But here comes the speculative theorist! Isn’t it encouraging a bad principle; wouldn’t it be better to do away with all war? Wouldn’t peace societies be better? Oh, yes, my friend, as much better as the millennium would be better than this, but it is not here. Hard facts are here; war is here; war is the outgrowth, indicator and relic of barbarism. Civilization alone will do away with it, and scarcely a quarter of the earth is yet civilized, and that quarter not beyond the possibilities of war. It is a long step yet to permanent peace. We cannot cross a stream until we reach it. The sober truth is, we are called to deal with facts, not theories; we must practice if we would teach. And be assured, my friends, there is not a peace society on the face of the earth to-day, nor ever will be, so potent, so effectual against war as the Red Cross of Geneva.
The sooner the world learns that the halo of glory which surrounds a field of battle and its tortured, thirsting, starving, pain-racked, dying victims exists only in imagination; that it is all sentiment, delusion, falsehood, given for effect; that soldiers do not die painless deaths; that the sum of all human agony finds its equivalent on the battlefield, in the hospital, by the weary wayside and in the prison; that, deck it as you will, it is agony; the sooner and more thoroughly the people of the earth are brought to realize and appreciate these facts, the more slow and considerate they will be about rushing into hasty and needless wars, and the less popular war will become.
Death by the bullet painless! What did this nation do during eighty agonizing and memorable days but to watch the effects of one bullet wound? Was it painless? Painless either to the victim or the nation? Though canopied by a fortitude, patience, faith and courage scarce exceeded in the annals of history, still was it agony. And when in his delirious dreams the dying President murmured, “The great heart of the nation will not let the soldier die,” I prayed God to hasten the time when every wounded soldier would be sustained by this sweet assurance; that in the combined sympathies, wisdom, enlightenment and power of the nations, he should indeed feel that the great heart of the people would not let the soldier die.
Friends, was it accident, or was it providence which made it one of the last acts of James A. Garfield in health to pledge himself to urge upon the representatives of his people in Congress assembled, this great national step for the relief and care of wounded men? Living or dying it was his act and his wish, and no member in that honored, considerate and humane body but will feel himself in some manner holden to see it carried out.
ACTION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
The president of the American Red Cross, Clara Barton, in November, 1881, laid before President Arthur the matter of the Treaty of Geneva, and the unfulfilled desire of President Garfield that the United States should give its adhesion to that international compact. To this President Arthur gave a cordial and favorable response, and made good his words by the following paragraph in his first annual message, sent to the forty-seventh Congress:
At its last extra session the Senate called for the text of the Geneva Convention for the relief of the wounded in war. I trust that this action foreshadows such interest in the subject as will result in the adhesion of the United States to that humane and commendable engagement.
This part of the message was immediately taken up in the Senate and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, consisting of the following named gentlemen, to wit: William Windom, Minnesota; George F. Edmunds, Vermont; John T. Miller, California; Thomas W. Ferry, Michigan; Elbridge G. Lapham, New York; John W. Johnston, Virginia; J.T. Morgan, Alabama; George H. Pendleton, Ohio; Benjamin H. Hill, Georgia.
During the consideration of the subject an invitation was extended to the president of the American Association, its counsel and other associate members to meet the above named Senate Committee at the capitol, for conference, and for an explanation of such points as still remained obscure, to aid their deliberations, and to facilitate investigations.
On the seventeenth of May, 1881, Hon. Omar D. Conger submitted to the United States Senate the following resolution, which was considered by unanimous consent and agreed to: