CLARA BARTON SPEECHES & WRITINGS FILE [*Speeches & Writings by Others*] [*Books*] [*Boston, William E., The Life of Clara Barton*] [*Notes & proofs*] Dr. Barton's notes. The Lorraine Fifth Avenue at Forty-Fifth Street New York Dr. Mathias Lynde Drs A. Main April 4, 1802 - Father unstable - so fearful her child had nervous " that in whom of the most confidential intimacy could she be understood to unlock the silence which to the very end of life she maintained as to vet thisWas not of the early day. Here further and shiftless worldly life aimless. Honestly lack of public respect - absence of tenant Relation to with schools churches and individual and sympathetic MD Further asylum fanatic song tracts. which Flu to sane & Leva THE LORRAINE FIFTH AVENUE AT FORTY-FIFTH STREET NEW YORK Rama Cath U. Where its probates annual to deliberate this adding if a new seat to the Docent Calendar. are out of milk as appuled to exact her feet if Advocates Diaboli to make our of every Amer + awarded have the most that can be said to Awnyation Bank of Job.only seven faults is Miss Dix too much inclined to talk - Busy not her own hands, too willful & debated in her treatment of others - and at times her self - conservation was offensive - an automatic habit of imperfect coward - then mistook of taking into her own hands the dream of momentous jealous - faults of her virtue.Skillful surgeon is not too hard, then an magnificent over must took away after his own butcher problem. of selfish & greedy attendants or physicians met eat up & hand up the supplies of abrasives delicacies & wins for the sick, then enough more must be supplied to give the sick the day end of a chance. It is uselessto try to help war. "All this. tomorrow Miss Dix could not bring herself to endure. Brady to live on a court kind to sacrifice herself without stunt, her whole and was on fur it then spectacles of incompetence and callous indifference she was doomed daily to intrude. She became overwrought and hurt the required self-control. --- Inevitably she became involved in sharp alter - catch with pursuit medical officials & with NY watch surgeons - 338-9. thrust on Miss Dix. then very qualified which had no preeminently pulitzer for the remains there in which she had wrought such miracle of success NY an to tell against her. She was nearly 60 years old. and with a constitution suffered by malaria. assumedly and preliminary weakness She had her graves seen[to take in.] a lonely and nighhanded mother, flaming her own projects. Keeping her own Counsel. and pressing on, unhampered by [her] the need of competency of others, toward her self-chosen good ----- The love mother could not change her notion. She tried to do every thing herself, and the feat before lay because her infinite ability. At the 8 hr came to recognize this, again & again exclaiming in disasters, "This is not the work I would have my life judged by."up to that time she had insisted on, and in her herself had been able to secure perfection of disciplin & organzatn - "But in war - especially in a war her apt ability [extend?] on by a raw & [mix few did?] people, - all such pefecton of orgnzatn & discplin is out of the questin. If a good feid hospital is not to be had, the work must be made of a bad one. If a To take in....Such a commission as the March of events was before day to move - involved a sheer practical improbability. It unified. not a sigh. handed more, nearly & years old and shattered in health. between engaged occupants at 20 different centers" Tiffany - 331- 7. for free services at the War Dept. & to the Surgeon General." She said more affected "Supt of Female Nurses. to select & assign more nurses to general or lieutenant military hospitals; they not to be scoffed within her sanction & approval except in cases of urgent need."to take in... Such a commission - as the march of events was before long to prove - involved a sheer practical improbability. It implied, not a single- handed man nearly 60 years old and shattered in health, but immense organized departments at 20 different centers." Tiffany 331-7. Dorothea Lynch Dix. THE LORRAINE FIFTH AVENUE AT FORTY-FIFTH STREET NEW YORK 6 Main April 4, 1802 - d. July 17, 1887. Cluld host in Maite 1818 1817 then in Boston ____ Massachusetts first Black to proposed to Lincoln call have took with 6th & 8th ____ "What seems to have main the fault of Miss Dix's administration of her responsible officer, namely an over worry it zeal her affiliating her at times into interpreter action, and thus impairing that singular balance of faculties through which her previous successes had been achieved, has, perhaps, been sufficiently dwelt on" Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix by Francis Tiffany. Houghton Mifflin & Co 1890. [?] 1892for free services at the War Dept. & to the Surgen General." She afraid more affected " Supt of Female Nurses to select & assign newer nurses to general or few sent military hospitals; they not to be employed within her sanction & approved except in cases of injured." "Women nurses were volunteering by the thousands. the majority of them without the experience in health Dept then in such under stand. Who should pass on their qualifications, who stations, superintend & train them? Now under the Atlas wrought of cares & problems sifliters so suddenlystitched & sewed & tested it Fetlury Chasing other extended with men nearby us before teacher in Boston [18th 16] 1816-17 - and again in 1821 Offered School with grandmothers turn for charitable & rely on unsneglected motion of counts in Charlestown [1837] inherited property to another independent. In 1837 encouraged & Chang. listed ref to papers. bounties & powers. Procured legislation of state trustee bylaws. d. July 17. 1887. End of Chapter on C.B.'s Cm. ___________ 1. She had no normal childhood - a waif in family of your father. No boy playmates or Corre---len are remembered "faintly" of little girls. No dancing - no skating - no kissing games - By rigid Puritan region with morbidly leviatin dispointed ' Still a problem [when an] unchallenged - shy little girl when at 16 herHotel Majestic West Seventy-second Dr. at Central Park New York. Skuts City intend - her 2 "watch arms" Milburn & from up attic - suddenly transformed. into a teacher - A quiet tearful little teacher - not to be toppled with - expelling - whipping this way - but many perfect - Here by conference her pupils. No puppy love - We try & girl flirtation - She just perfect in for her related grueling when 28-30. and then little opportunity. Her soul also with stray things - Her covers all untidy - good, Complacent him - as good as average N.E. famous. But the not an average N.E. famous wife. From time to time she avoided her isolation - lonely - Devotions - but to the guide by gratitude - story to self reproach by. Ex officiant Julian - she thought of other going more in love - with tenure - his kind & children - and had longings for a change in her condition - But no more of those who applicant, though all even respected. I turn to the depths of her soul -Her experience of love carried with it [no] perplexity but no heart break. Her problem was whether to accept somewhat of the several men who proposed to her - man of average ability. with fair school education. and the qualities which and did make this successful famous good citizen, husband & father but not satisfy her dad or give her ambitious brothers spirit something thankful to - and determined to fight her lonely battle without them. No experience of estate loss - No memory of bitter grief or cruel disappointment her depths wasted. Sister in life. When she became famous. She was approached by men with matrimonial intent. One man, [at best, poor regard the war,] to whom she had been kind sought to regard her with his heart and hand. and our firm regard the was sorry it her as a inch - She a thorough American - Two possibilities - A professor - Conrad - able, destroyed She a round his erudition enjoyed his companionship - Mr Able Statesman - Her offered publication Dr Meeting - his brother -Her grief and silence. Her silence shall still be unbroken. If they cared, it was unworthy of these -- If they were only your friend - include Which ol the Fountain at Dansville. C.B. participated in many local entertainments - Reading previous copied in large plain hand. Teryson's Bugle Boy. By mis Pusuier of Chaldon. Relief of pueblows - Robt. Tourel - "Hounded" bby I.W. Watson. "Steady. boys. steady - Keep you arms ready. A preview of her own on Stuffraud - "Hange man?" Mitler on the Parthia- October 1873 (?)Wilmot I. Goodspeed, Pres. Clifton D. Gray, Vice Pres. Charles W. Barton, Sec.-Treas. 223 West Jackson Boulevard Western Church Press Club Chicago, Illinois [Keep the mgmt if Ch. 9- to work on Send share pages of Carbon -Edward Stark Perry Manager The New Leland Edward O. Perry President and General Manager Springfield, ILL ______ 19______[*Miss Gardel I make minor changes - yet you can also - But get back every first moment - phone me just a soon as you read it E*] 555 Clara Barton Gal. 1 of Chap. 34 10-31-11 Gibson CHAPTER XXXIV THE GALVESTON FLOOD, 1900 RETIREMENT 1904 -- MEXICO -- PRESIDENT -- FIRST AID TO THE INJURED, 1904-1910 ON September 8, 1900, a tidal wave and tornado of terrific force swept over the sea and submerged Galveston, the metropolis of Texas, -- a city of some forty thousand souls. The island on which it stood and the adjoining mainland were engulfed in the ripping fury of the waves. Lives to the number of from eight to ten thousand were suddenly lost in the cataclysm of flood and cyclone, which crushed like eggshells four thousand homes and drowned their occupants like rats. Thousands of survivors, so the news came to Miss Barton, "through a terrible day of storm and a night of terror floated and swam and struggled, amid the storm-beaten waves, with the broken slate roofs of all these homes hurled like cannon-shot against them, cutting, breaking, crushing; meeting in the waves obstacles of every sort -- from a crazed cow fighting for its life to a mad moccasin-snake -- perhaps to come out at least on some beach some miles away, among people as stunned and bewildered as themselves. Some of them struggled back to find possibly a few members of the family left, the rest among the several thousands of whom nothing is known." September the 10th, two days after, as soon as the interrupted wires could give news, Miss Barton dropped everything else at Headquarters and with her Red Cross Circle and some ten helpers at once set off for the distant field of flood and death. The New York World stood behind her and acquired a large subscription list with which it had started the appeal to the country. September 13th Texas City, opposite Galveston, was reached by Clara Barton and her committee, five days after the first news of the disaster at Washington. The trip was long because travel was interrupted. While waiting twenty-four hours for a boat across the bay, Miss Barton had to sleep on boards thrown across the tops of car seats. But she felt this was nothing compared with the fact that she was compelled to wait a whole day and night while thousands in almost plain sight were in agony beyond the bar. Her party was met by the local caretakers of the many injured who were being accommodated in crowded quarters in Texas City itself, although it mostly, too, lay stricken level to the ground. Across the bay the doomed city of Galveston appeared lighted, -- but not by electric lights ! The jets of flame came from vast funeral pyres on the coast. Twenty-three such funeral pyres Miss Barton counted at one time. Everywhere the air reeked, as it was to reek for months, with the acrid smoke of burnt human flesh, frequently thirty bodies or more being in one of the awful conflagrations. At once the President of the Red Cross and her committee were confronted by hosts of refugees whom the little harbor-boat kept landing on the beach of Texas City. All were sufferers, whether maimed or dazed. With the rest, arrived lunatics and unnumbered cases of nervous prostration caused by the terror of the days preceding. Thus warned of the catastrophe's extent, next morning Miss Barton's committee took the boat to Galveston. When the waters subsided, more than eight thousand people wre destitute, wandering about in the sand which coated everything, but which was not sufficiently deep to permit of the fixing of tent stakes for the erection of even canvas shelter from the elements. Confronting these refugees and victims as they opened their eyes shook off their stupor and became conscious of the catastrophe (to use Miss Barton's words) were "the debris of broken houses, crushed to splinters and piled twenty feet high, along miles of sea coast, where a spoil six blocks wide of the city itself was gone, and seas rolled over populated avenues; heaps of splintered wood were filled with furniture of once beautiful habitations,--beds, pianos, chairs, tables,--all that made up happy homes. Worse than that the bodies of the owners were rotting therein, twenty or thirty of them being taken out every day as workmen removed the rubbish and laid it in great piles of ever-burning fire, covering the corpses with mattresses, doors, boards,-- anything that was found near them, and then left them to burn out or go away in impregnated smoke, while the weary workmen 'toiled' on the next." Almost every family in the city had all or part of its members among the dead, while the living, for the most part without roof, remained to suffer in the blasts of the retreating hurricane and coming "nor'easter." To shelter and succor the thirty thousand people left, one third of whom at leas were huddling in the wreckage like cattle in a pen, the Red Cross proceeded to work. Meeting the Red Cross officers the city officials at first declared that they "needed no nurses." The quick reply of Miss Barton's spokesman was that she "was glad" as they had none to give. The look of surprise which followed upon the face of the high-keyed local head of medical relief was countered by the Red Cross representative's rebuttal: "What are you most in need of?" "Surgical dressings and medical supplies!" Telegraphing the huge order it was filled and received by the Red Cross in twenty-four hours. Thus the Galveston local committee of relief learned that the Red Cross had come with the country behind its back. They saw that a [nation was subject] to the Red Cross's beck and call. 555 Clara Barton gal 2 King10-31 II Chap. 34 "By that time, in the hot, moist atmosphere of the latitude, decomposition had so far advanced that the corpses -- which at first were decently carried in carts or on stretchers, then shoveled upon boards of blankets -- had finally to be scooped up with pitchforks in the hands of negroes, kept at their awful task by the soldiers' bayonets. And still the 'finds' continued, and at the average rate of seventy a day. The once beautiful driving-beach was strewn by mounds and trenches, holding unrecognized and uncoffined victims of the flood ; and between this improvised cemetery and ridge of debris three miles long and in places higher than the houses had been, a line of cremation fires poisoned the air." Even during the sixth week in Galveston, happening to pass one of these primitive crematories, a party of Red Cross workers stopped to interview the man in charge. Boards, watersoaked mattresses, rags of blankets and curtains, part of a piano and the framework of sewing machines piled on top, gave it the appearance of a festive bonfire, and only the familiar odor betrayed its purpose. "Have you burned any bodies here?" they inquired. The custodian regarded them with a stare and plainly said, "Do you think I am doing this for amusement?" He shifted his quid from cheek to cheek before replying: -- "Ma'am," said he, "this here fire's been going on more'n a month. To my knowledge, upwards of sixty bodies have been burned in it." One department of the Red Cross took care of all surviving children orphaned by the loss of parents. This was a group especially appealing to the country, and for it in New York alone was raised fifty thousand dollars. Miss Barton not only continued to aid the island of Galveston but planned to reach the suffering mainland across the gulf where nearly twenty counties for forth miles inland, were inundated. There were one thousand square miles and sixty different towns and villages in need. At Houston she therefore established another center for relief. Besides supplies and aid, Miss Barton arranged for the replanting of a portion of the devastated fields with strawberries, furnishing a million and a half plants for this purpose. It is little wonder that a woman in her eightieth year in the midst of such distress should for a moment succumb. The weak spot in Miss Barton's physique was her chest and the trouble as formerly centered here and soon developed into double pneumonia. But Miss Barton's wonderful recuperative powers came to her aid, and to the surprise of everyone she was soon her usual self again. She rose from her sick bed to prosecute the campaign of relief with greater ardor than ever, actually conducting work on the field for two more months, and expanding it to thirty counties. Besides the incessant toil in the wreckage, at Headquarters she found her tired nerves met by nights of clerical detail. "My stenographer," she said, "Miss Mary Agnes Coombs, found her post by me, and sixty to eighty letters a day, taken from dictation, made up the clerical round of the office of the president. This duty fell in between attending the daily meetings of the relief committee and receiving constant calls both in and out of the city. "Our men made up their living room at the warehouse. The few women remained at the hotel, the only respectable house in the town. "All this time, the stench of burning flesh penetrated every part of the city. Who could long withstand this? Before the end of three months there was scarcely a well person in Galveston. My helpers grew pale and ill, and even I, who have resisted the effect of so many climes, needed the help of a steadying hand as I walked to the waiting Pullman on the track, courteously tendered free of charge to take us away." In a letter to Miss Barton Governor Sayres refers to the success of her mission in relieving the thousands of Galveston sufferers and homeless: "I beg to assure you of my high appreciation of your services; their value cannot be computed in dollars and cents. Your very presence amongst us at this trying time, even without the substantial aid which you have rendered, would be indeed a benediction, and it has served to inspire our people with energy, self-determination and