CLARA BARTON      SPEECHES AND WRITINGS FILE  Speeches & lectures       Manuscripts & printed copies       1897-1910(1)                [1897]
Dr. Burnett gracefully introduced
the speaker as "the lady whom I
esteem to be the most wonderful
woman in the world, "I
cannot explain to you now why
I think so, but I have the very
great pleasure of introducing now
to you Miss Clara Barton, the
National President of the Red Cross,"
who smiling arose and spoke
as follows:
"After that very kind introduction 
I wish to say that I
find it a pleasure to speak in
your presence today.
It is to these four young persons
have (indicating the nurses) to
whom I suppose that I am being
called to address the few
remarks I will make, as they
are really the important part
that brings us here.
It is two or three years since,
I think, that the honored head
of this hospital (Dr. Burnett) apprised
me that she had established, 
not only a hospital 
but a training school, for nurses
(2)
and that she had done me the
great honor of naming that school
after me, and she asked of
me that I should sometime
speak with you myself, sometime
see you and talk with
you, and, in short consider you
mine. I need not say that
I was pround and glad of the
name, nor of the work in which 
I am engaged connected with
the training of nurses. And in
all these United States there is
not another training school for
Red Cross nurses. Therefore I
was glad and proud, but, I cannot
tell you how sorry I have
been, that so long a time has
passed before I have been able
to meet you. I have kept
track of you -- I have known
what you were doing, but I
could not get here; so many
things have stood in the way
from year to year, until now,
being in the vicinity, I could
not turn back, so I have comeWherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed. Hebrews 12: 12, 13.
INCORPORATED MARCH 27, 1884
Established to demonstrate the successful treatment of diseases without Alcohol. Both sexes and all classes of diseases (except contagious) taken. 

BOARD OF TRUSTEES:
Dr. Mary Weeks Burnett, President and Cor, Sec.,
1 Central Music Hall, Chicago, Ill.
Mrs. L. H. Plumb. Treasurer, Streator, Ill
Miss Julia Ames (for Mrs. Mary B. Willard), Rec. Sec.,
161 La Salle Street, Chicago, Ill.
Mrs. E. N. Peters, Manistee, Mich.
Mrs. J. B. Hobbs, 343 La Salle Ave., Chicago, Ill.
Mrs. J. K. Barney, Providence. R. I.
Miss Mary Allen West, 161 La Salle St., Chicago, Ill
Chairman of Advisory Board,
Miss Francis E. Willard, Evanston, Ill.
Chairman of Clara Barton Training School for Nurses,
Miss Clara Barton, Washington D. C.,

National Temperance Hospital
and
Clara Barton Training School for Nurses
3411 Cottage Grove Ave., Chicago, Ill.
Central Music Hall, Chicago, Ill., 188 


Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed. Hebrews 12: 12, 13.
INCORPORATED MARCH 27, 1884.
Established to demonstrate the successful treatment of diseases without Alcohol. Both sexes and all classes of diseases (except contagious) taken. 

BOARD OF TRUSTEES:
Dr. Mary Weeks Burnett, President and Cor, Sec.,
1 Central Music Hall, Chicago, Ill.
Mrs. L. H. Plumb. Treasurer, Streator, Ill
Miss Julia Ames (for Mrs. Mary B. Willard), Rec. Sec.,
161 La Salle Street, Chicago, Ill.
Mrs. E. N. Peters, Manistee, Mich.
Mrs. J. B. Hobbs, 343 La Salle Ave., Chicago, Ill.
Mrs. J. K. Barney, Providence. R. I.
Miss Mary Allen West, 161 La Salle St., Chicago, Ill
Chairman of Advisory Board,
Miss Francis E. Willard, Evanston, Ill.
Chairman of Clara Barton Training School for Nurses,
Miss Clara Barton, Washington D. C.,

National Temperance Hospital
and
Clara Barton Training School for Nurses
3411 Cottage Grove Ave., Chicago, Ill.
Central Music Hall, Chicago, Ill., 1883
"without staff or scrip," as they
say, for I have not a word
in my mind to say to you.
I conclude that you get all
needful instruction here better than
any I could give you, so I
am here today to meet you,
to know you, and to give you
something of a history of the
Red Cross Movement, and
having explained it a little, to
here, if it accords with your wishes,
to see what the confirmation
may be to you.
I have visited a great many training
schools, and seen a great 
many trained nurses, and I
am inexpressibly glad that
some nurses are being trained
under the direction of a person
like your head, and, for the
specialty which she has undertaken
in this long felt need.
It is now about ten years, or 
more since I had need of
nursing myself, and I tried to
get a trained nurse, but with
my wide and long acquaintanceship
4
of trained nurses there was
none for my peculiar case.
There were trained nurses in
abundance, and good trained
nurses too -- but they were
trained for particular duties

The better part of the training, the
hygenic part of the training you
will get here, as you cannot get
in any other training school in
the country. Dr. Burnett has made
a specialty of what is the hardest
to take hold of. You are
nurses enough already to know
that nervous diseases are not the
easiest in the world to handle.
They require great care. The
nervous patient has to be treated
much in the spirit of faith.
You have got to believe that 
they will get well, and you 
have got to make them believe
it too, though you see
from month to month, and
sometimes from year to year
everything is discouraging -- the
5
nurse must stand by them,
must be patient, and hopeful
though many linger on just so.
Any man in business would
be discouraged to see his
affairs go on from year to year
with no possibility of a 
change, this year just like
the last, year after year. Of 
course it is discouraging.
Yet the nurse who takes care
of such a patient has to stand
there, and the physician has
to stand there. They take
hold of the case in faith.
They know that it is a time
of patience and schooling.
The most of nurses were
trained in those days for
the one department of nursing,
namely, for the duties attendant
upon replenishing the
earth, and she is engaged
to be in hand at a certain
time, & told that her services
will be required for possibly
three weeks. She knows all
that is required, and does
6
everything that is necessary.
Her patient gets well and she
has the satisfaction of seeing her
on her feet and enjoying the
society of her nice baby, then
she goes on her way rejoicing.
The patient may be very ill
for a time, but in the course
of two or three weeks, perhaps,
more sometimes, the woman is
up and well. There is nothing
discouraging for that nurse.
There is a little hard work perhaps, 
but there is nothing to
worry or harass.

Perhaps I shall be a little bit
personal and tell you a little
but of experience of my own.
In '73, or the beginning of '74, I
myself went completely down
after hanging on the edge like
a child, who had been clinging
to the slippery stones on
the steep bank of a swift flowing
stream, but my fingers slipped
off and I went down,
under, and I just paddled 
until I was too weak to do
7
even that and could only float.

I was perfectly helpless, sleepless,
and not able to speak.

And month after month I laid
like that. I was removed
from Washington to Massachusetts,
and still there I laid.
I knew I had nervous frustration,
and the physician knew
it, yet there I laid. In a
severe case there is nothing to
be done but just wait -- there
is faith, and patience, and
sacrifice, and hope for those
arrived, but it is just wait.
My friends were tired and I was 
tired. At the end of many 
months I tried to get a trained
nurse. I sent to Boston for
one. She could be had for
$20.00 a week. In as much
as I did nothing but lie abed
there was not much required,
but still I must have
somebody there, not at night,
for never had I kept anybody
awake, but in the day,
it was care, and attention, and 
8
patience. I did not take that
nurse. I got on somehow, I hardly
knew how. I had persons
with me who would have been
enough to have made a well
person sick -- yet they did not
kill me, but I am sure if they 
were to come a-while today
they would make me sick. They
seemed to have very little knowledge 
of disease at all, and I
am sure they knew nothing
of nervous diseases. They said it
was just in my mind. That
if I would just set my mind
well I would be all right. That
nobody ever got well lying abed
as I was. That I must not give
up and lie there so helplessly.
I did not take medicine. I could
not take it, I was too weak. Time
passed on, and the criticisms
that came to me were enough
to kill me, because I did not
get up, and get out. It made
me cross and worse. The only
thing you can administer at
such times is patience.9
Trust your patient, and make her
feel that you trust her. Talk
to her and not to some one
out side. Stand by her for that
may be the one thing that can
serve her.
At the end of many months
it got across the Atlantic Ocean
and away over in Switzerland
that I was very ill and not
well attended. It came to a 
dear friends ears, who left all
that she had, I mean by that
that she left all her friends,
and took the trouble to come
to America, 4000 miles, and
said she had come to take 
care of me. She is now Mrs
M./C. Golay residing in Maywood,
Ill. and I have asked her
to be here with me today that I
might tell you what she did
for me. From that time I 
knew what it was to have
nursing -- some one to tell me
straight, and plan what she
had to say, and dismissed the
people on the outside that came

10
to quiz me. There was no one
whispering around outside, or at
the foot of the stairs, or none of
those little things to try me.
If I did not do right my self
she took courage to tell me so,
but she did not tell any body
else, mind. I felt her sympathy
and trust, and they were so helpful.
They helped me up, and she
stayed with me until I climbed
up out of that, until I got hold
of the work again. And when
I did not need her any more she
found another, who needed her
care. It is cases like that I 
have in my heart, that some body
could be trained for. Nurses enough
I could get at that time,
who would come and stay for three
weeks. But I would not be well in
three weeks, and would have
nothing to show for my three
weeks! I have wished ever since
for some one, who would be willing, 
to be trained for the care
of those, who need sympathy &
love, & patience, & faith, [and]11
would carry them on with the view
of what is good for the patient.
I conclude that the desire is here
to endeavor to instill into the
minds of your nurses this faith
and how to carry it out. And the
Doctor, herself, having passed
through a seige of nervous frustration
feels just like me. When
I first knew her she was weak.
She knows what it is both theoretically
and practically. I
consider you among the most
favored of nurses in training,
because Ms. Burnett understands
medicine, and medical
terms, and medical training,
and you will gain from her
what will be always of the greatest
help to you in your nursing.
When you go out you will fall
under physicians who will have
no, or little regard for the matter
of food, and your patients will
be in your power. Of course you
must never interfere with the
order of your physician who-so-ever
he or she may be, but

12
in the matter of food your patient
will be largely under your controll
and your training here will
stand you good. You have the
right to use your discretion but
never to disobey an order. If the
nurse has been well trained in
this matter of food the physician
will be likely to leave it with the
nurse. You are especially favored
also in the time given. I
find it is two years. I am
glad it is so long. You want a
chance to familiarize yourself
with the whole course. There are
by no means as many of your profession
in the world as there
should be. We have, you will
agree with me, a great many
too many sick persons, and if
they are sick they must be taken
[taken] care of, and we have not
enough nurses. There is a call
for the services of people like
yourselves. There is so many
asking for something to do, so
many asking what they can do.
It seems to me that if I were13
asking that question I would fit
myself to go and help suffering
humanity, and when I was fitted
I would go and do it. I would 
make myself fit to go and take
care of some one that needed my
care, and then I would take care
of them.
I have said that I have seen nurses
in their
In 1870 which was the Franco German
war I was there and I assisted in
the care of the wounded soldiers.
I found there were two classes of
nurses. There were more or less of
the Sisters, as these two countries
are largely catholic, but few in comparison,
here and there. But of
those who were always quiet, always
patient, always devoted, always giving
attention -- the nurses proper
belonging to the army, every one
wore our badge. Some wore the 
badge like mine (indicating it)
and some wore the badge like that
(indicating the Dr's upon her arm)
but I saw there in all the service
of that great army no one who
14
was not a Red Cross nurse.
I saw such devotion [of] to our work,
such daring, such risking of life,
such patience, such fortitude, as
was something to be marveled at.
I could see behind them the
Red Cross gleaming. What an inspiration!
No matter where they 
were, even right under the fire to
take up the wounded they were just
the same. That pledge they had
taken, that insignia they had too--
???? promising to regard & defend,
carried them through.
I brought that idea home, for we
had nothing of that kind in the
United States. But before I could
institute the Red Cross we had
at once a most serious war and
we had none of these devoted
nurses. For before I had time
to introduce it here came my
time of nervous prostration.
I had to wait all that period
to tell my people of the Red Cross
of other nations. But finally
it was known here, and from
that time the people have been
15
slowly learning what it is, and many,
man are the requests to
come. Many requests from the hospitals
having nurses for the Red Cross
to graduate under. But nowhere
in the United States is there a
school of training, or better, a Red
Cross training school, where they
are called Red Cross Trained Nurses.

I want now to tell you just a 
little what it means, and how it 
came about.

It occurred in 1860, you are all too
young to remember that, but in that
year and the year before we were
in war ourselves, but in Switzerland
there originated in Geneva
the idea, through the humanity of
one mane, some way by which the
people of the country could aid the
hospital staff of nurses in their
work. The result of this request 
was the call at Geneva of a meeting
where all the nations of the
world were to be represented.
And not only the people were to be
represented, but the King and
Emperor themselves, the war-making
16
powers, were requested to send delegates
there to see if it were possible
to make a compact in
which all the war making powers
should agree to do what they
could for the amelioration of the
suffering of the soldiers.

When a battle takes place one
party must conquer. The enemy
would cross over the [field] foe, the
vanquished foe, and they must
stand it. It had been the
custom that every one who belonged
to the vanquished army must
flee or they would be captured.

It had always been so. It was 
never known that any outside help
came until Florence Nightingale
carried it to the army of the Crimea.
And then it was not done again
until the Sanitarium Commission
carried it there.

Thus it occurred that this convention
asked of all these war making
powers to try and make better
laws, that no matter who conquered,
or who was conquered, that the
help be left on the field, and the
17
attempt was to be made to see if
some way could not be found out
for the better treatment of wounded
men. It was found. It is
known as the "Treaty of the Red Cross."
So when I found that out I went
to join the work in Germany. The
Germans conquered every time, but
there was such thing as a wounded
Frenchman left on the field.

The Red Cross went directly there. 
Protected her wounded, protected 
her hospitals from fire and from
destitution, and yet it was the
most terrible war on record. There
were no infringements of the law of
the National Red Cross.

There were 32 nations represented
in this International Congress. 
Then I promised these nations
that I would try and have the
United States come into that
army. All that was written & said
and done was in vain at first,
but after a time, in 1882, the
United States deferred to that
Conference and we became a
Red Cross nation and I became

18
the national head of that organization,
and now there is only one
other thing that I need to tell
you about that organization.

You saw it had only refference
to the treatment of wounded in
war. But when we organized, we
organized for the relief of the suffering
from great calamities,
which entail as much suffering
as war. We thought that
there was little likelihood of war
but there were relentless calamities
that we might suffer from in the
same way, therefore, we organized
in this platform, a national Red
Cross of the United States, for the
relief of the wounded in war, or
for the amelioration of their condition
should fire, or famine, 
or drought, or pestilence, or any
other calamity which should call
for national sympathy, [should]
come upon us. It is not for
local needs, or for calamities of a 
district where Christian societies
can reach, but when there comes
something so great that all the19
other societies were paralized and
not able to cope with it. Then the
Red Cross must step in and
take up the burden and carry
it. And it must take charge of
the liberalities of the people of the
country, and dispense their gifts.

In such cases of public appeal
every body wants to give, and in
no case must the charities of the
people of the United States be curtailed.
I would depreciate the
power that would find all the
supplies and take care of them
themselves and decline the gifts
of the people. It is good and
wholesome for the people to feel
that those in suffering belong to
them. It has always happened
that there was no legitimate avenue
to get these supplies to the people
at the proper time. it is the
Red Cross that sends them first *
finds what is needed, telegraphs
it over the country, and we are
ready with our supplies to send
what is best, and supply until
we are not needed any longer.

20
We put in soldiers and supplies when
they are in need, not waiting until 
the papers tell us what a
dreadful wreck is somewhere, and
half the people have found it out
and carried workers.

For instance, what would you think
if a fire company, who when the
fire alarm rang, would have to
go out into the field and hunt
up the horses, and send word
around here and there to the
men and scirmish around until
finally the apparatus was in order &
appeared on the scene only to find
the fire well under controll and
their services unnecessary? You
would think them very foolish, and
just as soon have your old
buckets. Thus is it when some
accident happens to a community
so great that it becomes a calamity?  
It has been from two to three
weeks before the people understood
the nature of the trouble and the
needs of the people. The wounded
have been cared for in a fashion
by those nearest by and after a


21
week or two supplies from the
public have begun to come in.
And they send and send until nobody
knows what to do with the things.
And now this is just where we
have our place. We are sent for
first and come even before the people
realize what has happened
to them they are still so dazed.
We say we are here and ready
to take your gifts and use them to
the best of our ability, and until
the people are served and satisfied.
When all is over we cannot
return the surplus to you but
we put it back to use the next
time, and when the next thing
comes we have this store to supply
the first needs from at the start.
When it is over we retire and
you will hear little or nothing of
us or our work until the next
thing comes, then we are just a
prompt and ready as the well
regulated engine getting to the fire.
This is the principle upon which we
work.

It was only in '82 that I had the start.

22
It was in President Garfield's short
administration that I had the
assurance that the United States
would come into that Congress. It
was not signed until the next spring
under President Arthur. There were
ple[a]nty of calls for us. There was the
big forest fire in Michigan. We had
had one little society formed in my
little place of residence. But we were
there, and staid out eight weeks
I think. There Dr. Hubbel, who
has stood upon every field where
we have worked, was selected
to take care of our supplies. That
was our first work, and nobody
knew what the Red Cross meant.
Some thought we were a Catholic
society. It never entered any bodies
head that it was the great organization
in which every civilized nation
of the world took part, and
we of the United States were the
last, and latest, and most ignorant
of all the newcomers. But
little by little they have learned.

Then soon after that came the
first flood. The first rise of the

23
Mississippi, which took place just
about the time the wonderful
treaty was made of which I told
you. We were there for that need.
The people contributed and Dr. Hubbel 
was there to take care of the supplies.
Then in '83 came the Ohio
flood. And Dr. Hubbel was there, and
we did what we could. Then the
next year the Ohio rose again. Then
I thought if that was coming every
year I might as well be prepared 
for it and by one means or another
the attention of the people was
drawn to me and the Red Cross.

The people were entirely destitute.
They needed clothes, they needed
food, they needed shelter. The supplies
were in the hands of the government,
but nobody seemed in a
condition to know what to do.
We arrived. Chartered a government
boat. Put out a Red Cross
flag, and loading our boat with
supplies we went down the river
from side to side, from side to side
giving without stint. Then the 
Mississippi rose and we chartered

24
the boat again and went up and
down the Mississippi. We took
care of not only the people, but the
cattle as well, and saved many
things. It was four months before
we got back to Sandusky, and 
our last work was to take the materials
and all that was needed 
[for the little houses on our boats and
took what was needed] for the little
houses the people must raise, for
all that they had now was a little
patch of mud. So we took every
thing that was needed for the little
family that must begin at the
very beginning again. Some of the
best women and men of the land
had been with us, helping with all
their might, so when our work was
done, we left the boats in their hands
for safe delivery, and went home, 
in the fifth month after we had
come. In this year when the
International Congress was to be
held in the United States was requested
to send its delegates. I was
requested to go. And returning
there came the Colchester earthquake.
family 
25
and we went there. Then came
the Texas drought, and we went &
stood by them. Then came the
destructive cyclone, and we were
there. And so on from time to
time until now the people begin
to recognize us so fully that when
anything happens they telegraph 
us first thing. So they came for us
to go to Mount Vernon. And they
kept on telegraphing until we thought
it was time to cure. we stayed
there until relief societies were
formed, and the people are able to
help themselves. It was one of the
most terrible sights that [the] we
ever looked at. Some of the houses
in that town are not to be found
at all. Half of its people wounded
or dead. And debris scattered everywhere,
and yet you could not find
a whole piece of furniture left.
There could be no human foe so relentless
as were these waring elements.
No human mind could conceive & 
carry out such barbarous tortures as

26
were there. For instance, in the
hospital there I saw a man,
his wife with a broken leg, and all
a mass of bruises all over them both,
and with them a little invalid
daughter who has spinal disease &
has not walked for years, and a young
girl of fourteen perhaps.

When the shock came they were 
all happy together in their little house.
One daughter was away at the time &
has not been heard from since.

On the floor [was] of the room where
they sat was a bare woven rag carpet,
strong & new & well tacked down.
The house was entirely taken away.
That man was wrapped around and
around in that strong new carpet
until he was bound as with wishes,
taken up and thrown upon the
red hot stove. Now if you can
think of anything more diabolical
I cannot. The wife was blown through
a doorway with such force that
her one foot, which happened not
to escape the door [posts] was shattered
at the ancle and she is
a complete mass of bruises. The27
oldest child there was so dazed
she could not tell what was
the matter. As she heard her
parents groans she went from
one to the other trying to console
them, until it came to her sight
that the father was roasting on
the stove. Then this girl of 13 years
got him off of the stove and out
of the wreck of the house. In all
this desolation & distress that
little helpless cripple, of no use
in the world except in the love
of its mother & father, was left unharmed.
This is a sample of the
cruel mysteries of this calamity.
It seemed as though every thing
that was terribly was done. The
people were dazed. They could not
tell what to do. They were in a
most pitiful and helpless condition.
They wanted some one to tell
them what to do and direct their
movements. The Red Cross was the 
first. The first hundred dollars 
came from Cairo. Then came
several hundred dollars from New
Albany. The people wondered, but

28
I knew that the Red Cross there
was faithful to its badge, and
ready in the instant of need.
80 from us have gave out thousands.
Ever ready in the hour where help is wanted.
We met there, myself & Dr Hubbell
just returned in January and scarcely
on my feet properly from the long trip,
but we met again at Mount Vernon.
As you have doubtless seen I have been
again through the leading hospitals of
Europe. At the request of the dear Princess
then, the now Empress [Alec] Victoria
of Germany, I went to Berlin and
accompanied her through [the] her one
hospital there. And there was no one
there who did not wear our badge.

