In considering this condition of things it seemed desirable to so extend the original design of the Red Cross societies operating in other lands as to include not only suffering by war, but by pestilence, famine, fires or floods--in short, any unlooked-for calamity so great as to place it beyond the means of ordinary local charity, and which by public opinion would be pronounced a national calamity; but that this addition should in no way impair the original functions of the society, and that for their own well being they should be held firm by the distinguishing feature of the international constitution, which provides that local societies shall not act except upon orders from the National Association, which is charged with the duty of being so fully informed upon all such subjects, both at home and abroad, as to constitute it the most competent judge of the magnitude and gravity of any catastrophe.
During all these years no societies under the true banner of the Red Cross of Geneva were or could be organized, for the government had not yet ratified the treaty and no department of the government had then intimated that it ever would be ratified. It could not be a responsible or quite an honest movement on my part to proceed to the formation of societies to act under and in conformity to a treaty of special character so long as our government recognized no such treaty and I could get no assurance that it ever would or indeed could recognize it.
But this delay in the formation of societies, however embarrassing, was in no manner able to interfere with the general plan, or the working details for its operations, which had been arranged and decided upon before the presentation of the subject to the government in 1877, and published in pamphlet form in 1878, making it to cover, as it now does, the entire field of national relief for great national woes and calamities in time of peace, no less than in war. The wise provisions, careful preparations and thorough system which had been found so efficient in the permanent societies of the Red Cross in other countries, could not fail, I thought, to constitute both a useful and powerful system of relief in any class of disasters. I therefore ventured so far upon the generous spirit of their original resolutions in the plan of our societies as, mechanically speaking, to attach to this vast motor power the extra and hitherto dead weight of our great national calamities, in order that the same force should apply to all and serve to lighten I hoped, so far as possible, not only the woes of those directly called to suffer, but the burdens on the hearts and hands of those called to sympathize with their sufferings.