Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/354

Rh the foremost treaties of the country, and we became thenceforth and forever a Red Cross nation, it surely had something to do with the government. "But this treaty covered only the relief of suffering from war, and realizing the far greater needs we might have in the calamities of civil life, I personally addressed the governments through the 'International Committee of Geneva,' asking their permission for the American Red Cross to act in our national calamities, as in war. This request was gravely (considered in the congress of Berne, and was granted by the powers as the American Amendment to the International Treaty of Geneva. Inasmuch as it became a law, under which all nations act to-day, it might be said not only to have had something to do with the government but with all governments.

"Later on, when another martyred President requested and opened the way for me to take the Red Cross to the starving reconcentrados of Cuba; and a little later, when war desolated its fields, to take ship, join the fleet, and seek an entrance for humanity, and the highest admiral in the service bade it go alone with its cargo of food to the starving of the stricken city, and Santiago lay at our feet, it might be said it had something to do with the government.

"During the twenty or more years of such efforts was mingled the relief of nearly an equal number of fields of disaster, none of which were unserved, and for which relief, not one dollar in all the twenty years was drawn from the treasury of the United States; the munificence of the people through their awakened charities was equal to all needs."

The fields of disaster were the Michigan forest fires of 1881; Mississippi River floods and cyclone of 1882-3; Ohio and Mississippi River floods of 1884, especially disastrous, requiring relief for thousands of people; Texas famine, 1885; Charleston earthquake catastrophe, 1886; the Mt. Vernon, 1ll., cyclone,