Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian / Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of America

by Charles Sumner Young

CLARA BARTON PAYS RESPECTS TO FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

In the year 1854 occurred the Crimean War. At the Scutari and Barrack Hospitals, Florence Nightingale rendered service that gave her immortal fame. “Her services there,” said Clara Barton in 1882, “marked an era never before reached in the progress of the world. When Miss Nightingale, with her thirty-eight faithful attendants, sailed from the shores of England, it meant more for the advancement of the world, more for its future history, than all the fleets of armies and navies, cannon and commissary, munitions of war, and regiments of men, than had sailed before her in that vast campaign.

“This unarmed pilgrim band of women that day not only struck a blow at the barbarities of war, but they laid the axe deep at the root of war itself. When Florence Nightingale, covered with the praises and honors of the world, bending under the weight of England’s gratitude, again sought her green island home, it was to seek also a bed of painful invalidism, from which she has never risen and probably never will.”

’Tis good that thy name springs

From two of earth’s fairest things

A stately city and a sweet-voiced bird.