self-confidence. Nothing that I could say or do would adequately compensate you and the Red Cross for your and its kindly and substantial offices at this time. I can only pray that God be with you and with it, and prosper all your undertakings." In addition, the State of Texas which had already known Miss Barton through the Pan Handle famine, adopted the following resolutions, February 1, 1901 (H. C. R. No. 8): "In behalf of the people of Texas, the Legislature extends to the American National Red Cross Society, the most grateful acknowledgment for the relief extended through the Society to the sufferers in Texas by the storm of September 8th, 1900, and especially does the Legislature thank Miss Clara Barton, President of the Society, for her visit to the State and her personal supervision and direction of relief to those who were in need and in distress. "That the Governor be and he is hereby requested to transmit a copy of this resolution to Miss Clara Barton." Engrossed Resolutions were drawn up by the Central Relief Committee as follows:several thousands of whom nothing is known. September the 10th, two days after, as soon as the interrupted wires could give news, Miss Barton dropped everything else at Headquarters and with her Red Cross Circle and some ten helpers at once set off for the distant field of flood and death. The New York World stood behind her and acquired a large subscription list with which it had started the appeal to the country. September 13th Texas City, opposite Galveston, was reached by Clara Barton and her committee, five days after the first news of the disaster at Washington. The trip was long because travel was interrupted. While waiting twenty-four hours for a boat across the bay, Miss Barton had to sleep on boards thrown across the tops of car seats. But she felt this was nothing compared with the fact that she was compelled to wait a whole day and night while thousands in almost plain sight were in agony beyond the bar. Her party was met by the local caretakers of the many injured who were being accommodated in crowded quarters in Texas City itself, although it mostly, too, lay stricken level to the ground. Across the bay the doomed city of Galveston appeared lighted, -- but not by electric lights! The jets of flame came from vast funeral pyres on the coast. Twenty-three such funeral pyres Miss Barton counted at one time. Everywhere the air reeked, as it was to reek for months, with the acrid smoke of burnt human flesh, frequently thirty bodies or more being in one of the awful conflagrations. At once the President of the Red Cross and her committee were confronted by hosts of refugees whom the little harbor-boat kept landing on the beach of Texas City. All were sufferers, whether maimed or dazed. With the rest, arrived lunatics and unnumbered cases of nervous prostration caused by the terror of the days preceding. Thus warned of the catastrophe's extent, next morning Miss Barton's committee took the boat to Galveston. When the waters subsided, more than eight thousand people were destitute, wandering about in the sand which coated everything, but which was not sufficiently deep to permit of the fixing of tent stakes for the erection of even canvas shelter from the elements. Confronting these refugees and victims as they opened their eyes, shook off their stupor and became conscious of the catastrophe (to use Miss Barton's words) were "the debris of broken houses, crushed to splinters and piled twenty feet high, along miles of sea coast, where a spoil six blocks wide of the city itself was gone, and seas rolled over populated avenues ; heaps of splintered wood were filled with furniture of once beautiful habitations, --beds, pianos, chairs, tables,-- all that made up happy homes. Worse than that the bodies of the owners were rotting therein, twenty or thirty of them being taken out every day as workmen removed the rubbish and laid it in great piles of ever- burning fire, covering the corpses with mattresses, doors, boards, -- anything that was found near them, and then left them to burn out or go away in impregnated smoke, while the weary workmen 'toiled' on the next." Almost every family in the city had all or part of its members among the dead, while the living, for the most part without roof, remained to suffer in the blasts of the retreating hurricane and coming "nor'easters." To shelter and succor the thirty thousand people left, one third of whom at least were huddling in the wreckage like cattle in a pen, the Red Cross proceeded to work. Meeting the Red Cross officers the city officials at first declared that they "needed no nurses." The quick reply of Miss Barton's spokesman was that she "was glad" as they had none to give. The look of surprise which followed upon the face of the high-keyed local head of medical relief was countered by the Red Cross representative's rebuttal: "What are you most in need of?" "Surgical dressings and medical supplies!" Telegraphing the huge order it was filled and received by the Red Cross in twenty-four hours. Thus the Galveston local committee of relief learned that the Red Cross had come with the country behind its back. They saw that a nation was subject to the Red Cross's beck and call. "What do you most need," the chief of police was asked. "Homes," was the reply. Estimating the material needed for homes, Miss Barton sent at once over the whole United States a plea to all lumber, hardware, and furniture dealers. This demonstration by action was proof enough to Galveston of the Red Cross and its President, and Miss Barton was asked to assume charge of the administration of relief. Preferring to cooperate, joined by Vice President Stephen E. Bar- ton and Fred L. Ward, together they faced the actual needs, and the Red Cross went to work, each group with a separate department of investigation empowered to meet the discovered want, whether it be for stoves, heaters, food, clothing, bedding, blankets, or for other necessities of life. In answer to these needs, from constantly arriving carloads and shiploads centralized at the Red Cross warehouses, came huge boxes, branded with a flaring Red Cross, their contents ready to be handed out at every place where clustered a group of the needy. The task was tremendous. Miss Barton, who herself remained over two months, thus sketched the condition : "Dead citizens lay in thousands amid the wreck of their homes, and raving maniacs searched the debris for their loved ones, with the organized gangs of workers. Corpses, dumped by barge loads into the Gulf, came floating back to menace the living ; and the nights were lurid with incinerations of putrefying bodies, piled like cord- wood, black and white together, irrespective of age, sex, or previous condition. At least four thousand dwellings had been swept away, with all their contents, and fully half of the population of the city was without shelter, food, clothes, or any necessities of life. Of these, some were living in tents, others crowded in with friends hardly less fortunate ; many half-crazed, wandering aimlessly around the streets, and the story of their sufferings, mental and physical, past the telling. Every house that remained was a house of mourning. Fires yet burned continuously, fed not only by human bodies but with thousands of carcasses of domestic animals. todian regarded them with a stare and plainly said, "Do you think I am doing this for amusement?" He shifted his quid from cheek to cheek before replying : -- "Ma'am," said he, "this here fire's been going on more'n a month. To my knowledge, upwards of sixty bodies have been burned in it." One department of the Red Cross took care of all surviving children orphaned by the loss of parents. This was a group especially appealing to the country, and for it in New York alone was raised fifty thousand dollars. Miss Barton not only continued to aid the island of Galveston but planned to reach the suffering mainland across the gulf where nearly twenty counties for forty miles inland, were inundated. There were one thousand square miles and sixty different towns and villages in need. At Houston she therefore established another center for relief. Besides supplies and aid, Miss Barton arranged for the re- planting of a portion of the devastated fields with strawberries, furnishing a million and a half plants for this purpose. It it little wonder that a woman in her eightieth year in the midst of such distress should for a moment succumb. The weak spot in Miss Barton's physique was her chest and the trouble as formerly centered here and soon developed into double pneumonia. But Miss Barton's wonderful recuperative powers came to her aid, and to the surprise of everyone she was soon her usual self again. She rose from her sick bed to prosecute the campaign of relief with greater ardor than ever, actually conducting work on the field for two more months, and expanding it to thirty counties. Besides the incessant toil in the wreckage, at Headquarters she found her tired nerves met by nights of clerical detail. "My stenographer," she said, "Miss Mary Agnes Coombs, found her post by me, and sixty to eighty letters a day, taken from dictation, made up the clerical round of the office of the president. This duty fell in between attend- ing the daily meetings of the relief committee and receiving constant calls both in and out of the city. "Our