In 1896, as the Italian Red Cross declined assistance, it expended $75,000 for Abyssinia relief, and in 1899, as the United States Government declined its offer of assistance, it gave aid to the Spanish Red Gross for the veterans of the war. As England declined assistance, it expended some $56,000 for the Boers in 1899. During the Boxer trouble in China the Red Cross provided most valuable assistance at a cost of over $600,000. Its greatest work was rendered during the late terrible war with Japan, during which it expended over $15,000,000 in relief work, providing hospital trains, ships, field and reserve hospitals, a large medical nursery and administration personnel. THE CHRISTMAS STAMP [Illustration] Late as the January BULLETIN is in going to press, it is not possible to tell of the result of the Christmas Stamp sale. This must wait for the April issue, but that the result promises to be remarkable is shown by the fact that the wholesale orders received up to December 15th at Red Cross Headquarters from the State Branches and Anti-Tuberculosis Associations authorized by the Red Cross to sell these stamps aggregated twenty-five millions and it has proved most difficult to have the stamps printed rapidly enough to fill these orders. It was not possible when the orders were pouring in at over a million a day to reply as rapidly as was desired. Neither Red Cross Headquarters nor State Branches anticipated any such remarkable demand. For the season of 1909 a new stamp will be issued, for the design of which a prize will be offered. Regulations governing the competition for this prize will be formulated and issued later. The Red Cross has received through the courtesy of Mr. Einar Holboll, Postmaster of Centofte, Denmark, a copy of this year’s Danish Christmas stamp. The coloring is dark blue with a yellow light shining through the corridors of the Sanitarium for Tuberculosis Children, built by means of the Danish Christmas stamps. [Illustration: DANISH CHRISTMAS STAMP FOR 1908] What Agnes Repplier Has to Say of the Red Cross Christmas Stamps What does the Red Cross Christmas Stamp mean? It means that you are asked to spend one cent more on every Christmas present that you send. It means that this tiny fraction of money, multiplied by thousands, will yield a noble sum for the maintenance of a great work—open-air Day Camps for the cure of Tuberculosis. It means that by using the stamp, you express confidence in the work of the Red Cross. It means that you extend the circle of your friendship until it embraces the friendless, and that your good-will reaches beyond the few whom you love to the many whom you are bidden to love. It means that the spirit of Christmas stirs in the heart of Christendom, and that you respond to this spirit by linking your Christmas gifts with the cause of the poor and the ill, with the work of wisdom and of mercy. THE RED CROSS CHRISTMAS STAMP BY E. S. MARTIN.