-two nations, if
applied to, might place at its disposal. These men had treaty power to
go directly on to any field, and work unmolested in full co-operation
with the military and commanders-in-chief; their supplies held sacred
and their efforts recognized and seconded in every direction by either
belligerent army. Not a man could lie uncared for nor unfed. I thought
of the Peninsula in McClellan's campaign--of Pittsburg Landing, Cedar
Mountain and second Bull Run, Antietam, Old Fredericksburg with its
acres of snow-covered and gun-covered _glacee_, and its fourth-day flag
of truce; of its dead, and starving wounded, frozen to the ground, and
our commissions and their supplies in Washington, with no effective
organization to go beyond; of the Petersburg mine, with its four
thousand dead and wounded and no flag of truce, the wounded broiling in
a July sun--died and rotted where they fell. I remembered our prisons,
crowded with starving men whom all the powers and pities of the world
could not reach even with a bit of bread. I thought of the widows' weeds
still fresh and dark through all the land, north and south, from the
pine to the palm; the shadows on the hearths and hearts over all my
country. Sore, broken hearts, ruined, desolate homes! Was this people to
decline a humanity in war? Was this a country to reject a treaty for the
help of wounded soldiers? Were these the women and men to stand aloof
and consider? I believed if these people knew that the last cloud of war
had forever passed from their horizon, the tender, painful, deathless
memories of what had been would bring them in with a force no power
could resist. They needed only to know.

As I journeyed on and saw the work of these Red Cross societies in the
field, accomplishing in four months under their systematic organization
what we failed to accomplish in four years without it--no mistakes, no
needless suffering, no starving, no lack of care, no waste, no
confusion, but order, plenty, cleanliness and comfort wherever that
little flag made its way--a 