men made up their living room at the warehouse. The few women remained at the hotel, the only respectable house in the town. "All this time, the stench of burning flesh penetrated every part of the city. Who could long withstand this? Before the end of three months there was scarcely a well person in Galveston. My helpers grew pale and ill, and even I, who have resisted the effect of so many climes, needed the help of a steadying hand as I walked to the waiting Pullman on the track, courteously tendered free of charge to take us away." In a letter to Miss Barton Governor Sayres refers to the success of her mission in relieving the thousands of Galveston sufferers and homeless : "I beg to assure you of my high appreciation of your services; their value cannot be computed in dollars and cents. Your very presence amongst us at this trying time, even without the substan- tial aid which you have rendered, would be indeed a benediction, and it has served to inspire our people with energy, self-determination and self-confidence. Nothing that I could say or do would adequately compensate you and the Red Cross for your and its kindly and sub- stantial offices at this time. I can only pray that God be with you and with it, and prosper all your undertakings." In addition, the State of Texas which had already known Miss Barton through the Pan Handle famine, adopted the following resolu- tions, February 1, 1901 (H. C. R. No. 8) : "In behalf of the people of Texas, the Legislature extends to the American National Red Cross Society, the most grateful acknowl- edgment for the relief extended through the Society to the sufferers in Texas by the storm of September 8th, 1900, and especially does the Legislature thank Miss Clara Barton, President of the Society, for her visit to the State and her personal supervision and direction of relief to those who were in need and in distress. "That the Governor be and he is hereby requested to transmit a copy of this resolution to Miss Clara Barton." Engrossed Resolutions were drawn up by the Central Relief Com- mittee as follows : "Resolved, That we especially than and render homage to the woman who is the life and spirit of the Red Cross -- who is the em- bodiment of the saving principle of laying down one's life for one's friend, whose friend is the friendless and whose charge is the stricken, and should be exalted above Queens, and whose achievements are greater than the conquests of nations or the inventions of genius and who is justly crowned in the evening of her life with the love and admiration of all humanity -- MISS CLARA BARTON." In the summer of 1902 occurred the International convention at St. Petersburg, Russia. Miss Barton was appointed by the Presi- dent to represent the United States, Congress voting appropriations. In May at the age of eighty-one, but judging from her photograph at the time, a woman more nearly in the prime of life, Clara Barton set forth on her journey over halfway round the world. The remembrance of her in 1891 when she aroused America, through the Red Cross, to send food to aid the thirty-five million starving Russians was fresh in the mind of all in the Russian Empire. When she arrived where the International Convention of the Signatory Powers to the Treaty of Geneva was to meet in St. Peters- burg, she was tendered a warm and significant reception, the depth of which her countrymen and women little realized. Her address before the convention was received with the usual acclaim. As a further and official mark of Russian esteem, the Emperor conferred upon Miss Barton the Russian Decoration of the Order of the Red Cross. June 6, 1900 the American National Red Cross was reincorporated by Congress -- it being the wish of Miss Barton to make the organiza- tion more representative and also on the other hand to limit the scope of its insignia to legitimate Red Cross uses. From this time more power was assumed by the Board and its executive committee. Between Miss Barton and a member of the board of control and its executive committee, a slight shadow of misunderstanding increased as time went on, and led to misconstruction, misinterpretation and conflict of authority.555--Clara Barton -- gal 3 -- Greer Chap 34 Though unhappily it sank at times to a matter of personalities and comparative unessentials, in the large it was a contest between two systems, the one that had fitted the creative twenty-two years when the Red Cross centered about Clara Barton, to whom it owed its life -- the other the system of the future, struggling to fit itself to the time when the founder should be no more, and when therefore, a different system would be necessary, --a system centering around not a single person who could never be reproduced -- but about a board of control and executive committee. Miss Barton was at first inclined to be resigned to the new system. Had the atmosphere remained clear and not become clouded with factionalism and discolored by these personal charges she would undoubtedly have seen the wisdom of a change both in leadership and in plan. But these unfortunate characteristics aroused at first her antagonism. The conflict of authority between Miss Barton and the new Board and its representative, was manifested slightly at Galveston when a representative of the Board and Miss Barton differed; Miss Barton, notwithstanding her severe illness, reassumed control, however, and the representative departed from the field. Miss Barton returned to Headquarters in the fall of 1900, after three months at Galveston, and occupied herself i recuperation and in administrative affairs. When in the spring of 1902 the terrible Mount Pelee earthquake occurred, astounding the world with its unheard-of destruction of human life, Miss Barton was on her way to St. Petersburg. She felft that a second test of the Board of Control and Executive Committee which remained in power, was here presented. But upon her return she declared that the Red Cross in her absence had failed to do as she had always done successfully, take the initiative in an appeal to the country to spring to the relief at once, in this the most terrible earthquake in human history. When Congress finally appropriated money, she felt that the part the Red Cross played was insignificant and a poor proof of the ability of the Board of Control. With the aged President this weighed deeply as proving that the divided authority the by-laws made possible was bad and the cause of inaction. Strong central authority for immediate action as, she thought, absolutely essential. To make this possible she felt it necessary to resume actual control, and to this end led a movement to amend the by-laws. At the annual meeting of the American National Red Cross in Washington, D.C., December 9, 1902, these amendments providing for the increase and consolidation of power and the election of Miss Barton as President for life were offered for adoption. "For the reason that shortly after the adoption of such by-laws," explained Miss Barton, "and because of certain objections made by the remonstrants, and to satisfy their every complaint, if possible, the President of this Society appointed a committee consisting of Hon. Richard Olney, Hon. George F. Hoar, Hon. John G. Carlisle, the Honorable Chairman of this Committee, and Lieut. General Nelson A. Miles, to draft a set of by-laws for this Society; that the Committee met and drafted a set of by-laws, and copies of the same were mailed to members a month in advance of the last Annual Meeting, and at such last Annual Meeting such by-laws were presented for consideration and unanimously adopted; that such by-laws so adopted were in all essential respects the same as the by-laws complained of and adopted in 1902, except that such new by-laws provided for the establishment of a First Aid Department, and provided for a Board of Trustees of 13 members, of which the President shall be a member ex officio. . . . "This course is taken," Miss Barton declared later, as to this 1903 action, "the new code of by-laws proposed and circulated, and the annual meeting called with the sole purpose of doing everything in my power to harmonize existing differences between members of the corporation and to make the Red Cross an efficient instrument of the beneficient objects it is designed to serve. If in initiating these measures for the conciliation of opposing interests and views, it may seem to some of my friends that I overlooked just grounds of personal offense n imputations wantonly made upon my honor and integrity, I do so knowingly and willingly, and because the cause that the American Red Cross is meant to promote stands first in my affections and my desires. It would be strange if it did not -- if the cause for which I have devoted myself for half a century were not deemed by me worthy of any possible sacrifice of personal pride or personal interest. It would be equally strange, if after so many years of earnest effort for the relief of human suffering, during which I have always lived and moved in the full glare of the public gaze, I could not now safely trust my character and good name to the care of the American people. I am sure that I can and that I risk nothing in doing so, and if those now at variance with me will meet me in the same spirit by which I am animated, we cannot fail to adjust all differences to our mutual satisfaction and to the great advantage to the cause all should have at heart." 