Part 42
6. The freedom from red-tape and the keeping out of ruts is another element of power. We practice a certain amount of parliamentary usage, and strongly urge the study of it as a part of the routine of local unions. We have good, strong “constitutions,” and by-laws to match; blanks for reports; rolls for membership; pledges in various styles of art; badges, ribbons, and banners, and hand-books of our work, are all to be had at “national headquarters,” but we will not come under a yoke of bondage to the paraphernalia of the movement. We are always moving on. “Time cannot dull nor custom stale our infinite variety.” We are exceedingly apt to break out in a new phase. Here we lop off an old department, and there we add two new ones. Our “new departures” are frequent and oftentimes most unexpected. Indeed, we exhibit the characteristics of an army on the march rather than an army in camp or hospital.
The marked _esprit de corps_ is to be included among the secrets of success. The W. C. T. U. has invented a phrase to express this, and it is “comradeship among women.” So generous and so cherished has this comradeship become that ours is often called a “mutual admiration society.” We believe in each other, stand by each other, and have plenty of emulation without envy. Sometimes a State or an individual says to another, “The laurels of Miltiades will not suffer me to sleep;” but there is no staying awake to belittle success; we do not detract from any worker’s rightful meed of praise. So much for the “hidings of power” in the W. C. T. U.
There are two indirect results of this organized work among women, concerning which I wish to speak.
First. It is a strong nationalizing influence. Its method and spirit differ very little, whether you study them on the border of Puget Sound or the Gulf of Mexico. In San Francisco and Baltimore white ribbon women speak the same vernacular, tell of their gospel meetings and petitions, discuss the _Union Signal_ editorials, and wonder “what will be the action of our next annual convention.”
Almost all other groups of women workers that dot the continent are circumscribed by denominational lines, and act largely under the advice of ecclesiastical leaders. The W. C. T. U. feels no such limitation. North and South are strictly separate in the women’s missionary work of the churches, but Mississippi and Maine, Texas and Oregon, Massachusetts and Georgia, sit side by side around the yearly camp-fires of the W. C. T. U. The Southern women have learned to love us of the North, and our hearts are true to them; while to us all who fight in peaceful ranks unbroken, “For God and Home and Native Land,” the Nation is a sacred name.
Second. Our W. C. T. U. is a school, not founded in that thought or for that purpose, but sure to fit us for the sacred duties of patriots in the realm that lies just beyond the horizon of the coming century.
Here we try our wings that yonder our flight may be strong and steady. Here we prove our capacity for great deeds; there we shall perform them. Here we make our experience and pass our novitiate that yonder we may calmly take our places and prove to the world that what is needed most was “two heads in counsel” as well as “two beside the hearth.” When that day comes the nation shall no longer miss, as now, the influence of half its wisdom more than half its purity, and nearly all its gentleness, in courts of justice and halls of legislation. Then shall one code of morals—and that the highest—govern both men and women; then shall the Sabbath be respected, the rights of the poor be recognized, the liquor traffic banished, and the home protected from all its foes.
Born of such a visitation of God’s spirit as the world has not known since tongues of fire sat upon the wondering group at Pentecost, cradled in a faith high as the hope of a saint, and deep as the depths of a drunkard’s despair, and baptized in the beauty of holiness, the Crusade determined the ultimate goal of its teachable child, the W. C. T. U., which has one steadfast aim, and that none other than the regnancy of Christ, not in form but in fact; not in substance but in essence; not ecclesiastically, but truly in the hearts of men. To this end its methods are varied, changing, manifold; but its unwavering faith these words express: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.”
The Woman’s National Christian Temperance Union has a publishing house in Chicago that in 1889 sent out 130,000,000 pages of temperance literature; employs 146 men and women, mostly women; pays a dividend of seven per cent. on money invested; is the proprietor of its own presses and of its machinery, including an electrotyping department. It publishes the _Union Signal_, organ of the World’s and National W. C. T. U., with a weekly circulation of 85,000 copies; also four other papers for the young people, children, and Germans; and has connected with it a large job office for general printing. The directors of this great establishment are all women, and the editors women. No one can hold stock except a white ribbon woman that is a member of the W. C. T. U. This enterprise constantly enlarges because it has a sure foundation in the ten thousand local unions of the W. C. T. U.
The National W. C. T. U. has also founded a woman’s temperance hospital in Chicago, conducted throughout by women, its object being to prove experimentally that alcoholics have no necessary place in medicine.
