We plant an oak to commemorate a career, sacred, sacred to one who loved the world—to one whom all the world loves. As in Japan a certain tree is sacred, in America every tree is sacred that is love-planted. Our act, and sentiment, is in consonance with hers whose almost last wish was that an oak sapling be planted at the shrine of her beloved horse; that it might be his monument, and with the hope that the children would love and protect it as Baba’s Tree.
“Sing low, green oak, thy summer rune,
Sing valor, love, and truth.”
In no other atmosphere of her native land as here is a place so appropriate to plant this historic tree. Through this atmosphere, into yonder edifice, came the cry “Come and Help Us”;—from Cuba that cruelty, pestilence and starvation were the portions of thousands; from Galveston that still other thousands of men, women and children had become victims of disaster, on her storm-swept coast. In every instance to the cry for help was there response, and on wings of love the Angel of Mercy sped forth to minister with her own hands to suffering humanity.
It was here that she basked in the sunset rays, as they dipped gently towards the west. Yonder are the trees which she planted with her own hands; yonder the soil wherein grew her beautiful flowers; yonder humanity’s centre from which flowed her charities to almost every part of the known world; yonder the chamber from whose bed of sorrow she cried: “Let me go; let me go”; yonder the window through whose casement on Easter Morn, in 1912, her spirit flew to the Great Unknown.
Nature that springs from the soil decays and dies; deeds that spring from the soul never die. Nature’s foliage that ornaments is destroyed by the frosts of winter; the spiritual foliage that ornaments is perennial. The American Red Cross whose bud, in 1881, opened to the sunlight in the forests of Michigan is now the sheltering tree for the world’s millions; the woman that planted the seed and nourished it with her tears, as later she planted that other tree known as THE NATIONAL FIRST AID, is now the spirit that stands sponsor for certain charities, charities the most widely known of all the charities of earth.
Neither marble nor canvas is so venerated as the tree, from out of GOD’S FIRST TEMPLES—a tree to commemorate the individual is the most venerated memorial in the world. The world will little care, or note not at all, what we say and do here and yet the spirit of these environments may become the inspiration of future ages. The mound that soon must shut out from view our mortality will be leveled and covered with earth’s foliage, only to be forgotten or marked “UNKNOWN.” But let us pray that the tree, whose sentiment is world-humanity, may take highest rank among the world’s other historic trees; that through the centuries the children of successive generations will love and protect THE CLARA BARTON OAK, NATURE’S EASTER-TRIBUTE TO IMMORTALITY.
Planting the “Clara Barton Rose”—Miss Carrie Harrison, Chairman Clara
Barton Centennial Committee of the National Woman’s Party.
MEMORIAL TREE PLANTING TO THE MEMORY OF CLARA BARTON