years the pages of the press have been devoted to chronicling the giant strides made in the art of destruction, but little notice has been taken of a movement that has been steadily progressing for the relief of the misery of battle fields.

It was true, joyfylly true, that amidst all the din and clash of war in both hemispheres, with the stars and stripes and the banner of secession in the west, and the battle flags of Prussia, Austria and Italy in the EAst, all afloat, and while the most wonderfully distressing and distracted efforts at promiscuous and individual relief the world has ever seen, were going on, ---the great key note had been struck in little Republican Switzerland; a master hand had touched the keys which were to bring music out of discord; to gather all these wild and fugitive strains into one grand international anthem of humanity and cooperation, in which all the nations of the world could unite.

The times they tell us produce the men; and thus, when Monsieur Henry Dunant inspired by the memories of Solferino, stood before the learned "Genovese Society of Public Utility" in Switzerland, and asked it to consider questions of organizing permanent volunteer Relief Societies in time of peace, whose aim should be to afford relief to the sick and wounded in time of war, by supplementing the regular military establishment of surgical assistants by voluntary aid, and also asked that a system of neutrality between belligerents be instituted for the protection of hospitals, official and volunteer nurses, hospital supplies, surgeons and the wounded themselves, and an international convention for that purpose was successfully convened by the members of that society, the chord was struck that spanned the world.

From this movement emanates the present great and certain system of neutral and international relief in war, and it is scarcely too much to predict, nay, one fondly hopes and firmly believes, that it marks the coming of, and points the way to that blessed era of peace on Earth and good will to man, when men shall know each

-13-

other and reason together and the nations shall war no more.

After what has been said, the interesting details of this important movement can be quickly related.

It was to the direct influence of the work by Monsieur Henry Durant, entitled "Unsouvenir de Solferino" as well as to the personal exertions of that gentleman that the movement which led to the International Congress of 1864 and its results, were immediately due.

Monsieur Durant, a Swiss gentleman, was travelling in Italy on his own account in the year 1859, and was in the neighborhood of Solferino on the day of the great battle of the 24th of June.  The aspect of the battle field, the sufferings of the vast numbers of wounded scattered over it, and the occurrences which he afterwards observed in the hospitals where he remained some days, assisting as a volunteer in attending upon the wounded, deeply impressed him.

Notwithstanding the liberal provisions which had been made by the French army in surgeons, means of transport, surgical stores, and sick dietary, and in addition, the aid afforded by the inhabitants of the places to which the wounded were first brought, -Monsieur Dunant saw, that owing to the vastness of their numbers, the wounded were left for days without attention or proper surgical relief, and he was led to consider whether there were any means by which this superadded suffering in time of war might be obviated; this led to the publication of the Souvenir de Solferino in 1862, containing descriptions of what he had observed on the battle field and in hospitals, as well as numerous arguments in favor of a proposition for founding in every country permanent societies for the relief of the wounded.

This work created a great sensation and was quickly translated into several European languages, and the "Genovese Society of Public Utility" appointed a committee of which General Dufour, the General in Chief of the Swiss Confederation accepted the presidency, for the purpose of supporting and encouraging the dissemination of the proposals of Mr. Dunant.

This led to an international conference, held at Geneva in Oct. 1863, which was attended by delegates from sixteen govern-



-14-

ments, including Great Britain, France, Spain, Prussia, Austria and Italy.

This conference sat four days, framed important resolutions, and resulted in the calling of an International Congress, known as the International Convention of Geneva of 1864, for the purpose of considering the question of neutralization of the sick and wounded soldiers of belligerent armies.

This congress was assembled from the Supreme Federal Council of Switzerland.  The Invitation was accepted by sixteen powers, and the congress opened on the 8th of August 1864 at the Hotel de Ville, Geneva, provided for the occasion by the Federal Government.

There were present twenty five members of the Diplomatic, Military and Medical staff of various nations and armies.

The deliberations lasted nearly a fortnight, and resulted in a code of Nine ARticles agreed upon by the convention, and signed on the 22nd of August, by the representatives of those governments which had previously accredited their delegates with sufficient power for signing a treaty.

This is considered a most remarkable instance of a general treaty brought about by the exertions of an individual in private life.

