Clara Barton’s Hand-written Report on the Sixth International Conference of the Red Cross, Held in Vienna in 1897

She discusses the fight to get Congress to protect the Red Cross name and symbol, which she calls “humanity’s sacred emblem”

The Sixth International Conference of the Red Cross convened Vienna from September 19-24. It was widely attended and considered several subjects, including the work of the national societies, and the aid their governments gave them. The Conference also did groundwork that led to the Convention for the Adaptation to Maritime Warfare of the Principles of the Geneva Convention. American delegates included Clara Barton, head of the American Red Cross, Julian Hubble, the first field agent of the Red Cross, and organization secretary George H. Pullman.

Although Congress ratified the Red Cross Treaty of Geneva in 1882, fifteen years of trying had failed to get Congress to protect the Red Cross name and emblem; nor had efforts for an official Congressional Charter been successful. In 1897, Barton was very much involved with these efforts, ones which would bear fruit in 1900 by Congressional enactment.

This is Barton’s hand-written report on the Sixth International Conference of the Red Cross, likely her retained draft, as it was found in her personal papers,

“The Sixth International Conference of the Red Cross convened in the Austrian capital, Vienna, September 19, and continued until the 24th. Delegates from all the nations within the treaty, nearly two hundred, were present. Our government officially appointed as its representatives Miss Clara Barton, Dr. J.B. Hubble and George H. Pullman. The American Red Cross selected and empowered, in addition to the above delegates Dr. Lucy Hall-Brown, a noted 19th century physician, to represent its central committee, and Charles Wood King as official interpreter. Each government made a full report of the work done by the Red Cross during the five years succeeding the past conference (Rome 1892), all replete with interest. The American Red Cross reported its work on the Port Royal Islands, South Carolina 1893-4, and the relief of Armenia 1896. Also presented a history of its efforts to secure protection for the name and insignia of the Red Cross.

“The leading signatory nations of the world, whose public spirited citizens have generously endowed their Red Cross organizations, and whose governments have passed salutary laws protecting the insignia from illegal use gave, through their delegates, reports of great weight and instruction. It was very interesting to note, in all or nearly every report, that the governments of Red Cross nations had passed adequate laws protecting the one universal emblem of humanity from degradation. It was humiliating to confess before that great conference that in our own enlightened country there are 284 persons, corporations and firms, who were using the name and sign of the Red Cross as a public trademark for private gain. That innumerable bodies of people had formed Red Cross Societies for local purposes and were independent of, and in no manner connected or in affiliation with, the national organization. All of which was very confusing to the minds of our own people; and that our Congress had, up to the present time, passed no law for the protection of the Red Cross.

“The delegates as a body were astonished and surprised that the wealthy man of the great republic had not richly endowed their own Red Cross, and cannot understand why our Congress had not prohibited, by strong laws, the prostitution of the name and signature of humanity’s sacred emblem.”