The first initiative to give private aid to the wounded on the battlefield was taken in Russia in 1854, during the Crimean War, when Grand Duchess Helen Pavlovina (a sister of Emperor Nicholas I) formed a party of trained nurses, who, under the leadership of the afterwards celebrated surgeon, Pirogoff, went to the war and cared for the wounded. In 1867 was formed a Society for the care of the wounded and sick warriors, which changed its name in 1876 and was then called the Russian Red Cross Society. From its very start the Society was taken under the august protectorate of the Empress Maria Alexandrovina, wife of Emperor Alexander II, and many persons of the imperial family and prominent statesmen became its members. At the very first, lack of funds prevented the Society from the activity along the broad lines which it desired. Not being able at the start to found its own communities of nurses, with its own hospitals and surgical clinics, the Society for a number of years had to place its nurses, for the purpose of training, in the military, civil and municipal hospitals. Only after the Turkish War in 1876-77, in which the immense utility of the Society’s activity was proved, was its popularity assured. Thus the number of communities of Red Cross nurses from 5 in 1878 rose to 99 in 1906. The total number of hospitals and clinics of the Red Cross at present amount to 148. In 1906 the number of persons cared for in these institutions was 1,294,547. [Illustration: RUSSIAN RED CROSS DEPOT OF SUPPLIES.] [Illustration: RED CROSS STATION.] In 1868 the Russian Red Cross had 35 institutions of all kinds and in 1906, 920. On the first of January, 1907, the Red Cross Society of Russia consisted of the following institutions: 1 Chief Board of Administration; 8 Boards of District Administration; 95 local Boards of Administration; 509 local Red Cross Committees; 40 Committees of communities of Red Cross nurses; 60 communities of Red Cross nurses; 90 ambulatory clinics; 6 emergency hospitals; 5 asylums for former Red Cross nurses; 1 asylum for invalids; 9 asylums for crippled soldiers; 1 asylum for soldiers’ widows; 3 asylums and 3 sanitariums for children of disabled soldiers; 7 convalescent houses; 1 maternity hospital. [Illustration: RED CROSS HOSPITAL SHIP.] Any person entering into a community as nurse is not obliged to take any kind of oath, but gives only the promise to submit to a vigorous discipline, to acquit him or herself conscientiously of all duties and to nurse the sick carefully. The feminine personnel is divided into two categories—sisters of charity and nurses for surgery.