It will be born in mind that the aim of the Congress of 1864 was to obtain the neutralization of the wounded in beligerant armies, and of the personnel and material necessary for their care and treatment,--and to determine whether the human principles which had from time to time been applied exceptionally might not under certain limitations be rendered consistent with military necessities on all occasions, and be established as a rule.

The conference of 1863, less official in character, had aimed at the foundation of a system of Relief Societies for all countries and its resolutions are to this end.

A word in regard to the character of the Nine Articles, of the Treaty formed by the congress of convention of 1864, may not be out of place.

The 1st naturally provides for the security of the hospitals in which the wounded might happen to be collected, that they

-15-

shall be held neutral, and be respected by belligerents so long as sick or wounded remain in them.

Articles 2 and 3 provide for the neutrality and safety of all persons employed in the care of the wounded in hospitals, -surgeons, chaplains, nurses, attendants, even after the enemy has gained the ground, but when no longer required for the wounded, they shall be promptly conducted under escort to the outposts of the enemy to rejoin the corps to which they belong, thus preventing all opportunity to roam free and make observations under cover of neutrality.

Article 4 settles the terms on which the material of hospitals, field and general, shall be regarded, that field hospitals shall not be subject to capture.

Article 5, with the view to quieting the fears of the inhabitants in the vicinity of a battle, who often flee in terror, as well as to secure their assistance, and the comfort of their homes for care of the wounded, offers military protection, and certain exemptions to all who shall entertain and care for the wounded in their houses.

Article 6 binds the parties contracting the Treaty not only to give the requisite care and treatment to all sick and wounded who fall into their hands, but that their misfortunes shall not be aggravated by the prospect of banishment or imprisonment.  They shall not be retained as prisoners of war, but if circumstances admit may be given up immediately after the action to be cared for by their own army, or if retained until recovered and found disabled for service they shall be safely returned to their country and friends, and that all convoys of sick and wounded shall be protected by absolute neutrality.

In order to secure the neutralization of hospitals and material and the nurses engaged in the service of the wounded, it was necessary to fix upon some common sign by which they could be recognized by all parties and all nations uniting in the Treaty.  Thus Article 7 provides a flag for hospitals and convoys and an arm badge for persons.  The design proposed was a red cross upon a white ground.-16-

The reasons for this selection were two fold, First it 
was typical of the Christian princile of the international charity 
embodied in the articles of the convention; Second it was a compliment 
to the country in which the congress was sitting, this being 
the national flag of Switzerland with the colors reversed, 
her flag being white cross on a red ground.
In order to show that the parties carrying this flag 
have a right to it by treaty as well as to indicate the country 
to which they belong, it must always be accompanied by the national 
flag, and in order to guard against wrongful use of the arm 
badge or Brassard, it is left to the military authorities to issue 
them.
Articles 8 and 9 provide for the details of execution, 
and for the treaty being left open for the subsequent admission 
of governments.
This treaty received the signature of twelve governments 
at first, which were soon increased to sixteen and subsequently 
to double that number.
As before remarked, the International Conference of 1863, 
dealt with the subject of the national relief committees so warmly 
urged by Monsieur Dunant.
Its resolutions provided for the formation of central committees 
in each country with power to form sub-committees, to establish 
relations with the government, -to make themselves acquainted 
with all improvements in the means of helping wounded soldiers, - 
to train volunteers for hospital service, -to collect materials for 
sick and wounded when necessary, -to keep up friendly relations and 
intercourse with each other, in order that any improvements or 
inventions if field transport, likely to be serviceable in campaign, 
made in one country might be made known in other countries; just 
as improvements in the implements of destruction are mutually observed 
and generally without much reserve communicated between nations 
on friendly terms with each other.
In time of war these committees become the agents of the 
public at large for affording aid through the proper authorities