1 1 These paragraphs are from p. 72 of "Clara Barton and The Red Cross" "Reply to Remarsbank" issued March 30th, 1904. However, the minority defeated at the annual meeting of 1903 were not content. They protested to President Roosevelt and succeeded in securing his aid. Through Secretary Cortelyou on January 2, 1904, he stated that the President and the Cabinet could not serve under the conditions of the Board of Consultation. January 29, the minority's memorial headed by John M. Wilson, vice president, was introduced to Congress as embodying the protest, and printed as House Document No. 340. This memorial charged in the large that the amended by-laws centralized in Miss Barton as President, too much authority, pointing out in this connection that she was allowed to select her own executive committee. Had it confined itself to this, the memorial would have been a fair protest against Clara Barton's Red Cross system as a whole from 1881 to 1904, as being unfit for the future, when Miss Barton's regime should have been finished. But in that it went on to criticize the past of the Red Cross, as it had been directed by Miss Barton, it generated heat instead of light, confused unessentials with essentials and degenerated into a contest of personalities in place of principles. The Investigation Committee, equally sought by Miss Barton and the remonstrants, was appointed by the Red Cross with Senator Redfield Proctor as Chairman. Under its direction a treasury official the Red Cross books and records Miss Barton had laid open. 555 -- Clara Barton -- gal 4 -- Greer Chap 34 entirety by removing herself from power and thus doing away with the centralized authority about which the Red Cross had in the past swung. This put the Society under the Board of Control with the Executive Committee, and the President of the United States as nominal President. The Committee of the opposition had evidenced the lack of any real belief of serious fault on Miss Barton's part by having prepared to propose her as Honorary President with a salary for life. The serious charges made were against the system, and at that, so far as it had its deepest grounds, against the system not necessarily as operated in the past, but against it as adapted for the future. Time has not only already exonerated Miss Barton's character and career, but has seen the Red Cross which she feared would suffer, come out of the controversy unscathed -- the Red Cross winning its new system, ready to meet the future, but leaving Clara Barton also secure in her achievement as founder and successful administrator for nearly a quarter of a century of its affairs. One reason for Miss Baron's inability to turn the Red Cross over earlier to the new system was her individualism. She had always, except in the Franco-Prussian war, worked as an individualist, on her own initiative, her only referendum being the people of the country or the world. Temperamentally impossible to her was the new system demanding that she work under the direction of a Board of Control. To one trained for thirty-three years to proceed on her own initiative on the occasion of disaster -- it was beyond possibility to accept the new plan. Differences and the divorce of the two systems, her own and the new one, were on this account inevitable, when "the old order changed by giving place to the new." Miss Barton's mistake was in wishing the Red Cross President to combine both field work and the work of administration. No human could do both -- and she could not keep away from the field of action. Therefore that which suffered, if any, would be the business details. Grant that receipts or accounts of certain details did fail to reach Headquarters when she left them to risk her life in Mississippi floods, or in Cuba, or with the wounded at Siboney or Santiago! That is not wonder! The only wonder is that she could keep accounts at all. When General Shafter sent word to seize wagons -- anything -- only to come, she could hardly sit down and foot up accounts. Such times, when men are dying by the hundred in the night, are not times for systematizing a commercial institution. When the magnificent government of the United States suffered it commissariat, even in the camps at home, to fail so miserably, and when after engagements with the Spanish the army department confessed its terrible unpreparedness and called on seventy-seven-year-old Clara Barton to unload her Red Cross ships and rush their supplies to the battlefield to meet the mortal emergency -- who can wonder that she could not stop to supervise items of book-keeping. [*Drop*] [Supplies and gifts always were receipted direct to the senders. Never was this fact denied. For example, as to not filing complete reports as in the Mississippi floods she was told not to by the Government and Secretary of State, . As to diversions of funds, [when] there were cases when she had to divert funds, as asked by the army commanders as at Santiago to seize supplies, and she diverted supplies meant for reconcentrados. Such diversion does not incriminate. Refusal to divert would have been, instead, her real incrimination.] If the country were asked to-day -- would it have preferred that in the Civil War, in the Franco-Prussian War, in the Spanish War, at Galveston and in twenty odd national catastrophes that Clara Barton head of the Red Cross, had stayed at home and kept the ledger perfect or have acted as the nation's arm of mercy and the mainspring of relief at the front, what would it say? It would say, give us Clara Barton, the nation's heroine, on the field. Give us the woman herself actuating all America to the relief of suffering. We can grow hundreds of thousands of bookkeepers, but of such national heroines, there is but one. In the perspective of history where little things grow small and big things large, the national verdict for Clara Barton will be one of endless love and pride. Her system had done its work ; nevertheless this was in the past. Soon she must leave it. The opposition was planning for the time when no such figure as Clara Barton in her vigor, would exist. It was hard for her to understand this because the air was beclouded with personal charges on her own side and on the other which made her feel that it was necessary in defending herself to defend the old system of centralized authority and action in the President. Her modesty and natural simplicity never let her once feel but what some new Clara Barton could arise to embody the spirit of the Red Cross and swing the country as she did. Those behind the new system knew this [*drop*] [discussion] was impossible. Had Miss Barton seen all this it would not have been so hard for her to have let others hold the reins and conduct the detailed administration while she remained the the animating initial genius -- and President at large -- and honorary position from which the heart of America would have never dislodged her. Had she been able to get away from petty fears on the one hand and petty charges on the other, she would have seen that the new system institutionalized the Red Cross where she had one individualized it. In December, 1904, came the new bill reincorporating the Red Cross. By this Act of Congress the American Red Cross was newly organized and reincorporated, and brought under Government supervision, the charter providing that the President of the United States be President and that among other members of the Board, five should be chosen from the Department of State. Treasury and Justice and that a disbursing officer of the War Department should audit the accounts of the secretary. The association is the officially recognized Volunteer Relief the remonstrants, and to satisfy their every complaint, [?] President of this Society appointed a committee consisting of Hon. Richard Olney, Hon. George F. Hoar, Hon. John G. CArlisle, the Honorable Chairman of this Committee, and Lieut. General Nelson A. Miles, to draft a set of by-laws for this Society ; that the Committee met and drafted a set of by-laws, and copies of the same were mailed to members a month in advance of that last Annual Meeting, and at such last Annual Meeting such by-laws were presented for consideration and unanimously adopted ; that such by-laws so adopted were in all essential respects the same as the by-laws complained of and adopted in 1902, except that such new by-laws provided for the establishment of a First Aid Department, and provided for a Board of Trustees of 13 members, of which the President shall be a member ex officio. . . . "This course is taken," Miss Barton declared later, as to this 1903 action, "the new code of by-laws proposed and circulated, and the annual meeting called with the sole purpose of doing everything in my power to harmonize existing differences between members of the corporation and to make the Red Cross an efficient instrument of the beneficient objects it is designed to serve. If in initiating these measures for the conciliation of opposing interests and views, it may seem to some of my friends that I overlooked just grounds of personal offense in imputations wantonly made upon my honor and integrity, I do so knowingly and willingly, and because the cause that the American Red Cross is meant to promote stands first in my affections and my desires. It