To be called to tell in a few brief weeks the whole story of the Red Cross from its origin to the present time seems a labor scarcely less than to have lived it. It is a task that, however unworthily it may now be performed, is, in itself, not unworthy the genius of George Eliot or Macaulay. It is a story illustrating the rapid rise of the humane sentiment in the latter half of the nineteenth century. On its European side, it tells of the first timid and cautious putting forth of the sentiment of humanity in war, amid the rattling swords and guns of Solferino, its deaths and wounds and its subsequent awful silence.

It tells of its later fertilization on the red fields of Gravelotte and Sedan beneath my own personal observation.

It was from such surroundings as these that the Red Cross has become the means by which philanthropy has been grafted onto the wild and savage stem of war.

From the first filaments spun in the heart of a solitary traveler have been drawn onward stronger and larger strands, until now more than forty of the principal nations of the earth are bound together by bonds of the highest international law, that must make war in the future less barbarous than it has been in the past.

It gives hope that “the very torrent, tempest and whirlwind” of war itself may some day at last, far off, perhaps, give way to the sunny and pleasant days of perpetual and universal peace. When a proposition for an absolute and common disarmament of nations, made by the strongest of the rulers of Europe, will not be met by cynical sneers and suggestions of Machiavelian craft.

On its American side it is a story of such immense success on the part of the American National Red Cross in some of its greatest and most difficult fields of labor, that no financial report of them has ever been made, because the story would have been altogether incredible. The universal opinion of ordinary business people would have been that these results could not have been obtained on the means stated, and therefore something must be wrong or hidden, and to save ourselves from painful suspicion, it was decided, rightly or wrongly, that the story must remain substantially untold till its work in other fields had prepared the public mind to accept the literal truth.

But the time has come at last when the facts may properly be set forth without fear that they will be discredited or undervalued.

It will relate some of the experiences, the labors, the successes and triumphs of the American National Red Cross in times of peace, by which it had prepared itself to enter upon the Cuban contest as its first independent work in time of war.

The Red Cross has done its part in that contest in the same spirit in which it has heretofore done all the work which has been committed to its care. It has done it unobtrusively, faithfully and successfully.

It may not altogether have escaped censure in the rather wild cyclone of criticism that has swept over the country, but we remember not so much the faultfinding that may have occasionally been poured out upon the Red Cross, as the blessings and benedictions from all sides for work well and nobly done that have fallen even upon its humblest ministers and assistants.It has been truthfully said that “so great has been the pressure to share the difficulties and dangers of this service with only transportation and subsistence for pay, that the Red Cross could on these terms have had as many volunteers as there were enlisted men, if their services could have been utilized and made important.”

Indeed, it seems to have become the milder romance of war, and is gradually winning its way into the very heart of the pomp and circumstance of “glorious” war itself.

The Red Cross has therefore come to be so loved and trusted, its principles and insignia have been so deeply set into the substance of international law and the life of many great nations, that people everywhere are beginning to ask with enthusiasm about its origin and history; about the principles on which it acts. They ask for some statement of its experiences, its hardships and its perils, and for some account of those who have been most prominent in its operations.

It is partially to answer these and many similar inquiries that this book has been prepared. It is in part a compilation and revision of various statements necessarily incomplete and unsatisfactory, made from time to time to meet emergencies. In part it has been wholly rewritten.

A great portion of the story of the Red Cross has been told in other languages than English, because it was of work done by other than English people. Much of this literature has never been translated or placed within the reach of the English-speaking public.

Although the gradual growth of the idea of something like humanity in war, stimulated by the ignorant and insane horrors of India and the Crimea, and soothed and instructed by the sensible and practical work of Florence Nightingale, had slowly but surely led up to the conditions which made such a movement possible, it was not until the remarkable campaign of Napoleon III. in Northern Italy again woke the slumbering sympathies of the world that any definite steps revealed themselves.

In compiling this book I have been compelled to make use of much of the material contained in a previous history written by myself in 1883, which in turn was based upon the records and the literature of the International Committee, and the official correspondence connected with the treaty.