Each badge is accorded for the first service.
After five years faithful service
the degree is changed for one higher,
again at the end of the first ten years
it is changed for a higher, and so on
until at the end of twenty years i
like this I wear but set in solid gold.
And is worn with all the honor that
a nurse can wear, and that is a 
great deal. And then suppose something
happens to them and they can29
no longer look out for themselves they
are pensioned by the soldiers and
taken care of. In our country it is
not yet so. You are the first persons
to whom I have ever talked in
this way. You are here to serve and
graduate as nurses -- not as Red
Cross nurses unless you desire.

The only [fo] pledge that distinguishes
you from other nurses is that in
case of war the Red Cross nurse is
to consider herself at the call of the
nation. If she is wanted she is
under obligation to go and report
herself as a Red Cross nurse for duty.
You here may not be called.
We suppose that there will be no
war in our country to force us to call
upon you. But if there should be
you will be pledged to leave your 
station wherever it is, supplying
it if you can, but making no delay,
and report for duty. For it is supposed
that when such a call comes
there is greater need there for you
than there could be among well regulated
and peacably living communities.

30
I should wish to require, if it can
be, that there be another degree of
instruction added to your already
thorough course, and that is the
duties of a nurse in a military
hospital, because as Red Cross
nurses you will pledge yourselves
to serve in military duty when
called. And you want to know
what your duties will be in case
the call should ever come to you.

So I trust that there will be some
way to work into your course such
instructions as will meet the case.
Now I have tried to tell you the 
outlines of the Red Cross movement
and explain to you what it may
mean to you, and it now rests
with you for fine young ladies to answer
me back and say whether
you will wear the Red Cross and
be Red Cross nurses.
[IF NOT DELIVERED IN 8 DAYS RETURN TO
THEOSOPHICAL BOOK CONCERN,            R-11
ROOMS 424-426 ATHENAEUM BUILDING,                           [Postmark]
90 VAN BUREN STREET,                                                        CHICAGO, IL
CHICAGO]                                                                             SEP 23
                                                                                              
If not delivered called for in 5 days
return to
Dr Mary Weeks Burnett
3104 South Park Ave
Chicago Ill.

File
Red Cross
Nursing
Red Cross address
on nursing at graduation
of R.C. nurses

Miss Clara Barton
Pres. Am. Nat. Red Cross Ass'n
Washington
D.C.23.
C.B
Aug 22/1898
On the morning of the 22nd of August, 1898, Miss
Barton assembled the members of her party--nineteen in number--and formally introduced them to the Captain of the "Clinton",upon which ship she was enroute from Santiago de Cuba to Havana. She then spoke briefly of the freight carried by the "State of Texas" for the reconcentrados, our stay at Sinoney and the relief work done there and at Guantanamo. She also referred to the "Texas" being the first ship to enter Santiago harbor after the surrender, on the afternoon of the 17thof July, 1898. Continuing she said:
"The first ship we saw enter the harbor the next, Monday, morning had on board Admiral Sampson and Commodore Schley. They called for a cable and tied up to the stern of our ship, remaining there for the most of the day, I suppose to see if we knew how to unload. When the Admiral went away I asked him what advice he had to give, and he said not any, that we did nor need any; but if anybody troubled us to let him know. In four days that ship was unloaded of fourteen hundren tons -- all taken out, put away under cover, and the next morning we released the "State of Texas" and she went back to New York, a clean ship. Since that time we have had no transportation. The did not replace her with anything, and all we had was the "Mary Morse", loaded with ice. The committee in New York tried to get the "Triton" and could not; therefore, we had no transportation in the five weeks that we remained at Santiago.
And several of our people were taken with the fever, and in one way or another eleven of them have gone home, one gone into the ground, and with the accessions we have made, we are this party left. When we had no other transportation, I asked the President for it, and he has given you, and we have determined to do the best we can. I would be very glad if the President would still--if you captain likes it--if the President would continue to us the use of this ship. I am almost afraid he will not; he will think it is too large for us--too important. I do not think he realizes what an important body we ourselves are. I think if he knew that we are so many and who we are, that he would think we were worthy of the ship. I should very much like the ship; she is light draft and can go into the various ports easily. She is good to run back and forth. We want her very much. but I do not know whether we shall have her or not. They are well disposed in Washington; I think they have done a very handsome thing.
I do not know whether you realize just what the President has done, and what we expect to find in Havana. All of you
2.
know how we have been taking out from the supplies of the reconcentrados now for almost two months, borrowing for the troops everything we had, and we have made out lists and lists of what the Government would owe to the Cuban Relief, because the Cuban Relief is one body--that is, one sending--and the Red Cross for the army is another. I have never been willing to take out all these fine supplies that I had to, to go to the camps, to the hospitals at the front, and to the soldiers, as you have seen us doing. I could not feel that I could take this out of the supplies for the reconcentrados--that were given to the reconcentrados and that belonged to them; and so I charged it up against the Government, and they owed us immensely on that. The authorities knew this--I made them know it; they knew it at headquarters and in Washington. And now when I ask for a ship--I did not ask for any supplies, but I asked of the resident to send a ship that we could take our own supplies from Santiago around to Havana--he sends this ship, and then at the same time orders two thousand tons of supplies to meet us in Havana--all United States supplies--and does not put anybody over them. That is, he did not tell me that he sends them as United States supplies, by any quartermaster, by any commissary, but asks, if it would not be too much, for me to take those supplies and distribute them in Havana. By that the United States means to cancel its debts to the Cubans, and I think they have done it very handsomely It seems as though, if they send in two thousand tons of supplies for us to use in place of what has been given to the army, that we can square accounts with the and say it is all settled. The United States feels that it can well afford to do that, and it wants to do it, and it asks of us-not only of me, but of you, of everybody--to do the best you can to get it to the people who need it; and I now ask of you right here (for I may not have you together again so well) every one of you, when we gen into Havana, to do individually the the best you can. Don't each one wait to see whether Miss Barton has asked you to do it or directed you to do it. I give the general order here to every man, whatsoever you see that you think ought to be done and that the work will be the better for, do that. If I see that you are doing wrong, I will try to tell you; but each man of you must feel individually that the work is yours. And do not let any little misunderstanding come between each other. Nothing retards work like that. Work in unison, remembering that there are thousands there--if we find them still alive--there are thousands there dying for the very help that your good, strong hands can give. Just give it with a free heart, one and all, the best you know, and by that means we shall do the best work that can be done.
There is not another body of people in the United States3.

to go in there as we can go.  You might ask of every organization 
in the United States--you will find organizations there of
three hundred thousand ladies all in one body.  If you were to
ask of that organization to step into Havana at the end of
three days and relieve those people, they could not do it.
They could write, they could talk and cry, they could do a great
many things with the best hearts in the world; but to go in
there and do the work that you can do, trained to it,--take your
mules, your teams, your hospitals and put your men in with the
medicines and manage these supplies--there is not another body
of people in the United States that has had the experience to
do it.  Some of us here have eighteen years of that kind of
work over our heads all the time.  If we do not know how to do
it, nobody knows how; we know it, experience having taught us,
and we carry that knowledge with us, and I want each one of
you to feel at perfect liberty to do what your judgment seems
best.  If we see that your judgment is erring, we will tell
you; we won't blame you.  Each one of you has his or her own
department.  I do not expect that I have got to say to Mr.
Elwell how he shall manage a peculiar team of mules; when he
wishes to manage a warehouse, he knows every port there to start
it off with.  I have not got to tell these doctors how they
shall open a clinic, and how they shall get in the most of the
people, nor to Dr. Egan how he shall supply them with medicine
or what the medical department ought to be; for I am very much
afraid you will find a great deal of medical work there - when
we came away there was a great deal of medical work.  Go about
those things in the best way you can.  Save every life that is
possible, just as much as if they were in the waters here and
you saw them struggling.  Every man of you will drop a rope.
These people are in just as much suffering and danger; they
will try to climb up on you--help them, keep them up; Do everything 
you can, and when we shall have done tat, we shall have
done everything that is expected of us.

The Government from the President down is working with us.
These supplies that are coming were not asked.  Remember, it
is the President of the United States who has asked this work
to be done, who has asked of me to do it, and has asked, through
me, of you to do it.  You could not have a higher calling.  Nobody 
in the world could have a higher calling than you have here
and all I ask of you is to honor it to the extent of your ability.  
Every man of you honor the calling, for it is high and
it is great, and the eyes of the world are on us today to see
what shall be done.  The newspapers are sending me their telegrams 
as fast as they can:  "When you get to Havana, let us know
what you find.  Let us know what you can do."  The whole
world is interested in what we, this little body of people are

4.
going to do there.  And this great captain has us in charge,
and he has come to take us safely there and stay with us if he
can.
Now, gentlemen, I am glad of this opportunity to talk with
you, because I always do call my people together from time to
time and tell them of what I want and talk matters over with 
them, hold a conference with them, and this is the conference
I hold with you previous to going into Havana.  If when we get
there and you see--each one sees-what they can do, and we are
not quite settled, I will call you again and you can each one
tell us what you see.  We will confer again, and we will continue 
to confer enough to keep ourselves in touch with all we
are doing, enough to understand each other.  You can never do
work well until all the parties connected with it perfectly understand
each other, and above all things, work in unison.  You
know the old story of the two men who tried to pull a barn over,
and one man stood on one side and the other man on the other
side, and they pulled and pulled, but the barn did not come down.
Get your ropes on one side and pull together.  you will find
greater strength here; there is not in the United States of 
America a body to go into Havana and work as effectively as that
which sits right before me.  You have every opportunity, and
now let us think it over and take advantage of the opportunity
you have.  I thank you very much Captain for meeting with us,
and I thank you gentlemen and will call you again in Havana." GIVE CHICAGO A CHANCE"
A few years ago I passed a summer or two at Thousand Islands 
and by invitation of my honored friend, Rev. Doctor Royal H. Pullman, 
erected some tents on his grounds and held a kind of summer headquarters 
of the Red Cross for a month or two, out of the heat of my own 
city of Washington.
The castle of Mr. Geo. M. Pullman was just across the bay 
and in his visits from Chicago to it and o his reverend Brother 
he sometimes strayed up to the Red Cross tents; and at the Length grew 
interested in the work, which, with my assistance, I was, during one 
of the summers clerically finishing up; for on that occasion we had 
just left the field of relief for the Port Royal Islands, South
Carolina, which relief we had entirely conducted and had carried
through its 50,000 human beings bereft of everything, often even the
soil on which their little homes had stood and which the fury of the 
waves had swept off from the earth and rolled into the sea with 6,000
of the inhabitants themselves.

The field had been of ten months duration, or from the
destruction of the crop in September, 1895 until July 1894 when the
new crop which we had helped and taught them to raise had made them
independent, prosperous and happy.

The financial mind of Mr. Pullman led him to inquire into
the methods adopted, and the cost at which so much had been accomplished
2
and when he learned that besides some material help in the way of
food and clothes sent by the people of the country in the first weeks
of excitement and a small personal donation from Empress Augusta of
Germany, [that] $31,000 in money, covered every penny of assistance
which we had received from any source- that including merely the
30,000 people left on the Island wholly in our care, it was only
$1.00 a piece in money for ten months= and when were added to that
the temporary relief given to as many more on the mainland of South
Carolina, whose entries could not be resisted, it was scarcely 50
cts. apiece in money received by us- not a dollar from any government
or any state, he naturally questioned how it was done; and as naturally
I could only tell him, that like the majority of our other fields of
Red Cross relief for the last fifteen years, we had applied our means
with an economy born only of necessity- with hard work that no other
relieving body ever performed, unpaid and unprovided, and that often
at the close had gone into our own purses for the finishing up, and
[that] beyond that I had no explanation to make, or report to give him.

His smooth brow knitted a little as he reviewed the situation.  
At length he replied "But Miss Barton the people of the United
States don't want you to do this.  They do not understand it.  They
think your Organization draws from some other source- as from the
government; I thought so.  Have you ever explained this to the wealthy
men of the country?" "No Mr. Pullman I do not know them; they

3
would not be interested in these things, they have other and more
personal interests."  "I cannot agree with you" he
replied-  "rich men in these days are not misers, the time was perhaps
when a man who gathered and had gold did make a miser of himself and
hid his gains; but that is long past; the rich men of to-day are
rather looking to see where they can bestow, or apply their means to
the best advantage for the people and the world about them.  I must
ask you to change your opinions, or rather your feeling, and give
them at least a chance.  have you ever told the men of Chicago that
the Red Cross needed money?" "Certainly not- I do
not know them, I would not dare approach them." "You need
not"  he replied   "you know me and I know them.  I will speak for you
when you tell me-  GIVE CHICAGO A CHANCE-"  With this he walked
thoughtfully out of my tents.

Before ever the relief of another field came, he was laid
away so still, so deep that scarce our thoughts could reach him, and
I have struggled through other fields with the picture of this money
in may heart until now.  If he were here to-day, I should tell him that
the Red Cross had now at its charge in Cuba-the taking up out of the
streets, out of hunger, homelessness, destitution and death, the full
orphan children of the dead reconcentrade mothers of Weyler's doom.
Statistics tell us of 50,000   I will reduce it to 40,000, for many
will die in spite of all.  The government helps somewhat in rations.4
The people of the towns where they were left and now live like little
animals, help all they can.  The Red Cross must do the rest- helping
them up and into conditions where other people can care for, or help
them to care for themselves.  What we did for the colored race at
Port Royal, we can do for this race in Cuba.
A dollar a piece in money will let us help them up into
life, and place them where other agencies can later look after them.
Sic months should accomplish their work; and $40,000 in money or credit
to draw from would enable us to do it.
George W. Pullman is not here, and Clara Barton for the
first time in her life speaks for herself-
SHE GIVES CHICAGO A CHANCE.

Directors Meeting 1899
It will soon be eighteen years since some of us now here,
but more, called to meet in higher assemblies, met in this city and
formed ourselves into a body corporate to be known as the "American
National Association of the Red Cross:". having for its objects the
securing of the adhesion of the American Government to the Treaty
of Geneva, it, in turn, having for its object the amelioration of
the conditions unavoidably connected with and growing out of the
customary warfare of the world, and to which proposed adhesion we
had taken the liberty of praying that, as a country, we should be
permitted to extend our organized assistance to the victims of
great national disaster other than war.  So new and unknown was the
subject that the meeting took on almost the form of a personal re-
quest to personal friends.  It was a life service to which you were
called, and with your lengthened years you have proved your fidelity.
If any mistake were made at that meeting, it was in the choice of
your President.  She has often bitterly felt that and has striven
with the strength of her life to make up in fidelity on her part
what be lacking in other qualifications and conditions.
In less that a year from the date of our formation, the adhesion 
to the Treaty was assured, including our request to aid on2.

civil fields, and in March, 1882, in accordance with this provision,
commenced our legitimate work under the Treaty, in co-operation with
the International Committee, with our own Government, and with the
generous assistance of the people of the United States.
          During the last tow months of the year just closed, every
hour that could be spared from other duties has been given to the
preparation of a statement of the events covering the time between
the accession of the Treaty in 1882 and the present.-a history, as
nearly as possible to make it in that short space of time, of the
processes found necessary and available, the methods adopted and
the labor performed by our organization.  These statements are in the 
hands of the publisher, taking the form of a book of seven hun-
dred pages, entitled "The Red Cross", and will be within the reach
of all in a very few days.  It will contain the reports of the work-
ers at all of our most important fields, detailed accounts and reports
by the various workers at the field of Cuba, and the reports of the
auxilliary societies of the entire United States, so far as they
could be obtained in time, and there was found space for them between
the covers of the book.  As narrators we may not have been eloquent, but
we have been truthful, and with the selection of this one short intro-
duction, which with your permission I will read, let me pray you to
accept the statements of this forthcoming book as the report which,
ordinarily, I would be expected to make here, thus leaving the time,

3.

already too shrot, for the consideration of the future rather than
the past.
          The introduction is as follows:
          With the exception of some three or four members present
who have been so directly connected with the work of the recent
campaign that a few words verbally should be heard from them, this
will finish the details of this report.  I refer to Mr. Barton, who
has conducted the relief through New York--our honored veteran
member, Judge Sheldon, who organized the Pacific Coast; Rev. Dr.
Kent, who acted in all good ways as Agent at Jacksonville and Porto
Rico; and Hon. B.H. Warner and Mrs. B.D. Mussey, who conducted the
home camp, and Mr. D.L. Cobb, whose assistance has been everywhere
valuable.
          Although required by our constitution to hold an annual
meeting in January of each year, it has not always been possible
for us to conform to the regulation with that degree of efficiency
which we could have desired.  More than half of the years have found
all our working members at some field, too needy and distressed
to be left.  In the absence of all contributions or provisions for
the maintenance of a headquarters and a permanent offical staff
to preside over its deliberations, and with the expenses which
your President has had incumbent upon her at all fields, she has
not found it possible always to provide for the requirements of
the constitution in this regard.
          In May, 1893 a general meeting was held and a reincorporation          4.

of our original association was had, at which time we took on the
name of the American National Red Cross; dropping the word associ-
ation, and from that time have acted as a committee, endeavoring to
make an intelligent and needed distinction between the national
body and the various societies which must eventually form to work
in conjunction with it.
          The present year has brought the one great change for which
we had looked with anxiety and solicitude, knowing tha the first
touch of war, whenever it should come, would awaken from an almost
incomprehensible lethargy the slumbering millions of the nation,
who in their dazed condition and quickened imulses, would consti-
tute a force needing a direction which it might not be easy for us
to institute or them to follow.  Patriotic they would be, loyal
they would mean to be, still there was food for thought and reason
for solicitude.  In a country like ours, the habitude of which was
so typically portrayed by the pen of our late gifted countrywoman,
Mrs. Stowe, in her description of an interesting family, the govern-
ment of which was "moral mission" and the "children adminstered it."
          We have had two standing committees:  first, the Cuban Relief Com-
mittee, formed before the war for the relief of reconcentrados in
Cuba, and with which your President was actively connected by re-
quest of President McKinley and his department of State, and has,
in a manner, so remained in the present, acting in commission with

5.

the provision of our American Amendment.  Commencing before 
the war, the necessities for its activities will last long after
the Government should be able to meet every requirement of its
armies at rest.  Even now I have need to lay before you pending
negotiations for our immediate future of action.  This committee
we are informed is about closing its existence and will naturally
makes it report to the President and the Department of State, at
whose suggestion it formed and under which it has acted.
          The second was a committee known as the New York Relief
Committee, which on the outbreak of the war, formed at the instance
of leaders of its own body, consisting of a large numer of the
most wealthy and influentians citizens of New York City.  This
committee had for its object the relief of the National Committee
in the increased labors which the war brought to it.  Under this
committee have been formed the hundreds of various auxilliaries which
have worked with such tireless assiduity during the entire campaign,
and which have sprung up everywhere like magic, showing that in the
creation of this great, God-give country, the seeds of that love
of patriotism, which requires no adaptation of soil for its growth,
had been evenly disseminated.  That sprurning difficulties it threw
up its shoots, covering the whole land with a growth that, burst-
ing into flower and fruit, found its way to every army camp and
hospital--filled the knapsack of the soldier on the march, wet
the fevered lips when the need of food was passed, and closed6.

glazing eyes to the last light on earth, to be replaced by the
sunlight of the realms of the Great Master who had called them.
From the pine lands of Aroostock and the sterile soil of New England,
to the orange and palm of the Carolinas and Florida, from the snow
mountains of Alaska and Oregon, to the gold-tinted soil of California,
across the alkali plains and the teeming prairies of the
west, down the valleys of the great Father of Waters and all its
tributaries, alike sprang this marvelous growth; and side by side
in its heaven-sent culture toiled the mistress who controlled and
the servant who obeyed. side by side, recognizing no difference,
the wrinkled hand of age and the dimples of youth, the hand grown
hard and bony with the daily drudgery of life and the jeweled-covered
lily fingers to which no day of toil had ever come ; the soft, sweet
speech of the cultured lady was jostled by the rude dialect of the
unlettered woman to whom culture was a myth, but from whose compressed,
determined lips rang clearly out "My son is in the war; let
me work!" with a tone that defied further eloquence.
There are only feeble touches of those auxiliaries which
have formed, and bringing in their sheaves, wait at the door of the
American red cross in whose name they exist and have done their 
womanly and their heavenly work.  To you, my committee, I commend
them and ask your wise consideration for their future.
The committee to whom they have heretofore reported was

7.

formed to work during the war.  It has acted nobly and served its
country faithfully in her hour of peril.  Busy men, weary with the 
cares of the world, they may well seek to relieve themselves of a burden they no longer need to bear.  This matter also I would refer
to our committee for consideration.  This, with a few suggestions 
which I venture to offer, will constitute the sum of the remarks
which I have thought it proper to make.
someone has asked if we proposed to retain the headquraters
of the National Red Cross here in Washington?  I can only reply
that it was never anywhere else.  It knows no other home and sees
no reason for a change; but I would recommend that, with our increased
activities, it have a permanent location of its own,
properly fitted, in keeping with its importance and the examples of
other nations.
I would also suggest that some steps be taken to give the
organization an income, which it never has had in any degree, and
also the creation of a fund for the suitable conduct of its work
at home and at its fields as well. The American National Red
Cross should have a fund of at least a half million dollars, and
it is perfectly practicable to have it; but this fund must be always
from the munificence of the people and in no way from the
Government.  Never lose sight of the fact, I pray you, that the
Red Cross means people's help for national necessities, no na-8.