would be strange if it did not--if the cause for which I have devoted myself for half a century were not deemed by me worthy of any possible sacrifice of personal pride or personal interest. It would be equally strange, if after so many years of earnest effort for the relief of human suffering, during which I have always lived and moved in the full glare of the public gaze, I could not now safely trust my character and good name to the care of the American people. I am sure that I can and that I risk nothing in doing so, and if those now at variance with me will meet me in the same spirit by which I am animated, we cannot fail to adjust all differences to our mutual satisfaction and to the great advantage to the cause all should have at heart."1 1 These paragraphs are from p. 72 of "Clara Barton and The Red Cross" "Reply to Remarsbank" issued March 30th, 1904. However, the minority defeated at the annual meeting of 1903 were not content. They protested to President Roosevelt and succeeded in securing his aid. Through Secretary Cortelyou on January 2, 1904, he stated that the President and the Cabinet could not serve under the conditions of the Board of Consultation. January 29, the minority's memorial, headed by John M. Wilson, vice president, was introduced to Congress as embodying the protest, and printed as House Document No. 340. This memorial charged in the large that the amended by-laws centralized in Miss Barton as President, too much authority, pointing out in this connection that she was allowed to select her own executive committee. Had it confined itself to this, the memorial would have been a fair protest against Clara Barton's Red Cross system as a whole from 1881 to 1904, as being unfit for the future, when Miss Barton's regime should have been finished. But in that it went on to criticize the past of the Red Cross, as it had been directed by Miss Barton, it generated heat instead of light, confused unessentials with essentials and degenerated into a contest of personalities in place of principles. The Investigation Committee, equally sought by Miss Barton and the remonstrants, was appointed by the Red Cross with Senator Redfield Proctor as Chairman. Under its direction a treasury official went over the Red Cross books and records Miss Barton laid open. The result was that the charges pending in 1904 were dropped. The report was never made public and cannot now be found. They dropped the investigation, and in this way exonerated Miss Barton of the petty charges of misappropriating funds, and did not incriminate her past administration. Miss Barton presented her resignation June 16, 1904.1 By this, 1 "In the month of December a public call was issued by the burgess of Butler, Pa., for aid in the relief of the epidemic of typhoid, which was raging at that place with great severity, reaching nearly '2000 cases--over a hundred deaths having occurred. This call was answered at once by the president, accompanied by Dr. J. B. Hubbell, general field agent of the Red Cross, and Gen. William H. Sears, and experienced worker, going in person to Butler and assisting in organizing the committees, and associating with them such outside Red Cross bodies of relief as were adjacent, remaining until the relief was fully and satisfactorily organized. This service was most gratefully received by the central committee, as expressed by public vote of thanks." for the sake of harmony in the Red Cross, whose welfare she put above her own, she yielded to the new system, clearing the decks for it in its We can grow national heroines, there is but one. In the perspective of history where little things grow small and big things large, the national verdict for Clara Barton will be one of endless love and pride. Her system had done its work ; nevertheless this was in the past. Soon she must leave it. The opposition was planning for the time when so such figure as Clara Barton in her vigor, would exist. It was hard for her to understand this because the air was beclouded with personal charges on her own side and on the other which made her feel that it was necessary in defending herself to defend the old system of centralized authority and action in the President. Her modesty and natural simplicity never let her once feel but what some new Clara Barton could arise to embody the spirit of the Red Cross and swing the country as she did. Those behind the new system knew this [discussion] [*drop*] was impossible. Another thing Miss Barton did not see was that the Red Cross was old enough to stand alone upon its feet. Had she realized the permanency of its foundation she would not have feared so at its transfer to the new system of administration. She could not see that it was unnecessary now for her to keep the Presidency, and full power, in order to insure the stability of the Society. She did not understand that her work had been so built into its blessed system that the Society was regarded by the American people not as a changeable organization, but as an indestructible organism, which no change of names could overthrow. Had Miss Barton seen all this it would not have been so hard for her to have let others hold the reins and conduct the detailed administration while she remained the animating initial genius--and President at large--an honorary position from which the heart of America would have never dislodged her. Had she been able to get away from petty fears on the one hand and petty charges on the other, she would have seen that the new system institutionalized the Red Cross where she had once individualized it. In December, 1904, came the new bill reincorporating the Red Cross. By this Act of Congress the American Red Cross was newly organized and reincorporated, and brought under Government supervision, the charter providing that the President of the United States be President and that among other members of the Board, five should be chosen from the Department of State, Treasury and Justice and that a disbursing officer of the War Department should audit the accounts of the [secretary] [*treasurer*]. The association is the officially recognized Volunteer Relief Society of the United States and is not under any one of the Executive Departments. In time of war its personnel would cooperate with the medical departments of the Army and Navy. In 1915 the organized directorate was as follows: Hon. Woodrow Wilson, President; Mr. Robert W. De Forest, Vice-President ; Mr. Ernest P. Bicknell, National Director ; Hon. John Skelton Williams, Treasurere; Hon. John W. Davis, Counselor; Mr. Charles L. Magee, Secretary. Maj.-Gen. George W. Davis, U.S.A., Chairman Central Committee; Birg.-Gen. C. A. Devol, U.S.A., General Manager ; Miss Mabel T. Boardman, Chairman National Relief Board ; Hon. Robert Lansing, Chairman International Relief Board; Maj.-Gen. William C. Gorgas, Surg.-Gen. U.S.A., Chairman War Relief Board ; Maj. Robert U. Patterson, Medical Corps U.S.A. Chief Bureau of Medical Service ; Miss Jane A. Delano, Chairman National Committee, Red Cross Nursing Service; Miss Fannie F. Clement, Superintendent Town and Country Nursing Service; Mr. Lewis E. Stein, Chief Bureau of Membership ; Austin Cunningham, Chief Bureau of Information and Editor of Magazine. Executive committee: Miss Mabel T. Boardman, Washington, D. C.; Hon. Robert Lansing, Secretary of State; Mr. Robert W. de Forest, New York, N. Y. ; Hon. Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior ; Major-Gen. William C. Gorgas, Surgeon-General, U. S. Army ; Surgeon-General William C. Braisted, U. S. Navy; Mr. Charles D. Norton, New York, N. Y. Referring to the last days of her connection with the Society [she] [*Miss Barton*] [says] [*said*] in a letter written August 1, 1904 from Washington: "It is very important that I be here until the changes of the Red Cross organization are made. I have to turn things over to new hands and really ought not to be away at all till it is finished." Of the great work of the Society she adds: "When the Government accepted the Red Cross, perhaps a bit arrogantly, I felt that my end was accomplished, and that I was ready to give it up." Clara Barton might retire from the actual Presidency of the Red Cross--but in the minds of the people and in the hearts of the soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic nothing could remove the lasting impression she had made as the mother of the greatest organ of mercy this land has known. Clara Barton Gal. 5 of Chp. 34 10-30-11 Gibson In 1915 the Governmental estimate and the place in American public opinion Clara Barton holds is thus expressed in the last word of the able and pointed speech of acting Secretary of War, Henry Breckenridge, at the laying of the corner-stone of the American Red Cross Building, March 27, 1915. In a portion of the address he concluded: The War Department of necessity feels a very close connection with the Red Cross. Out of the suffering of the wounded soldiers at the battle of Solferino first came Dunant's idea of the Red Cross. America's participation in the Red Cross Treaty of Geneva was agitated and induced by a noble woman whose sympathies had drawn her to the battlefields of the Civil War. To every soldier who fought in the Union Army and survived the War, the name of Clara Barton was known. And as long as the American Red Cross endures or its name is remembered the memory of Clara