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America’s foremost woman. Houghton (Mich.)Gazette.

Clara Barton’s, a career which has no parallel in American history. Cleveland (Ohio)Plain Dealer.

Clara Barton—in citizenship, the memory of her career must remain a rich heritage to the people of this country.

Portland (Ore.)Telegram.

Clara Barton’s Red Cross achievements are monumental, and because of the corner-stone she laid the present superstructure will endure. Her name is the synonym for the American Red Cross as it was, and as it is.B. F. Tillinghast, Delegate to the International Red Cross Conference at St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1902.

Destiny is the decree of God.A. Cunningham.

Destiny cannot be avoided.G. Cowpay.

Destiny bears us to our lot.Disraeli.

Who can turn the stream of destiny?Spencer.

In your own bosom are your destiny’s stars.Coleridge.

How circumscribed is woman’s destiny.Goethe.

Let a woman steer straight onward to the fulfillment of her own destiny.Mrs. Emma R. Cole.

Clara Barton—one of the immortals.Brooklyn Citizen.

Quaff immortality.John Milton.

Born of immortality.Wordsworth.

This longing after immortality.Addison.

I have an immortal longing in me.Shakespeare.

Immortality! We bow before the very term, Immortality!

George Douglas.

’Tis immortality to die aspiring.Chapman.

No one could meet death for his country without the hope of immortality.Cicero.

Clara Barton—she earned immortality.

Boston (Mass.)Herald.

She passes through the portals of immortality.

Joplin (Mo.)Globe.

Rest thee among the immortal names that were not born to die.

Rutland (Vermont)Herald.

He is truly great that is great in charity.

Thomas À Kempis.

The most useful is the greatest.Theodore Parker.

Great names stand not alone for great deeds.Henry Giles.

He who does the most good is the greatest.Bishop Jartin.

He only is great at heart who floods the world with a great affection.Roswell D. Hitchcock.

As the stars are the glory of the sky, so great men are the glory of their country; yea, of the whole earth.Heine.

Greatness is nothing unless it is lasting.Napoleon.

On eagle’s wings immortal scandals fly.Stephen Harvey.

To reproach is a concomitant to greatness, as satire and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.

Joseph Addison.

Such is the destiny of great men that their superior genius always exposes them to the butt of the envenomed darts of calumny and envy.Voltaire.

America has her Washingtons, Jeffersons, Lees, and others whose names are written down in the hearts of all Americans, but Clara Barton accomplished a work compared with which the career of generals fade in the distance as a shadow.

Pensacola (Fla.)Journal.

From a speech by Honorable Henry Breckenridge, Acting Secretary of War, representing the United States Government, at the laying of the corner-stone of the American Red Cross Building, at Washington, D. C, March 27, 1915.

To every soldier who fought in the Union Army, and survived the war, the name of Clara Barton was known. And as long as the American Red Cross endures or its name is remembered the memory of Clara Barton will be cherished. Her sympathies were universal, her zeal unflagging. She nursed the wounded of two wars on the continents, in our Civil War and in the Franco-Prussian War. She directed the work of her association to the calamities of peace, as well as the stricken fields of war. She was in Cuba before the Spanish War—was on the “Maine” the day before it was blown up, and tended the wounded survivors in the hospital ashore. Wherever humanity called for help—in the Balkans or in Strasburg—in Cuba or in Galveston—in Paris or on the American battlefields of the sixties—there came the ministering hand of Clara Barton.

To take an historical perspective, disfavor with a temporary and passing administration means nothing in the end to a name as great and a career as long as Clara Barton’s, as this estimate shows. For a while it maymean on both sides much misconstruction and suffering, but in the end this is forgotten and the fame remains undimmed.

Florence Nightingale, at the Crimea, England’s great introducer into the world of the system of women hospital nurses, was actually so ignored by a subsequent English ministry that, though a poor invalid, she was ousted from her minor position in a Governmental office. It caused her intense pain, and although a chronic sufferer from her many labors, she saw herself ignominiously thrown out by new political leaders who, great as they were, could not understand her. But when she became an octogenarian, all this became a buried incident, and all England a few years ago bent to do her homage, when the Lord Mayor of London granted her the freedom of the city, and the Golden Casket, England’s highest of honors. Now, since her death, a monument is being erected and nothing is considered too good to let Great Britain make her memory green in the British Isles.

Thus will perish the temporary unhappy misunderstanding and misconstruction of 1902–1904, through which Clara Barton suffered. In the atoning stream that swallows time’s ticking seconds of little troubles, its unessentials will be dissolved. Indeed, as demonstrated in nearly 3000 American newspapers in 1912, they have already been dissolved, leaving her character and career eternally crystallized at the base of an enduring national foundation and an immortal American destiny—the greatest an American woman has yet produced.

©Harris & EwingHENRY BRECKENRIDGESo long as the American Red Cross endures, and its name is remembered, the memory of Clara Barton will be cherished.—Henry Breckenridge, of Kentucky. Orator of the Day, Assistant Secretary of War, representing the U. S. Government at the laying of the corner stone of the Red Cross Building at Washington, D. C., March 17, 1915; Lieutenant-Colonel World War.See page368.

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