-17-

to the sick and wounded.
There is, it is believed, no civilized nation which has not, 
today, its central committee existing and acting in accordance with 
the resolutions of that conference.
In monarchical governments they are generally under the patronage 
of members of the Royal families.
Of their work of unparalleled activity, unselfish devotion, 
and holy beneficence in all wars, among all peoples from their institution 
to the present moment, there is neither time nor space for 
me to speak.
The work of the International Relief Committees of Europe 
during the Franco-German war, could no more be portrayed in this 
paper, than could the four years work of the sanitary commission of 
the United States be represented here.  It would be historic mutilation 
to attempt it.
It is something however to know, that the needless sufferings 
of that terrible conflict were almost entirely averted, that no 
record of military abuse or cruelty stains the annals of its history.  
That wounded captives were nursed in the same hospitals with their 
own, -That prisoners of war were well treated and faithfully returned, - 
That the national committee and societies under the Treaty vied with 
each other in the munificence of their gifts, and their promptness 
of relief, that true to the great and holy spirit of Christianity, 
there was no respect of persons in that great gala day of charity.  
The jeweled fingers of the princess and the hard hand of the peasant 
woman met and labored side by side unquestioned and unquestioning 
in their God-given mission.-
Ay!.  Side by side they wrought as side by side their dead 
lay on the fields.  Empress Augusta assumed the active head of the 
Society of Germany which position she still continues to honor.
The beloved Grand Duchess Louise of Baden, only daughter 
of the Emperor and empress of Germany, was untiring in the conduct 
of the noble society she had already formed and patronized.  Her 
many and beautiful castles, with their magnificent grounds, throughout 
all Baden, were at once transformed into military hospitals, and-18-

her entire court with herself at its head formed into a committee of superintendence and organization for relief.

I have seen a wounded Arab from the French armies, who knew no word of any language but his own, stretch out his arms to her in adoration and blessings as she passed his bed.

Switzerland which received the entire fleeing fugitives of Alsace Lorraine, and the outcomes of Strasburg after bombardment, and into which Bourbaki threw his whole army in defeat, not only nourished and sheltered these, but gave her money and material as from a bottomless well; there was no end of her bounty.

The English committee under, I believe, the direction of the Duke of Sutherland, made more than good her great record of English philanthropy; no higher praise could be bestowed.

For the Treaty itself it is all important to know that it stood every test of military trial, that no instance of infraction of its regulations or of advantage being taken of its privileges, it is recorded; from that time there has been no expression of doubt or fears.  The harness has been tried.  Of the part taken by the United States in the work of relief in this great conflict, unfortunately, one is not able to speak in this connection, as she was not a party to the Treaty, and had no national society; consequently she must make her contributions in her own way, and run her own risk of their safe reception and proper distribution.

If her supply ships, under only a single flag sailed into foreign ports held by the enemy who could not recognize them, -would not permit them to land, and they lay until the vessels chartered for the voyage must return, and the perishable portion of their valuable stores spoiled and found a reception in the dock, and the more permanent portion was unloaded and sold to the highest bidder and the little money it brought distributed with the best and most conscientious judgement of the disappointed, tired, sore-perplexed and baffled agents; it was only the natural result, and oft repeated experience of unorganized and unsystematized charity the world over.

If this were so, it is past, let us bury it with the past, and be thankful that it can never happen to us again.

The question naturally arises in every mind, why were we

-19-

not a party to the Treaty, and why had we no societies?

Although the fact seems not only singular, but painful, I think the reasons can be made obvious.

It will be remembered that the conference and congress of Geneva were held during the years of 1863 and 1864.  The United States having been invited with all other nations to send delegates, was officially represented at the latter by Mr. Bowles then residing in Paris, and by him the Resolutions and articles of both assemblies were officially transmitted to our government for action.

It was not unnatural that our renowned Secretary of State, William H. Seward should have declined on the officially stated ground that we were already in the midst of a relentless and barbarous war.

-----

Some years later, another convention, known as the convention of 1868, was held in Paris, and another set of articles, including the wounded of maritime wars, as well as those of land forces, was submitted to the nations.

In this convention, the United States was most fitly represented by its moblest and world-renowned philanthropist, Rev. Dr. Henry W. Bellows, who was appointed its representative in this country and by that honored gentleman, the articles of the original Treaty, including the additions of the 1868 were again represented to the U. S. Government, and were again declined, most likely for the reason that they had once before declined.  But through the faithful endeavors of Dr Bellows, a society was actually formed during that year; but the subject, as well as its literature was foreign to our people, who knowing little of it felt no interest; and still further, a society formed for the purposes of International Relief in war, lacking any International Treaty to that end, and lacking all the privileges and powers to be conferred by the Treaty, was simply Hamlet with Hamlet left out, and like a sapling planted without a root, it naturally withered away.