-tional help for people's needs.
The American Red Cross has never received a dollar of support
from the Government as such, and has never sought it.  It has not failed to ask of Congress the protection of its name and insignia.
Thus far, through one hindrance and another, it has failed
to obtain it.  I would recommend the continuance of this effort
suitably made.
I cannot refrain from urging the appointment of a permanent
body in Congress, of three or five members, who shall constitute a
joint committee of the Red Cross and who will acquaint themselves
with the subject and the laws governing it internationally, to which
body all matter requiring to be presented to the Government by the
National Red Cross shall be referred, and thus secure that correct
understanding and intelligent action which can alone save us from
unpleasant criticism by other nations and secure the benefits which
should accrue to ourselves from such an organization.
Lastly, allow me to earnestly and prayerfully to recommend to
this body that unity of action which has always characterized it.
In all the eighteen years of its existence we have never had a dissention
of any kind.  Perfect good-will and careful regard for the 
wishes of others have marked every step.  Let us pray that if any
apparent cause for disagreement arise, that patience, forbearance
and forgiveness, guided by wisdom, shall dispel it; that the
Golden Rule shall be our rule, and that the spirit of him who bore

9.
all things, forgave all injuries, and died blessing his enemies,
shall permeate our councils, and that the shadow of his mantle rest
ever on our pathway.1 copy of paper read
by Miss Barton at Director's
meeting Feb. 25-99.[1900]
I suppose with[out] [any] no subject given, my name would suggest one.
I could no more disconnect myself, in the minds of the public, from
the Red Cross than could Miss Anthony or our beloved president, Mrs.
Sewell, from the enfranchisement of woman.  I have talked the subject
over the entire country for twenty-five years, I have filled
the waste baskets of the land with my written and published literature
on the subject, and still I am asked imploringly "Where can 
we learn something of the Red Cross, its history, its work, and how
you came to be connected with it?"  Although its history is
not a long one, I cannot tell it in twenty minutes.  My connection with
it was accidental.  I can try to give you a little of both.
The Red Cross was born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1864.  To
follow the simile, I might say that its father was Mr. Henri Dunant, 
a Swiss gentleman still living -- its mother was The Society of Public
Utility of Switzerland -- its Godfather and provider, since its
birth, is Mr. Gustave Moynier, president of the International Red 
Cross Society, Geneva, which society is the home of the International
Red Cross of the World.
So much for its immediate and physical history.  Mentally and
remotely its inception lay in the untold and unrelieved sufferings
and agonies of man and womankind -- since the Creator first called
into existence the human race, endowed with the reason and capabilities
of man and the passions and cruelties of the brutes.
The first we know of man he slew his brother, -- The records of
the old testament are simply a record of war and slaughter in hundreds
of thousands, with no relief or even an expression of pity.
The wars of Alexander, Cyrus and Hannibal are no better, and
even the battles of Napoleon 1st are pictures of great heaps of
wounded, dead and dying left to perish where they fell.  No intimation
of pity or suggestion of relief appears, to weaken the manliness
of the heroic pages of their history.  Their medical service
seemed scarce worth mentioning.
The Crimea commenced the same, closed to everything but accounts
of masterly fighting - but the world was making progress - 
the newspaper correspondent and come into existence, and dared to
write of something beside glory, and when the doors of Scutura -
opened to Florence Nightingale and her forty nurses, the flood of 
light which followed revealed a condition of military hospitals
that shocked the world.  For once, pity spoke, and even glory-loving-3-
Britain joined her sweet singer;
"The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring."
But all this lesson resulted in no general steps toward a
prevention of a recurrence on any other field; no organization of
relief was formed, and the other field followed soon.  On the 24th
of June, 1859 the armies of Napoleon III, equipped with every facility
then known to military medical science, stood face to face with
the foe in northern Italy, three hundred thousand combatants in a 
line of five leagues - fifteen miles - and fought fifteen hours
without cessation or rest.  The horrors of that field, through the
suffering of its wounded from want of care - scarcely one surgeon
for fifty men - bleeding, fainting and famishing, were witnessed by
a humane Swiss gentleman, Mr. Henri Dunant, who stayed his traveling
carriage in the vicinity of the battle and worked among the wounded.
The memories of the sufferings he had seen haunted him, until at
length he wrote and published them, and the Souvenir de Solferino,
in a few months, had been translated into the leading languages of
the world, and lay on the tables and on the hearts of the best of
Europe.

-4-
The seed had been well sown, and, in 1863, took root in a conference at Geneva, Switzerland, the object of which was to find
if it were not possible to devise some means to lesson the needless
sufferings of soldiers at the field.  This conference was succeeded by a convention for the same purpose in the following year of 1964.
This convention was composed of delegates from the sovereign, - 
the war-makers - of the lending nations of Europe, and it what is 
known as the Convention, or Treaty of Geneva for the relief of the
sick and wounded of armies.  Here commenced organization.
The arguments adduced at this convention were that no army had ever been found equal to the needs of its wounded in battle, and
equally decided that none ever could be.  No army could move, march,
or fight while burdened with sufficient medical material or personnel
to meet the needs of its wounded in, and after a battle.  For
this condition of things there must must be found a ready, this
was what they had come together for, and a remedy, after days of
deliberation, was suggested, the key note of which formed the first
article in the convention, viz: That all military hospitals, all
the sick and wounded in them, all persons caring for them, physic--5-
-ians, chaplains, attendants, all material for their use or comfort
belonging to either belligerent army, be held as neutral by the
other, to remain unmolested, not subject to capture, and treated as
if its own.
This appealed to the better nature of the world in general, and
has been manfully accepted and respected since that day.
Another provision growing out of the first conference has been
less heartily successful, for it struck a blow at one of the strongest
and most time-honored rules of war, a blow so distasteful, so
repugnant to the old-time military idea, so democratic, so to speak,
that, up to the present day, it has been only partially welcomed
and rather grudgingly acknowledged.
This provision provided that societies of civilians be formed
in the various countries, whose duty it should be to provide whatever
might be lacking in the medical department of an army at the field, either in material or personnel, and whose privilege it
should be to go to the field under the proper restrictions and use
them.
This provision would break one of the hitherto most impregnable

-6-
privileges and customs of war, viz: that no civilian be allowed upon 
a field, especially in time of battle.
Perchance some gray-haired father will one day read this little
sketch through the dim mist that gather at the tender memories of
the days when he waited at the outer edge of the captured field,
where the wounded lay perishing, or the lifeless body waited, and
there was neither power nor pity in his whole country, the country
for which he had given so much, sufficient to cross that little line
of steel and let him in.
This conference further proposed that each country should have
one central society and only one; that this society should have power
to form other societies, to provide surgeons and equip them; to
establish hospitals, to train nurses; in short to be a civil arm of
war, if war must exist, (and who had power to prevent it?); that
they should keep in preparation to accompany their armies, pacing
themselves at their disposal and holding themselves in readiness for
emergencies, the same as the soldier in pay of the State; and yet 
they would be no cost to the State, nor to any but themselves.
Of this convention, more than half were official delegates rep--7-
resenting the war-making powers of fourteen powerful governments of
the world, and so ripe and the world become for higher humanity and
its greater liberty, that the historian has chronicled that the
eyes of all Europe were turned towards that little meeting in 
Geneva.
Will you kindly keep in mind the date, for I am trying only to
comply with your request for better information. - This was in 1863,
and '64, just the middle of our Civil War.  Three thousand miles
away we knew little of European movements (much less than now) - 
in war ourselves, we had little time to study them.  Our Sanitary 
Commission was struggling for recognition and Europe knew nothing
of it.  The Red Cross was an unknown, nameless child, in a far
away country.  May I beg you to let these facts answer once and
for all the mistaken, misleading and constantly recurring question
of the Red Cross in our Civil War?  We had none - more's the pity - 
but we had none.
Let us see what it would have done for us if there had been. -
First, all wounded, sick or disabled persons would have been held
as neutral, and the hospitals, even at the field, would have been

-8-
nursed all alike. - The blue and the gray would have lain side by
side in them; all surgeons, chaplains and attendants would have been
free upon the field to care for their own, and when through, returned
to their own armies.  The charter further provides that all supplies
designed for the sick or hospitals shall be held sacred to
their use, and not subject to capture by either army, all wounded
prisoners to be returned to the own army, if it could take them.
If in retreat, and it could not take them, the conqueror must care
for them with his own.  No man can be left on the ground to suffer
and die uncared for, - a sick, wounded or helpless man is no longer
a foe, but a human being, with all nature's claims to human pity and
care, and, under the convention of Geneva, created by the war-makers
of the civilized world, all must so regard them or break one
of its strongest treaties.  All these and more were conceded in
that convention of '64.  Civilians might go and act at a field,
neutral hospitals be established and the gifts of a sympathizing
people be lavished in tons for their use at a field, but how would
they be known, how prove the authority by which they would go, how
should the armies know who to receive and accept ; - how should-9-
fraud be prevented, the honest protected and the pretender detected?
The delegates of the princes of the earth struggled with this problem, - 
its solution would be their masterpiece. - All these hospitals,
all their people, all this material must bear a mark, some sign must
be adopted that all could use, and that all the world would know and regard.  This convention had met in Switzerland; this little republic
had shown the courage to call them to her to tell them of their
faults, and suggest a reform.  Courage wins respect, even from an 
opponent, and they sought to honor Switzerland in the choice of a 
sign. Would she let them adopt her flag - a white cross on a
red ground? She could not - she had fought a thousand years for
that.  Then they would still honor her by reversing her colors
and making the sign a red cross on a white ground, and this became 
the immortal sign of the greatest humanity the world had ever known.
That sign must stand for every token of humanity in war that could 
ever be known in the warring world.  The fainting soldier on
the field must konw it; the monarch on the throne obey it.  It
must float above every military hospital; the brave fellows who gathered up the wounded under fire must wear it on their breasts,
and the wan-cheeked nurse to whom they delivered them must wear it

-10-
arm.
What is that mark on the long train of cars thundering on 
through day and night to the front? why do the unlettered workmen
along the track lift their hats as it whirls past?  That 
little cross of red has touched the heart and won the love of the universe.
Let us not despair of humanity, when it can be so easily reached.
So popular was this sign that it even lent its name to the 
treaty itself.  One would think the high and single purposes of
this sign sufficient to protect it from improper use or personal
use - but you will recollect that you take Red Cross Whiskey for
your cold; you smoke Red cross cigars, you play euchre with Red
Cross playing cards, and possibly feel that you are patronizing the
Red cross.  These are frauds which we are unable to prevent.  We
are not only war-like, but an enterprising people as well.
The various Orders and Commanderies of the Red cross that you
notice in the press are quite another thing, usually secret societies
for purposes of theiw own, charitable or social. - The Red Cross of
Geneva is in no way an "Order", and should not be so designated.
It has no secrets.
There is only one International Red Cross Society.  There can-11-
be no such thing as an International American or English or French
Red Cross Society.  Al these are national.  A score or more of
national societies were formed following the conference of 1863,
which, strengthened by the convention of '64, lost no time in preparing
for their work.  In 1866 Austria, Italy and Germany afforded
opportunity for trial.  The sad field of Sadowa testifies to their
need.  Italy and Germany were in the treaty, Austria not.
That made no difference in the treatment of its wounded.
Pardubitz fed, and dressed the wounds of 600 to 800 a day for two
months, regardless of friend or foe.
In 1870, under Napoleon III, France marched to its eastern
borders, while Germany Watched the Rhine.  Both were leading Red
Cross Nations.  The German Red Cross, like its army, was ready.
Its central committee received and applied $10,000,000. as an aid
to the medical department of the army.  The Red Cross of France,
like its army, was not ready; and yet her alacrity surprised the
world.  In one month she raised and equipped seventeen movable
field hospitals, which were sent to the army and went with it to 
Sedan.  During the Siege and Commune at Paris, a vast number of
sick and wounded had been massed together, and the famine of the 

-12-
last days of the Siege had rendered their condition pitiable beyond
description. The Red Cross, by full approval of the Prussian authorities,
removed 10,000 of these, and brought back 9,000 prisoners
from Germany.  I speak of these from personal observation and
participation.
In July 1876, Servia and Montenegro entered Turkey. All were
in the treaty. The Turkish officials, intelligent and educated,
understood the origin of the Red Cross and respected it, but prudently
feared to place a cross in the sign of their ignorant, fanatical
soldiery, and the Red Crescent was substituted, which remains
until today.  In 1877 Russia came down and crossed the Danube.
Plevna tells its terrible tale.  The Servian Red Cross, young and
poor, established its wonderful hospital at Belgrade, and Roumania
nursed 1042 wounded Turks.  $15,000,000. in Red Cross relief were
spent by Russia alone.
Of civil wars there has been no end.  Italy has its Garibaldian
and Papal war.  Spain its Carlist.  Russia led its armies to the
region of Persia, and its Red Cross sent 117 persons after them, who
followed the advance guard and had six wounded and twelve killed.
The Dutch established its Red Cross in Malay in 1878, Bolivia-13-
and Peru entered the treaty during their civil wars of 1879 and 1881.
In the early Transvaal war, the Boers, without being in the treaty,
lived up to its highest precepts.
The Japanese became one of the most advanced Red Cross nations,
the Emperor being the active head of its central society.
Civil wars are usually considered the most cruel, and yet,
singularly, the Carlist war in Spain was said to have been exempt
from cruelties.  Doctors are nurses were respected, prisoners were
well treated, and even the wounded insurgents set at liberty, at
Pampeluna.  Spain has always regarded her Red Cross, and even in the height of the Spanish-American war sent her official testimonials
of regard to the President of the Red Cross of America.
The exceptional cases of cruelty in war which stand out to
shock the world, are usually of individual import, depending largely 
upon the moral nature and characteristics of the officers, or persons
placed in power.  It is to be supposed that if Wirtz, with all
his mediocrity of intellect, and possessed the heart of a Stonewall 
Jackson or Fitzhugh Lee, that Andersonville, with its 13,000 dea,
would ever have stained our proud record?  The reconcentradoes of
Cuba were not driven out and gathered in under the rule of Blanco.

-14-
Having followed the Red Cross through the origin and incipient
activities of its first decade or two in Europe, let us turn, for
a few minutes, to the pact it has taken in our own country.
It will be recalled that, although officially invited to every
conferences, the United States was too sadly occupied to give attention
to anything outside itself, until the close of our civil war;
and then, too worn, tired, and glad of the end of the war to ever
want to hear of it again.  Thus it happened that, when Dr. Henry W. 
Bellows, the great apostle of war relief, and president of our Sanitary 
Commission, having come in contact with the Red Cross at the
Paris Exposition of 1868, and perceiving its great utility, undertook 
to interest the American people, and induce the government to 
unite with the treaty, and actually formed a society, failed both
with the government and people, was compelled to abandon his society
and relinquish his efforts. Foreign nations keenly regretted this,
and continued their efforts to interest America.
In 1870 this poor specimen of national work and representation
encountered the International Red Cross personnel at Geneva, Switzerland.
Struck by its goodness, its greatness, and its need in all
countries, she assumed the representation of her own and followed-15-
with the International Society through the field relief of the entire 
Franco-German War, and long hard months after, late in 1873,
with a solemn promise to the International Society, to the leading
governments of Europe, war-worn and broken, bed-ridden and good
for nothing, your assumed representative came home to you.  Only in
1877 could she make her first effort, with the administration of
President Hayes, to carry into effect the promises of '73.
Here commenced the explanations to the government, the talking
to the people over the country, and the filling of waste baskets.
In 1882, during the administration of President Arthur, following 
out the expressed desires of his lamented predecessor,
Garfield, and the advices of his cabinet, the treaty was adopted by
our government, and we became the thirty-third in the roll of the
Red Cross nations, not a very proud record for advanced America.
At the instance of President Garfield, a central society of
about thirty member,s of which I bring you a remnant, faithful and
dear, had been previously formed, by-laws enacted, officers elected,
etc.; but aside from this small body of deeply interested persons,
and the Executive Department of the Government, which had given us
the treaty, little was known of it throughout the United States.

-16-
Bonfires were lighted in Europe at the news of the accession
of America to the treaty, but America could not quite see its importance.
It added no new territory, it cost no money, it gained
none, it changed no votes and had no political bearings, had no differences 
of opinions, and no petty scandal.  It seemed to have
much to do with wounded soldiers, and we had none.  We had our 
Grand Army, and was not that enough?  Thus, it was generally settled
that it was probably some Catholic order, or a sisterhood of
foreign countries, and was prudently let alone.  But the small central
society understood well the charge it had assumed, and took up
its duties.  All that officially pertained to a governmental treaty
must be performed, - it must be promulgated by our President, ratified
by the ratifying powers of the Congress of Berne, and the
proper connections made between the society of our government, all
to be acknowledged and sent to the international headquarters at
Geneva.  The Army was to be instructed, its hospital flags changed,
the old yellow flag to be put aside and the Red Cross substituted.
It had no small labor to change its regalia and regulations, but I 
think it would not change back today.
All this was duly complied with, and we were, at length, a Red-17-
Cross nation, with a central society ready for the relief of wounded
soldiers, but no soldiers to relieve, and no prospect of any.  We
had gained a treaty.  It would rust out without application of some 
kind, and be unknown and worthless when the sad day should come for 
its use.
The society saw and felt the responsibility resting up on.
The people must be awakened and instructed by some kind of object 
lesson.  We had no wars, no battlefields to attract their sympathy
and help, but we had great disasters constantly occurring, as 
pitiable, oftentimes, as a battle, and which it was our custom to
call upon the government t relieve through appropriations from the 
treasury.  Here was a legitimate opportunity to apply the first,
great principles of the Red Cross, viz: "People's help for National 
Need."  to this opportunity the perplexed committee turned and,
on presenting the treaty for acceptance, it prayed the ratifying 
powers at Berne to accept the United States, which the privilege of
relieving in great national calamities, other than war, confining
its operations to disasters beyond local relief, and requiring governmental 
aid.  The request was kindly considered and granted.  
Thus, in 1882, America stood alone among the Red cross treaty

-18-
nations, with the official privilege of rendering aid in great calamities
in civil life.
The nineteen fields of Red Cross relief in eighteen years, on
which the members of that committee have stood and conducted the 
relief, tell the story of their labors.  The Ohio and Mississippi 
floods in 1884, the Jacksonville Yellow Fever, Johnstown, Port
Royal, Russian Famine, Armenia, Cuban Reconcentrados, and Galveston
should have constituted sufficient object lessons.  The organization
has been faithful to its trust, and the people have been faithful
to theirs, so far as they understood it.
These were object lessons, many and hard, and for a purpose - 
but did the Red Cross of America never come to its legitimate use?
Did it never find its place in war? Were those nineteen years of 
misspent effort?  Did its century tree never bloom?
It was only when the flash of swords and the bugle cal of 
three short years ago startled our peaceful dreams, and the little 
island at our feet put on the mantle of war, and our young men 
marched away to duties, privations and dangers they had never known,
that the reality came home to the American people.  Does this 
mean us? - cries the startled mother, wife and sister.  Is this-19- 

real war and not National Guard parade and drill that calls these
men out?  Who will care for them if sick, who will nurse them
back to life and bring them home to us if wounded?  Who will 
save them from prison, torture and death, if captured?" 
200,000 gray bearded men, with slow and limping tread, give
ominous answer, "War is war, they must take their chances as we did
forty years ago." 
"But", persists the terror stricken sister and wife,"you old
soldiers suffered more than tongue can tell; endured all that mortals
could endure and live; you marched into ambush under mistaken
orders, - your surgeons were captured after a battle, - you lay
wounded on the field until the vultures attacked you, - you languished
in fever hospitals without nurses, - but that was forty
years ago, is there nothing better now, have we provided nothing
better in all that time?"
Possibly a little better, dear terrified sister, let us see. 
More than the grizzled old soldiers of '61 will answer this.
Another army of men, with locks still dark and faces young, yet old
before their time, will give reply.  Men who camped in the fever 


-20- 
swamps of Santiago, toiled up the mountain side of San Juan, braved
death at El Caney, tossed on the fever ships that bore them back - 
raved in the delirium of Montauk, till at length the cool, gentle
hand of the nurse called back the life fast ebbing out. 
Did some sign glisten on the breast or encircle the arm of that
nurse? 
Ask the brave men whom the Philippines sent back in thousands
to the Western slope, - the men of Manila. 
When California takes them from the crowded ships, and the
clean hospital beds, home food and the tender care of the women of
California remind them that life may yet be worth the living, does
the flag floating over that hospital tell these men anything?  Old
Glory, with its stars and stripes forever, strong, robust, full of
life and hope, sixteen months ago that flag led them on to war, - 
Today, weak, sick, fever-burned, broken in heart and limb, the Red
Cross welcomes them back. 
Go with me a little further;  let us look at the cemetaries of
the camps of two years ago.  Stand with me at Arlington and mark
the scores of fresh made graves filling, filling month by month,
and ask:  "Did the little society of nineteen years ago miscalcu- 

-21- 

late?  Was it mistaken?  Would it take back that little far away
work if it could?  Heaven grant that some day there will be no
need of war relief, but it is not yet." 
America has a double responsibility.  Her Red Cross is two-fold,
- military and civil, - both of the same origin, incurring
mainly the same duties.  Let us compare:  Twelve months ago the
war veterans of Manila were pouring into San Francisco in thousands,
wounded, sick poor and friendless.  The Red Cross of California
received, nursed, fed and helped them on.  This was the war relief
of the Red Cross.  At the same time the elements had devasted
a great seabound city, literally sweeping it into the sea, - killed
ten thousand of its people and left twenty thousand homeless, ruined
and desolate.  The Red Cross entered there, and, by request, took
charge of its relief, working for months among its distressed victims, 
breathing an atmosphere nearlt fatal to life and health, and
left only when the survivors could help themselves.  This was the
civil relief of the American Red Cross;  the same organization, officers
and society, and practically the same work. 
Twenty years ago it had become the custom to apply to Congress 


-22- 
for a appropriation of money for every disaster of any moment, and
it was granted.  Since the Red Cross took up its first field of relife, 
nineteen years ago, no appropriation has been asked for, not
one time has the government been even called upon to put its hand 
into its treasury for relief, and not a dollar has been appropriated
for this purpose. 
The Red Cross has shown the people their duty to their government; 
it has taught patriotism, and given them opportunity to raise
their fallen men in distress voluntarily;  it has opened their hearts
to sympathy and their senses to their duties. 
It has united our people in their charities and unified our
nation with other nations and given us standing with the civilized
people of the globe. 
Although slow to act in the beginning, being the 33rd nation
to accept the treaty for the relief of war on land, it stands to the
everlasting credit of America that she was the first to recognize 
the rights of the navy in the relief of war at sea; for, in her
treaty, she included the articles of bot the Army and Navy, which
no nation had yet done.  And for this fact it was possible for
Spain to join in a Modus Uvendi, pledging herself to observe, the 

-23- 
right sand humanities of the Red Cross on the sea, as well as on
the land.
This also made possible the fitting of the national hospital
ships, the beautiful Solace and Relief, with their characteristic
red and green straiks, as yet scarcely comprehended by the officers
who commanded them.  


