LAMBERTVILLE, in HOLCOMBE HALL, THIS EVENING, APRIL 7TH, AT 7½ O’CLOCK. SUBJECT: SCENES ON THE BATTLE-FIELD. ADMISSION, 25 CENTS. American money and supplies also were used to help victims of religious wars in Turkey and Armenia during 1896. Although Turkey had signed the Treaty of Geneva, Red Cross efforts were at first resisted there. Under strong pressure from the American public, however, Barton and field workers of the American Red Cross sailed for Turkey. They gained admittance to the country and spent ten months helping the wounded and distributing tools and medical supplies. It was, in many ways, a harrowing experience, and the safety of the Americans was repeatedly threatened. At least one of Barton’s biographers, Blanche Colton Williams, thought that the Armenian relief work was the height of Barton’s achievement. Despite all of Clara Barton’s peacetime achievements, the Red Cross remained officially connected with the military, its chief function being to give medical aid in time of war. The Spanish-American War in 1898 provided the first chance for the American Red Cross to serve in this official capacity. Unfortunately, the Red Cross effort was fragmented, marked by contention and controversy, and it ultimately led to the entire reorganization of the Red Cross in America. The Red Cross, under Barton, sent various types of assistance to Cuba. The earliest efforts, starting in January 1898, were in behalf of the thousands of Cuban nationalists who had been herded into concentration camps by the Spanish colonial government. Barton was giving civilian aid in Cuba when the battleship USS _Maine_ blew up. When war was declared on April 25, 1898, Barton and her small crew went to work in field hospitals and hospital boats. She was distressed to find that once again the Army Medical Department had sent inadequate personnel, and that cots, food, and bandages were all lacking. “It is the Civil War all over,” she lamented, “no improvement in a third of a century.”