Barton will be cherished. Her sympathies were universal, her zeal unflagging. She nursed the wounded of two wars on two continents, in our Civil War and in the Franco-Prussian War. She directed the work of her association to the calamities of peace as will as the stricken fields of war. She was in Cuba before the Spanish War -- was on the Maine the day before it was blown up and tended the wounded survivors in the hospital ashore. Whenever humanity called for help -- in the Balkans or in Strassburg -- in Cuba or in Galveston -- in Paris or on the American battlefields of the sixties -- there came the ministering hand of Clara Barton. He added as to the Red Cross which she founded: The meaning and significance that underlie the development of the Red Cross movement are fully symbolized in its emblem. The Red Cross banner symbolizes to America those qualities that must be found in our nation if the nation is to endure. The Red Cross banner spells for humanity the qualifications that are prerequisite to a sus- tained onward and upward march of the human race. The white field of purity and in it set the cross of self-sacrifice blazoned with the deep red of courage and bravery -- this is the banner that the Red Cross unfurls in the van of marching humanity. And to the degree that America approximates the realization of the ideals spread upon that banner, to the degree will the nation endure and persist in righteousness and in strength. In honoring the self-sacrifice and con- secration of its women and in rearing a useful monument to the spirit of humanity, as exemplified in the Red Cross, the nation not only honors itself but gives hopeful pledge and assurance of the sound ideals that lie at the basis of American national life. From the point of an historical perspective, disfavor with a tem- porary and passing administration means nothing in the end to a name as great and a career as long as Clara Barton's. For a while it may mean on both sides much misconstruction and suffering. But in the end this is forgotten and the fame remains un- dimmed. It has been true of all the great humanitarian relievers of war, Henri Dunant, the founder of the European and the International Red Cross, was called at first a humanitarian crank and suffered many rebuffs. To-day this fact, however much pain it caused him then, is obsolete and unremembered amid the world tributes to his name. Dr. Henry Bellows, who headed the great Ambulance system and Sanitary Commission of the Civil War, which finally developed into the greatest then known in the world, faced untold opposition and lack of sympathy from even the Civil War cabinet who, when he sought to introduce the Red Cross, called it "the fifth wheel to the coach." Succeeding administrations for ten years rebuffed him, till by 1877 he gave up in despair trying either to make permanent or to graft the old Ambulance system and Sanitary Commission into the Treaty of Geneva. Florence Nightingale, at the Crimea, England's great introducer into the world of the system of women hospital nurses, was actually so ignored by a subsequent English ministry that, though a poor invalid, she was ousted from her minor position in a Governmental office. It caused her intense pain, and although a chronic sufferer from her many labors, she saw herself ignominiously thrown out by new political leaders who, great as they were, could not understand her. But when she became an octogenarian, all this became a buried incident, and all England but a few years ago bent to do her homage, when the Lord Mayor of London granted her the freedom of the city, and the Golden Casket, England's highest of honors. Now, since wounded of two wars on two continents, in our Civil War and in the Franco-Prussian War. She directed the work of her association to the calamities of peace as well as the stricken fields of war. She was in Cuba before the Spanish War--was on the Maine the day before it was blown up and tended the wounded survivors in the hospital ashore. Wherever humanity called for help--in the Balkans or in Strassburg--in Cuba or in Galveston--in Paris or on the American battlefields of the sixties--there came the ministering hand of Clara Barton. He added as to the Red Cross which she founded: The meaning and significance that underlie the development of the Red Cross movements are fully symbolized in its emblem. The Red Cross banner symbolizes to America those qualities that must be found in our nation if the nation is to endure. The Red Cross banner spells for humanity the qualifications that are prerequisite to a sustained onward and upward march of the human race. The white filed of purity and in it set the cross of self-sacrifice blazoned with the deep red of courage and bravery--this is the banner that the Red Cross unfurls in the van of marching humanity. And to the degree that America approximates the realization of the ideals spread upon that banner, to that degree will the nation endure and persist in righteousness and in strength. In honoring the self-sacrifice and consecration of its women and in rearing a useful monument to the spirit of humanity, as exemplified in the Red Cross, the nation not only honors itself but gives hopeful pledge and assurance of the sound ideals that lie at the basis of American national life. From the point of an historical perspective, disfavor with a temporary and passing administration means nothing in the end to a name as great and a career as long as Clara Barton's. For a while it may mean on both sides much misconstruction and suffering. But in the end this is forgotten and the fame remains undimmed. It has been true of all the great humanitarian relievers of war. Henri Dunant, the founder of the European and the International Red Cross, was called at first a humanitarian crank and suffered many rebuffs. To-day this fact, however much pain it caused him then, is obsolete and unremembered amid the world tributes to his name. Dr. Henry Bellows, who headed the great Ambulance system and Sanitary Commission of the Civil War, which finally developed into the greatest then known in the world, faced untold opposition and lack of sympathy from even the Civil War cabinet who, when he sought to introduce the Red Cross, called it " the fifth wheel to the coach." Succeeding administrations for ten years rebuffed him, till by 1877 he gave up in despair trying either to make permanent or to graft the old Ambulance system and Sanitary Commission into the Treaty of Geneva. Florence Nightingale, at the Crimea, England's great introducer into the world of the system of women hospital nurses, was actually so ignored by a subsequent English ministry that, though a poor invalid, she was ousted from her minor position in a Governmental office. It caused here intense pain, and although a chronic sufferer from her many labors, she saw herself ignominously thrown out by new political leaders who, great as they were, could not understand her. But when she became an octogenarian, all this became a buried incident, and all England but a few years ago bent to do her homage, when the Lord Mayor of London granted her the freedom of the city, and the Golden Casket, England's highest of honors. Now, since her death a monument is being erected and nothing is considered too good to let Great Britain make her memory green in the British Isles. Thus will perish the temporary unhappy misunderstanding and misconstruction of 1902-1904 which Clara Barton suffered. In the atoning stream that swallows time's ticking seconds of little troubles its unessentials will be dissolved. Indeed, as demonstrated in nearly 3000 American newspapers in 1912, they have already been dissolved, leaving her character and career eternally crystallized at the base of an enduring national foundation and an immorta lAmerican destiny--the greatest an American woman has yet produced. Nevertheless, that Miss Barton felt her severance of relations at the time deeply is shown in the following letters to Professor Charles Sumner Young: "MY DEAR MR. YOUNG:-- "I wonder if I have ever said a word in reply to your comforting letter of May. If I have or have not said anything on paper I have in my heart answered it many times and bless both you and Mrs. Logan for your kindliness and trust. I have never in my life a moment's doubt of the loyalty of Mrs. Logan. She stood the brunt of the battle while she could and longer than I wished her to. "She foresaw what was coming with her keen knowledge of human nature and thorough political training. She read the actors like a book. I well remember one night when she made this remark, and it was comparatively early in the game. Looking at me, she said, calling me by name: 'At first I called this prosecution, then I called it persecution, but now I name it crucifixion, and that is what they mean.' I knew it too, but there was no redress, no course but to wait the resurrection if it came. "The trust, even of one's best friends, under the circumstances, and knowing nothing of the facts, could not be expected to withstand it. That it was physically withstood was beyond either the expectation or the intention. But my good friend, that is all passed. The press not longer turns its arrows upon me. The harvest was not what the reapers expected, and I suspected if it were all to be done over again in the light of their newly gained experience it