[*[Nov.1901]*]

A Childs' Party 

[*I believe another copy is preserved*] 

A CHILD'S PARTY.
It is the "reminiscence of a happy moment," which by  beloved
friends of the Legion of Loyal Women ask of me - some moment
or event so happy as to be worth the telling.  That may not be
an easy thing in a life like mine, but there are few things the
"Legion" could ask of me that I would not at least try to do.
But, dear sisters, I fear I must ask of you patiently to travel
far back with me to the little childhood days which knew no care.
Patiently, I say, for that was long ago. 
I lived in the country, a mile or more from the village.
Olivia Bruce, my favorite friend, lived in the village.
Olivia had "made a party," and invited twelve little girls,
schoolmates and playmates, herself making the thirteenth (we had
never learned that there could be bad luck in numbers). 
It was May, and the party was to be held on "Old Election
Day."  Care and thought were given to the occasion.
Each guest was to learn a little poem to recite for the
first time, as a surprise to the others. 
There was some effort at costume.  We were all to wear
aprons alike, from the village store - white, with a pretty vine,
and cozy, little, brown birds in the corners.  Embroidered?  Oh, 
not just stamped;  but what embroidery has since ever borne comparison
with that?
Our ages must conform - no one under ten, or over twelve. 
How glad I was that I had been ten the Christmas before! 
At length arrangements were completed, and nothing to be
wished for but a pleasant day. 
The morning came, heavy and dark.  The thunder rolled, the
clouds gathered and broke, and the lightning as if in cruel mockery
darted in and out among them, lightning up their ragged edges,
or enveloping the whole mass in quivering flame.  The rain came 

-2-
down in torrents, and I fear there were torrents of tears as well.
Who could give comfort in a disappointment and grief like that?
Who, but old Morgan, the gardener, with his poetic prophecy - 
"Rain before seven, be clear before 'leven." 
I watched the clouds, I watched the clock, but most of all
I watched the hopeful face of old Morgan.  How long and how dark
the morning was!  At length, as the clock pointed half past ten,
the clouds broke again, but this time with the bright, clear sun
behind them, and the high arching rainbow resting on the tree tops
of the western woods. 
It was long to wait, even for dinner, and the proper time to
go.  Finally, all traces of tears were washed away, the toilet
made even to the apron and hat, the mother's kiss given upon
the cheek of her restless child with the gentle admonition "Be a 
good girl!" and as I sprang from the door step striving hard to
keep at least one foot on the ground, who shall say that the happiness
and joy of that little bit of humanity was not as complete 
as ever falls to the lot of humanity to be? 
The party was a success.  The thirteen little girls were
there;  each wore her pretty apron and the knot of ribbon in her 
hair;  each recited her little poem quite unknown to the others. 
We danced - played ring plays. 
"The needle's eye than can supply
The thread that runs so true." 
-----
"For no man knows
Where oats, peas, beans, or barley grows." 
We "chased the squirrel," "hunted the slipper," trimmed our
hats with wild flowers and stood in awe before the great waterwheel
of the busy mill. 
At five o'clock a pretty tea was served for us, and dark-eyed
Olivia presided with the grace and gravity of a matron;  and-3-
as the sun was sinking behind the western hills, we bade goodbye,
and each sped away to the home awaiting her. 
I to be met by a mother's approving kiss, for I had been "a 
good girl," and gladly sought the little bed, and the long night
of unbroken sleep that only a child may know. 
Long, long years ago the watchful mother went to that other
world;  one after another the guests of the little party followed
her - some in girlhood, some in young womanhood, some in weary
widowhood.  One by one, I believe, she has met and welcomed
them - welcomed each of the twelve and waits 
Clara Barton. 


[*[Welcome to Foreign Delegates Suffrage
Meeting]*]
[*[1901-02]*]
Madam President
Ladies and Delegates. 

Among many honors which from time to time have
been tendered me by my generous country people, not one
has been more appreciated than the privilege of giving
this word of public welcome to the honored delegation 
of women present with us. 
Ladies of Europe: 
To me has been given the honor of bidding you 
welcome to America. 
If a hundred tongues were mine, they could not
speak the glad welcome in our hearts. - You have come
far to honor us, - and we do not forget that it is a 
paternal act - the time-honored parent holding out its
hand to the child. - But, ladies, it is an epoch in the
history of the world that your coming marks.  For the
first time within the written history of mankind have
the women of the nations left their homes and assembled
in council to declare the position of woman, as woman,
before the world, bringing to national and international
view the injustice and the folly of the barriers which
ignorance has created, and tradition fostered and pre- 

-2- 
served through the unthinking ages, until they came to
be held, not only as a part of the natural laws and
rights of man, but the immutable decrees of Divinity
itself. 
Through the ages long and dark has woman listened
to, believed and obeyed the laws she had no power in
creating, neither in amending, - for it was a shame for
her to speak in public, and from child-hood to the
grave, modesty was her crowing virtue.
If woman alone had suffered under these mistaken
traditions - if she could have borne the evil by herself,
it would have been less pitiful.  But her brother
man, in the laws he created and"ignorantly worshipped", 
has suffered with her. 
He has lost her highest help;  he has crippled the
intelligence he needed;  he has belittled the very source
of his own being, and dwarfed the image of his Maker.
In all these he has suffered with her,
"For sure as sin and sufferings' born
We walk to fate abreast."
Ladies, there is a propriety in your crossing the
seas to hold the first council in America, for it was
in this new, untrammeled land of freedom, free birth, 


-3- 
free thought, and free speech that the first outspoken
notes were given - the first concerted action taken
towards the release of woman, the enlightenment of man
as a law-maker, and the attention of the world directed 
to the injustice, unwisdom and folly of the code under
which it lived. 
It was here that the first hard blows were struck. 
It was here the paths were marked out that have been
trodden with bleeding feet for half a century, until at
length the blows no longer rebound, and the hands of the
grateful, loving womanhood of the world struggle for a
place to scatter roses in the paths where erst were 
flint and thorns - and an admiring world of women and
men alike, breather, in tones of respect, gratitude and
love, the names of Elizabethan Cady Stanton and Susan B.
Anthony. 
Miss Anthony, I am glad to stand beside you while
I tell these  women from the other side of the world who
has brought them here. 
This, ladies of Europe, is your great prototype. 
This, the woman who has trodden the trackless fields of
the pioneer 'till the thorns are buried in roses.  This, 

-4- 
the woman who has lived th hear the hisses turn to
dulest strains of music. 
The woman who has dared to plead for every good
cause under Heaven, who opened her door to the fleeing
slave, and claimed the outcast for a brother. 
The woman beloved of her own country and honored
in all countries. 
Although a slow lesson to learn, it has always
proved that the grandeur of a nation was shown by the
respect paid to woman. 
The brightest garlands of Spain, linked with immortelles,
twine about the name of Isabella. 
The highest glory of England to-day is not that
she places her crown on the brow of her trusted and
beloved new monarch, a man whom the nations of the earth
welcome to their galaxy of rulers, - but that she lays 
her mantle of fifty years rule, through war and peace
and progress, such as was never known before, upon the
grave of a woman - that mantle on which no stain has
ever rested, and on which the sunlight of happiness is
shadowed and dimmed only by the tears of a sorrowing
nation, as it reverently bears it to its honored rest. 


-5- 
England, thank God you had no Salic law, although
its resistance cost you your strongest ally. 
America has none, and, Miss Anthony, the paths 
which you have trodden through these oft painful years
lead to that goal, and, though your eyes will have 
opened upon the blessed light of the Heaven beyond - 
verily there may be some standing here who shall not
taste death until these things come. 
Ladies and Delegates: 
In the name of the Great Leader who has called
you,
We welcome you. 
In the name of our country, its great institutions
of learning and equal privileges to all,
We welcome you.
In the name of the Brotherhood of Man,
We welcome you.
In the name of our never forgotten pioneers, a
Mott, a Stone, a Gage, a Griffin, a Garrison, a May, a 
Foster, a Douglass, a Phillips. 
We reverently welcome you.
In the name of God and humanity, in the name of 

-6-
the angels of earth and the angels of Heaven,
We welcome you to our shores, to our halls, to
our homes, to our hands, and to our hearts.
Welcome, ladies, to America.

[*11 Address*] 
Peace Meeting) | church of our Father
It would seem that having tired out one
audience within the last 48 hours, I might
give the others a rest. especially as I am
to pursue the same subject. and I thought
I had done so, but when I heard it announced
from the platform last evening that I was 
to be among the speakers tonight as well
it occurred to me that there were one or
two points, which admitted of still further
explanations. There is much in a name
and the very name of Peace wraps a halo
of holiness about itself. I have been
asked by this same society of which I am
a member of many years, to come and
meet with them in their yearly conferences and
let us compare our ideas of peace and war.
argue the question. and do something once for
peach as well as war. I can understand all
that friends. and know that it seems to you
that I am fostering war, and opposed
to peace. I was a member of the first
peace society I ever heard of and attended
its convention in St James Hall London
in 1873. I have been a member ofTHE FAIRFAX. 
EUROPEAN PLAN
14TH & F STREETS. 
Washington, D. C.,     190 

2 
this society almost as long.  and yet 
I cannot convince you that I also love
and work for peace.  It is only that 
our methods differ.  We call a meeting
or conference to promote peace, and
we call the friends of peace  - they
all gather, express their views, have a
harmonious meeting and reparate 
we have reconnected our converts  
grateful our friends - but what have
we done to our foes -- have we 
converted them -  how could we - they 
were not there = We have touched no one who had no power
The Red cross Calls a convention
and it invites the war makes of the
world to send their delegates.  it ask 
them to come and see the other side
of the shield - to see the mischief
they do - the woe they cause - and
join in an effort to lessen it if
they cannot quite arest it - it is
a new feature to them - a page they
have never read - and they go3 
away and study it - that conference
has made a call upon the conservative 
and instructed those who have the
power.  There lessens will tell - and
again I say to you my friends and
colleagues the Red Cross US the [greater]
greatest peace society on the earth today
It is teaching war to make war upon
itself.  We have not only mankind
to make over before we can get universal 
peace, but we have the geography of
the earth to reconstruct -- You cannot
put a finger on a single geographic
line, dividing the property of any 
nations today that was not put there 
by the sword, and still more every 
line is held by the sword - We have
all this to change before we can get 
the haven of universal peace -
Meanwhile - the distresses of strife
will go on, and I have been content
to try in my little way to 

4
lessen them so far as I could
My good brother Love tells us I
could have done a better work
[I dont know how that may be
I know I could have done 
better what I had done with
better knowledge and I] 
When he shows me how and
makes me see it I will
try to carry out his instructionsTHE FAIRFAX.
EUROPEAN PLAN
14th & F STREETS.

Washington, D.C.,   190

Remarks made in the
church of Our Father on the
occasion of the Peace Society
at the conference meetings
Feb. 2 - 1902

{*11 Rx*]
Address read at National council of women. Carroll Hall
Feb. 22, 1902
I suppose with[out] no [any] subject given, my name would suggest one.
I could no more disconnect myself, in the minds of the public, from
the Red Cross than could Miss Anthony or our beloved president, Mrs.
Sewell, from the enfranchisement of woman. I have talked the subject 
over the entire country for twenty-five years, I have filled
the waster baskets of the land with my written and published literature
on the subject, and still I am asked imploringly "Where can
we learn something of the Red Cross, its history, its work, and how
you came to be connected with it?" Although its history is not
a long one, I cannot tell it in twenty minutes. My connection with
it was accidental. I can try to give you a little of both.
The Red Cross was born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1864. To
follow the simile, I might say that its father was Mr. Henri Dunant, 
a Swiss gentleman still living - its mother was The Society of Public
Utility of Switzerland - its Godfather and provider, since its
birth, is Mr. Gustave Moynier, president of the International Red
Cross Society, Geneva, which society is the home of the international
Red Cross of the world.
So much for its immediate and physical history. Mentally and
-2- 
remotely its inception lay in the untold and unrelieved sufferings
and agonies of man and womankind - since the Creator first called
into existence the human race, endowed with the reason and capabilities
of man and the passions and cruelties of the brutes. 
The first we know of man he slew his brother, - The records of
the old testament are simply a record of war and slaughter in hundreds
of thousands, with no relief or even an expression of pity. 
The wars of Alexander, Cyrus and Hannibal are no better, and
even the battles of Napoleon Ist are pictures of great heaps of
wounded, dead and dying left to perish where they fell.  No intimation
of pity or suggestion of relief appears, to weaken the manliness 
of the heroic pages of their history.  Their medical service
seemed scarce worth mentioning. 
The Crimea commenced the same, closed to everything but accounts
of masterly fighting - but the world was making progress - 
the newspaper correspondent had come into existence, and dared to
write of something beside glory, and when the doors of Scutura 
opened to Florence Nightingale and her forty nurses, the flood of
light which followed revealed a condition of military hospitals
that shocked the world.  For once, pity spoke, and even glory-loving 


-3- 
Britain joined her sweet singer: 

"The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring."

But all this lesson resulted in no general steps toward a 
prevention of a recurrence on any other field;  no organization of
relief was formed, and the other field followed soon.  On the 24th 
of June, 1859 the armies of Napoleon III, equipped with every facility
then known to military medical science, stood face to face with
the foe in northern Italy, three hundred thousand combatants in a 
line of five leagues - fifteen miles - and fought fifteen hours
without cessation or rest.  The horrors of that field, through the
suffering of its wounded from want of care - scarcely one surgeon
for fifty men - bleeding, fainting and famishing, were witnessed by
a humane Swiss gentleman, Mr. Henri Dunant, who stayed his traveling
carriage in the vicinity of the battle and worked among the wounded. 
The memories of the sufferings he had seen haunted him, until at
length he wrote and published them, and the Souvenir de Solfereno, 
in a few months, had been translated into the leading languages of
the world, and lay on the tables and on the harts of the best of 
Europe. 

-4- 
The seed has been well sown, and, in 1863, took root in a 
conference at Geneva, Switzerland, the object of which was to find
if it were not possible to devise some means to lesson the needless
sufferings of soldiers at the field.  This conference was succeeded 
by a convention for the same purpose in the following year of 1864.
This convention was composed of delegates from the sovereigns, - 
the war-makers - of the leading nations of Europe, and is what is
known as the Convention, or Treaty of Geneva for the relief of the
sick and wounded of armies.  Here commenced organization.
The arguments adduced at this convention were that no army had
ever been found equal to the needs of its wounded in battle, and
equally decided that none ever could be.  No army could move, march,
or fight while burdened with sufficient medical material or personnel 
to meet the needs of its wounded in, and after a battle.  For
this condition of things there must must be found a remedy, this
was what they had come together for, and a remedy, after days of
deliberation, was suggested, the key note of which formed the first 
article in the convention, viz:  That all military hospitals, all
the sick and wounded in them, all persons caring for them, physicians, 


-5- 
chaplains, attendants, all material for their use or comfort
belonging to either belligerent army, be held as neutral by the
other, to remain unmolested, not subject to capture, and treated as
if its own. 
This appealed to the better nature of the world in general, and
has been manfully accepted and respected since that day. 
Another provision growing out of the first conference has been
less heartily successful, for it struck a blow at one of the strongest
and most time-honored rules of war, a blow so distasteful, so
repugnant to the old-time military idea, so democratic, so to speak,
that, up to the present day, it has been only partially welcomed
and rather grudgingly acknowledged. 
This provision provided that societies of civilians be formed
in the various countries, whose duty it should be to provide whatever
might be lacking in the medical department of an army at the
field, either in material or personnel, and whose privilege it
should be to go to the field under the proper restrictions and use 
them. 
This provision would break one of the hitherto most inviolate-6-
privileges and customs of war, viz: that no civilian be allowed upon 
a field, especially in time of battle.
Perchance some gray-haired father will one day red this little 
sketch through the dim mist that gather at the tender memories of 
the days when he waited at the outer edge of the captured field, 
where the wounded [boy] lay perishing, or the lifeless body waited, and 
there was neither power nor pity in his whole country, the country 
for which he had given so much, sufficient to cross that little line 
of steel and let him in.
This conference further proposed that each country should have
one central society and only one; that this society should have power
to form other societies, to provide surgeons and equip them; to
establish hospitals, to train nurses; in short to be a civil arm of 
was, if war must exist, (and who had power to prevent it?); that 
they should keep in preparation to accomapny their armies, placing 
themselves at their disposal and holding themselves in readiness for
emergencies, the same as the soldier in pay of the State; and yet 
they would be no cost to the State, nor to any but themselves.
Of this convention, more than half were official delegates representing

-7-
representing the war-making powers of fourteen powerful governments of 
the world, and so ripe had the world becomes for higher humanity and 
its greater liberty, that the historian has chronicled that the 
eyes of all Europe were turned towards that little meeting in 
Geneva.
Will you kindly keep in mind the date, for I am trying only to 
comply with your request for better information. - This was in 1863, 
and '64, just the middle of our Civil War.  Three thousand miles 
away we knew little of European movements (much less than now) - 
in war ourselves, we had little time to study them.  Our Sanitary 
Commission was struggling for recognition and Europe knew nothing 
of it.  The Red Cross was an unknown, nameless child, in a far 
away country.  May I beg you to let these facts answer once and 
for all the mistaken, misleading and constantly recurring question 
of the Red Cross in our Civil War?  We had none - more's the pity - 
but we had none. 
Let us see what it would have done for us if where had been. - 
First, all wounded, sick or disabled persons would have been held 
as neutral, and hospitals, even at the field, would have been -8-
nursed all alike. - The blue and the gray would have lain side by
side in them; all surgeons, chaplains and attendants would have been
free upon the field to care for their own, and when through, returned
to their own armies. The charter further provides provides that all supplies designed for the sick or hospitals shall be held sacred to 
their use, and not subject to capture by either army, all wounded
prisoners to be returned to their own army, if it could take them.
If in retreat, and it could not take them, the conqueror must care
for them with his own. No man can be left on the ground to suffer
and die uncared for, - a sick wounded or helpless man is no longer
a foe, but a human being, with all nature's claim to human pity and
care, and, under the convention of Geneva, created by the war-makers of the civilized world, all must so regard them or break one
of its strongest treaties. All these and more were conceded in
that convention of '64. Civilians might go and act as a field,
neutral hospitals be established and the gifts of a sympathizing
people be lavished in tons for their use at a field, but how would 
they be known, how prove the authority by which they would go, how
should the armies know who to receive and accept; - how should

