Details
BARTON, CLARA, Founder of the American Red Cross. Typed letter signed, ("Clara Barton") to Mrs. J.S. Sperry in Pueblo, Colorado, Headquarters of the American Red Cross, Washington, D.C., 4 May 1900, 2 pages, 4to, the first page on paper with the American Red Cross letterhead, small marginal tear at top right of each leaf, with a 2-line note in pencil from the recipient at end.
Responding to Mrs. Sperry's inquiry regarding the American Red Cross's possible relief plans for famine victims in India, Clara Barton, 79 and still exercising her autocratic powers over the Red Cross, answers that the organization "has not taken up that subject, and is at present extending no aid there. The calls upon it for the past few years have been so great and so various, that it has found its hands more than full outside of India. The reports of the magnitude of need and suffering there are so appalling that one scarcely knows what to recommend." She explains that as India is a British colony, "in dealing with India, one must deal with England".
The priorities of the American Red Cross lie elsewhere: "All questions of great need or suffering are 'vital questions' with the Red Cross, in as much as human life is concerned. We also observe the various efforts made toward the creation of local funds. While approving a step in that direction, we cannot forget that America has still a war of its own. That its own soldiers are on strange fields, thousands of miles away, difficult to reach, not over well supplied, and in the great rush for Africa and India, and other points however remote, that a cry comes up from, our own field seems nearly forgotten. Our soldiers in the Philippines, we feel have just cause for thought, if not for complaint in this direction...."
Responding to Mrs. Sperry's inquiry regarding the American Red Cross's possible relief plans for famine victims in India, Clara Barton, 79 and still exercising her autocratic powers over the Red Cross, answers that the organization "has not taken up that subject, and is at present extending no aid there. The calls upon it for the past few years have been so great and so various, that it has found its hands more than full outside of India. The reports of the magnitude of need and suffering there are so appalling that one scarcely knows what to recommend." She explains that as India is a British colony, "in dealing with India, one must deal with England".
The priorities of the American Red Cross lie elsewhere: "All questions of great need or suffering are 'vital questions' with the Red Cross, in as much as human life is concerned. We also observe the various efforts made toward the creation of local funds. While approving a step in that direction, we cannot forget that America has still a war of its own. That its own soldiers are on strange fields, thousands of miles away, difficult to reach, not over well supplied, and in the great rush for Africa and India, and other points however remote, that a cry comes up from, our own field seems nearly forgotten. Our soldiers in the Philippines, we feel have just cause for thought, if not for complaint in this direction...."