At a plenary session of the Council of Delegates held on September 9, 1963 on the occasion of the Congress of the International Red Cross in Geneva, Mr. Léopold Boissier, who was presiding, made the announcement that H.I.M. the Empress of Japan proposed making a personal donation to the Shôken Fund. She thus wished to mark the year preceding the fiftieth anniversary of that fund, at the same time as the Centenary of the Red Cross in which she shows a special interest as patron of the National Society of Japan. Her gift, amounting to 3,600,000 yen, representing the equivalent of about 43,000 Sw.frs., is intended to increase the inalienable fund.

The very year in which it has just celebrated its centenary, the International Committee of the Red Cross is carrying out a largescale relief action in circumstances which, in a way, recall the experience of Henry Dunant, its illustrious promoter, a hundred years ago on the battlefield of Solferino. The victims today are in the mountains of the Yemen, but like those of the Lombardy plain a century ago, these wounded and sick troops are abandoned to their suffering. In this isolated corner of the Middle East, in an Arabia which can no longer be called a happy land, these unfortunates are forgotten.

We have the honour to inform you of the official recognition on July 4, 1963, of the Red Cross Society of the Federation of Malaya by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

This Society applied for recognition by letter dated June 6,1962. The application was accompanied by the Decree promulgated on April 16,1962, by the Government of the Federation of Malaya which accorded the Society recognition, together with the text of the Society's Statutes and a report of its activities.

The Council of Delegates,

having with deep satisfaction taken note of the Reports submitted on the occasion of the Centenary of the Red Cross,

thanks the International Committee of the Red Cross, the League and each National Society for the humanitarian work which they have accomplished since their foundation and which to the honour of the Red Cross Movement has greatly expanded in recent years.

The 1963 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the International Committee of the Red Cross jointly with the League of Red Cross Societies. These glad tidings were announced to the ICRC by the following telegram sent from Oslo, on October 10, 1963.

The Russians say that one must not go to Tula with a samovar, because it is there that samovars are made. The English avoid taking coals to Newcastle. In the same way, the Dutch would not go to Gouda with a clay pipe. To speak about the Red Cross before an assembly such as this, composed of loyal friends of the International Committee and distinguished servants of the institution, is rather like flying in the face of the wise counsel of so many nations. In such tricky circumstances, I have only one recourse and that is to take refuge in a past as distant as possible. Fortunately, the Centenary which we are celebrating today invites me to do just that. It was in fact a century and a day ago that five gentlemen, as unlike each other as it is possible to be, met together for the first time.

On February 17, 1963, the International Committee of the Red Cross will have had a hundred years of existence.

On February 9, 1863, the Public Welfare Society of Geneva met at the instigation of its President, Gustave Moynier, to study the proposals which Henry Dunant had formulated at the end of his book “A Memory of Solferino” : first of all to create already in peace-time aid societies which in time of war would assist the army medical service ; then to conclude an international Convention which would serve as a basis for their action. The Public Welfare Society then appointed from amongst its members a Committee of five, in order to prepare a memorandum on the subject which would be presented to a forthcoming relief congress.

In its Circular No. 437 of August 23, 1962, the International Committee of the Red Cross had the honour to invite the Central Committees of National Societies to send in the names of nurses and voluntary aids whom they judged qualified to receive the Florence Nightingale Medal. This invitation, which quoted Article I of the Regulations, was accompanied by questionnaires bearing various headings for the candidatures.

Under this title a play was broadcast by Radio Geneve, on May 8, 1963. For fourteen years an emission—sponsored by the ICRC and the League and the European Broadcasting and Television Union—was devoted to the Red Cross, leading up to the anniversary of Henry Dunant's birth. Relayed by an ever increasing number of broadcasting societies, it now covers four continents.

The Regulations of the Augusta Fund provide for the distribution of income from the Fund every fourth year on the occasion of the International Red Cross Conferences. As these Conferences do not take place at regular intervals, the International Committee of the Red Cross has informed the National Societies, in its Circular No. 429 of March 20, 1960, that such income would henceforth be distributed every fourth year, irrespective of the date on which the Conferences are held.

Mr. Frédéric Siordet will remain Vice-President of the International Committee in 1963, whilst Mr. Martin Bodmer has been appointed Vice-President for 1963 and 1964.

On February 17, 1963 the International Committee, as we know, celebrated the hundredth anniversary of its foundation. It received numerous messages on that occasion and last month we published those from National Red Cross Societies which reached Geneva by the end of February. Since then further testimonies have been arriving in large numbers, congratulatory messages from National Societies together with thanks for the silver-gilt medal presented to them by the ICRC in recognition of their services. We therefore now continue to publish the letters and telegrams received in Geneva and signed for the most part by the Presidents of National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

At the beginning of this year the ICRC had accepted a mission at the request of the Algerian and French Governments in joint agreement. This mainly involved the tracing of persons having disappeared in Algeria since the cease-fire on March 19, 1962, and in respect of whom the International Committee had received individual enquiries covering some 1,200 cases.

We have the honour to inform you of the official recognition on July 4, 1963, of the Cameroon Red Cross Society by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

This Society applied for recognition by the International Committee by letter dated June 10, 1963. The application was accompanied by the Decree promulgated on January 9,1963, by the Government of the Cameroon Republic which accorded the Society recognition, together with the text of the Society's statutes and a report of its activities.

When I started working in the Manuscript Department of the Public and University Library of Geneva in November 1941, the Henry Dunant Archives had not yet been classified nor catalogued. Some of these, thrown haphazard into a case, finally reached the Library after many vicissitudes by reason of a bequest made by the inheritor of Dunant's papers, his nephew Maurice Dunant, who died in 1931. Another part of these archives were still being preserved by Madame Maurice Dunant. Furthermore, other documents had been lent by the Dunant family to private individuals who were reluctant to part with them.

We have the honour to inform you of the official recognition, on August 8,1963, of the Red Cross Society of Trinidad and Tobago by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Society applied for recognition in a letter dated July 2, 1963. The application was accompanied by the Decree of May 31,1963, of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago recognizing the Society, together with the text of the Society's Statutes, and a report of its activities.

We have the honour to inform you of the official recognition, on August 8, 1963, of the Red Cross Society of Tanganyika by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

This Society applied for recognition in a letter dated July 9, 1963. The application was accompanied by the Government of Tanganyika's Decree of December 7, 1962, recognizing the Society, together with the text of the Society's Statutes and a report of its activities.

A large number of National Red Cross Societies and their federative body, the League, have associated themselves with the founder institution of the Red Cross in a tribute of recognition to the members of the Committee of Five, whose energy and powerful imagination brought about the birth, on February 17, 1863, of a movement which today is universally heard and respected.

The International Committee took a sincere part in the tragic event which was mourned on November 22, 1963 by the people of the United States and by the American Red Cross. Mr. John F. Kennedy was not only President of the United States, he was also Honorary President of the National Society to which a short time ago, on the occasion of the Centenary of the Red Cross, he addressed a message which was published in the International Review. One will also recall the stirring message full of confidence which he sent this September to the Centenary Congress of the International Red Cross in Geneva.

Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions constitutes a striking affirmation of humanitarian protection.

Out of respect which is due to the individual, the States parties to these Conventions have in fact accepted to limit, to a certain extent, their liberty of action as regards their own nationals in the case of internal conflicts. International law has thus managed to penetrate a field hitherto exclusively reserved to internal law and the International Committee of the Red Cross has been especially mentioned as being capable, under certain conditions, of acting as guarantor for such protection.