-9-
fraud be prevented, the honest protected and the pretender detected?
The delegates of the princes of the earth struggled with this problem, -
its solution would be their masterpiece. - All these hospitals
all their people, all this material must bear a mark, some sign must
be adopted that all could use, and that all the world would know and
regard. This convention had met in Swtizerland; this little republic
had shown the courage to call them to her to tell them of their
faults, and suggest a  reform. Courage wins respect, even from an
opponent, and they sought to honor Switzerland in the choice of a 
sign. Would she let them adopt her flag - a white cross on a 
red ground? She could not - she had fought a thousand years for
that. Then they would still honor her by reversing her colors
and making the sign a red cross on a white ground, and this became
the immortal sign of the greatest humanity the world had ever known.
That sign must stand for every token of humanity in war that could
ever be known in this warring world. The fainting soldier on
the field must know it; the monarch on the throne obey it. It
must float above every military hospital; the brave fellows who
gathered up the wounded under fire must wear it on their breasts,
and the wan-cheeked nurse to whom they delivered them must wear it
-10-
arm.
What is the mark on the long train of cars thundering on 
through day and night to the front?  Why do the unletterd workmen
along the track lift their hats as it whirls past?  That little
cross of red has touched the heart and won the love of the universe.  
Let us not despair of humanity, when it can be so easily reached.  
So popular was this sign that it even lent its name to the 
treaty itself.  One would think the high and single purposes of 
this sign sufficient to protect it from improper use or personal 
use - but you will recollect that you take Red Cross Whiskey for 
your cold; you smoke Red Cross cigars, you play euchre with Red
Cross playing cards, and possible feel that you are patronizing the 
Red Cross.  These are frauds which we are unable to prevent.  We 
are not only a war-like, but an enterprising people as well.
The various orders and Commanderies of the Red Cross that you 
notice in the press are quite another thing, usually secret societies 
for purposes of their own, charitable or social. - The Red Cross of 
Geneva is in no way an "Order", and should not be so designated.
It has no serets.
There is only one International Red Cross Society.  There can 

-11-
be no such thing as an International American or English or French 
Red Cross Society.  All these are national.  A score or more of 
national societies were formed following the conference of 1963, 
which, strengthened by the convention of'64, lost no time in preparing 
for their work.  In 1966 Austria, Italy and Germany afforded 
opportunity for trial.  The sad field of Sadowa festifies to their 
need.  Italy and Germany were in the treaty, Austria not.
That made no difference in the treatment of its wounded.
Pardubitz fed, and dressed the wounds of 600 to 800 a day for two 
months, regardless of friend or foe.
In 1870, under Napoleon III, France marched to its eastern 
borders, while Germany Watched the Rhine.  Both were leading Red
Cross Nations.  The German Red Cross, like its army, was ready. 
Its central committee received and applied $10,000,000. as an aid 
to the medical department of the army.  The Red Cross of France, 
like its army, was not ready; and yet her alacrity surprised the 
world.  In one montht she raised and equiped seventeen movavle 
field hospitals, which were sent to the army and went with it to 
Sedan.  During the Siege and Commune at Paris, a vast number of 
sick and wounded had been messed together, and the famine of the 

-12-
last days of the Siege had rendered their condition pitiable beond 
description.  The Red Cross, but full approval of the Prussian authorities,
removed 10,000 of these, and brought back 9,000 prisoners 
from Germany.  I speak of these from personal observation and 
participation. In July 1876, Servia and Montenegro entered Turkey.  All were 
in the treaty.  The Turkish officials, intelligent and educated, 
understood the origin of the Red Cross and respected it, but prudently
feared to place a cross in the sight of their ignorant, fanatical
soldiery, and the Red Crescent was substituted, which remains 
until today.  In 1877 Russia came down and crossed the Danube.  
Plevna tells its terrible tale.  The Servian Red Cross, young and 
poor, established its wonderful hospital and Belgrade, and Roumania 
nursed 1042 wounded Turks.  $15,000,000. in Red Cross relief were 
spent by Russia alone.
Of civil wars there has been no end. Italy has its Garibaldian 
and Papal war.  Spain its Carlist.  Russia led its armies to the 
region of Persia, and its Red Cross sent 117 persons after them, who
followed the advance guard and had six wounded and twelve killed.  
The Dutched established its Red Cross in Malay in 1878, Bolivia 

-13-
and Peru entered the treaty during their civil wars of 1879 and 1881.
In the early Transvaal war, the Boers, without being in the treaty, 
lived up to its highest precepts.
The Japanese became one of the most advanced Red Cross nations, 
the Emperor being the active head of its central society.
Civil wars are usually considered the most cruel, and yet, 
singularly, the Carlist war in Spain was said to have been exempt 
from cruelties.  Doctors and nurses were respected, prisoners were 
well treated, and even the wounded insurgents set at liberty, at 
Pampeluna.  Spain has always regarded her Red Cross, and even in 
the height of the Spanish-American war sent her official testimonials
of regard to the President of the Red Cross of America.
The exceptional cases of cruelty in war which stand out to 
shock the world, are usually of individual import, depending largely 
upon the moral nature and characteristics of the officer, or persons
placed in power. Is it to be supposed that if Wirtz, with all 
his mediocrity of intellect, had possessed the heart of a Stonewall 
Jackson or Fitzhugh Lee, that Andersonville, with its 13,000 dead, 
would ever have stained our proud record?  The reconcentradoes of
Cuba were not driven out and gathered in under the rule of Blanco.-14-
Having followed the Red Cross through the origin and incipient 
activities of its first decade or two in Europe, let us turn, for 
a few minutes, to the part it has taken in our own country. 
It will be recalled that, although officially invited to every 
conference, the United States was too sadly occupied to give attention 
to anything outside itself, until the close of our civil war; 
and then, too worn, tired, and glad of the end of the war to ever 
want to hear of it again.  Thus it happened that, when Dr. Henry W. 
Bellows, the great apostle of war relief, and president of our Sanitary 
Commission, having come in contact with the Red Cross at the 
Paris Exposition of 1868, and perceiving its great utility, undertook 
to interest the American people, and induce the government to 
united with the treaty, and actually formed a society, failed both 
with the government and people, was compelled to abandon his society
and relinquish his efforts.  Foreign nations keenly regretted this, 
and continued their efforts to interest America.
In 1870 this poor specimen of national work and representation 
encountered the International Red Cross personnel at Geneva, Switzerland.
Struck by its goodness, its greatness, and its need in all 
countries, she assumed the representation of her own and followed

-15-
with the International Society through the field relief of the entire
Franco-German War, and long hard months after, late in 1873, 
with a solemn promise to the International Society, to the leading 
governments of Europe, war-worn and broken, bed-ridden and good for 
nothing, your assumed representative came home to you.  Only in 
1877 could she make her first effort, with the administration of 
President Hayes, to carry into effect the promises of '73.
Here commenced the explanations to the government, the talking 
to the people over the country, and the filling of waste baskets. 
In 1882, during the administration of President Arthur, following 
out the expressed desires of his lamented predecessor,
Garfield, and the advice of his cabinet, the treaty was adopted by 
our government, and we became the thirty-third in the roll of the
Red Cross nations, not a very proud record for advanced America.
At the instance of President Garfield, a central society of 
about thirty members, of which I bring you a remnant, faithful and 
dear, had been previously formed; - by-laws enacted, officers elected, 
etc.; but aside from this small body of deeply interested persons, 
and the Executive Department of the Government, which had given us 
the treaty, little was known of it throughout the United States.-16-
Bonfires were lighted in Europe at the news of the accession 
of American to the treaty, but America could not quite see its importance.  
It added no new territory, it cost no money, it gained 
none, it changed no votes and had no political bearings, had no differences 
of opinions, and no petty scandal.  It seemed to have 
much to do with wounded soldiers, and we had none.  We had our 
Grand Army, and was not that enough?  Thus, it was generally settled 
that it was probably some Catholic order, or a sisterhood of 
foreign countries, and was prudently let aglone.  But the small central 
society understaood well the charge it had assumed, and took up 
its duties.  All that officially pertained to a governmental treaty 
must be performed, - it must be promulgated by our President, ratified 
by the ratifying powers of the Congress of Berne, and the 
proper connections made beween the society [and] our government, all 
to be acknowledged and sent to the international headquarters at 
Geneva.  The Army was to be instructed, its hospital flags changed, 
the old yellow flag to be put aside and the Red Cross substituted. 
It had no small labor to change its regalia and regulations, but I 
think it would not change back today. 
All this was duly complied with, and we were, at length, a Red 

-17-
Cross nation, with a central society ready for the relief of wounded 
soldiers, but no soldiers to relieve, and no prospect of any.  We 
had gained a treaty.  It would rust out without application of some 
kind, and be unknown and owrthless when the sad day should come for 
its use. 
The society saw and felt the responsibility resting upon it. 
The people must be awakened and instructed by some kind of object 
lesson.  We had no wars, no battlefields to attract their sympathy
 and help, but we had great disasters constantly occuring, as 
pitiable, oftentimes, as a battle, and which it was our custom to 
call upon the government to relieve through appropriations from the 
treasury.  Here was a legitimate opportunity to apply the first 
great principles of the Red Cross, viz: "People's help for National 
Need."  To this opportunity the perplexed committee turned and, 
on presenting the treaty for acceptance, it prayed the ratifying 
powers at Berne to accept the United States, with the privilege of 
relieving itn great national calamities, other than war, confining 
its operation to disasters beyond local relief, and requiring governmental
aid.  The request was kindly considered and granted.  
Thus, in 1882, America stood alone among the Red Cross treaty -18-
nations, with the official privilege of rendering aid in great calamities 
in civil life.
The nineteen fields of Red Cross relief in eighteen years, on 
which the members of that committee have stood and conducted the 
relief, tell the story of the labors.  The Ohio and Mississippi 
floods in 1884, the Jacksonville Yellow Fever, Johnstown, Port
Royal, Russian Famine, Armenia, Cuban Reconcentrados, and Galveston 
should have constituted sufficient object lessons.  The organization 
has been faithful to its trust, and the people have been faithful 
to theirs, so far as they understood it.
These were object lessons, many and hard, are for a purpose - 
but did the Red Cross of America never come to its legitimate use?
Did it never find its place in war? Were those nineteen years of 
misspent effort?  Did its century tree never bloom?
It wa only when the flash of swords and the bugle call of 
three short years ago startled our peaceful dreams, and the little 
island at our feet put on the mantle of war, and our young men 
marched away to duties, privations and dangers they had never known, 
that the reality came home to the American people.  Does this 
mean us? - cries the startled mother, wife and sister.  Is this 

-19-
real war and not National Guard parade and drill that calls these 
men out?  Who will care for them if sick, who will nurse them 
back to life and bring them home to us, if wounded?  Who will 
save them from prison, torture and death, if captured?"
200,000 gray bearded men, with slow and limping tread, give 
ominous answer, "War is war, they must take their chances as we did 
forty years ago,"
"But," persists the terror stricken sister and wife, "you old 
soldiers suffered more than tongue cal tell; endured all that mortals
could endure and live; you marched into ambush under mistaken 
orders, - your surgeons were captured after a battle, - you lay
wounded on the field until the vultures attacked you, - you languished 
in fever hospitals without nurses, - but that was forty 
years ago, is there nothing better now, have we provided nothing 
better in all that time?"
Possible a little better, dear terrified sister, let us see.
More than the grizzled old soldiers of '61 will answer this.
Another army of men, with locks still dark and faces young, yet old
before their time, will give reply.  Men who camped in the fever-20-
swamps of Santiago, toiled up the mountain side of San Juan, braved 
death at El Caney, tossed on the fever ships that bore them back - 
raved in the delirium of Montauk, till at length the cool, gentle 
hand of the nurse called back the life fast ebbing out. 
Did some sign glisten on the breast of encircle the arm of that
nurse?
Ask the brave men whom the Philippines sent back in thousands 
to the Western slope, - the men of Manila.
When California takes them from the crowded ships, and the 
clean hospital beds, home food and the tender care of the women of 
California remind them that life may yet be worth living, does 
the flag floating over the hospital tell these men anything?  Old
Glory, with its stars and stripes forever, strong, robust, full of 
life and hope, sixteen months ago that flag led them on to war, - 
Today, weak, sick, fever-burned, broken in heart and limb, the Red 
Cross welcomes them back.
Go with me a little further; let us look at the cemetaries of 
the camps of two years ago.  Stand with me at Arlington and mark 
the scores of fresh made graves filling, filling month by month, 
and ask:  "Did the little society of nineteen years ago miscalculate?

-21-
miscalculate?  Was it mistaken?  Would it take back that little far away 
work if it could?  Heaven grant that some day there will be no 
need of war relief, but it is not yet."
America has a double responsibility.  Her Red Cross is two fold, 
 - military and civil, - both of the same origin, incurring 
mainly the same duties.  Let us compare:  Twelve months ago the 
war veterans of Manila were pouring into San Francisco in thousands,
wounded, sick, poor and friendless.  The Red Cross of California 
received, nursed, fed and helped them on.  This was the war relief 
of the Red Cross.  At the same time the elements had devasted 
a great seabound city, literally sweeping it into the sea, - killed 
ten thousand of its people and left twenty thousand homeless, ruined 
and desolate.  The Red Cross entered there, and, by request, took 
charge of its relief, working for months among its distressed victims, 
breathing and atmosphere nearlt fatal to life and health, and 
left only when the survivors could help themselves.  This was the 
civil relief of the American Red Cross: the same organization, officers
and society, and practically the same work. 
Twenty years ago it had become the custom to apply to Congress-22-
for an appropriation of money for every disaster of any moment, and
it was granted. Since the Red Cross took up its first field of relife,
nineteen years ago, no appropriation has been asked for, not
one time has the government been even called upon to put its hand
into its treasury for relief, and not a dollar has been appropriated
for this purpose.
The Red Cross has shown the people their duty to their government; it has taught patriotism, and given them opportunity to [raise] serve
their fellow men in distress voluntarily; it has opened their hearts
to sympathy, and their senses to their duties.
It has united our people in their charities and unified our
nation with other nations, and given us standing with the civilized
people of the globe.
Although slow to act in the beginning, being the 33rd nation
to accept the treaty for the relief of war on land, it stands to the
everlasting credit of America that she was the first to recognize
the rights of the navy in the relief of war at sear; for, in her
treaty, she included the articles of both the Army and Navy, which
no nation had yet done. And for this fact it was possible for
Spain to join in a Modus Vendi, pledging herself to observe theREMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS
to the
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE AT ST. PETERSBURGH. 
[*Summer, 1902*] 

Most Honored Gentlemen: 
Since the autumn of 1897 when
the American Red Cross had the honor of meeting with this
hohorable council there have taken place in the United States
of America beside one event of International importance,
three or four of minor character, more especially pertaining
to the Red Cross in its National capacity. 
In the Spring of 1898, at the request of President
McKinley, the Red Cross under the charge of its President undertook
the relief of the reconcentradoes in the Spanish
Island of Cuba, which island was in a state of insurrection 
against the government of Spain.  The gathering of the country
people into the towns, in order to cut off their aid to the
insurgent soldiers in the mountains, whom the Spanish arms
could not reach, had become a war measure which produced 
great suffering and loss of life, especially as the means of
subsistence on the island grew less and starvation became
imminent. 
This condition of things gave great concern to
our people, and painfully so to our great and tenderhearted 
President McKinley;  and at length, at his request,
a committee of relief was formed in New York under the management
of Mr. Stephen E. Barton as chairman, by which committee 
supplies were shipped to Cuba.  These supplies were received
in Cuba by the President of the American National Red
Cross who had gone there for that purpose and were, by herself
and her assistants, distributed among the hospitals and
towns where the reconcentradoes were gathered.  The suffering
was very 


-2-

was very naturally terrible and the death-rate apalling. 
There were a few months of this quiet relief over
the islands but finally, in the month of April, war was declared
between our nation and Spain, which is known as the
" Spanish-American War." 
This was the first time in the history of the American
Red Cross that any touch of war in our own country had
called for its labors;  its work, during the fifteen years of
its ixestence, having been entirely confined to scenes of national
disaster in civic life.  It is needless to say that we
were not in that state of preparation which would have been
desirable.  Still the Red Cross became the rallying cry for all
war relief throughout the United States.  Auxiliaries were
formed in every state from which relief went out to every conceivable
want that a needy soldier could be supposed to have. 
It is safe to say that notwithstanding all the efforts
which had been made to spread a knowledge of the organization
over the country, to fully one half of the people of 
the United States the idea for the first time came home to
them, that the Red Cross had its foundation in war, and simply
meant war-relief.  To their lasting credit, however, be it said
that once in possession of the idea, they acted upon it with
an avidity equaled only by their liberality and faithfulness. 
The thousands from the coffers of the millionaire lay side by 
side with the hard earned pennies of the wash-woman, and the
cheers of the multitude were divided between the broad national
emblem and the little red cross that floated modestly by
its side. 
Our records show an aggregate of scores of principal 
auxiliary societies, with hundreds of lesser bodies reporting
to them in the eastern parts of the country as in 

-3- 

New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington and Chicago;  while
on the Pacific Coast California and its kindred states formed
a saction of its own, but working in harmonious conjunction
with, and under the direction of, the central body at New York 
and Washington.  Their financial statement at the close of the
year 1901 shows the receipt and the employment of 400,I98 
francs and fifty continues.  This record [*stands*] to the credit of the
women of California.  It seems scarcely credible that the western
coast of our country is, geographically, almost as near
to the seats of government of some of the countries represented
in this assemblage as to our own.  San Francisco reaches
her neighbor Tokio almost as readily as Washington, and yet
it was through this distant door that the American armies
marched for the Philippines and China.  It was through this
hospitable door that they returned and are returning, wayworn, 
weary, broken in health and spirit to the homes they left and
the land they tried to serve.  To the grand women of California,
that golden coast, are due the thanks of the [wide] [*whole*] American
nation.  The broad banner of the Red Cross has covered
their every act of devotion, charity, unity and love.  One 
faithful woman, as chairman and director -Mrs. W.B. Harrington
has held the control of this vast work and should be
with us here to day to make her own matchless report. 
Ladies of the highest social position went voluntarily
into the hospitals and to the fields as nurses and
many a soldier in the miry fever swamps caught hold once more
of the life fast ebbing out, blessing the tender nursing of
the jewelled hands that never before knew either hardship or
labor. 
It remains for me, however, to bear my personal testimony
to the unfailing faith with which our sister nation
Spain, through all these trying days, sustained her fealty to 


-4- 

her vows and to the treaty;  nay more, the generous courtesy
at all times manifested, together with every offer of protection
from the Commanding General and still more and higher,
in the very hear of the contest, with the wounded and the
prisoners of both armies on either [xxxx] hand,  there came to
the President of the American Red Cross the Royal Decoration
of Spain, the gift of Her Majesty the Queen in these darkest
days, -a token held with pride which no words can express.
Can more be said than express the hope that the relations so
amicably commenced may continue unbroken until a whole world
at peace shall no more need the Red Cross nor its treaties
for protection. 
It has been my good fortune to have associated officially 
with me, at this conference, the medical director of
both the navy and the army of the United States at the field
of Cuba, in the persons of Admiral Van Reypen, Medical Director 
of the Navy through the entire Spanish-American War, and
Dr. Nicholas Senn, Medical Director at the field on the island
of Cuba during the same campaign.  With coadjutors so able, as
eye-witnesses and participants, no more little words of mine 
are needed to represent our first war under Red Cross relief. 
May I, however, bespeak from the conference a few minutes audience
for these eminent representatives, so well armed with
all needed facts.
 
ACTION OF CONGRESS 
It will be remembered that America, in common with
other nations, has for years labored for the protection of the
name and the insignia of the Red Cross.  Two years ago a bill
was passed by our Congress which gave to the Red Cross governmental
recognition, which it had not before had, but quite
failed in affording the protection sought.  The usurpation of
the insignia had become so general, the holders of patents 

-5-
who use it claiming "vested rights" that even the government
hesitates to intefere.  If this protection is ever to be granted 
in America, it must be by future action, a better understanding
of the subject and a higher sense of rectitude.  No
mere efforts of the Red Cross by itself can surpass those alrady
made. 

SOUTH AFRICAN WAR. 
It is with humility and indignation that I, speaking
personally as President of the American Red Cross, am
compelled to mention here a most regretable occurence which 
transpired in relation to the war in the South African states. 
I merely make my own statement of the affair, involving neither
the opinions nor the prejudices of any other person and desire
to be so understood. 
Some two or more years ago the President of the Red
Cross was waited upon by reputable agencies requesting that
the sanction of the Red Cross should be given to a body of
men in the city of Chicago, some fifty-six in number, said to
be composed of physicians and their assistants, who had organized
themselves into a corps of medical help for the
wounded and sick in the armies, in the field of South Africa 
where need was imminent.  Their funds were all raised, they
were medically officered, would soon sail from New York and
wanted, most of all, the sanction of the Red Cross, and to go
out as a body of volunteer Red Cross physicians and nurses 
for friend and foe alike.  Habitually cautious, we hesitated, 
and it was only after repeated visits from the agency and when
we were informed that the men were already in New York prepared 
to sail, -that each man of the forty-six had individually
given his sworn affidavit of entire loyalty to the cause he
represented and nothing else, and when they asked merely a letter
of recognition and the privilege of making a little Red 


-6- 

Cross flag for themselves that the letter and the flag were given
to their agent, and even then, our field agent, Dr. J. B. Hubbell
was sent from Washington to New York to personally inspect
the corps as it embarked, before allowing the letter and
and the flag to pass into their hands. 
After some weeks news of disloyal conduct began to
come back from Pretora.  The agents were promptly summoned to
Washington.  They could not believe the reports.  They had faith
in the rectitude of the corps.  At length the correctness of
the report was no longer to be gainsaid, and finally their head
surgeon returned, heartbroken and bearing back, as we were told,
their dishonored flag which he had succeeded in preserving.
Reports said that the men, once safely past the outposts and
admitted as Red Cross assistants, had torn off their brassards 
and trampled them, had taken allegience to the Boer Commanders
and entered the army as Irish American recruits. 
There was nothing to be done.  Of their fate we know
little.  A portion at least returned later to Chicago, how received,
if as heros or renegades we know not.  There was no law
for them, and none for us.  We can only report it here, but
speaking for myself, and I believe the delegation with me,I
desire to say that the moderation and the patient forbearance 
of the British authorities in dealing with these men was
something beyond conception.  Again I believe I speak for all,
when I say that, according to all known rules or customs of
war, England would have been justified in demanding the liberty
if not the life of every recreant traitor in that body. 
So far as we know, this is the only stain of disloyalty
or of broken faith that rests on the American Red Cross.
It is enough. 

