DUNANT : THE STORY OF THE RED CROSS
By Martin Gutnpert
Dr. Gumpert's life of Henri Dunant (Eyre and Spottis- woode, 8s. 6d.) contains so little about the man and so much about his times that it will disappoint readers who are inter- ested in the Red Cross and its originator. The author's long historical surveys need a good deal of revision, and his repeated complaint that the Red Cross movement has kept clear of pacifist politics is hardly fair. But when Dr. Gum- pert is actually writing about his hero, he compels attention. Dunant, a young Genevan banker, happened to be at Sol- ferino in June, 1859, and to see the French and Austrian wounded in all their untended misery. In 1862 he published an account of what he had seen, with a plea for a voluntary ambulance service in war-time. The book was well received in all countries, and especially in Prussia. In 1863 Dunant, with Moynier, an influential lawyer of Geneva, and three others, founded the Red Cross. A year later an international conference of sixteen countries met at the instance of the Swiss Government and adopted the Geneva Convention. Dunant unfortunately went bankrupt in 1867, and gradually dropped out of the Red Cross organisation to live in obscurity. He was rediscovered in 1891 and made much of ; the Tsar gave him a pension and the first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to him and F. Passy in r9or. But nothing that he did in the twenty years before his death in 1910 was com- parable with the inspired effort of his youth.
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