A woman’s temperance temple, to cost over a million of dollars, was projected by Mrs. Matilda B. Carse, president of the W. C. T. U., of Chicago, and is now in course of erection. While the national society is in no wise responsible for this movement, it has done much to help it forward, and hopes in the course of time to have headquarters here for its publishing department, etc., a large hall for public meetings, a kindergarten, restaurant, and all the paraphernalia of a great temperance headquarters. Besides this it expects to realize from the rentals, as the building is located in the heart of the city, a large annual endowment for its various lines of work.
A Woman’s Lecture Bureau has been established in Chicago, which is constantly sending out speakers to all parts of the United States and Canada. These speakers may be men or women, but the management is in the hands of white ribboners.
Some local unions do as much work as a whole State society: for instance, the Chicago Union, which last year sheltered 60,000 friendless men in its great lodging house; which maintains a temperance restaurant, an anchorage for degraded men and women, where 5,000 were cared for last year, a kindergarten, daily gospel meetings, and many other forms of Christian philanthropy.
In 1883, on the suggestion of the National President of the W. C. T. U., a World’s Union was projected, and Mrs. Mary Clement Leavitt, of Boston, started out to organize all civilized countries. She has now (1890) been seven years absent, and is reaching a greater variety of nationalities than any woman who ever lived. She has thus far traveled over fifty thousand miles; held over a thousand meetings; more than eleven thousand pages have been written; she has spoken, through interpreters, to people in twenty-three languages. Other missionaries are constantly being sent to follow Mrs. Leavitt, and the white ribbon is acclimated in every country in the world. Its methods are the universal circulation of a pledge against the legalizing of the sale of brain poisons, including of course, and chiefly, alcoholics and opium. This is to be presented to all governments by a deputation of women to which the petition will be entrusted when the number of signatures reaches two millions, and they will carry it round the world. The methods of the National W. C. T. U. have been universally adopted, of which the principal ones are total abstinence for the individual, and the effort to secure total prohibition for the State. The noon hour of prayer is everywhere observed, asking God’s blessing on the work and workers. The white ribbon—emblem of purity, prohibition, patriotism, and philanthropy—is the badge worn, and the motto, “For God and Home and Every Land.”
The first president of the World’s W. C. T. U. was Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucas, sister of John Bright, and president of the Woman’s Temperance Association of Great Britain. The second and present president is Frances E. Willard.
Australia is organized, also Japan, China, Ceylon, Madagascar, the civilized portions of Africa, Scandinavia, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. In continental Europe the progress is slow, as drinking habits are well nigh universal; but much progress has been made in Switzerland, also in Berlin. In the former country through the efforts of Miss Charlotte Gray, in the latter city through Mrs. Mary Bannister Willard, of the Home School for Girls.
A World’s W. C. T. U. convention is to be held in connection with the World’s Fair in Chicago, in 1893.
Wherever white ribboners are found, will be found friends of woman’s complete enfranchisement and admission to all professions and trades, on the ground that no artificial barrier should be thrown in her way, but that she should be freely permitted and welcomed to enter every place where she has capacity to succeed. Perhaps no motto of the W. C. T. U. is more frequently quoted than the following: “Woman will bless and brighten every place she enters, and she will enter every place.”
XVIII. THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF THE RED CROSS.
BY
CLARA BARTON.
In no way, perhaps, is more clearly proven the just necessity for some explanation concerning the subject of the Red Cross than by the fact that I am asked to make these explanations as a contribution to woman’s work, when, in fact, every original idea of the humanities sought to be organized, and the methods of relief ordained, were, like the terrible and needless cruelties which led to them, the work of men, and have largely continued to be such.[219]
It would scarcely be conceded that, because many women have found a place to work, and work well, in the United States Treasury, Patent, and Pension Bureaus, that these departments themselves should be exclusively classed as woman’s work.
If, in our rapid march of progress over newly acquired territory, we should be found appropriating to ourselves some of the old landmarks and strongholds, a philosophical solution may perhaps be found in the familiar principles of the angles of incidence and reflection. It might be added that, presumably, the circumstance of the leadership (if so presumptuous a term may be allowed) of the Red Cross in this country having incidentally fallen to a woman’s hands has had a tendency to mislead in this direction.
Considering how very little has yet been definitely comprehended of the characteristics of this young child of their adoption, the tones of parental kindness and good feeling in which it is spoken by the people of the entire country, is touching to us who watch its course and destiny. Their very natural endeavors to square its habits and methods by those of ordinary charitable organizations, are not unfrequently perplexing to them and embarrassing to us; and their consternation at times, when this strange duckling suddenly takes to the water, is suggestive of other scenes.
