Recent world events have weighed heavily over the last few months. As long-time readers will know, one of my most meaningful charitable experiences was my deep involvement the founding of a WW II focused museum (www.secretsofradar.com) a quarter-century ago.
Our museum’s launch had auspicious timing – we filed our charitable registration just before 9/11, and our first year opening to the public was just as the Iraq war started in 2003. That spring, I travelled to Ottawa to address a reunion of over 100 WWII radar veterans. In one of the more profound moments of my life, one of our veterans, a fellow named Jim, pulled me aside, and said to me with weariness, and sadness, “Ryan, if you had lived through what we had lived through, you would know that war is sometimes necessary, but only as a last possible resort, once all other options have been exhausted. It breaks my heart to say that I don’t think politicians understand what war is truly like.”
That line will stay with me for the rest of my life, and it is in moments like these I hear Jim’s voice echoing in my mind. He and I went onto discuss many things that evening from his experience, including the importance of the many humanitarian aid organizations who looked after wounded soldiers and civilians in his time in Europe during the war. Well into his eighth decade, he still teared up recalling the importance those organizations made to him, his fellow soldiers, and to the many civilians he met on the way.
Those organizations, in the way we now know them, are partially the outcome of the last battle in history between two Monarchs, a compassionate Swiss Merchant, and a group of Italian women whose compassion had no bounds.
The Battle of Solferino.
In June 1859, over a quarter million soldiers met in battle at Solferino Italy, under the personal joint command of the French Emperor Napolean III and Victor Emmanuel, the first King of Italy, against the Austrian forces of Emperor Franz Joseph. The battle was a bloody, horrific affair, with an 11km long front line. Austrian troops were entrenched inside several villages. At the village of Solferino, the French and Italian forces attacked the entrenched Austrians in a battle which lasted over 12 hours. Casualties on both sides were horrifically high, with the French and Italian forces finally seizing the town by sundown, forcing an Austrian retreat. Injured and dying soldiers were bayonetted by the respective opposing forces.
At the end of the battle, forty thousand wounded, dying and dead remained on the battlefield – almost 20% of the entire forces gathered in the area. This was the sight that greeted Henry Dunant, a Swiss merchant who arrived at Solferino a day later. Horrified by what he saw, Dunant could not believe that the armies did not have even the most basic level of medical intervention or other care. Dunant put his own business aside, and worked with a group of local women, and they collectively did their best to organize and provide shelter, compassion and medicine to those suffering, without regard to which side the soldiers had fought. He also petitioned for the release of Austrian Doctors who had been captured by French and Italian forces, in order to have more hands available to care for inured men. “Tutti Fratelli” (all are brothers, in Italian) would become the rallying cry of Dunant and the women he worked with to ensure aid and comfort was provided to those in need.
The sights he saw at Solferino would stay with him for years, haunting his dreams. Dunant was a devout Calvanist Christian, and he was deeply moved by the inhumane conditions of war. He would write a book about what he saw, A Memory of Solferino.
A Memory of Solferino, was as much a manifesto as it was a memoire. In the book, he advocated for a neutral organization to exist that would provide care for the wounded. Dunant would do everything he could to get the book into the hands of the important political and military people in Europe.
In February of 1863, a five person Committee, including Dunant, two medical doctors, a general and Gustave Moynier a jurist who was president of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare, became the founders of they called “The International Committee for Relief to the Wounded” .
Moynier, in particular, was a force within Geneva’s charitable sector, having worked with or served with nearly 40 charitable organizations. Moynier and Dunant, however, were opposite in many ways. Dunant, an idealist after his first-had experiences of the horrors of war, was insistent that the organization push to have its staff, and any wounded soldiers it was treating to be seen as a neutral force on a battlefield – regardless of which side’s soldiers might be receiving support. Moynier, on the other hand, felt that the insistence on neutrality might destroy any credibility the organization might have. While Dunant’s view would eventually prevail, the rift between the two men would never heal. Moynier, once elected president of the organization, would drum Dunant out of the group in 1867, using Dunant’s bankruptcy (a result of the failure of his business) as an excuse.
