The Red Cross: Some Facts Concerning Clara Barton’s Work
Booklet
By Walter P. Phillips
Bridgeport, Conn.
1903

Page 8 of 8

Transcript:
"...to preserve his own peace, dare to linger near the walls moulded from the stuff of which his very soul is made, we find obloquy enough at hand to bury him quickly out of sight.’

A year ago, after having served the Red Cross as its General Secretary, for more than twenty years, I declined a re-election, but I cannot let this occasion pass without raising my voice in protest, for I owe it to myself to defend a woman who is being unjustly assailed and I have spoken because I owe it also to the rapidly disappearing fragments of the federal armies, which, once every year, march again to marital music under the banner of the Grand Army of the Republic and to the memory of those wearers of both blue and gray who ranging themselves upon the firing line, when the bugle’s blast was heard by Southern ford and glen, fell and now sleep beneath the unremembering grass, the deep slumber from which there is no material awakening.  Whether on another plane of existence, they remember that when the cold hand of death stretched toward them, the tender touch of a woman cooled their fevered brows – this we may not know.  But we do know that all over this broad land there are yet living, widows and daughters whose natural protectors perished on the field of honor and by whose lips the name of Clara Barton is always spoken with reverence—women whose hearts beat in unison with hers and whose souls and those of the mothers of men, throughout the earth, are linked with hers and are in unending tune with the Infinite.”  “…to preserve his own peace, dare to linger near the walls moulded from the stuff of which his very soul is made, we find obloquy enough at hand to bury him quickly out of sight.’
A year ago, after having served the Red Cross as its General Secretary, for more than twenty years, I declined a re-election, but I cannot let this occasion pass without raising my voice in protest, for I owe it to myself to defend a woman who is being unjustly assailed and I have spoken because I owe it also to the rapidly disappearing fragments of the federal armies, which, once every year, march again to marital music under the banner of the Grand Army of the Republic and to the memory of those wearers of both blue and gray who ranging themselves upon the firing line, when the bugle’s blast was heard by Southern ford and glen, fell and now sleep beneath the unremembering grass, the deep slumber from which there is no material awakening.  Whether on another plane of existence, they remember that when the cold hand of death stretched toward them, the tender touch of a woman cooled their fevered brows – this we may not know.  But we do know that all over this broad land there are yet living, widows and daughters whose natural protectors perished on the field of honor and by whose lips the name of Clara Barton is always spoken with reverence—women whose hearts beat in unison with hers and whose souls and those of the mothers of men, throughout the earth, are linked with hers and are in unending tune with the Infinite.”   

Clara Barton National Historic Site, CLBA 4497