In order to obtain this, and our Committee can be of use to you, and between Mr. Moynier and myself we shall do all we can to help to enlighten you. But you must also have direct intercourse with the relief committees of the different countries which are at this moment engaged in the war, although administratively the international communications from neutral countries are made by the International Committee. You know by experience that many letters are in that case lost in the hands of employees, subordinates, or men too much occupied, and that one needs to throw the bait often and on several sides, at the risk of losing much time.
3. You must put yourself in direct communication with your President. I see in it the use, first, to augment your credit in the country; second, especially to obtain that your letters and your sendings be given up by persons in high positions and influential, in particular ambassadors and consuls. You know that question by your experience in the American war better than I do, and I shall not enlarge upon it.
4. You must have money, and you know the means to procure it. The Sanitary Commission has collected sixty millions of francs during your war, especially by immense bazaars. In our country bazaars always succeed, much more so than collections, and produce three to four times as much. They always succeed, while collections oftentimes fail.
5. Once having the necessary money, the question rises, if it would be advisable to choose two commissaries,—for example, two young physicians supplied with a recommendation from your President,—who should go together to Europe with instructions and plein-pouvoir from your new Committee, directed to go first to Geneva to the International Committee and from there to go directly to the Headquarters of the Russian army, in order to make its acquaintance and to obtain from it the authorization to circulate in the army and to gather all the information necessary for your work. It would be desirable that they speak tolerable French, this language being the official one in Europe; if they speak and write only English, they would lose time and would not always be understood. Those two or three commissaries should be posted on the theater seat of the war and should give you all the news by an active correspondence. They ought probably to engage themselves not to write on politics. I never did it in war-time of Italy, Schleswig, and France. Besides these commissaries, you need an office or an agency in Europe to whom all the relief funds must be addressed and who would take the charge of sending them on wherever the commissaries indicate. I do not know what our International Committee will decide upon this, but I think it will be disposed to be an intermediary between America and the belligerent armies, as it has done during the War of 1870 by the agency residing at Bâle placed there by us. This agency has received five hundred letters, besides other correspondence, every day, either for France or Germany. Notice, however, that our Committee wish to show an absolute neutrality and should certainly refuse to coöperate in anything like a political party. It is, therefore, necessary that your publications speak out your intention to remain neutral and to carry the relief indifferently to all those who suffer. That will not hinder you to correspond more particularly with the Russian army, which for you is more accessible, with whom the communications are easier, and for whom I believe America has more political sympathy; but you must insist on your principle of neutrality in your publications and let this position be known in Constantinople, and especially to the Committee newly formed in that city. Your commissaries, after their arrival at Geneva, might remain there some days in order to study a little our library which contains everything that has appeared since the beginning of our work. It would be desirable, however, that the Committee of the Red Cross in America should buy the principal works, and that there should be a commission of several established persons who would take it upon themselves to study them and to give an account of them; there is a little in every language.
I have sent you a number of our International Bulletins which appear every three months, and in which I have spoken of you. The annual subscription being only six francs, your Committee would take two subscriptions and by it would know all that is done in the different countries. Last year we sent three delegates to Montenegro, an interesting little country, where with material help and money we can do a great deal of good, and where one is received like a Divinity by this enthusiastic population, but which is also jealous and suspicious.
Our old delegates being at Geneva, yours could receive numerous and useful information. Before realizing this ambassador, we had three months’ study and treating.
I send you my discourse made in Brussels, which for your case does not contain any immediate application. I might give one to your hypothetical delegates as they pass through Geneva.
As you see, Miss Barton, and honored friend, I began with the idea that the American Society of the Red Cross should revise and assure its stable existence by an immediate employment of its power through a practical application; relief funds to send to the belligerent armies of the Oriental War. Once consecrated by action by the remembrance of what it has done, its basis will be firmer, its credit more assured, and then you will be able to give it a definite form and shape which experience will have shown you to be the most useful.
Not knowing yet what Mr. Moynier has done during my absence, I shall not send you the letter which I wish to address to your President, but shall do it as soon as I shall have seen him, if he has not already done it.
Write to me at any time concerning the affairs of the Red Cross and I shall reply as well as I can, being always in accordance with Mr. Moynier’s wishes, who does not know English.