Durant would go on to have many difficult years, and moved to Paris to escape the infamy of his bankruptcy in Geneva. He continued to advocate for humanitarian relief , founding several other organizations. He even advocated for the creation of a world library.
In the meantime, The international Committee for the Relief of the Wounded changed its name to the International Committee of the Red Cross, and began to spread around the world. Austria, Spain, Sweden, and Prussia would all name him an honourary member, but he remained persona non-grata with the original committee.
By 1895, Dunant was living a very meagre life, but a newspaper article in a German magazine changed his fortunes. Entitled “Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross” would be reprinted across Europe. Shortly after, he received a prize from Switzerland, and a personal note from Pope Leo XII. A number of European aristocrats made donations to support him.
For Dunant, the greatest honour would come in 1901, where he was award the inaugural Nobel Peace Prize, and for how his life’s work and the publishing of A Memory of Solferino influenced the initial Geneva Convention. In the words of the Nobel Committee:
“There is no man who more deserves this honour, for it was you, forty years ago, who set on foot the international organization for the relief of the wounded on the battlefield. Without you, the Red Cross, the supreme humanitarian achievement of the nineteenth century would probably have never been undertaken.”.
Ironically, Moynier’s friends advocated for him also to win a Nobel prize, nominating him four times – a feat that he would never achieve, although an institute he founded would win the prize in 1904.
Dunant’s Nobel money was kept in a separate bank account in order to prevent his many creditors from seizing his funds. Untouched in his lifetime, he left the funds for bequest in his will to those who had helped him in his lean years, and to a number of charitable causes.
In his last years, Dunant was overcome with paranoia and depression – convinced that Moynier and his creditors were coming to get him. Ironically, he and Moynier would die in the same year, only a few weeks apart. His last written words were “Where has Humanity gone?”
One of his final bequests, was to donate some of his Nobel prize money to ensure a “Free Bed” was always available in the nursing home he spent his last years at. He left his world in much the same way he lived – advocating for compassionate care of those in need.
The Red cross more century later…
A century later, the Red Cross is now called the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, a renaming completed in 1983, recognizing that both Christian and Muslim societies have formed around the world sharing the same purposes – to provide compassionate care to all, regardless of religion, race, politics or class. It endeavours to relieve the suffering of individuals, being guided solely by their needs, and to give priority to the most urgent cases of distress.
Recognizing that the society now operates in many parts of the world with people beyond just Christian or Muslim backgrounds, a third symbol has been added – a Red Crystal, allowing a representation of the society anywhere in the world where it is needed.
Dunant’s Life teachers us lessons on compassion and charity.
Few people have had such an impact on the world through a combination of compassion and charitable endeavor as Dunant. The organization he founded, and the many other incredible Humanitarian Aid organizations that now exist make a significant and real impact to the betterment of the world. I am sure today, as war rages in the Middle East, Ukraine, and elsewhere, dedicated staff and volunteers are doing their best to mitigate the terrible nightmare of war.
Most of us here in Canada live in a time and part of the world where we cannot appreciate the high cost of warfare. My friend Jim passed away three years ago, at the age of 101, but his words will remain for as long as I live. He and his generation witnessed the worst of humanity. I’m grateful that aid charities were there for him in WWII, and I hope that they remain part of our society for as long as we need them. These groups – now number a multitude beyond just the Red Cross and Red Crescent and working wonders around the world in some of the most dangerous conditions possible.
As Dunant’s example shows us, charity is not just an act of tax reduction, or sacrifice. Charity should be an act of change and an act of compassion. It also is at its best when it transcends national and religious boundaries to provide compassion to all, as the organization Dunant founded has shown over the last 160+ years.
For me though, one of the things I admire the most about Dunant was that his final act of charity in his will, was to provide a free spot in the Nursing home that cared for him to others in need. Here indeed was a man who lived trust to himself and his belief in compassion to the very end, in every way possible.
Ryan