EDITOR'S NOTE
So far as is known, this book of such far-reaching influence has never before been translated or published in English.
PREFACE
Henri Dunant, the famous author of "A Souvenir of Solferino," was born in Geneva in 1828.
The instruction and philanthropic principles received by him in his youth, together with his natural energy and power of organization, were a good foundation for the unfolding of the ideas and inclinations which led to his fertile acts.
In 1859 occurred the event which definitely impelled him to a course of action which did not discontinue during his whole life. A course of action for the mitigation of the sufferings caused by war, or from a broader point of view, for the commencement of the reign of peace.
This event was the battle of Solferino, when he first organized, in Castiglione, corps of volunteers to search for and nurse the wounded.
Having thus started the idea of a permanent organization of these voluntary bands of compassionate workers, and also of an international treaty agreement in regard to the wounded, he presented himself to Marshal MacMahon and afterwards to Napoleon III, who became interested in the project of Dunant and immediately ordered his army no longer to make prisoners of the physicians and nurses of the enemy.