SUSAN B. ANTHONY, EARLY And Late ELIZABETH CADY STANTON . 208 216 218 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 240 THE BOOKER T. WASHINGTON MONUMENT AT 264 284 AMERICAN APOSTLES OF PEACE - NOAH WOR- MARK TWAIN'S NOTE ON THE FIRST HAGUE WOODROW WILSON, PORTRAIT BUST BY P. PROOF OF THE LEAGUE COVENANT IN THE 291 296 302 I THE RED CROSS AND CLARA BARTON It is a glaring truism that not a single movement for the amelioration of human existence, not a single "cause" or "reform," has reached the point of accomplishing anything without a sacrificial effort on the part of one man or woman. Before the final achievement scores or hundreds more will have made their contribution to it. But almost invariably it is possible to look back, when the ends are accomplished, and to single out the person most closely identified with their beginnings. Here the cause to be considered is what the founders of the American Red Cross called "the progress of mercy," through the organization of that national spirit of philanthropy which, without undue self-gratulation, may be regarded as an American characteristic. With the establishment of this cause, and with its promotion to the stage from which the American Red Cross was developed into the vast agency for good which it proved itself in the World War, the name of Clara Barton must always be linked. Cause and champion have seldom been more closely identified. Clara Barton lived for more than ninety years, much beset with physical weakness through more than the first half of them, yet manifesting before the age of fifty such powers of physical endurance as the strongest man might envy. While she was still in her early forties, the Red Cross had its origin in Switzerland. A few years later during the Franco-Prussian War - it became intimately known to her, and she took part in its operations at the battle front. Thus the person and the cause came into definite contact. To look first at the one by herself, then at the other by itself, and finally at the two in conjunction, is to discover afresh what can be brought to pass by the sustained, wholehearted devotion of individual powers to a great object. It is also to recognize the place of a strong personal link between origins and results. I When Clara Barton was born in a farmhouse at Oxford, Worcester County, Massachusetts, on Christmas Day, 1821, Samuel Richardson's novel, Clarissa Harlowe, made up of eight volumes of correspondence in the vein of eighteenth-century romance, was less secure as a classic than it is to-day; but, perhaps |