GALVESTON, TEXAS. 

)&) 

Of the American Red Cross in civil relief during
the past five years, perhaps it is sufficient to name that
of Galveston, Texas, swept by a hurricane and tidal wave in
August 1900.  No greater disaster than this has fallen to our
charge to relieve.  Thirty thousand persons were overwhelmed
by the sea.  Eight thousand are supposed to have been drowned 
or killed and ten thousand mad utterly homeless.  The Red Cross
was so fortunate as to be able to render most acceptable service
during this sad crisis, in helping to build up temporary
homes, in furnishing them, feeding and clothing the sufferers 
and to aid the husbandmen in the desolated surrounding country
from which the fury of the waves, for sometimes fifty miles
inland, had carried away not only the homes and the animals
but had cleared the ground of all vegetation.  This was a fruit-growing
section of the country for the northern markets.The 
storm had taken from these husbandmen their only means of subsistence.
They were largely strawberry-growers.  No plants were
left on the ground.  The Red Cross procured at once a million
and a half of strawberry plants and distributed them among the
people.  These plants yielded fruit the first year.  This year 
their product is almost incredible in quantity.  The State of
Texas is [almost] a thousand miles in diameter.  It is no longer
a stranger to the Red C ross. 

THANKS FOR PUBLICATIONS.
Until the present time the American Red Cross has
published no official bulletin but has endeavored to supply
this deficiency so far as possible by sending the reports of
its fields of activity.  Such reports of the relief of Cuba and
Galveston have been sent recently to all central societies w 
whose address we possess, and we have been happy to receive
from very many societies most courteous acknowledgements for
which we desire to return our cordial thanks. 


-8- 

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT. 
To our patriotic and true-hearted President Roosevelt,
who carries with him the hearts and the hopes of our people,
our thanks are due for the appointment of the delegates to this
Conference.  While we ardently pray that his administration may 
never need the services of the Red Cross in war, we hope to be
permitted to lay our hands beside him in any woe that may befall
his people. 

OUR MARTYRED PRESIDENT. 
There remains but one more subject to mention.  In this
I am sure of the sympathy not alone of this Conference, but of
the whole world. 
The best of rulers, the man most beloved in all our 
land, of whom no word of disapproval is spoken, whom all trusted,
who loved his people as they loved him, has fallen by the
assassin's hand.  The third so to fall in our history.  God grant
it be our last. 
Let us take to ourselves courage and the hope that
the steps which we are so unitedly taking toward the love
and good will of all the nations of the earth, may not be
without effect. 

President of the
American National Red Cross. 

1
[*11 Try 11 R.*]
[*Peace Council 1902*]
[*P-11*]
When the official Invitation was given eight months ago to
prepare this paper, the World slumbered in unwanted peace.
For a scientific and philanthropic association
devoted to Social Science to have then been busied
with thoughts of "International Relief in War"
now seems to clothe that association with
the mantle of wise and prophetic foresight;
for the same lightening flash that told the
terrible news of the bombardment of
Alexandria -- the old home of the Pharaohs --
told us also that [above] among the fire and the
smoke, above the wounded and the slain
of both armies, floated out full and clear
the brave, peaceful, Samaritan ? blessed folds of the flag
of the Red Cross of Geneva -- and as every
newspaper in the land reiterated the fact,
from many hearts went out a sigh of
relief and a benediction on those who
organized this great mitigation of the
horrors of war.  We all learned at that
moment that no step towards the right
can be premature and that it is quite
possible for the wisest to build even better
than he knows.
Relief of any kind in war to wounded or
prisoners seems not to have anciently occupied [the]
seriously the attention of nations or of individuals;
and although the whole written history of

2
mankind is filled with the slaughter of
victims, the sacking and burning of towns;
[the torture degradation] the famine and the
pestilence of sieges; the torture, degradation
and enslavement of captives, little attention
has been given to amelioration[s] of these
unetched conditions, and an account of
that little seems to have been dropped through
accident, by historians --
One searches wearily through volumes of
International law to find in Grotius & Puffendorf
a little something on the treatment and
exchange of prisoners and even in Wheaton
the conditions have grown none too easy --
The original rule of war is laid down in the
Old Testament in rude ferocity even to the
extermination of neighbors, but no hint of
mitigation appears 'till the command "Love
your Enemies" lights up the banner of Christ.
It is less than three centuries ago that the
leading nations began to comprehend the grave
responsibility resting upon them as the
creators and promulgators of war; they then
began an official sanitary service, the
foundation of the present Military Medical
Service and staff of armies, which seemed so
great an advance on all that had gone
before.3
The care of the sick and wounded once assumed
by the government was left unthought of by
the people once the sufferings of sick & wounded
soldiers constituted one of a large class of
misfortunes for which no one was to blame; if
Wars must be; the Military surgeons humane
and noble have been the first to pity and
the bravest to proclaim the necessities of their
wretched patients and have ordinarily acted
up to the full measure of the regulations for
their relief. --
Little or no progress was made in relief work by
the French during the wars of the First Napoleon;
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 --
The women of Germany particularly of
Frankfort, in July 1814 united to form the
Frauenverin of that city to care for the sick and
wounded in War, and they provided for the
wants of the Military Hospitals and the care
of the sick and wounded without distinction
of friend or foe during all the War and the
Typhus that followed it - That society still
exists and has promptly rendered
its invaluable service in every war of the
Fatherland from that day to this.

4.
But in the vast Military operations of the War
of the Crimea in 1854 the newspaper correspondents
first threw back upon astonished England the
terrible fact of the entire inadequacy of her
Military Medical field service and both
government and people awoke as from a
dream.  When the letters of Lord Sidney Hubert
the British Minister of War and Florence Nightingale
crossed in transit -- the one begging for civil
help and the other begging to render it -- they
marked an era in the Worlds progress.
Two weeks later Miss Nightingale and her
forty faithful attendants sailed from England.
This little unarmed pilgrim band of
women that day struck a blow not only at
the barbarities of war, but at war itself --
which wrought meant more for mankind than all
the fleets and armies of that vast campaign.
The story of that volunteer corps seems like
a romance and the World knows it by heart,
now disease lessened, gangrene disappeared,
pestilence fell away, now under the strong
support of the Military authorities
and of the gracious Queen herself, the British
Military Hospitals in the Crimea from awful
depths of wretchedness, soon became types of
what Military hospitals ought to be --
The great example was given, this sense of5
costly sowing took root and would not die.
In the Italian wars of Napoleon 3d the garden
cities of Northern Italy, Milan, Turin, Brescia
burst into bloom with civil hospitals for the
care of the sick and wounded which were
the wonder of the hour -- but they were without
organization -- the first excitement died away
beneath the weight of difficulties and inexperience.
You certainly need no reminder of the
distressing inadequacy of our own medical
and hospital field service in the war of the
Rebellion - fearfully apparent within a
month after the firing upon Fort Sumpter --
nor of the uprising of the Sanitary Commission
with its 32,000 relief committee all over our
land, its struggle for existence and military
recognition even in the face of the daily
demonstration of the great and pressing necessity
of its humane co-operation --
No act of our Country has ever won for it such
an amount of moral credit and respect from
other nations as has resulted from this unparalled
display of active humanity --  The highest
French and German authorities upon the
subject are enthusiastic in their praise; it
was claimed to have marked a new era in
the Worlds history; to have been the greatest
act of philanthropy that humanity has ever

6
meditated and accomplished, to have
modified the whole social system of the United States.
Even before the American Conflict was ended
in 1864-66 occurred the War of Schleswig Holstein.
Here again was the old experience of insufficient
official medical service; here again appeared 
even increasing manifestations of unofficial
relief-timely-useful-welcome.
These statements otherwise so inadequate
sufficiently show these facts: -
1. That the official Army Medical Staff and
provisions for The sick and wounded of armies
have never been adequate to the emergencies
of active service - 
2. that individual humanity and ingenuity
have been untiring in their efforts to meet
and supply the costly deficiency -
3. That through lack of organization and
that concerted action which alone supply
the power to overcome great obstacles the
best of these efforts have nearly failed.
You recall how the work of the American
Sanitary Commission was at first jealously
regarded as a cunning device to gain power
for selfish ends; one Secretary asking what
they did want since they evidently did not
really want what they asked for and
even President Lincoln thought them
7/
only adding a fifth wheel to the coach
At last after repeated rebuffs and discouragements
on the 13th" of June 1861 There
was appointed "A Commission to inquire and
advise in respect to the Sanitary interests of the
United States forces"
It was in the midst of a very carnival of
War in 1864 that the great key note of a grand
harmony of peace was struck in Switzerland
M. Henry Dunant a Swiss gentleman traveling
in Italy in 1859 was in the neighborhood of
Solferino on the day of the great battle of the
24th of June He seems to have been deeply
impressed by the aspect of the battle field +
the sufferings and death of vast numbers
from the inadequate nursing and official
surgical relief
In 1864 inspired by these memories he stood
before the Genovese Society of public utility
in Switzerland and asked that Society
to consider the question of organizing permanent
volunteer Relief Societies in time of peace
to act in time of war by supplementing
the regular military establishment of
Medical + Surgical Assistants ; also as to a
system of neutrality between belligerents for
hospitals nurses  surgeons supplies and the
wounded themselves; he also published

8/
a work entitled "Un Souvenir de Solferino"
To these initial efforts of Mr. Dunant the
Inter National Congress of 1864 and its wonderful
results are primarily due An Inter National
Conference  attended by delegates from sixteen
Governments including Great Britain, France,
Spain, Russia, Austria, and Italy was held
in Oct. 1863. It sat four days - agreed upon some
important Resolutions and resulting in
the calling of the Congress known the International
Convention of Geneva of 1864 for the purpose of
considering the questions of the neutralization
of the sick and wounded soldiers of belligerent
armies. Called at the request of the
Supreme Federal Council of Switzerland it
was accepted by 16 powers and opened its
sessions at the Hotel de Ville at Geneva on
the 8th of Aug. 1864 by delegates accredited 
with sufficient power[s] to sign a treaty.
Nine articles agreed on by the convention
were signed on the 22nd of August; the 
main object being to establish as a rule
governing all military forces _ on all occasions
under some limitations. The human
principles which from time to time have
been exceptionally applied.
The articles adopted constituted a treaty
which received the signatures of twelve9
governments at first increased subsequently
to 16 and now to more than double that
number
A notable opportunity for putting these
principles to the severest test soon occurred
in the Franco-German war of 1870 and
it is cheering to know that they stood
triumphantly every test of military trial
in one of the momentous wall of  modern times
No instance of the infraction of their
regulations or of advantage being taken of its
privileges is recorded. Every advantage
anticipated was secured Every treaty-bound
power found its contributions for the relief
of the sick + wounded in either army
promptly acknowledged + faithfully distributed
and returns made with absolute accuracy
and fidelity; Every power not within the
Treaty and the organization found its
contributions objects of indifference or suspicion;
there was no voucher for their character
and no one to take charge of them who
could pass through Army lines
In this condition the magnificent 
contributions of this country were found
at last In spite of the best judgement
[often] of the most conscientious of agents they
partly perished and weer largely wasted

10
because there was no organized channel
through which they might [pass] flow.
It may be asked why this country had not
adopted the Treaty? The story would be long;
The U.S. had been represented in the Convention
of 18th by the great head of the Sanitary Commission
Dr H.W. Bellows who presented the matter to
the U.S. government ably + well and it was
declined as it had been before to the amazement
and perplexity of the Inter National Committee
of Geneva.-
It was again urged upon the attention of the
Government in 1877 during the administration
of Pres. Hayes and it was again declined
It was not till almost four years later-
with the incoming of the Administration
of Pres. Garfield that any favorable response
was made to those urging this most important
Treaty of humanity through seventeen weary 
years Pres. Garfield promised to recommend
the adoption of the Treaty in his first annual
Message to Congress in Dec. 1881 The Hon.
Secy of State wrote a most cordial letter of
approval embodying the sentiments of the
whole cabinet Pres. Arthur carried out the
plan and performed the promise of his
lamented predecessor and the Treaty was finally
adopted by the U.S. and its long days of neglect
was over.11
The American Society originally organized in
1877-8 re-organized almost immediately after Pres.
Garfields assurances of cooperation and
support in June 1881 extended the scope of
its labors or supervision beyond the original
idea of relief in War to the relief of the
suffering caused by the greater calamities
to which the vast extent of our country renders
it painfully liable-
In July + Aug. 1881 subordinate societies were
formed in Danville Rochester + Syracuse
just in time to meet the emergency of the
Michigan fines of that year which they did
thoroughly and well and the recent
overflow of the Mississippi called again for
help which was rendered with a promptness
exactness and ease alike gratifying to all
concerned It is a fact worthy of mention
that the munificent contributions of one
individual through the Rochester Society
of $10.000 in deed 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 to
secure any return from the land the present
year
      

12
a call from the National Committee made
upon the Rochester Society to meet this
new emergency was promptly responded to
and within 3 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 properly assorted and
re-shipped to the proper points in five
different states with full instructions
for its final distribution-
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 subordinated societies of
thirty two nations acting in concert in the
blessed work of charity and the practical 
furtherance of good will among mankind13

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 Inter National 
relief in great emergencies as some years 
of attention to the subject and some 
little experience have given me.

If your honored body shall find 
the subject matter of sufficient 
importance to attract its further 
attention and elicit such suggestions 
and counsel as it may from time to time 
the pleasure to bestow the great object of my 
coming will have been attained.[*CV*]
1/.
Remarks to the members of my executive committee when
they shall have reached the point of forming state committees
as suggested in Article III - Sec 2 of By Laws of Jan 9, 1903
The subject to which you have so graciously consented
to lend your wise consideration, being one which has
naturally constituted the chief and most anxious sum
of my thought, endeavor and efforts for the last decades,
I trust I may be pardoned if I venture things to your
attention some of the attempts made in the confidence of untried
hope as well the calmer and more modest wisdom later
born of the travail of experience, The longing that
is only one countryman of wisdom - standing and never
out of the being things would come and stand with me
and help to plant in the national garden the germ
of the new plant seeking its home.  Until this late withering
swoon of destruction swept over, it would have been so
easy under even slight favoring conditions to accomplish this, but when
shall one learn the great lesson of life constantly
before us.  Verily the seed is not questioned until it due 
Nothing is more apparent than that to extend
the benefits of the Red Cross throughout the country it
must be engrafted into all its domain, through its states
and possibly its territories.  How to do this and at the
some time preserve to the national organization its parental
oversight and wise direction and at the same time secure the support and large
heart of the people, in its welfare as something belonging to them is a

2/.
question of no small moment.  In what way they shall best grant a
knowledge of its purposes, its qualifications, its scope, its necessities, in
fact of itself has proved a far more intricate study
than appears of the surface to the unaccustomed eye.
What manner of known organization shall best suit.
One tries to adapt it to the methods of other great and
successful bodies, the Mason for instance, the great Catholic
church, the Y.M.C.A. - The Christian Endeavor and other striking examples
of successful organizations, but none fit.  It is not a social
body, it is not a religious body, it cannot be sectarian, or for by its very life principles, it must be free from all shades of sect.  or soce
it must give to the Mulen and the Israelis and the heathen the same consideration as the
Christian.  Its very health makes it difficult to arrange.
Again I need not call to your minds the strong sectional
sentiments of our people.  The tendency of the people of a 
state to lose sight of the fact that there is a power
greater than themselves, indeed they are often almost ready to take
up arms in defense of state loyalty.  Will it as exclude the
residents of a state are clanish and the matter that can
draw lend and hold them in unison without friction and
at the same time raise their legal interest and natural
love above all state pride must be wise, strong form
and kind and generous.  The natural must be the
acknowledged head.  To do this it must be in some
manner mode generally independent of the state organizations
although supported by the same element.
In other words if it would maintain the respect of its stateDraft of notes to
Committee on Extension

3
organizations it must not place itself in the position
of a dependency upon them as such for its funds
The less financial arrangements existing between the
two the better the prospect for continued harmony
and successful action a ratio of percentage from
the state bodies - while almost universal I have observed
to be defective - the tendency of these bodies is to starve the National, or to create the natural discord of debts &
credit - To alleviate all there difficulties, and
at the same time give to all person, the highest
position in the Red Cross which they could crave
I would suggest that every person seeking to belong
to it become an actual sustaining member by the
payment of an annual due of one dollar. this should
entitle them to a certified to that effect, and this certificate should continue their eligibility to the State
organization of which they may wish to become a
member - and or no other conditions could they become
or remain a member of Any State organization and
the faithful fulfillment of this regulation should constitute the only financial transactions known between the national organization and its local branches - An annual or semi annual
Report of all its member to be made by each state body to
the National thus keeping the tally correct and membership honest

4 / That which costs nothing has generally no worth to the possessor - when a privilege is bought and paid for it 
assumes a value - without some direct bond between 
the National Red Cross and the individual people or allowing them to become members of their State Societies alone, - three 
fourth of them would never never realize, and one third of them would 
never even know of the existence of the national body. This is the great 
difficulty we have always had to contend with, and what we shall continue to meet from the people until they are taught in some practical way. When they find that they cannot become members even in their own state without first settling with the national, they will learn of its existence and use, and to respect it accordingly - nothing will be so generally and immediately effective in spreading a knowledge of the red cross army the masses as this simple reasonable and equitable course - and at the same time it supplies the great financial spring for the sustenance of the national body. It will, as well be a help and safeguard in the formation of the State societies - all legitimate applicants will have been recommended to, and accepted by the national.  State societies, should, I think be left free to pursue such methods of relief, or of good work as best befits their locality, conditions and needs -

5/ The next step to consider would seem to be the best
and earnest method of establishing state organization
How to find and get into communication with the most
desirable persons in each of the nearly half hundred states
some of them nearly as far away as some foreign countries
The selection of the proper persons in each state
would be difficult not to say doubtful achievement
In order to succeed it must be persons who stand
high in the confidence and respect of the people of the 
State: persons who by position would be accorded
the right of leadership: and power. and to whom this
precedence would unhesitatingly be given - In every state
there is one, and only one person to whom this public
sanction has been given. and whose prominent and choice
of the people cannot be questioned - viz its elected governor
What man in any state could so properly - and
authoritatively call for a body of leading citizens to
organize in that state a Red Cross Society or Committee
to take the lead in humane operations and to organize
under it the smaller bodies to cooperate with it
in every section of the state - 
The objection might be urged that, notwithstanding



6/
all the advantages of position still the German might
in some instances prove to be a phlegmatic man, and
not disposed to push ahead a movement of this kind
even when referred to him and thus it sleep on his
hands - Nature provides a remedy for this state of
things - persons are nearly sure to select opposite nations
as partners, and besides the women of the state should have
a leader of their own in some manner. Why not select
the German and his wife, as the persons to take the
lead of this organization. Making them jointly the leaders
in the general organization - what one may lack, it may
be pretty well assured will be found in the other
and that terrible bane of all such endeavors - may
jealousy will be eliminated - their efforts will be a 
unit, they will work in harmony - a main element
in all cooperative work - The glory of one will be the
pride, not the envy of the other - Their ranks will
be doubled - and I firmly believe their results will
be equally so - It will then be left to them to accept
their membership from those already accepted - 9and0 by the
national and bearing their certificate, each one well
knowing to whom, they belong. and that the Red Cross is a part of

7/
themselves, and they come home to work in it with
their state. - There would be no financial relations
between the State & National - no bad blood, but a
proved record of work accomplished to be handled in
together with membership once or twice a year - 
It would remain for men accustomed to the
clarification of voters - to arrange how many persons
in a State would entitle that society to a role in
the national body - and such other technicality as our
customary in such matters - I would not recommend
an attempt to follow too closely the beaten track of
political or other bodies - but for our nice
committee to mark out its own track so far as it
seems to them best
It seems to me that with
such a foundation - with our Work of first Aid
well established, and a harmonious attitude between
ourselves - a good field committee with experience 
and the cooperation of the leading journals of the
Country. as I think we already have - that
the Red Cross needs anything but to be rid of
the baneful elements of disappointed ambition and
a rule of ignorance to make it what it should be
It will at this rate fund itself and will not need depend 
[r*on gifts of the wealthy under it.*]

