You would do well to have Mr. Moynier’s pamphlet translated into English, “What the Red Cross is.” My little volume, entitled “The Surgeon at the Ambulance,” has been translated into English either in England or in America; perhaps it would be well to have a new edition of it for the circumstance. At last our volume “The War and Charity” has also been translated into English. For all our publications of the International Committee and its members it suffices to address Mr. George, Librarian at Geneva. Perhaps it would be necessary and useful, after you have plenty of money and fellow-laborers, to publish every three months a small bulletin of your work in one of the good American journals.
And now, my dear Miss Barton, I have talked enough to you about the Red Cross. I have given you my ideas provisionally, expecting better ones later. You see, I have spoken to you familiarly and with an entire confidence and fraternal friendship which our intercourse and our common work in Europe has brought forth.
May God sustain you, if you do undertake this new work, and, in entertaining and augmenting your corporal strength and brain power, may He continue to inspire you with that moral irresistible power, that invincible strength, which He alone can give and which the incredulous humanitarian never can give.
Accept, Miss Barton, and honored friend, the assurance of my respectful friendship.
Louis Appia, Dr.
Dansville, July 1st, 1877
Docteur Louis Appia
Membre Comité International de Secours aux Militaires blessés, Geneva
Docteur and Honored Friend:
I cannot find the words to properly express to you my gratitude for the kind and careful manner in which you have treated my letter. But first allow me to thank Madame Appia for her generous part, and all the prompt care she took to place it in the proper hands, and let me thank both for the excellent photograph, so welcome now, and for all the future to be preserved among my choicest and most honored keepsakes.
How kind it was of you, my good friend, to give me so much of your time and labor, embodied in that long letter so filled with valuable suggestions! If nothing more comes of it, it will at least bring us to an understanding in reference to the actual existence and standing of the Order of the Red Cross in America. I was extremely guarded in my letter, not at all knowing how you stood in regard to your selected representative in this country, for I knew you had one, and, if you were satisfied, I did not wish to ripple the calm waters of confidence and security by even one pebble of discontent or doubt. I wrote cautiously like a woman. You have spoken out like a man, and it is well. With the pains your Comité have taken, the Red Cross should have been known and honored in every household in America to-day. It has not died here: it was still-born; it has never once gasped on our shores; the nurses to whom you delivered it have never even uncovered its face, and America does not know that this holy child was ever an applicant for her adoption. She would have received it with open arms at the close of our war, when her own wounds were unhealed, and her memories fresh and tender. She will be less enthusiastic now at the end of a ten years’ peace, and no prospect of war. Still, the understanding and heart of the American people will lead them to examine and promote whatever cause has for its object the benefit of mankind, or the alleviation of human woe. I think I know my people, and although, through want of proper opportunities, or physical strength, or mental capacity, I may not be able to move them in this matter, this fact will in no way affect their general character, and, when all things combine for the proper presentation of this subject to them by whomsoever it may be, it will be received and adopted by them. Your suggestions are excellent and lay out much such a field of labor as I had looked forward to, and all this would be easy of accomplishment in America, if an urgent necessity existed. Until it does, it would be, I suspect, a difficult task to work up sufficient enthusiasm, but it was in anticipation of such a necessity that I was endeavoring to prepare the way. The simple war between Russia and Turkey might not be able to awaken the people, for we have a comparatively small element of either nationality among our populations, but if other European nations engage and Germany, France, and England, or all become involved, the interest in America will be scarcely less than on the other side. Then would be a repetition of the old sad days of the Franco-Prussian War, when every heart was sad and every purse open, they tell me, and half America in mourning.
Now, my idea was, in anticipation of such a state of affairs in Europe as should call for the sympathies and aid of the Americans, to be prepared with an organization, which would be only the body of clay, like the first man Adam, until the breath of life was breathed into its nostrils. This breath would be the necessity and the call for help from the suffering fields and peoples of Europe; then it would be well that the body were created to receive it. The first step, it seems to me, is to find and appoint to the head of the work some person in America who will have the spirit, the interest, the enterprise, the determination to push the work, and bring it before the country and the people, or the honest conscience to resign the position in favor of some one who will, and not hold it for years, as an empty honor, smothering out its life, and leaving the country in ignorance of its existence.