One early winter evening in ’68 I stood on the platform of one of the finest new opera houses in the East, filled to repletion, it seemed to me, with the most charming audience I had ever beheld,—plumed and jeweled ladies, stalwart youths, reverend white-haired men. Gradually, and to my horror, I felt my voice giving out, leaving me; the next moment I opened my mouth, but no sound followed. Again, and again, and again I attempted it, with no result. It was finished! Nervous prostration had declared itself. I went to my home in Washington, lay helpless all winter. Finally, by my physicians I was ordered to Europe, and in early September, ’69, I was able to go.
I came in time to Geneva, when, while we were waiting, anticipating and settling ourselves, one day there was announced a visit from a body of Geneva gentlemen, having some business with me.
They introduced themselves as the officers of a society known as the International Convention of Geneva,—more familiarly, the Red Cross,—having for its object the amelioration of the sufferings of war, the succor and nursing of the wounded and sick in battle, the relief of prisoners, the guarding against famine and pestilence, and whatever may befall a people, under the scourge of war.
And this, in its international character, extends not alone to its own, but to all nations within the compact.
This society had been formed in 1865, at the instance of Dr. Louis Appia,—there present,—a noted surgeon in the Italian wars of Napoleon III, who had at that date called a convention composed of delegates from the civilized nations of the whole world, formed their laws for international neutral action in all wars extending to all peoples, framed their treaty and presented it for signature, through the delegates present, to the nations which they respectively represented. In less than two years this compact had been signed and entered into by twenty-five distinct governments comprising all the civilized and some semi-civilized nations of the globe.
With your kind permission, I will depart for a few moments from my narrative and speak of the nature of the international compact, which may not be familiar to you.
This treaty, consisting of ten articles, and making material changes in the articles of war governing the medical and hospital departments of all armies, provided among other things for entire neutrality concerning all hospitals for the care of sick and wounded men; that they should not be subject to capture; that not only the sick and wounded themselves, but the persons in attendance upon them, as surgeons, hospital stewards, and nurses should be held neutral, and free from capture; that surgeons, chaplains, and nurses, in attendance upon the wounded of a battle-field at the time of its surrender, should be regarded as non-combatants, not subject to capture, and left unmolested to care for the wounded so long as any remained upon the field, and, when no longer needed for this, be safely escorted to their own lines, and given up; that soldiers too badly wounded to be capable of again bearing arms should not be carried away as prisoners, but offered to their own army if in retreat it could take them. They must be placed in hospitals and cared for, side by side with the wounded of the enemy; that all convoys of wounded or evacuations of posts should be protected by absolute neutrality; that all supplies designed for the use of the sick or wounded should be held as neutral and entirely exempt from capture by either belligerent army; that it should be the duty of both generals in command to apprise the inhabitants, in the vicinity of a battle about to take place, of the fact that any house which should take in and entertain the wounded of either side would be placed under military protection, and remain so as long as any wounded remained therein, and that they would be also exempt from the quartering of troops and ordinary contributions of war, thus literally converting every house in the vicinity of a battle into a furnished hospital and making nurses of its inmates.
In order to carry into effect these great changes, it would be needful to have some one distinctive sign, a badge by which all these neutral peoples and stores could be designated. There must be but one hospital flag among all nations within the treaty, and this same sign must mark all persons and things belonging to it. The convention studied diligently for this sign; at length it got so far as to decide that a cross would be acceptable to nearly all peoples. They next said, “We represent here the great war-making monarchy of the world.”
This little Republic of Switzerland, so small that one of us could crush her between our thumb and finger, has had the courage to invite us here to consider our cruelties and call upon us for some better system of kindness and humanity than we have heretofore practiced. For this brave lesson she deserves something of us. We cannot take her flag; she has fought a thousand years for that, and will not give it up; but if she permits, we will reverse its colors—a white cross upon a red ground—and make a red cross on a white ground the one distinctive sign of humanity in war, the world over. The consent was given and this committee of gentlemen who had called the convention, with Monsieur Gustave Moynier as its president, was reëlected by all the nations as the international medium and head of war relief throughout the civilized world. To anticipate a little, I would say here that our adhesion to this treaty in 1882 has changed our articles of war; our military hospital flag. We have no longer the old faded yellow flag, but a bright red cross at every post, and the same sign to be worn by all military surgeons and attendants, if the orders of the War Department have as yet reached them, for we are to-day, you will be glad to know, not only in full accord with this International Treaty of Geneva, but are considered one of the strongest pledged nations within it.
There were at this time thirty-one nations in this great compact, comprising all the civilized and even some of the semi-civilized nations of the globe, all with one great and incomprehensible exception, the United States of America.