Clara Barton, Professional Angel

Chapter Sixteen

The Turkish field had not yet really closed before press and public invited—indeed required—Barton to take up a prolonged mission in Cuba. For nearly two years Americans had trained their eyes to this neighbor some ninety miles from their shores. In 1895 the Cubans had staged a revolution against the colonial rule of Spain, but the insurgents had lost and the despotic policies against which they were fighting were strengthened. To show their displeasure and to attract the attention of the United States, the rebels destroyed property and planned guerrilla raids on Spanish military fortifications. To check the rebels the government rounded up suspect inhabitants of the countryside and herded them into concentration camps. The Spanish administrators were unable or unwillingto providefor the reconcentrados, as they came to be known, and the wretched people were left to starve in the filth and exposure of the camps. It was estimated that one-third of the Cuban population died in these miserable camps during the last years of the nineteenth century. Such a situation was manna for the sensationalist press of the day, and the plight of the reconcentrados became increasingly prominent in feature stories.' Barton was sitting in the shade at the Thousand Islands, making plans to produce a seriesof Red Cross medals to be awarded to the veterans of the Turkish campaign, when the first intimation of possible American aid to Cuba reached her. She wasback in Washington, clearing up the final financial accounting and writing a lengthy report of the Middle Eastern field, when requests for Red Cross aid began to filter to her. At first these pleas were editorials in the press calling for help for Americans who were among those suspected by the Spanish authorities and were therefore also being held in the camps. "The Armenian venture . . . has established the precedent that it isnot necessary that two countries should be at war in order to admit of the intervention of the Red Cross in behalf of the suffering," the New York Tribune declared in January1897.2 Barton did not 296 sixteen share the enthusiasm of the press for such a venture. There had been altogether too much criticism of her work in Turkey, too many delicate negotiations with unfamiliar governments, for her to take lightly the idea of another foreign mission . And the situation in Cuba wasundeniablyexplosive. It involved three hostile parties and a state of quasi war between the Cubans and their rulers, which made the legal position of the Red Cross ill-defined. Moreover, Barton was far from convinced that the American public—or the American government— really knew what they wanted when they so earnestly sought her help in Cuba. In a sense the clamor for Red Cross intervention in Cuba was indicative of the way in which Barton had become a victim of her own success. During the infant years of the American Red Cross, she had been so anxious to prove the organization's value, and to publicize its work, that she had heeded almost any call for help. Despite the remaining misunderstandings about the official relations of the Red Cross and the government, there wasnow a broad publicawareness of the practicalgood work that Barton and her small staff had accomplished. But it was blithely assumed that the Red Cross was a much larger organization than it wasand that its resources were vast, its abilityto respond unlimited. Now Barton was nearly overrun with requests that she should fly to the scene ofevery disaster that befell the country. Her work in Turkey had exacerbated this situation by adding the miseriesof other nations to the list of tragedies the American Red Cross wascalled upon to relieve. At the same time that the Cuban situation was drawing to a head, Barton was required to take action in Texas, again at the Sea Islands, and in Greece, where Christians were once more battling the Turks. To these fields she sent token amounts of money, sometimes dispatched advice, and made a polite show at rallies called to solicit financial or political support. On the whole she hoped to keep Red Cross activities regarding the reconcentrados at the same level. Only when rival organizations began to show an interest in the problem did she reconsider the role she and the Red Cross should play in Cuba.3 During the early part of 1897 Barton kept Cuba in the back of her mind; her more immediate concern waswith the exacting process of moving her household and business...