1          
A few words at the Congl church
for the U.T.C U. Nov 22d 1903
The Worlds S S. day
Friends
I know you will forgive me
and I think you will measurably understand
me when I say that in some way I feel that
I am out of place in this beautiful gathering
That I cannot bring myself fully into
accord with it
To you it is an occasion of rejoicing
for the progress you have made in the grand
work you are accomplishing the world over
Your hearts are full of grateful joy
you are reporting the results and celebrating
the success of the mighty efforts of the great
leader you so faithfully follow
                  
2
In the exhilaration of your daily work
while you do not forget still in a manner
you lose sight of the bereavement you have
suffered and there is peace in your hearts
for exultation and abounding hope
To me who have not been with you
in the rush and excitement of your success
the sad memory lingers with scarcely an
abatement- To me the shock of the
unlooked for and distracting message as
it fell from the wires - 'Francis Willard is dead'
still remains
I cannot yet think of her as
gone from us forever - To me she is not only
here in spirit I believe she is - but
it seems to me that somewhere among us3
that outward form so beloved by all,
must be: - that in some opportune 
moment, that clear toned voice like a 
silver bell will let fall into our midst 
like words of wisdom and loving grace 
we so dwelt on and long once more to 
hear. To me, she comes nearest in 
the memory of tender sorrowful words, both spoken and written, when the soul was too full for silence. and reached out for another soul that could give back sympathy, and keep it's secret. 
I thank god that He enabled me 
to do both, 
I thank Him for the high, noble 
hand that reached out from the seas

4
and strengthened the arm, steadied 
the faltering steps, and bound up the 
wounds that had pierced the soul, as 
arrows pierce the body. 
I thank Him for the brave 
Mother land that rested here, when the
wild rush of her own brought weariness 
and pain.
I thank Him with you that in
His wire ministrations that noble helping
hand from afar has filled the vacant place
and become your leader - 
Bless the honored name we need 
not speak. - all the world knows it. 
But most of all, is gratitude we5.
for the great faithful love of a whole
nation- the homage of a people shown
in world gatherings like this following
the precepts walking in the footsteps,
serving and striving to live out the
example of that saintly and sainted
spirit to the end
Let us Serve faithfully and bravely.
loving and daring Keeping always
before us that to me the greatest of
modern prayers
Lord God of hosts be with us yet
Lest we forget  lest we forget
Clara Barton
Glen Echo

Robert Racks
 Manchester[*45-11
F. Willard*] 

A few words at the Cong'l. Church for the W. T. C. U. 
November 22nd, 1903 
The Worlds S. S. Day . 
[** copy sent] usa B
US  Frances Willard*] 

Friends:
I know you will forgive me and I think you will measurably understand 
me, when I say that in some way I feel that I am out of place in this
beautiful gathering, that  I cannot bring myself fully into accord with it. 
To you, it is an occasion of rejoicing for the progress you have made
in the grand work you are accomplishing, the world over.  Your hearts are
full of grateful joy.  You are reporting the results, and celebrating the
success of the mighty efforts of the great leader you so faithfully follow. 
In the exhilaration of your daily work, while you do not forget, still
in a manner you lose sight of the bereavement you have suffered, and there
is place in your hearts for exultation, and abounding hope. 
To me, who have not been with you in the rush and excitement of your
successes, the sad memory lingers with scarcely an abatement.  To me, the
shock of the unlooked for, and distracting message as it fell from the,- 
"Frances Willard is dead" still remains. 
I cannot yet think of her as gone from us forever.  To me, she is not
only here, in spirit, as I believe she is, but it seems to me that somewhere 
among us that outward form so beloved  by all must be;- that in some
opportune moment, that clear toned voice, like a silver bell will let fall
into our midst the words of wisdom and loving grace wee so dwelt on and long
once more to hear.  To me, she comes nearest in the memory of tender sorrowful 
words, both spoken and written when the soul was too full for silence,
and reached out for another soul that could give back sympathy, and keep its
secret. 
I thank God that He enabled me to do both.
I thank Him for the high, noble hand that reached out from over the
seas and strengthened the arm, steadied the faltering steps, and bound up 


2. 
the wounds that had pierced the soul, as arrows pierce the body. 
I thank Him for the brave Motherland that rested her, when  the
wild rush of her own brought weariness and pain. 
I thank Him with you that in His wise ministrations that noble helping
hand from afar has filled the vacant place and become your leader. 
Bless the honored name we need no speak,- all the world knows it. 
But most of all, is gratitude due for the great faithful love of a 
whole nation, the homage of a people shown in world gatherings like 
this, following the precepts, walking in the footsteps, serving, and striving
to live out the example of that saintly and sainted spirit to the end. 
Let us serve faithfully and bravely, loving and daring, keeping
always before us that to me the greatest of modern prayers
Lord God of hosts be with us yet
Lest we forget- lest we forget. 
Clara Barton. 
Glen Echo.11-A
Miss clara Barton 
At graduation Oxford High School
[*Return copy to H.W. Cristy*]
A little talk to the graduating class of
the High School of Oxford Mass on the presentation
of their diplomas - 
Friends teacher, pupils - townspeople
"Let me thank you for the honor you have conferred
upon me. and beg you to bear with the remarks I make.
The cause which calls us together, and the
ceremony we are to witness are of no ordinary
moment. They are those in which, in one, or
another capacity, every one present has a personal
interest. From the instructor to the layman of
the town. all have a part; but of varying natures.
"Let us first turn to the honored teacher.
To him this night marks a duty done."
The feverish heat of endeavor of the past year
may now cool away - the struggle is won. Like the
toiling husbandman he brings his sheaves
and lays them at our feet. He may rest
his brain, wipe the sweat from his brow. and
receive the congratulations so well deserved - 
so freely gain. Accept, then, faithful teacher
the guardian of our Thanks: may no less success
ever attend your labors in life.

2
"To the parents of this graduating class, whom
almost we could cull from the audience by the
gleam of pride and joy on your faces: still there
is mingled in the events of this evening a sensation
9never0 not known to you before. How you have toiled
through the years. since the prattle of childhood, for
the school life of these children!! You have even
forgotten to be weary. in your interest for the.
"Their life has been yours - their studies, their welfare
as pupils. With what fatherly and motherly longing
you have watched them spring gaily from the door-step
each morning for the duty that was theirs. You
have travelled the same road with the, with
never a turn till tonight. The end for which you
have stroven is here. We rejoice with you, but
along with our rejoicing, There trickles into our
hearts a vein of pity we had not looked for.
"In all your gain, you have still lost something
Mother,. You have lost your little school girl!
True she is still with you, but along with the whysome
happy, careless, school girl laugh, comes the first
touch of woman-hood. In the sparkle of her eye,
athwart the gem of trained intellect that rests
3.
On her brow. you now discover the first shadows of care.
All the more will she need you now. Fare as
the lilly, sweet as the rose, in this new life she comes
into your hands. Guide her carefully. Oh, Mother, guard 
her from the frivolities of youth, and the spoilers touch. You have lost your happy school girl, but you have gained a companion; for such she will seem to you
from this night on. We congratulate. and we 
sympathize.
"And Father, to you comes the sam
change! You. also have lost your school boy,
but judging by the manliness and vigor of the exercises
to which we have listened tonight, you too
have gained a companion. Hold well, the
confidence he will offer you. - give him the
advice he will so often need, and if rightly
permitted, will seek from you.
"In a manner. your most critical duties in
the future of your son. are just commencing.
"The aspirations of youth will draw him
dangerward, The paths so trodden and so worn,
by you, are all new to him. Show him the quicksands;
warn him of the dangers - kindly -

4
fatherly, never impatiently, remembering that
what is so plain to you, is all unseen by him,
He is looking to the tall hights beyond with longing
eyes. - His ambitions are spurring him on. - show
him the pitfalls that lie between, and help him over.
"If there is a weak rung in the ladder he
"climbs, bid him tread it lightly, and hold
fast his unskilled hand, lest he fall. - And
when in turn, you must descend your ladder
of life. his manly grateful hand shall still
hold yours. helping you down safely and lovingly
to the end. " Yes, Fathers. the turn in the long
nod comes to you as well. - You have lost
your mischievous school boy, but from this
night, in the great brotherhood of man, you too
have gained a companion. As you have heard
his voice in the exercises of this evening, you
will yet hear it with a still greater pride,
in the affairs of life around you, or in the
councils of the nation. Guard him - guide him,
fit him for the life he is commencing -
(She)
P2
5
Graduates [Students] of the class of 1906, to you, more than to 
all others is this night the turn in your road 
of life.  - More than to all, is it of interest to 
you. Since happy little children with the 
morning kiss at the door-step, carrying a flower 
to your teacher, your gaze has been fixed on 
this night. How you have toiled for it's 
success! The sunshine and the rain. The 
heat and the cold have been the same to you. 
Your thoughts, your hopes were centered 
on this point.
In that little roll of parchment, which it 
is my proud privilege to hand to you tonight 
lies the fruition of these years of faithful endeavor.
It is yours now to keep them as unsullied 
and spotless as you receive them. It is yours 
to see that no finger mark of dishonor rest 
on them. That in your future lives you 
build up around, and incircle each one with 
a halo of usefulness. integrity. justice. 
mercy, love of man, and love of God, that 
shall render it forever impregnible. 
First of all, is due your gratitude 

6
to the parents, who, with a solicitude you cannot 
now comprehend, have made this night possible 
for you.
Next, to [the] your teachers whose anxious toil 
you can never repay. and to the nation whose 
wise and beneficent laws create, and protect 
the institutions you enjoy. You are now 
fitting yourselves for citizenship. Whoever 
will, or no, The day must come when it will
fall on all alike. The highest point you can 
ever attain is a worthy citizenship in a country 
like ours, where all rule and all obey. 
Where the Government of the people, for the 
people, and by the people cannot perish from the 
earth. To accomplish this, you must live 
above the frivolities and temptations of early 
life. Put on manhood and woman-hood 
as securely and seriously as possible. 
Never forget the courtesies of life. 
Girls, remember that politeness is only kindness. 
That good manners can spring only from 
a good heart. And that True Religion and un-defiled 
asks only helpfull kindness and to keepunspotted from the world.

And Boys, this applies equally to you.  And let me in addition beseech of you, that you reject the temptations that surround young manhood.  They will lie thick on every side.

Let chastity be your girdle of honor.  Shun the sparkling glass as you would shun destruction and death, it is there, and nothing less. - Cast it forever from you. - The adder lies under its foam.  And boys - toss to the winds the alluring cigaret - Nay, every form of the rank broad leaf, that saps the richest earth for its growth and which no animal that God has created can feed and live upon.  Cast all these temptations behind you.  Live pure and simple lives!

Oh, Graduating Class of 1906. - Children of Grand Old Oxford, set your standards high and firm, an example that all may hereafter follow.

And now in thy youth beseech of Him, who giveth upwardly not that his light in they heart become not dim - And his love be unfazed.  And thy God in the darkest of days shall be Freeman and strength to thee

A LITTLE TALK TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF THE HIGH SCHOOL OF OXFORD, MASS. ON THE PRESENTATION OF THEIR DIPLOMAS.

FRIENDS, TEACHER, PUPILS, TOWNSPEOPLE.

Let me thank you for the honor you have conferred upon me, and beg you to bear with the remarks I make.

The cause which calls us together, and the ceremony we are to witness are of no ordinary moment.  They are these in which, in one, or another capacity, every one present has a personal interest.  From the instructor to the laymen of the town, all have a part, but of varying natures.

Let us first turn to the honored teacher.  To him this night marks a duty done.  The feverish heat of endeavor of the past year may now cool away.  His struggle is won.  Like the toiling husbandman he brings his sheaves and lays them at our feet.  He may rest his brain, wipe the sweat from his brow, and receive the congratulations so well deserved, so freely given.  Accept then, faithful teacher, the guerdon of our thanks; May no less success ever attend your labors in life.

To the parents of this graduating class, whom almost we could cull from the audience by the gleam and joy on your faces; still there is mingled in the events of this evening a sensation not known to you before.  How you have toiled through the years, since the prattle of childhood, for the school life of these children!  Their life has been yours, their studies, in your interest for them.  With that fatherly and motherly longing you have watched them spring gaily from the doorstep each morning for the duty that was theirs.  You have travelled the same road with them with never a turn till tonight.  The end for which you have striven is here.  We rejoice with you, but along with our rejoicing, there trickles into our hearts a vein of pity we had not looked for.

In all your gain, you have still lost something.  Mother, - You have lost your little school-girl.  True she is still with you, but along with the happy, careless school girl laugh comes the first touch of womanhood.  In the sparkle of her eye, athwart, the gam of trained intellect that rests on her brow, you now discover the first shadows of care.  All the more will she need you now.  Pure as the lilly, sweet as the rose, in this new life she comes into your hands.  Guide her carefully, Oh, mother, guard her from the frivolities of youth, and the spoilers touch.  You have lost your happy school girl, but you have gained a companion for such she will seem to you from this night on.  We congratulate and we sympathize. 

And father, to you comes the same change!  You also have lost your school boy, but judging by the manliness and vigor of the exercises to which we have listened tonight, you too have gained a companion.  Hold well, the confidence he will offer you, give him the advice he will so often need, and if rightly permitted, will seek from you.H. S. Joslin . 
oxford. 

2. 

In a manner your most critical duties in the future of your
son,  are just commencing.  The aspirations of youth will draw him dangerward. 
The paths so trodden and so worn by you, are all new to him. 
Show him the quicksands;  warn him of the dangers, kindly- fatherly, 
never impatiently, remembering that what is so plain to you, is
all unseen by him.  He is looking to the tall heights beyond with
longing eyes.  His ambitions are spurring him on.  If there is a 
weak rung in the ladder he climbs, bid him tread it lightly, and
hold fast his unskilled hand, lest he fall.  And when in turn, you
must descent your ladder of life, his manly grateful hand shall
still hold yours, helping you down safely and lovingly to the end. 
Yes fathers, the turn in the long road comes to you as well.  You
have lost your mischievous school boy, but from this night, in the
great brotherhool of man, you too have gained a companion, as you have
heard his voice, in the exercises of this evening, you will yet hear 
it with a still greater pride in the affiars of 
life around you, or in the councile of the nation.
Guard him, guide him, fit him for the life he is commencing. 

Graduates of the class of 1906- to you, more than to all others
is this night the turn in your road of life.  More than to all, is it
of interest to you.  Since happy little children, with the morning 
kiss at the doorstep, carrying a flower to your teacher, your gaze
has been fixed on this night.  How you have toiled for its success! 
The sunshine and the rain, the heat and the cold have been the same
to you.  Your thoughts, your hopes were centered on this point. 

In that little roll of parchment, which it is my proud
privilege to hand to you tonight, lies the fruition of these years 
of faithful endeavor.  It is yours now to keep them as unsullied and
spotless as you receive them.  It is yours to see that no finger mark
of dishonor rest on them.  That in your future lives you build up
around, and incircle each one with a halo of usefulness, integrity,
justice, mercy, love of man, and love of God, that shall render it
forever impregnable. 

First of all is due your gratitude to the parents, who
with a solicitude you cannot now comprehend, have made this night
possible for you. 

Next to the teachers whose anxious toil you can never repay.  And 
to the Nation whose rise and beneficent laws create, and protest
the institutions you enjoy.  You are now fitting yourselves for citizenship. 
Whoever will, or no, the day must come when it will fall on all
alike.  The highest point you can ever attain is a worthy citizenship 
in a country like ours, where all rule, and all obey.  Where the
Government of the people, for the people, and by the people cannot perish 
from the earth.  To accomplish this, you must live above frivolities
and temptations of early life.  Put on manhood and womanhood as
securely as possible. 

Never forget the courtesies of life.  Girls, remember that
politeness is only kindness, that good manners can spring only from
a good heart, and that true religion and undefiled, asls only helpful
kindness and to keep unspotted from the world. 


3. 

And Boys, this applies equally to you, and let me, in addition
beseech of you, that you reject the temptations that surround
young manhood.  They will lie thick on every side.  Let chastity
be your girdle of honor, shun the sparkling glass as you would shun 
destruction and death, it is there, and nothing less.  Cast it forever
from you,  the adder lies under its foam.  And boys, toss to the
winds the alluring oigaret.  Nay, every form of the rank brood leaf,
that saps the richest earth for its growth and which no animal 
that God has created can feed and live upon.  Cast all these temptations
behind you.  Live pure and simple lives. 

Oh! Graduating Class of 1906, children of Grand Old
Oxford, set your standard high and firm, an example that all may 
hereafter follow. 

And now in thy youth beseech of Him, who giveth     not
That His light in thy heart become not dim- And his love be unforgot
And thy God in the darkest of days shall be greenness and
beauty and strength to thee. 


         Opening remarks at 3'd Annual meeting
               of the First Aid   Boston 6-8 1908
Mr. Chairman, Ladies + Gentlemen:
           Once more it is my privilege
to open our annual ^ meeting and welcome its guests
            A meeting held for the purpose
of definitely recounting the labors and
progress of the past year of recieving
in the aggregate the results of our three
years of endeavor and by the experience
and knowledge thus far gained to the more
wisely estimate the process and needs of
the future
         The review of the past year lies
in the report of our faithful and I feel
like saying matchless secretary who has
much to tell us and whose time I 
shall not abridge by any formal
                         2
words of mine I have only to say
of the united labors of two active 
members of our staff - the two working
bees of the hive- our secretary and
assistant of the President - that more
faithful unselfish untiring + unbroken
labors I have never seen - never expect
and never want to see If I
have ever wished for wealth It was
to help on such workers and such work
as theirs
      Notwithstanding this has been
a year of financial depression our
progress seems to have been little
retarded thereby and our thanks
are due to the ready co-workers standing
faithfully by us the Young mens
Christian association - the Salvation

                   3
army The officers of the great steel
thoroughfares of the country and
others who might well be named
           In imaginary vision I see the
warning finger and shake of the head
of our beloved Vice President as her
name comes to my lips - but how
shall I aquit myself and not -at
least call to mind the ready services
the wise counsel and more than 
all the hopeful assurance that has
cast the silvery lining on every cloud
    The resignation of our first
Treasurer tendered through press of
personal occupation was regretfully
accepted with thanks for past services
          In general we may be soulfully
thankful for the kindly spirit every-                   4
where manifested and happy in the
acquirement of friendly relations
         But in the brightest sun-light
the shadows ever fall The touch of
the Eternal has rested on the brow
of or most revered and treasured
member and called him to itself.
          The pulse of a great heart true to
the wants of every human being has
ceased to beat The philanthropic
hand reaching out to every land
lies powerless and still and we
to whom his words were gold walk
tearfully under the shadows here
hopefully trusting in the sunlight
beyond It is not my purpose
neither my desire to pronounce
a eulogy on our lamented
                     5
member.- he does not need it.
and it is very little  for me to say
that whoever has known John Hitz
in this life has come as near to
knowing the type of those whom
we have been taught to believe
were fitted for the relmes of the next
as he can reasonably expect to
know
       Again our sympathies go out
to our esteemed and bereaved counselor
Mr Fulton whose home has
been darkened  and life saddened
by the loss of the companion loved
and mourned by all who knew
her and our tender thoughts cluster
around the motherless daughter
sharing alike the fathers loss + grief                    6
If I were to add a word in regard
to the character and prospects of
our work as an organization it
would be that in my belief it is
the most hopeful encouraging and
far-reaching in its activities and
its results for the welfare of mankind
in general of any humanitarian
movement existing today
           It interferes with no one:
It seeks only its own scattering  broadcast
the seeds of useful knowledge
planting in the hearts of all the love
and care of their fellow men - making
every where only for good
        If its future success and existence
be measured by its worth it must be
endless and we may proceed in
                    7
the firm trust that a work of
the people for the people and
by the people shall not perish
from the earth[* R x *] 
ADDRESS OF MISS CLARA BARTON, AT FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, OAK PARK,
SUNDAY, MAY 8TH, 1910. 
[*B-11 
Mothers Day.
sketch of life & work of C.B by C.B.*] 

FRIENDS - Through the courtesy of your pastor and my cousin,
I am invited to meet with you and say a few words, leaving their selection
to myself.  This I am told is our Mother's Day, and while my
theme does not bear directly upon that, when we remember all the mothers
and children concerned in it, it may not be considered entirely
outside of the mark, For I take you back with me to the time of the
Armenian Massacres of 18  .  The older members here will recall the
great wave of sympathy which swept over the country, coupled with fears,
for our missionaries, and the intense desire to send aid to Armenia.
We raised a fund, but Turkey would not permit its distribution.  England
raised also, with the results, and suggested application to the American
Red Cross as a distributor, of which body I need not say, I was President. 
We, as public servants, could only accept and go, if possible.  I selected
a considerable force of our best workers, both men and women, but
at a late moment finding that we were likely to be objected to, I reduced
my force, and we sailed for Liverpool to find the objections
confirmed, with proviso that Turkey would permit to land at Constantinople
such as our American Minister, Mr.Terrel, would guarantee.  I reduced
my force again, sending every woman back, and proceeded with what
remained, knowing that a few such men were a host in themselves.  I need 
not tell you of the welcome of the Missionary Board of Constantinople - 
Washburn, Gates, Peet, nor the glorious women toiling there.  You have 
heard of Miss Patrick's School for Girls at Scutard,  the old worshipped
hospital grounds of Florence Nightingale.  I was most urgently requested
to go there, and tell these girls gathered there from all the countries
of Southwestern Europe, who I was and where I came from.  They knew 


(2) 
what I came for.  I accepted, and what I said to them then is what I
will read to you today.  Thus, if in imagination you can make the transformation
from Dr. Barton's worthy congregation to fifty or more, bright
eyed, dark haired, Lain faced, eager girls, we shall be in proper relations. 