It is not singular that the International Committee of Geneva became perplexed by the repeated declinations and apathy of a nation which had given to the world the examples of a sanitary and christian commission, and sought explanation from such sources-20-

as it could reach.

The subject slept until 1877, when it was again presented, 
during the administration of President Hayes, and a committee was 
formed, consisting of four persons, three ladies and one gentleman 
styling itself the "American National Committee, or Society of the 
Red Cross for the Relief of Sufferings by war, pestilence, famine, 
fire, flood, and other calamities, so great as to be regarded as national 
in extent."

In the following year 1878, a small pamphlet was published explaining 
the subject and its objects.-
Entitled "The Red Cross of the Geneva Convention."

but, it was not until almost four years later, with the incoming of 
the administration of our martyred president, who himself to die 
a wounded soldier, that any favorable response was made, - any audience 
gained, -or the slightest echo returned to the faithful and persistent 
rappings of humanity through 17 weary years.

It will not, perhaps, be inappropriate, to name some of 
the persons no less than the measures, to whose active exertions, 
and philanthropic natures the accession of our country to the Treaty 
of Geneva is, at last due.

Its first Official Advocate and tireless friend from the
advent of the presentation of 1877, was Hon. Omar D. Conger, now senator 
from Michigan, then, a member of the House.

Hon. Secretary Windom, as a member of President Garfield's 
cabinet laid it before the President in cabinet session.  It was 
cordially received, and responded to, by the President and his cabinet.

Hon. Secretary of State, Jas. G. Blaine wrote a cordial 
letter of approval, and President Garfield promised to recommend 
in his first annual message to congress, the accession of the-20-

as it could reach.

The subject slept until 1877, when it was again presented during the administration of President Hayes, and a committee was formed, consisting of four persons, three ladies and one gentleman styling itself the "American National Committee, or Society of the Red Cross for the Relief of Sufferings by war, pestilence, famine, fire, flood and other calamities, so great as to be regarded as national in extent."

The American Committee felt itself sustained in making these important extensions in its field of action by the text of Article 20 of the Berlin Conference of 1869, which recommends that the societies established under the Treaty of Geneva, extend relief in time of peace to public calamities, which require, like war, prompt and well organized help.

This committee of 1877 devoted itself to the dissemination of a knowledge of the subject among the people, and the creation of a sentiment favorable to the adoption of the Treaty by the government; but, it was not until almost four years later, with the incoming of the administration of our martyred president, who was himself to die a wounded soldier, that any favorable response was made, -any audience gained, -or the slightest echo returned to the faithful and persistent rappings of humanity through 17 weary years.

It will not, perhaps, be inappropriate to name some of the persons no less than the measures, to whose active exertions, and philanthropic natures the accession of our country to the Treaty of Geneva is, at last due.

Its first Official Advocate and tireless friend from the advent of the presentation of 1877, was Hon. Omar D. conger, now senator from Michigan, then, a member of the House.

Hon. Secretary Windom, as a member of President Garfield's cabinet laid it before the PResident in a cabinet session.  It was cordially received, and responded to, by the President and his cabinet.

Hon. Secretary of State, Jas. G. Blaine wrote a cordial letter of approval, and President Garfield promised to recommend in his first annual message to congress, the accession of the 

-21-

United States to the Treaty.

Upon receipt of this information, the original American Committee of 1877 was reorganized and incorporated, under the name of the American Association of the Red Cross with the same objects as at first.

Scarcely was this accomplished, when the assassins shot palsied the great heart and strong hand on which its first hopes had grown.  Then followed the weary eighty days of national agony, when hope seemed once more smothered in the pall and the bier.

But a great hearted, and strong handed successor came to the rescue, and nobly took up the work where it had been left, and the first general message of President Arthur carried out the plan and faithfully performed the promise of his lamentable predecessor.  This act carried the subject before the Hon. Committee of Foreign Affairs in the senate, and there it again met its original friend, Senator Morgan of Alabama who had been one of the first to comprehend its true character, Hon. Senator Lapham of New York, who had been its untiring friend, and who has given to it has watchful care, and strong legal ability upon all occasions.

The dark days of the long neglected Treaty began to brighten, and its lines to fall in pleasant places.

After able discussion the accession of the United States to the Articles of the Conventions of both 1864 and 1868 was agreed upon, and the Treaty received the signature of President Arthur on the 1st of March, 1882.

