On the morning of September 12th, 1914, I presented myself at 3, rue de l'Athénée, the surprisingly modest headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Gustave Moynier, who was then unknown to me, one of the founders of this Genevese institution fifty years earlier, of which he had been President until 1910, said that he was also its door-keeper, because it was he who had the keys to the small, three roomed flat. It was there where the Committee's as yet by no means very considerable records were kept.

We have the honour of enclosing the text of a memorandum dated May 19, 1967, addressed by the International Committee of the Red Cross to the Governments of States parties to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and to the IVth Convention of The Hague of 1907, concerning the laws and customs of war on land. This memorandum bears on the protection of civilian populations against the dangers of indiscriminate warfare and, in particular, on the implementation of Resolution XXVIII of the XXth International Conference of the Red Cross.

On May 1st, Mr. Germain Colladon, delegate of the International Committee, went to Athens to examine with the authorities and the Hellenic Red Cross various humanitarian problems arising from the recent events in Greece.

Soon after his arrival, he was received in audience by Mr. Kollias, President of the Council of Ministers, and was authorized to visit recently arrested persons and inspect detention conditions.

He came back to Geneva at the end of the month then returned to Greece to continue his mission.

A film called “Presence of the Red Cross in Vietnam” produced by the ICRC Information Department, is now available in French, English and German. It shows, in approximately twenty minutes, the healing influence of the Red Cross against the devastating background of war.

In January 1967 and on the request of an Indian national living in Geneva the ICRC, through the National Red Cross Society in Karachi, asked the Pakistan Government to grant an entry visa to Mr. Ch. J., to enable him to go from India to Pakistan to visit his aged and ailing father, a recent widower. According to his religion, an only son must perform certain rites upon his mother's death.

On June 2, 1967, the International Committee of the Red Cross again received from its delegates in the Yemen reports of bombing by toxic gas.

A medical team, led by the head of the ICRC mission in the Yemen, went on May 15 and 16 to a village in the northern part of the country to attempt to give aid to the victims of bombing having taken place some days previously and as a result of which, according to the survivors, many inhabitants had died of asphyxiation.

On June 25, 1917, Romain Rolland wrote to Gustave Ador, then President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, informing him of the gift he was making to the Central Prisoners of War Agency. This gesture is worth recalling fifty years later, at a time when the fine figure of the author of Jean-Christophe is held in such high esteem.