even questions the
motives of the Red Cross), as showing what it had to meet and live
through in order to live at all.

In order to show the enthusiastic devotees of the present year how
questionable the beneficence of the Red Cross appeared to the best
people only a few years ago, I introduce the following address, read, by
request, before a congress of women, 1895 or 1896, hoping that the
charitably disposed reader will understand and appreciate the state of
mind engendered by the title of the request made, and forgive any
seeming acerbity:


                                 ADDRESS.

       WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RED CROSS IN ITS RELATION
                            TO PHILANTHROPY?

I am asked to say something upon the "Significance of the Red Cross in
its Relation to Philanthropy." I am not sure that I understand precisely
what is desired.

If a morning paper should announce that three or four of the greatest
political bosses or greatest railroad kings in the country had quietly
met somewhere, and sat with closed doors till long after midnight, and
then silently departed, people would ask, "What is the significance of
that? What mischief have they been devising in secret?" In that sense of
the word, _significance_--which is a very common one--the Red Cross has
none that I ever heard of. It has no rich offices to bestow, no
favorites to reward, no enemies to punish. It has no secrets to keep, no
mystic word or sign. Its proceedings would, and do, make a valuable
library, accessible to all men and all women from Norway to New Zealand.

I will not say that it is so simple and common in character that he who
runs may read, but surely she who desires information can sit down, read
and obtain it. The Red Cross has been quietly doing its work for thirty
years and is now established in forty independent nations. No other
institution on earth, not even Christianity, has a public recognition so
nearly universal. None has ever adhered more closely to its one single
purpose of alleviating human suffering. Has t