would not be done. to relieve myself. "To think of sitting here through an 'investigation' by the country I have tried to serve,--'in the interest of harmony' they say, when I have never spoken a discordant word in my life, meaningly, but have worked on in silence under the fire of the entire press of the U.S. for twelve months,--forgiven all, offered friendship,--and still am to be 'investigated' for 'inharmony,' 'unbusinesslike methods,' and 'too many years'--all of these I cannot help. I am still unanimously bidden to work on for 'life,' bear the burden of an organization --meet its costs myself,--and am now threatened with the expense of the 'investigation.' "Can you wonder that I ask a bridle track? And that some other country might look inviting to me? "Mr. Young, this unhappy letter is a poor return to make for your friendly courtesy, but so long my dark thoughts have turned to you, that I cannot find myself with the privilege of communicating with you, with expressing them. I cannot think where I have found the courage to do it, but I have. "I know how unwise a thing it seems, but if the pressure is too great the bands may break, that may be my case, and fearing that my better judgment might bid me put these sheets in the fire--I send them without once glancing over. You need not forget, but kindly remember, rather, that they are the wail of an aching heart and that is all. Nature has provided a sure and final rest for all the heartaches that mortals are called to endure. "If you are in the East again, and I am here, I pray you to come to me. "Receive again my thanks and permit me to remain, "Your friend, "CLARA BARTON." Later came, among others, this answer from Mr. Young. "MY DEAR MISS BARTON: "Now, Miss Barton, why you have confided in obscure me is a mystery I cannot solve; such a compliment is more than I can hope to deserve. Having written the above, General W. R. Shafter came into the library and sat beside me at the table. I stopped writing and we entered into a discussion of you and your affairs. He is exceedingly complimentary of you and your work. He especially requested me to extend to you his greetings and sincerest wishes. "My Uncle, General Ross, never told me of any event of his military career with so much pride as that of offering his services and acting as your lieutenant in the ware-house of the Red Cross at Havana. Likewise would I be proud of the distinction to serve you in the most humble capacity, either for the cause you represent or for yourself personally. "While I do not, and cannot, take seriously even the remotest suggestion that you might seek retirement and seclusion, I would gladly volunteer to be your Kit Carson over any mountain trail to happiness. I don't think the American people will ever permit your forced retirement, but in the event you should voluntarily withdraw from public service, I would indeed be glad to suggest to some of my friends, who I am sure would esteem it an honor and privilege, to offer you a home in Los Angeles, and a competence the rest of your life. "If in my humble way I can be of any service to you, you will please remember that you have but to command me. "Believe me, "Sincerely your friend, "C. S. YOUNG." And yet even in her grief Clara Barton is planning the extension of the Red Cross. The vision of helping humanity in pain was still one on which she fed. Studying the situation carefully, she saw but two fields where there was no Red Cross--China and Mexico. She did not want to go as far as China to found a field. Mexico became her passion, and at 83 she even packed her things actually to go. But her friends stood in the way and at the last moment dissuaded her. To Mexico, however, had she gone, conditions of barbarism might have been overturned and the sad pages of the late warfare have been reversed. There is no doubt Clara Barton's little figure, bringing its lessons of International Mercy, would have won the warm Mexican heart and established a real Red Cross. As it was, when the revolution broke out, no Red Cross existed worthy of the name. According to ambassador Wilson, who told it to me personally at the commencement of the Mexican trouble, no system of any sort was ready to care for the wounded, teach modern civilized treatment to the "shot on the spot" prisoners, or to prevent the other horrible cruelties of guerrilla warfare. In April, 1909, writing from Glen Echo to Professor Young, she [*Miss Barton*] refers to this desire of hers to go to Mexico: "Does Mexico recall to your mind a request that I once made of you, that you should see me across the border line of that strange country? However much I needed it, and whether well or ill, I never knew. I only know I did not go. But my own country seemed to me so hard that I thought I should not live it through. "The government which I thought I loved, and loyally tried to serve, had shut every door in my face and stared at me insultingly through its windows. What wonder I want to leave?" In a later conversation with Mr. Young about this letter Miss Barton said: "Referring to that letter I wrote you in which I expressed a desire to go to Mexico, I meant it. For several months I have been gathering together my belongings and adjusting my affairs so that I could go. "There were but two countries where the Red Cross Society did not exist--one in China, and the other in Mexico. I did not want to go to China, but did want to go to Mexico, and fully intended to go. 555 Clara Barton gal 7 King 10-31-II Ceap 34 "My friends finally dissuaded me and perhaps it was for the best, for if I had gone I probably would not have been alive now." Concerning her abandoned purpose to seek a refuge in Mexico, she wrote; "I can never understand why I failed to go. A greater power and a wiser mind were guiding, no doubt. "'To God my life was an open page. " 'To God my life was an open page. " 'He knew what I would be; " 'He knew hew the tyrant passions rage, " 'How wind-swept was all my anchorage, " 'And how I would drift out to sea.'" Yet, as we see it now, was not her first intuition the divine one, to found a Red Cross south of the Rio Grande? In the light of events in Mexico, it was inspired intuition. In the light of her death, as a preventive of decline, it would have been also the truer plan as it would have fanned to life the embers of the monogenarian and she, who at 77 sat on a gun carriage at Siboney, as in five other collapses just as severe, would probably have risen again in Mexico to the occasion of suffering and to the task of mercy. Contrary to what seemed best in the light of what we know now, the wiser plan, the divine plan, would have been for her to go. It would have added another great chapter to her victories-- the founding of the International Red Cross in Mexico whose benighted war-torn regions remain unenlightened and unhealed and know not mercy and civilization. And too it might have prolonged her own life by granting as in the past new reservoirs of power on which to draw. But if she could not go to Mexico she could do something else. Since her retirement from the leadership of the Red Cross Society at a time when most people in her position would feel that they were entitled to rest, Miss Barton was not idle. April 18, 1905, the National Organization of the First Aid of America was organized and she became its President. Faithfully she attended the official board meetings occurring in June during her summer vacation period at Oxford. Miss Barton had been molded by per past work into a perpetual state of watchfulness. As for individuals she was always on guard, so also she watched out for masses of people collectively. "As the result of my work among the injured and sick both in wars and calamities, my mind," she said during a Boston convention in 1906, "has been trained to look for trouble, for accidents and disorder wherever great masses of people were assembled." "Years ago, when it was my privilege," she said to her new Society, "to bring the Red Cross to this country, and after years of untold labor, gain for it a foothold, I thought that I had done my country and its people the most humane service it would ever be in my power to offer. But, as originated, it reached only a certain class. All the accidents incident to family life, the great manufactories and railroads, with their hundred thousand victims a year, were not within its province. Hence, the necessity and the opportunity for this broader work covering all. "A wise providence has permitted me to leave the one, that I might stand with the other in it beginning. "You will carry it is consummation what I only commence. "To you, my faithful officers, the welcome I give is from a heart tried as by fire, and to the results of the hard field you have chosen to make warfare between knowledge and ignorance, to walk beside the toiling man, to reach under the grimy shirt to find the rough, untaught heart of the wearer, and to teach it the uses of pity and the ways of mercy-- the love of man for man, born of the sufferings he is heir to. "Your joy will be the joy of those you serve, and minister to; your reward the success you achieve. It is a search for the Holy Grail, in God's mercy you may find it." She was actual President of the First Aid to the Injured from 1905 to 1910, attending to the office all these years and presiding at the Board meetings in June.