Copy of an Address read before the Alumnae of the"Girls
College" at Scutari, by invitation, during the Commencement
Exercises of June, 1896. 

And this, is Scutari.  The shrine at which the world has
worshipped through half a century.  The birthplace of humanity in war. 
The open sesame to the public philanthropy of womanhood.  The nursery
of trained nurses, and the home of this seat of learning honored the
world over.  Here were the "camps-allied" that reeked with death, and
here, the hospitals of Florence Nightingale.  Scutari it was, as our
English tongue first gave it to us, but it mattered no by what name it
was called;  in whatever land it was spoken it was loved alike, and
through choking voices, "all sang Annie Laurie." 
Far away in "merrie England", in her invalid chair, reclines
this great-souled woman, whose influence upon the progress of the world
is without measure, and whose benign light will shine steadily on, when
the "veil so thin, so strong" shall have hidden her from earthly view,
and the Heavenly protals ring with, "Well done, good and faithful,- 
Enter in."  The halo that his sainted woman will bequeath to this
spot will circle about this institution as long as history shall combine
the two, and every graduate that goes out from here, bears on her diploma
a name that is a talisman to all the world.  She has trodden the 
ground where woman was honored and blessed of all men, and where the
dark-browed soldier whose foreign tongue could not speak her name, kissed
her shadow, as she passed his bed. 

(3) 
Madam Chairman:  In great courtesy you have invited me to come before
this Alumnae and tell something of myself and work in America.
Your wise sense of the fitness of things will help you to realize,
in part, the embarrassment in which the position places me;  to bring my
tame story of hackneyed, every day life, to lay beside this altar of
history and renown is a thought at which my whole being shrinks into
nothingness, and I will not long occupy the time to the exclusion of
other speakers. 
I am aware that I have dropped into this Eastern country like a
visitor from another world, and to these Oriental students have, until
today, been a myth;  and even now, remain a mystery.  For their sake I
will ask the privilege of defining my personelle;  naming at least, what
section of the earth I dropped from, and what circumstances of birth
or otherwise placed me there;  as, even in the city of Boston, less than 
forty miles from by birth place, I had occasion not long ago to claim,
in open meeting, my rights of nationality;  the reporters having represented
me as a "Portugese lady who would address the audience on the
international usages of war," and a few days before, a Philadelphia 
paper had stated that "Miss Clara Barton who was observed in the audience
was prevailed upon to make some remarks on international topics. 
The the lady spoke in English and with very little accent." 
If that could occupy in my own country, what might not happen here? 
First then I am an American.  My grandfather, Dr. Stephen
Barton, a physician of very creditable eminence for those days, held
some civil office of trust in the Revolutionary war, residing in the 
old Huguenot town of Oxford, Massachusetts.  My father, Captain Stephen
barton, born there, was, in his earlier days, a non-commissioned officer 
under General Wayne - "Mad Anthony" - in the wars of the Western frontiers;
was present at the treaty of peace at Detroit.  Returning later 


(4) 
in life, married my mother, a bright young girl of seventeen, and became
a resident of Oxford.  At the end of six years they found themselves
the possessors of four strong healthy children, two boys, and
two girls.  The number remained unchanged for a dozen years or more,
when a slight accession accrued,-another strong healthy child.  This
time as Patrick would say - 
"It was meself." 
In such a family I had no playmates.  My brothers and sisters
became school teachers.  Naturally among so many teachers my education
commenced realy, not entirely systematic, as you will observe.  Each
instructor followed the bent of his or her own taste.  My sisters,- 
beautiful girls that they were,- took charge of all ordinary studies. 
My father drilled me in military tactics; we marshalled large
armies, laid in ambush, and fought sanguinary battles.  My elder 
brother, a fine student and business man, taught me mathematics and
book-keeping;  while the younger brother, a skillful horseman, taught
me to ride wild horses,like a little Mexican, and my practical mother
complained that among them all, her prospects for making a good housekeeper
of me, were not hopeful.  Still faithful to her blessed memory
and patient efforts I have"kept a moderate tight grip on the handful
of things" she did tell me. 
At fifteen I, too, became a teacher, and continued for ten
years with little interruption, when, feeling the need of higher education
for myself, I entered Clinton Liberal Institute N.Y. graduated,- 
established a few schools after that, and drifted into the city of
Washington a few years before the outbreak of the Civil War.  I never 
quite understood why I went, alone, and uncalled, to that slave city, capital 
as it was, unless it were that I had some knowledge to gain there, 
some acquaintance to make with men and things in order to fit for for
what was to follow a little later.  Be the cause what it may, the re- 

(5) 
sults were the same;  I did establish the footing I required, when, in
April 1861 the great drama of the civil war was opened upon our astonished
people, and Washington became its military and political center. 
Abraham Lincoln had become our President.  The city filled at once
with troops,-Battles followed, the wounded were brought,- the public
buildings were converted into hospitals. 
The Red Cross was not then in existence.  The people roused in their
might, established great commissions of relief that astonished the civilized
world.  The best ladies of the land entered its hospitals as nurses. 
I felt, that in my freedom, and singleness of purpose, and position,
I might do more than that, and asked of the military authorities the
privilege of taking, in person, supplies to the front of the armies where
the battles were going on. 
That would be, practically, what the Red Cross does now.  My request
was granted, and government furnished for myself, attendants and supplies;
Sometimes by rail, sometimes by boat, and again by long trains
of Army wagons,- six mule teams;-scores of miles through moving armies,
rain, mud, sun and dust to the point where the battle was expected to
take place. 
My supplies were often all there were for the wounded, until after
the battle days were over, and the regular hospital supplies could be
brought up without fear of capture. 
I usually held my force there, after this, till the wounded were
removed;  although, being so long the vanguard, sometimes my strength
gave out, and I, too, had to be removed.  In this way I met, probably
some forty battles,- I never counted them up,- am not sure that I could. 
Singularly, but surely I learned, that the military child training
of my father, and the rough riding of my brother had not been lost on
me, and saved me from many an awkwardness, if not something worse.  For 


(6) 
instance, I had not to be told, that the infantry was not mounted, nor
the cavalry on foot;  and did not commit the grave mistake of addressing
a major as "captain?", nor a captain as lieutenant, nor have to be
taught how to mount my horse, when the guns disturbed him a little, 
and he didn't stand quite still, nor how to cling to him when he leaped
for dear life with the enemy close in the rear. 
The war continued four years;  sometimes I remained out through a 
siege, as a Fredericksburg, Charleston, and Richmond, at times several 
months without returning to Washington, or finding other shelter than
tents or any army wagons;  at such times we had the sick and wounded 
in hundred with us in temporary field hospitals just out of range of the
guns.  This was a terrible war;-an astonishing area of country to be
fought over. 
Practically, the entire South and Southwest were a camp and battle
field;  their prisons were a terror to humanity;  and only the intelligence,
patriotism, and tireless energy of our people, both men and
women, saved it from becoming a foul blot on the pages of history. 
The Spring of 1865 brought its close.  The bugles of victory and
peace rang out;  our worn troops returned, the widows, mothers and orphans
strove to hide their tears, and our great patient President lay dead 
among the martyrs.  My little part was not quite played.  From behind the
scenes I still saw something to be done.  Our military rolls at the close
of the war, showed 80,000 men simply "missing", and of whose life or
death there was no record.  All over the land the anxious mourners waited. 
President Lincoln had given me permission to search for some tidings of
the fate of these men.  I cannot explain to you how it was done, but
it occupied another four years with many clerks, I realized then, as all
through life, that the instructions of the elder, business brother had
not been lost. 

(7) 
These eight years of continuous war work made  it  necessary to remove 
me once more;  and physicians ordered me to Europe, as the only
means of preserving the little strength I had left.  That was in 1869.
Late in September I reached Geneva.  My little war record had gotten
there before me.  At once the Officers of the International Red Cross
brought that subject to me as one to which our government could not be
induced to give ear;  asking me to study it with a view to the United
States becoming one of the treaty nations of which there were already
thirty-two.  In July following, the Franco-German war broke out, and at
the request of these officers of the International Red Cross I accompanied
them to the battle fields of the "Valley of the Rhine."  Please
don't ask me where I got the strength for I don't know.  I question if
I had it - I suspect I was bankrupt. 
But I stood with them on the battle ground of Haguernau, and helped
to take the wounded from the first great field.  The mingled water and
blood me us trickling down the steep rocky hill as we toiled up. 
From this, we followed through that short but terrible campaigne. 
Strasburg,-Metz, Sedna,-Paris, siege and commune, Belfort and Montbelier
in relief;-Six months in Strasburg after its fall, with 30,000 wounded,
sacked and helpless people.(I pursued there the same course that our
brave Grace Kimball is pursuing at Van;  and that our men are taking at
Harpoot and its villages today, viz., providing work, paying wages, and
distributing the products.) 
I had a year and a half of this European Red Cross relief, working
always in conjunction with the Royal Families of Germany, which great 
nation, while she smote with one hand, fed with the other.  At length the 
utter break down came;  a year in London, helpless, several years more
after reaching America.  Slow process to outgrow nervous prostration.
Little by little some sleep, some strength returned, and in 1877, in  


(8) 
accordance with my promise to European nations, and the memory of the
needless suffering of our own war, I asked the American government to
adopt the treaty of the Red Cross.  After long delay it honored me with
unanimous concurrence of both Houses of Congress and at the instance of
our other martyred President - Garfield, I assumed the position I now
hold, of President, as head of the organization in the United States. 
I had asked of the other 30(now 40) nations, to accept America in
the Treaty, with the privilege of aiding in great national calamities
other than war.  This was also granted, and it is through that provision
that all our Red-Cross work in America has been done. 
The National Committee or Society over which I preside is a permanent
body.  It has no elections, no emulations, no ambitions, no salaries
no dues.  Each member does his and her best for the good of humanity,
and with no other motive.  It knows neither politics, race, nor sect.  It
has no privilege to take part in ordinary charity.  It is the one organization
in our country formed or fitted for the relief of great
national disasters, and it never oversteps, perhaps I should say, understeps
its bounds. 
It is the sole judge of the magnitude of the disaster, whether
national or local. 
If thought to be capable of local relief, it leaves the relief
to that, paying no attention to it.  On going to a field our method
is, to go at once to the scene of trouble with our own funds and
material;  the press notifies the country that the Red Cross is at the 
field.  This is an avenue for the distribution of the contributions of the
people if they desire to make use of it. 
We never solicit, never ask help, but publish the conditions and
needs fully and correctly, and leave to the people themselves the direction 
of their charities, believing them to be as humane and charitable 

(9) 
as we are, and far better judges of their ability to give. 
We remain at the scene, helping the victims, until they are
again able to help themselves, and no longer.  When the Red Cross retires
from afield, the country is at rest concerning the relief of that
disaster. 
In the fourteen years of our existence, we have aided in,or
taken entire charge of some seventeen great public calamities.  We have
never left a field until it was time to close its contributions.  Among
these are the great overflows of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers in
1883 and 1884, where the strongest levees broke, and the rivers became
like a sea;  sometimes thirty miles in width, and the staunchest boat
would be a mere cockle-shell in one of its roaring crevasses. 
We chartered steamers and plowed the waters from Cincinnati and St. 
Louis, to New Orleans for four months, rescuing and feeding man and
beast, clothing the naked and sheltering the homeless .  That was twelve
years ago, and the poor negro of today, along those river banks has a
little Red Cross, of his own construction over his door "for luck".  He
says no harm will come to him "while he hab dat cross da." 
At Johnstown, where in 1888, the piled up waters plunged through an
entire city, lifting its firmest structures and floating them away like
toys, leaving 6000 dead in its river beds, and 35,000 homeless, we went
in with a force of fifty strong men and women;  more than a quarter of a
million dollars in money and material passed through our hands.  We
erected five great hotels for temporary shelter for the people, 'till 
living houses could be built.  We furnished 3000 of these houses entire,
when done, and settled the families in them.  Built them  hospitals and 
cared for their sick.  We were the last to leave them at the end of five
months, and have never dared to visit them in their fine reconstructed
city, dreading the reception they would be sure to arrange for us. 


(10) 
On the 27th of August 1893 a West Indian hurricane and tidal wave
swept ove 150 miles of island range, known as the "Old Porte Royal
Groupe", off South Carolina where the world famed "Sea Island cotton"
is grown.  These islands are owned and inhabited by negroes.  They are 
low flat alluvial islands, cut by rivers and creeks.  The wind drove the
waters of the Atlantic Ocean over them fifteen feet deep at the rate of
120 miles an hour.  Thousands were washed out to sea or lay buried 
in the floating rubbish.  But 30,000 were left utterly destitute.  Houses,
cattle, boats, food, clothing, all gone, ditches choked with sand, wells
filled with salt water, and only the faith in God that never deserts the
negro, left to sustain, and carry them through.  In this condition of
things the Red Cross was asked by the authorities of the state of South
Carolina to take in hand this gigantic relief.  We repaired at once to
the scene, doubting the ability of anything less than the U.S.government
to meet the situation.  After nearly a month of investigation and terrific
labor, we decided to assume the relief ourselves, taking full control
on the first of October.  This meant, to remain with, feed, clothe,
shelter, work, direct and control this colony of 30,000 negroes, scattered 
over an area of 150 miles, not only through the winter that stared
them in the face, but through the Spring and Summer months till the
next year's crops could be planted and grown.  To do all this, the voluntary,
unsolicited contributions of the American people, and their
faith in the RED CROSS were all there was to depend upon. 
The ground must be drained, the wells ckeared;  for this the negroes 
were organized into groups, set to work, and made responsible under their
own selected leader.  No white overseers.  Rations were instituted, for
which the able-bodied worked, and the feeble received without.  Lumber
was purchased and shipped down the great rivers, to rebuild their so-named
"rac-tified" houses and boats.  It as no uncommon thing to see 

(11) 
the young negoes club together, and, in odd hours, put up a two-roomed
house for a widow and children, while the soft plaintive notes of their
Gospel hymns swelled out above the rafters.  The seed must be provided,
and in February and March planted, for the crops, early and late.  For
this,farming tools had been purchased, and over 300 miles of ditches
had been dug during the winter, to drain the land of the salt water and
open the sluice-ways to the sea.  Six tons of small seeds of the best
quality were contributed by the great seed dealers of the country, and
the agricultural department of the government. 
The staple seed of potatoes and corn by the hundreds of bushels were
purchased by us, and distributed to each family for their fields.  The
making [*&*] fencing of a garden of a half acre of ground was made a law. 
Careless habits were positively forbidden.  Sewing societies were organized
for the women. 
It was July 1894 "when the corn was in the tassel, and the pumpkin
in the blow", and the little home-made boats laden to the water's edge
with piles of vegetables, varieties they had never known before, begain
pouring into the docks of Beaufort from the islands, piling the streets
till they were a drug in the market, and there was no more want, no
little homes lost, no land mortgaged, no debts on the Autumn crops, that
I called my men from the field, and weary, worn and glad, we gathered 
our little belongings, closed the Headquarters where so much hard work
had been done, hallowed by the ceaseless thanks of the thousands that
had thronged them, and followed, not by the shouts but the tears of the
swarthy multitude that had gathered, we sailed away for the other Headquarters
that had waited us in silence for ten weary months;  glad of the
work, and glad of the rest.  Those islands are not plentiful and prosperous. 
It is, I think, well understood that the Red Cross as such, did 


(12) 
not come to this terrible field of Anatolia.  It was not permitted to do
so.  Only two or three of my leading officers are with me, all as individuals,
but at the request of the American people. 
We shall leave when we have given the aid placed at our disposal. 
Another silent Headquarters wait  .  This field will never be relieved by
human help.  Time and change alone can work that transformation.  Pitiful
and perplexed we can only borrow the negro's faith, and leave it to its
destiny.      Clara Barton.
I am not quite finished, but with your permission would like a
word more.  You will understand that on crossing from Constantinople to
Scutari, I must cross the Sea of Marmora, to me one of the most beautiful
sheets of water in the world.  In our little Turkish boat this
was matter of a few hours, and as I waited and watched the little
inspiration came to me to use my pencil and the result was a few simple
verses which some publisher had the good will to print, and which I
will, if you will allow, read to you, not for their poetical merit, for
I am no more a poet than I am a speaker.  They are entitled "Marmora". 

[*2 copies*] 

A FEW WORDS AT ABRAHAM LINCOLN CENTER 
May 13, 1910.     (Chicago.) 

Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen, Ladies, Friends:- 
It might not have been sheer vanity that drew from Napoleon the
ejaculation that the approving shouts of the French Populace that welcomed
him back were sweeter to his ear than the voice of Josephine.  It was not
alone their praise, but their approval that touched his heart.  He knew he
had done his best for what seemed to him, their good, and the good of France.
He had shrived his honors and lived in exile.  Self appreciative as he may
have been, he had forgotten even himself in serving them.  They recognized
this, and their shouts meant neither vain glory, nor fickle fawning. 
It was the Well done  in their true glad tones that touched his heart,
and drew confession from a soul even as proud as Napoleon's . 
Thus my friends, people of Chicago it is not alone your words of
praise, though so many they be, that are sweet to me, but your approval of 
the little I have been permitted to do.  It is not the grace of speech, 
but the earnestness of the tone that fills my heart with gratitude.  It is
the love you bear me that wins and becks me here before you. 
It is not that this marvelous city fast coming into the first ranks of
the world, cal ls its greatest and its best to welcome me.  It is that they
come of themselves, all unbidden with nothing to hope for- nothing to gain.
You all know that in no direction have I anything to be coveted. 
Neither wealth, position, influence, power, grace, eloquence, and even
youth long gone;  and yet you place me here as something precious abd pay me
honors like a Princess.  And not only are your own citizens gathered here, 
but the border lines of your nfair  state are crossed and the welcome of all
alike falls upon my ear. 
Friends, let me pray you, do not overestimate me.  It is so little I
have done, so little I could do, limited by conditions on every side 


2. 

Remember this, and give me only what is due;  others follow, with better
conditions, give  them their due. 
"I need not be missed though another succeed me, 
To reap down the fields that in spring I have sown, 
He who plows, and who sows, is not missed by the reaper,
He is only remembered by what he has done." 

Friends I have trust in the sincerity of this ovation or I
should recoil from it.  You are trying to make me understand that you are
satisfied with what I have done and approve it.  I accept your approval
and thank you for it. 
You are also teaching me to love your great warm-hearted city, 
and like Queen Mary one day there will be found written on my heart
Chicago. 

Happy, if not merry days I wish for you- 
May they be many, for I know they
will be careful -----
No news of the Stayer, yet - 
Lovingly Always 
C. B. 


"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born
across the sea
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures
you and me,
As He died to make men holy, let us die
to make men free
While God is marching on." 

Tribute of Clara Barton 
to 
Julia Ward Howe 

Given at the

Memorial Meeting held by the League for Political
Education, at Hudson Theatre, New York 
November the twelfth 
1910 

"Methinks it is good to be here;
If Thou wilt, let us build--but for whom? 
Nor Elias nor Moses appear,--
But the shadows of eve that encompass with gloom
The abode of the deed and the place of the tomb. 

"Shall we build unto sorrow? the deed cannot grieve;
Nor a sob, nor a sigh meets mine ear,
Which compassion itself could relieve!
Ah, sweetly they slumber, nor love, hope, nor fear,
Peace, peace, is the watchword, the only one here." 

YES, FRIENDS, it is good to be here.  You have
chosen well.  From the busy marts of life,the 
pull of ambition, the whirl of commercial strife
and the mad rush of politics, you have calmly
stepped aside, and with hushed breath, lowered your flags 
to half mast, and with soft-tolling bell called a halt to the
rushing throng, inviting it to the house of mourning.  Aye, 
more!  Asking it to pay tribute to a great life grandly lived, 
and gloriously ended -- to try in words of poor, futile
human speech to show the loss we have sustained. 


For almost a century there has lived and walked
among us a figure,quiet, unobtrusive, harmless and helpful,
like the Master;  comforting the sorrowful and the 
afflicted, strengthening the weak, correcting the erring,
rebuking the wrong and upholding the right -- an honor
and a safeguard to her country;  and, thank God, her
country was not unmindful of its blessings while she
lived.  It has today the joy of knowing that it ne[*v*]er forgot,
     but freely gave its recognition 
and dealt out its honors with unstinted measure 
and ungrudging hands. 

Her Marah was never Marah, and "God sweetened
the waters before she stooped to drink." 

Julia Ward Howe is no longer with us.  She has
passed into the world's history to live among its greates
and its best. 

The flinty road of human life is closed to her "jubilant
feet," but "across the sea in the beauty of the lilies
her soul is marching on." 
[*Clara Barton*] 

[*Glen Echo, Md. 
Xmas. 1910.*]