Diplomats -- United States -- Biography; Morgenthau, Henry, 1856-1946; United States -- Foreign relations -- 20th century
I am going to Europe to assist Henry P. Davison in his work of
organizing the Red Cross for the great mission which I believe it
is called upon to perform in the world.
We have a very definite vision of what this work is to be. The
League of Nations, when it is formed, will necessarily confine its
administration to the more material aspects of government, such as
boundaries, armament, and economic questions. There is need,
therefore, for a League to care for the human wants and moral
aspirations of all peoples. This other “League of Nations” may well
be the International Red Cross, which enlightened men and women are
now engaged in forming. I am to assist in that work. It is a work
dear to my heart, something for which for many years I have felt
there is a definite need.
The Red Cross, in the new and more splendid opportunity that has
come to it, because of its services in the great war, is the
medium, I believe, through which all true lovers of mankind may aid
in making the world a better place to live in.
I came home from the Democratic Club’s reception to Cummings, snatched a
few hours’ sleep, and, on the following morning, boarded the ship that
was to take me on the journey which began with the International Red
Cross Conference and ended in my investigation of the Jewish massacres
in Poland.
CHAPTER XVI
THE INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS
We sailed on the _Leviathan_, formerly the _Vaterland_. When we boarded
the ship, we found the dock was elaborately decorated for the arrival of
the Secretary of the Navy; the handsome royal suite was reserved for him
and his wife. Josephus Daniels, no longer wearing his customary white
suit, now displayed an admiral’s cap, and was surrounded by admirals and
captains who were under his orders. He was the Secretary of the Navy and
to the chagrin of some of our prominent ironmasters, he had assumed the
exacting supervision of naval armour plate in lieu of his effective
distribution of newspaper boiler plate during the first Wilson campaign.
Other fellow passengers were seven physicians bound, like myself, for
the international conference of Red Cross Societies at Cannes: William
H. Welch, of Johns Hopkins, typifying to us all the wonderful
accomplishments of the Rockefeller Institute; L. Emmett Holt, the
medical foster-father of thousands of American babies; Hermann M. Biggs,
who, in his official capacities, has lifted public hygiene into a
recognized requirement of modern civilization; Colonel Russell, Chief of
the Division of Infectious Diseases in the U. S. Surgeon-General’s
office; Edward R. Baldwin, head of the well-known Saranac Lake
Sanatorium for Tuberculosis; Fritz B. Talbot, of Boston, famous as a
specialist in children’s diseases; and Samuel M. Hammill, head of the
Pennsylvania Child-Welfare Board. With these was Mr. Chanler P.
Anderson, ex-solicitor of the State Department.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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