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

Who once had been her country’s benefactor.

Human nature hasn’t changed since he, who became the first American President, suffered through the “Conway Cabal,” a cabal not dissimilar in the motives, the charges and the execution, to that through which suffered the first Red Cross President. But George Washington was a fighter; Clara Barton, a woman of peace. The Red Cross President was as patient as was the first martyred American President, under persecution, and who then said “I am nothing, but truth is everything.” She was as innocent and unsuspecting as was our last martyred American President, who said “I have never done any man wrong, and I believe no man will do me one.”

Man, political, cowardly-man constructed the apparatus;—the tongue of woman, the sender; the ear of woman, the receiver. Of all the God-given good of earth, one woman is the best; TWO WOMEN, the worst. The only serious charge in history that will stand against Clara Barton is that she WAS A WOMAN; her most serious “misappropriation,” that of her confidence in another woman.

Away the fair detractors went

And gave by turns their censures vent.

Elected for life? Yes. Then resigned? She was not a “war-woman,”—she had never filled a swiveled-chair;—yes, she resigned in the interest of peace and harmony. And from the facts, distorted, and the motives, impugned, as to why she resigned were taken the bundle of faggots to add fuel to the flames of her torture.

Slander never wants for material;

Virtue itself provides it with weapons.

As for safety, the ancient criminal fled to the Temple of the Gods, so America’s modern character-assassin fled to the Temple of the Red Cross, and implored silence; for then to recite the historic facts of the martyrdom might cause vibrations that would have shaken to earth the pillars of that sacred temple. President Clara Barton of the Red Cross said: “Its President has spoken not at all, and never will.” Silence reigned. The truth was withheld at the Red Cross receiving station, while untruth sped wireless—and all the world wondered.

The Red Cross! No, the recent Red Cross officials don’t know the facts,—the reputation of the Mother is the child’s richest heritage. The Mother loved the Red Cross child; the child, the Mother—the slander of the Mother, dead, is by the individual, not by the Red Cross. The slander having coiled itself in Red Cross official circles there it lives, and will live, until scotched by the Red Cross or the American people.