I am glad, Mr. Secretary, that you have seen it, as you have in the late celebration, for you will be the better able, it may be, to comprehend and excuse my persistency. Except for this constant and exhaustive occupation, I should have passed either of the last winters at Carlsruhe; but it has been sufficient to consume my entire time, strength, and spare means, and must continue to do so, until the treaty is disposed of and the Societies of the Red Cross, so indispensable to the effectiveness and utility of the treaty, are understood by the people, and measurably established throughout the country. To this end, I have at this moment in press a small work of a hundred or so pages, explaining the entire subject, its origin, history, and purposes, and of which I have ordered five thousand copies for gratuitous circulation. They will be ready at the opening of Congress or before, and I have four thoroughly formed societies, one NATIONAL in this city, completed and incorporated, one Local in Dansville, New York, one in the city of Rochester, New York, for the county of Monroe, and one similarly organized in Syracuse, New York. Both Rochester and Syracuse are forming local, town societies under them, and all, in the happy absence of war, are using up their surplus energies on the burnt fields of Michigan, to which their agents have already taken thousands of dollars to the hungry, and thousands of garments to the naked. I must beg, Mr. Blaine, that you do not misinterpret my motive in making this little revelation of foreign recognition. If the incentive had been mere personal vanity, I should probably have found a way to make the facts known, short of a decade, but it comes to me now, that it is perhaps, under the circumstances, a kind of duty that I should report to you on “Foreign Affairs.” Begging your pardon for my too long letter, I remain, Mr. Secretary, with the most grateful respect, Very truly CLARA BARTON The next thing that should be kept clearly in mind is that she did not establish an organization dependent upon Government appropriations. In this respect her organization was quite unlike some of those that were hastily organized to oppose her. At least one of these was organized with an eye keenly intent upon one form of then existing Government service, with which it might possibly be affiliated, with an inviting prospect of salaried positions and official appointments. When the Treaty of Geneva was ratified, and not only the Senate but House of Representatives stood ready to do almost anything for Clara Barton, many of her friends in Congress assumed that the next step would be a request for a Congressional appropriation to cover the administrative expense of the Red Cross organization. To every such suggestion Clara Barton returned an emphatic negative. This was her little creed announced at the outset, and often reiterated: