No consecutive book has been published by us since that date, but the history has been perhaps even more fully told, and that scores of times, in public addresses which its president and assistants have been called to make before great assemblies, selections from some of which will appear in this volume, as the fullest information given in the most compact manner that we can render in the short space of time allotted us.
The very title of the organization, viz.: “Relief in War,” has been a misnomer, and through all the early years especially was very generally misunderstood by the public. I have not unfrequently been invited and innocently urged to attend peace meetings and large charity gatherings for the poor and afflicted on the ground of needing instruction myself; inasmuch as I “was engaged in advocating war, wouldn’t it be well to hear something on the other side?” And I have been invited to become party to a discussion in which the merits of peace and war should be compared.
Large organizations of women, the best in the country, and, I believe, the best in the world, have faithfully labored with me to merge the Red Cross into their society as a part of woman’s work; without the smallest conception or realization of its scope, its international character, its treaty obligations, and the official ground it was liable at any time to be called to occupy.
Many charming invitations, from ladies even more charming, to address their convention or meeting, have still contained some well chosen word which might imply a question, if indeed the Red Cross really were the humane and philanthropic institution it claimed to be; naturally the address usually dealt with the question as it was put.
I name these facts as mere relics of the past, amusing now, but instructive to you of the present day (when no child even questions the motives of the Red Cross), as showing what it had to meet and live through in order to live at all.
In order to show the enthusiastic devotees of the present year how questionable the beneficence of the Red Cross appeared to the best people only a few years ago, I introduce the following address, read, by request, before a congress of women, 1895 or 1896, hoping that the charitably disposed reader will understand and appreciate the state of mind engendered by the title of the request made, and forgive any seeming acerbity:
ADDRESS.
WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RED CROSS IN ITS RELATION TO PHILANTHROPY?
I am asked to say something upon the “Significance of the Red Cross in its Relation to Philanthropy.” I am not sure that I understand precisely what is desired.
If a morning paper should announce that three or four of the greatest political bosses or greatest railroad kings in the country had quietly met somewhere, and sat with closed doors till long after midnight, and then silently departed, people would ask, “What is the significance of that? What mischief have they been devising in secret?” In that sense of the word, significance—which is a very common one—the Red Cross has none that I ever heard of. It has no rich offices to bestow, no favorites to reward, no enemies to punish. It has no secrets to keep, no mystic word or sign. Its proceedings would, and do, make a valuable library, accessible to all men and all women from Norway to New Zealand.
I will not say that it is so simple and common in character that he who runs may read, but surely she who desires information can sit down, read and obtain it. The Red Cross has been quietly doing its work for thirty years and is now established in forty independent nations. No other institution on earth, not even Christianity, has a public recognition so nearly universal. None has ever adhered more closely to its one single purpose of alleviating human suffering. Has that any significance or any connection with philanthropy? Let us see.