Three days afterward the Franco-Prussian War began and soon Clara Barton was again at the front. With the German army she entered Strasburg after the siege. On every hand were sick and wounded soldiers, women and children homeless and ragged and starving. Relief work started, she went to Paris on the outbreak of the revolution there. And this work made her enthusiastic about the Red Cross. For at once she felt the difference--she saw the new society accomplish in four months, with system and trained workers, what our country had failed to do in four years. What a contrast--supplies in plenty, wounds dressed at once, cleanliness, comfort, wherever the white flag with the red cross was flying, instead of mistakes, delays, needless suffering, lives sacrificed. She said to herself, “If I live to return to America, I will try to make them understand what the Red Cross and the Geneva Treaty mean.” She succeeded, though it was a task of years. She found officials indifferent, hard to convince, clinging to the tradition and prejudice that forbade any alliance with foreign countries, and saying, “Why make plans for another war? We’ll never have it!” But in March, 1882, the treaty was signed. Clara Barton became the first president of the American Red Cross Society, an office she held for twenty-two years. It was her suggestion that they be prepared to meet any emergency and give relief in time of peace as well as war. It was her influence that carried this American amendment in the International Red Cross Congress. Many have been the calamities where the Red Cross has given aid--two wars, floods in the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the Texas famine, the Charleston earthquake, the disaster at San Francisco, Florida’s yellow fever, the Johnstown flood, forest fires--these are a few of the urgent calls in our own land; and abroad the sufferers in the Russian and Chinese famines, in Armenia and South Africa, bear witness to her care. Eighty years old, she went herself to Galveston. At seventy-seven McKinley sent her to carry relief to the starving Cubans. And during the Spanish War she nursed American and Cuban and Spanish soldiers, once in a storm repeating her Antietam experience with hot gruel! Vast sums of money, poured out by the generous American people, were placed at her disposal for relief to the suffering and destitute. A sufficient sum in ready cash she always kept on hand, in case a telegram came when the banks were closed; for there must be no delay in the Red Cross’s starting on its mission of mercy. The world over Clara Barton was known and loved and honored. The German emperor gave her the order of the iron cross, which at that time had been awarded only for heroism on the battle-field. Queen Victoria herself pinned an English decoration on her dress. The Duke of Baden, Serbia, the Prince of Jerusalem all gave her honors; and her home was decorated with the flags of all the nations.