Some time ago, the International Review published an article describing the movement of solidarity which swept the Junior Section of the Japanese Red Cross when hundreds of disabled arrived in Tokyo, in 1964, for the International Games which had been organized for them. The competitions, which were launched more than twenty years ago, are spreading to an ever larger number of countries, and as they now cover a wide range of sports, they are in principle held in the context of the International Olympic Games. What a fine example of endurance and fortitude we are set by men and women who, although struck by bodily ills, do not submit but find fulfilment in some form of sport!

The Junior Red Cross of Japan played an outstanding part in ensuring the success of the Games, and we published at the time a report by Mrs. Sachiko Hashimoto, Director of the Japanese Juniro Red Cross, on Red Cross activities during the Games and, in particular, on the interpretation service which she organized and which in so many cases proved extremely effective. Not only did young Red Cross volunteers help disabled competitors communicate with one another by means of a language they had learnt for that special puropse, but by rendering all manner of small services they eased the life of persons who could get about only in a wheelchair.

We publish below the text of a circular which the ICRC sent on 17 May 1974 to all governments and national liberation movements which were invited to the recent Diplomatic Conference in Geneva.

The XXIInd International Conference of the Red Cross, at Teheran last November, unanimously adopted Resolution No. XII calling upon governments and National Societies to intensify their efforts to disseminate the Geneva Conventions. It also requested the ICRC to support such efforts, inter alia by preparing information material and by advising National Societies in their plans for the dissemination of the Conventions and Red Cross principles. Consequently, the ICRC is now putting forward a teaching plan for secondary schools. The plan is based on the experience of the Austrian Red Cross, and we reproduce it hereunder.

The International Review has several times described the work done by the ICRC in rendering humanitarian assistance to victims of the 1971 events in the Asian sub-continent. That assistance was for civilians as well as for prisoners of war and civilian internees, and it was rendered in various ways. A detailed article in our April 1974 issue described the repatriation of 250,000 persons in the Asian sub-continent, with the co-operation of the ICRC.

During April 1974, the ICRC delegation in Chile continued its activities on behalf of detainees and their families.

ICRC delegates and doctors visited some twenty places of detention and saw more than 2,800 detainees. As in previous months, the ICRC provided the detainees with material relief consisting mainly of medicaments, blankets, mattresses and working implements.

A group of six army officers, from Dahomey, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal and Zaire, followed a course in Geneva organized jointly by the Swiss army and the International Committee of the Red Cross from 29 April to 10 May 1974.