Before us now lie the problems of the future, and the question is: How shall we meet them? As friends of humanity, while there is still a possibility of war or calamity, it behooves us to prepare. In America perhaps, we are apt to undervalue careful preparation and depend too much upon our impulses. Certainly in no other country have the people so often risen from a state of unreadiness and accomplished such wonderful results--at such a great sacrifice. The first American war since the adoption of the Treaty of Geneva, has brought the Red Cross home to the people; they have come to understand its meaning and desire to become a permanent part of it. Now that the appropriate time has come, it is the purpose of the Red Cross, relying upon the active sympathy of the government and the generous support of the people, to continue its work of preparation, until in its councils and in its ranks the whole country shall be represented, standing together, ready for any great emergency, inspired by the love of humanity and the world-wide motto of the Red Cross: "In time of peace and prosperity, prepare for war and calamity." [Illustration: Clara Barton.] [Illustration: THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND _Dr. Appia died, succeeded by M.E. Jouard Neville. Recent additions to the Committee are, N. Adolphe Moynier and M. Paul des Goulles, Secretary to the President._] [Illustration: CLARA BARTON. _Taken about 1885._] INTRODUCTION. To be called to tell in a few brief weeks the whole story of the Red Cross from its origin to the present time seems a labor scarcely less than to have lived it. It is a task that, however unworthily it may now be performed, is, in itself, not unworthy the genius of George Eliot or Macaulay. It is a story illustrating the rapid rise of the humane sentiment in the latter half of the nineteenth century. On its European side, it tells of the first timid and cautious putting forth of the sentiment of humanity in war, amid the rattling swords and guns of Solferino, its deaths and wounds and its subsequent awful silence. It tells of its later fertilization on the red fields of Gravelotte and Sedan beneath my own personal observation. It was from such surroundings as these that the Red Cross has become the means by which philanthropy has been grafted onto the wild and savage stem of war. From the first filaments spun in the heart of a solitary traveler have been drawn onward stronger and larger strands, until now more than forty of the principal nations of the earth are bound together by bonds of the highest international law, that must make war in the future less barbarous than it has been in the past.