The mass of correspondence constantly pouring in, asking how one shall become a member of the “order,” or proposing to organize a “chapter,” or a “branch,” or “corps,” or “section,” independent, for special use, calling for copies of the constitution and by-laws of the national to aid in forming their own, so they can go on by _themselves_, reveals a vagueness of ideas concerning the subject which a few words might serve to render more clear and definite. First, the Red Cross is not an “order,” and has no tendency in that direction any more than the medical department of an army, which it was instituted to assist, is an “order”; or the great movement toward the general peace of mankind through arbitration and kindly fellowship, to which it is both an advance guard and a stepping-stone, is an “order.” It is not a “secret society” any more than is the Association of Charities and Correction, Adams Express, the Western Union Telegraph, a railroad corporation or a fire company, all of which the nature of its work at times assimilates. While societies, as usually existing, seek the advancement of ideas and the general progress of the world intellectually, morally, or religiously, mainly by expression of thought and opinions analogous to their subject, the Red Cross, by its relation, must deal in _active_ ways, mentally and physically, with people direct, and become responsible for their welfare as for funds and material for their use; and while it may properly have been designated as the culmination of the best humanities of the warring agencies of the past, finding possible expression in the latter half of the nineteenth century, it still needs to be explained that this medium of expression was the Treaty of Geneva of 1864 for the relief of the wounded and sick of armies. The Red Cross _means_, then, the people’s help for suffering through military necessities (a help hitherto mainly ignored), and it _is_ the result and the direct outgrowth of an international treaty, entered into by the civilized nations of the world for the mitigation of the sufferings from war, by first eliminating from its code all needless cruelties and old-time barbarities; and, secondly, by rendering neutral and exempt from capture all disabled soldiers requiring aid, all appliances, all material, and all personnel designed for them.
It is to be borne in mind, and not for an instant lost sight of, that while other methods leading up to these points have been always the outgrowth of the grandest human sentiments of mankind, they still remained _sentiments_, usually individual, and, beyond this, binding on no one; or, if organized for the moment, were lost as soon; while the Red Cross, embodying all these humanities, organizes and pledges the entire world, through its governments, to the one purpose and effort, and binds the whole by the stern sacredness of an international treaty, which no government will ever be found reckless and indecent enough to violate. The non-fellowship of the world would follow such an act. Indeed, no nation has a treaty it would hold so sacred in time of need.
Following a preliminary conference of 1863, a convention, composed of delegates appointed by and representing the heads of all the governments of the world, was held at Geneva, Switzerland, for the purpose of considering some method for mitigating the horrors of war, if wars must be.
And however disdainfully we at the present moment may curl our lips over the uselessness of such a consideration in the light of better methods, however scorn every thought of any effort in behalf of the woes of those who consent to deluge the world in blood, it is to be remembered that we ourselves at _that_ moment were not altogether exempt from the perplexing problem of war, and did not, as now, present to the world the grand and beautiful “Christian example” of arbitration and peace, of which we are at present the most advisory and conspicuous of advocates. Indeed, whoever will take down from the shelves one of the volumes of decisions of our then Minister of State, Mr. Seward, will find there recorded that the reason given for the United States having declined official representation in the Convention of Geneva was _not_ on the ground of high moral elevation, advanced views and consequent disapproval, but rather in this wise, that we were _ourselves_ in the midst of a cruel and relentless war, which did not admit of time for considerations of that kind. This decision was the first block over which a woman ungracefully stumbled, when, thirteen years later, an attempt was made to officially call the attention of our government to the knowledge even of the existence of such a treaty among other nations.
This convention, which occupied several days, discussed as never before the great question of an international agreement for the neutralizing of certain departments of all fields of battle, and the protection of all the personnel and material designed for them.
The establishment, as it were, of a goal in the midst of the most relentless field of animosity and strife, where those who could no longer run could touch and be safe; as if, in the midst of the wildest storm at sea, a haven could be established in mid-ocean where the disabled ships might find a harbor and rest.
The councils of this convention resulted in the formulation of a code of ten articles, which, upon solemn acceptance by the heads of each government, became the treaty of Geneva. These articles were as follows:
ARTICLE 1. Ambulances (field hospitals) and military hospitals shall be acknowledged to be neutral, and as such shall be protected and respected by belligerents so long as any sick or wounded may be therein. Such neutrality shall cease if the ambulances or hospitals should be held by a military force.
ARTICLE 2. Persons employed in hospitals and ambulances, comprising the staff for superintendence, medical service, administration, transport of wounded, as well as chaplains, shall participate in the benefit of neutrality while so employed, and so long as there remain any to bring in or to succor.
ARTICLE 3. The persons designated in the preceding article may, even after occupation by the enemy, continue to fulfill their duties in the hospital or ambulance which they may have, or may withdraw in order to regain the corps to which they belong. Under such circumstances, when the persons shall cease from their functions, they shall be delivered by the occupying army to the outposts of the enemy. They shall have specially the right of sending a representative to the headquarters of their respective armies.
ARTICLE 4. As the equipment of military hospitals remains subject to the laws of war, persons attached to such hospitals cannot, on withdrawing, carry away any articles but such as are their private property. Under the same circumstances an ambulance shall, on the contrary, retain its equipment.
ARTICLE 5. Inhabitants of the country who may bring help to the wounded shall be respected and shall remain free. The generals of the belligerent powers shall make it their care to inform the inhabitants of the appeal addressed to their humanity, and of the neutrality which will be the consequence of it. Any wounded man, entertained and taken care of in a house, shall be considered as a protection thereto. Any inhabitant, who shall have entertained wounded men in his house, shall be exempted from the quartering of troops as well as from a part of the contributions of war which may be imposed.
ARTICLE 6. Wounded or sick soldiers shall be entertained and taken care of to whatever nation they may belong. Commanders-in-chief shall have the power to deliver immediately to the outposts of the enemy soldiers who have been wounded in an engagement, when circumstances permit this to be done, and with the consent of both parties. Those who are recognized, after they are healed, as incapable of serving, shall be sent back to their country. The others may also be sent back on condition of not again bearing arms during the continuance of the war. Evacuations, together with the persons under whose directions they take place, shall be protected by an absolute neutrality.
ARTICLE 7. A distinctive and uniform flag shall be adopted for hospitals, ambulances, and evacuations. It must on every occasion be accompanied by the national flag. An arm badge [_brassard_] shall also be allowed for individuals neutralized, but the delivery thereof shall be left to military authority. The flag and arm badge shall bear a red cross on a white ground.
ARTICLE 8. The details of execution of the present convention shall be regulated by the commanders-in-chief of belligerent armies, according to the instructions of their respective government and in conformity with the general principles laid down in this convention.
ARTICLE 9. The high contracting powers have agreed to communicate the present convention to those governments which have not found it convenient to send plenipotentiaries to the international convention at Geneva, with an invitation to accede thereto; the protocol is, for that purpose, left open.
ARTICLE 10. The present convention shall be ratified, and the ratification shall be exchanged at Berne, in four months, or sooner if possible.
The nations adopting the Treaty are:
France, September 22, 1864. Belgium, October 14, 1864. Italy, December 4, 1864. Sweden and Norway, Dec. 13, 1864. Baden, December 16, 1864. Great Britain, February 18, 1865. Prussia, June 22, 1865. Wurtemberg, June 2, 1866. Bavaria, June 30, 1866. Portugal, August 9, 1866. Russia, May 22, 1867. Roumania, November 30, 1874. San Salvador, December 30, 1874. Servia, March 24, 1876. Chili, November 15, 1879 Peru, April 22, 1880. Bulgaria, March 1, 1884. Luxembourg, October 5, 1888. Switzerland, October 1, 1864. Netherlands, November 29, 1864. Spain, December 5, 1864. Denmark, December 15, 1864. Greece, January 17, 1865. Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Mar. 9, 1865. Turkey, July 5, 1865. Hesse Darmstadt, June 22, 1866. Austria, July 21, 1866. Saxony, October 25, 1866. Pontifical States, May 9, 1868. Persia, December 5, 1874. Montenegro, November 29, 1875. Bolivia, October 16, 1879. Argentine Republic, Nov. 25, 1879. United States, March 1, 1882. Japan, June 5, 1886.
The United States of America was the thirty-second in order. This treaty has changed not only the methods of procedure of the medical and hospital departments of all armies, but their insignia, flags, etc. There is but one military hospital flag in the world to-day. The commander who knows his own, knows that of the enemy, and he breaks an international treaty if he knowingly turns even a gun or a stray shot upon it. The convoy of prisoners under escort bearing that sign is safe; no officer can fire upon that unarmed and defenseless body of men by “mistake”; no “mistake” can be made nor pretend to be made. No captured men can longer suffer for lack of food; the _world_ is pledged to supply this want, and the way is opened to do it. No fields nor hospitals can lack attendance, nursing, nor the necessaries of life; to this relief the way is opened. No wounded men can lie unattended upon a field, and no attendant upon them can be captured. No distinction can be made in the care of the sick and wounded. By the articles of the treaty, all are non-combatants, all neutrals, and hence one common relation for all.
At the conclusion of the convention, the body of gentlemen of Switzerland who had convened it were designated by choice of the governments as the international head by whom all general intercourse between nations upon the subject of war-relief should be directed, and through whom all communications should be made. This is the “International Committee of Geneva.”