Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian: Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of AmericaYoung, Charles Sumner
History
Clara Barton: A Centenary Tribute to the World's Greatest Humanitarian: Founder of the American Red Cross Society, Author of the American Amendment to the International Red Cross Convention of Geneva, Founder of the National First Aid Association of America
Young, Charles Sumner
Barton, Clara, 1821-1912
Clara Barton said that the bravest act of her life was crossing the
pontoon bridge under fire at Fredericksburg. The historian will say that
the bravest act of her life was snatching her Red Cross child from the
social—political—fat-salaried-swiveled-chair clique at Washington, and
handing over her best beloved unharmed to the country for which in the
smoke of battle and terrors of disaster she had many times risked her
life. The historian will further say that in refusing to accept a
pension of $2500 for life and Honorary Presidency of the Red Cross from
that “clique” as the price of her child, and suffering persecution for
life as the penalty, there was shown the true mother spirit that must
commend her for all time to those who respect the spirit of
self-sacrificing Motherhood.
President Warren G. Harding, the president also of the Red Cross,
“entertains the highest sentiment regarding the splendid service of
Miss Barton.” Ex-President Woodrow Wilson—also ex-president of the
Red Cross—has voiced the sentiment of the American people in no
uncertain sound as has a second Clara Barton,—the soldier-angel
Margaret Wilson. General John J. Pershing has not been silent in his
admiration of the great woman, nor have the hundreds of thousands of
American boys on the “Western Front” been unmindful in gratitude to
the Founder of the American Red Cross; and, if signs fail not, from
the American Congress there will come to America’s greatest
humanitarian a testimonial—accompanied by an acclaim that will be
heard around the world.
On a certain state occasion the statement was made that there is less to
censure, and more to commend, in the public life of Clara Barton for the
twenty-three years she was President of the Red Cross than in the public
life of any one of the twenty-eight Presidents from George Washington to
Woodrow Wilson. There commenting on the statement, America’s beloved
Mrs. General George E. Pickett significantly said: “Yes, that’s true,
but Clara Barton was a woman.” But woman is coming into her own, and
Clara Barton said, “My own shall come to me.” Never was prophecy more
certain of fulfillment. With hundreds of thousands of Americans
receiving the benefits of “First Aid”; with more than thirty thousand
brave American nurses, ten thousand of these following the illustrious
example of Clara Barton by going to the battlefield; with more than
thirty millions of Americans serving the Red Cross in time of war; with
more than a billion of human beings making use of the Red Cross American
Amendment in times of peace and war, Clara Barton already has come into
her own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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