People would contribute, of course, even if there were no society to take charge of their donations, but without its wise hands to distribute, much would be lost.
"A number of years ago a physician in Bedford, Indiana, gave a tract of land to the American National Red Cross; more than a square mile, I believe, a beautiful farm with buildings and fruit-trees, a place where material can be accumulated and stored.

By the terms of the treaty of Geneva, forty nations are pledged to hold it sacred for ever against all invading armies, to the use of the Red Cross.

It is the only spot on earth pledged to perpetual peace." It was from a sad-faced lady in black, who had had two sons drowned in the Johnstown flood, that Lloyd and Betty heard the description of Clara Barton's five months' labour there.

A doctor's wife who had been in the Mt.

Vernon cyclone, and a newspaper man who had visited the South Carolina islands after the tidal wave, and Charleston after the earthquake, piled up their accounts of those scenes of suffering, some of them even greater than the horrors of war, so that Lloyd could not sleep that night, for thinking of them.
"Betty," she whispered, across the stateroom, turning over in her berth.
"Betty, are you awake ?" "Yes.