Under this civil feature the American Red Cross has aided in twelve great calamities: one forest fire, five floods, three cyclones, one earthquake, one famine and one pestilence. It has brought to the aid of the victims of these disasters, in money and material, many hundred thousands of dollars, acting as a systematized and organized medium of conveyance and distribution for the relief which the people desired to contribute. It has never yet solicited aid, it has scarcely suggested the raising of relief, but has endeavored to administer the relief which was raised wisely and faithfully.
[H]Since our adhesion to the treaty two international conferences have been held: the one at Geneva, by the International Committee, in 1884; the other at Carlsruhe, by the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden, in 1887.
As president of the American National Red Cross the honor has been accorded me to represent the government in each of these conferences. Some of the questions therein discussed, being of both national and international importance, will be later submitted for the consideration of your honorable legislative body.
The foregoing explanations made, I will, with your kind permission, gentlemen, venture to name to you some of the more personal features, of our own national branch of this world-wide organization, touching its conditions, positions, relations and requirements, inviting your thoughtful consideration to the same. I must do this, not only as its chief executive officer, but as the person who has been wholly responsible for our ever having had any connection with it. I alone brought this subject before the government, as the official representative of the International Committee, asking its adoption as a treaty, if found desirable; and was shown the exceptional courtesy of a unanimous accord in a most unfamiliar subject, by the largest, and, as I hold, the highest legislative body in the world.
During the intervening seven years, I have done my best and my utmost to properly test the value of the obligation taken, and to learn, from actual and practical experience, if the results would warrant a continuance of effort on the part of the national committee, and to some extent the encouragement and active co-operation of our government, without which the objects of the treaty would be misapplied, and its results practically lost.
These efforts have been made in the face of the open world. No action has been covered, none exaggerated. On its own fair merits, the American branch of the Red Cross stands before the government and the people it has served for their judgment.
If it has been an idle body?
If a parasite, drawing sustenance from others?
If it has promised and not performed?
If its work has been actual, or merely appeared upon paper?