It was ratified by the senate on the 16th of the same month, and the stipulations were exchanged at Bern, Switzerland on the 9th of June, and on the 26th of July, less than six weeks ago, the Treaty was proclaimed by the President to the People of the United States.

Thus this first great movement towards the neutralisation of nations and International Relief in war, became to this country an accomplished fact, and a Law of the Land.

Although we have been last and 32nd nation to accede to the original and first Treaty of 1864, it is consoling to know-22-

that we are the first to have affixed a signature to the Treaty of the 2nd Congress of 1868, covering maratime wars, no other nation having yet fully acceeded thereto.  Although late in the one, we lead in the other; and the last becomes first.

Some very brief remarks relative to the Relief Committees their origin, purpose, and methods of activity, may not be out of place.

First of all-is the International Committee of Geneva, known as the Comite International de Secours aux Militaries blessez" and is co-existent with the conference and congress of 1863-4.

It will be remembered at the instance of a committee selected by the society of "Public Utility of Geneva", the efficient and accomplished President of the Congress of 1864.  At the close of the congress, the nations which had become party to the Treaty finding it desirable that some center of action should be recognized, invested that committee, which had thus far constituted the soul of the work with power to act in that capacity; making it the legal source through which the exchange of communications between the committees of different nations should be made.

It thus became international in character, with that fidelity, wisdom, and unanimity it has fulfilled its important and peaceful mission, its vast work of almost 20 years has conclusively shown.

Its presidency has never been changed.  -The committees and societies formed in the several states, are national, and are free to institute, and administer their own systems of relief; but never neglecting to communicate them to other nations through the legal source; the International Committee of Geneva.

Under these national societies, exist in every country and in some countries in almost every town, subordinate societies, corresponding almost perfectly to the relief societies of the Sanitary Commission, with, however, this important distinction, that these are permanent societies.

It was these small tributaries to a great extent, that poured out the inconceivable amount of supplies which so promptly found their way to the hospitals in the Franco German war.

-23-

Of the American Society, which in Re-organization took the title of an Association, mention has been already made.

Up to the present moment, it is not known that any other national society under the Treaty has extended the scope of its labors or supervision beyond the original idea of relief in war.  But in view of the geographical position, and greater consequent security of America, from the frequent outbursts of war, -that scourge and terror of the more crowded nations of the Eastern hemisphere, it was felt, that she might not only well perform the duties, national and international expected of her by the conditions of the Treaty.  -but still have, in reserve, abundant means and energy, to devote to the sufferings caused by the great revulsions, and accidents to which the peculiar characteristics of her vast territory, and divers conditions render her painfully liable.

It was with this view that the American Association organized, as has been before stated, to include the relief of calamities so great as to be, by general estimation, regarded as national in their extent and demands.  and to hold itself, with it auxiliaries, both state and town, in readiness for immediate action in such emergencies, as well as for war; the same constitutional regulations serving alike for all.

It is needless to add, that the success of this untried 

Directly following this, another publication of 100 pages was issued, for the purpose of making the subject better known to the people and urging the accession of the government to the Treaty-

It is interesting and significant to-night to read from the pages of their publication of last year following:

New haven, Conn. Oct. 20/1886.

To the PResident of the U.S.

The undersigned would respectfully recommend to your favorable consideration the adoption by the government of the United States, of the provisions of the International Treaty of Geneva for the care of the sick and wounded in war.

Theodore D. Woolsey  Edwin Harwood
H.B. Harrison   Joseph Sheldon
John E. Todd     Francis Wayland-23-

Of the American Society, which in Re-organization took the title of an Association, mention has been already made.

Up to the present moment, it is not known that any other national society under the Treaty has extended the scope of its labors or supervision beyond the original idea of relief in war.  But in view of the geographical position, and greater consequent security of America, from the frequent outbursts of war, -that scourge and terror of the more crowded nations of the Eastern hemisphere, it was felt, that she might not only well perform the duties, national and international expected of her by the conditions of the Treaty.  -but still have, in reserve, abundant means and energy, to devote to the sufferings caused by the great revulsions, and accidents to which the peculiar characteristics of her vast territory, and divers conditions render her painfully liable.

It was with this view that the American Association organized, as has been before stated, to include the relief of calamities so great as to be, by general estimation, regarded as national in their extend and demands.  and to hold itself, with its auxiliaries, both state and town, in readiness for immediate action in such emergencies, as well as for war; the same constitutional regulations serving alike for all.

It is needless to add, that the success of this untried theory was a problem of no small moment; experiment alone could solve it.

The national society of 1877, had, from the first, steadily declined the taking of any steps towards the formation of societies, until it should have assurance of the accession of the U. S. to the Treaty.

This assurance came by the promise of the government in June 1881 that it would move in that direction.

In the following July and August, societies were formed in Dansville, Rochester, and Syracuse, just in time to send back their bountiful supplies, and liberal contributions in money, through the smoke that rolled over them from the blazing fields of Michigan.

This was fighting fire at a distance but they did it bravely and well.

-24-

The recent overflow of the Mississippi afforded subject for still further and more extended trial; and it is a pleasure to add with results, equally gratifying and assuring.

It is a fact worthy of mention that the munificent contribution of one individual through the Rochester Society of $10,000 in seed for planting the desolated district, was rendered doubly,- trebly valuable by the rapidity and precision with which it was distributed through the organized societies of the Red Cross.

The slow decline of the water delayed the planting till great haste was necessary in order to secure any return from the land the present year.

A call from the national, to the Rochester society to meet this new emergency was promptly responded to and within three days the seed was on its way to the Red Cross society of Memphis, which society, being notified of its transfit, made the necessary provisions for its immediate distribution, and within 24 hours after its arrival in Memphis, it was assorted, and reshipped to the proper points in five different states with full instructions for final distribution.

It is a comfort today to know that thousands of acres of that so recently desolated valley are rich with ripening vegetation and that thousands of persons are subsisting upon the results of that one well arranged act of generosity.

The Red Cross society of Rochester with less than year of existence, has contributed over fourteen thousand dollars in material and money to the relief of sufferers by calamities.

The incipient movement towards the formation of the magnificent society of Rochester, as well as Syracuse was made entirely by Rev. Dr. Gracey, the noted missionary to India and now Presiding Elder of the Methodis Dweere of the District of Rochester.  So much may the timely efforts of one person accomplish.

I have endeavored to submit to the judgement of this high-24-

The recent overflow of the Mississippi afforded subject 
for still further and more extended trial; and it is a pleasure to 
add with results, equally gratifying and assuring.
It is a fact worthy of mention that the munificent contribution 
of one individual through the Rochester Society of $10,000 
in seed for planting the desolated district, was rendered doubly, - 
trebly valuable by the rapidity and precision with which it was distributed 
through the organized societies of the Red Cross.
The slow decline of the water delayed the planting till 
great haste was necessary in order to secure any return from the 
land the present year.
A call from the national, to the Rochester society to 
meet this new emergency was promptly responded to and within three 
days the seed was on its way to the Red Cross society of Memphis, 
which society, being notified of its transit, made the necessary 
provisions for its immediate distribution, and within 24 hours 
after its arrival in Memphis, it was assorted, and reshipped to 
the proper points in five different states with full instructions 
for final distribution.
It is a comfort today to know that thousands of acres 
of that so recently desolated valley are rich with ripening vegetation 
and that thousands of persons are subsisting upon the results 
of that one well arranged act of generosity.
The Red Cross society of Rochester with less than year 
of existence, has contributed over fourteen thousand dollars in 
material and money to the relief of sufferers by calamities.
There is neither teacher nor preacher like necessity, 
and the late lesson of the Mississippi valley has resulted in the 
formation of societies in most of the cities of importance from 
Chicago to New Orleans, all organized under a general constitution, 
as auxiliary to the American Association of the Red Cross at Washington, 
and all affiliated with the national and subordinate societies 
of 32 nations, acting in concert, in the grand work of humanity, 
and the practical furtherance of good will among mankind.
My task is done.
I have endeavored to submit to the judgement of this high

-25-

assemblage to the judgement of this high assemblage such facts, and 
observations in regard to the practical utility of a system of national 
and international relief in great emergencies, as some years 
of attention to the subject, and some little experience have given 
me.
If your Honorable Body shall find the subject matter of 
sufficient importance to attract its further attention, and elicit 
such suggestions, and counsel, as from time to time, it may be 
pleased to bestow the great object of my coming will have been attained.