In place of the International Red Cross Conference, which has been postponed for two years, the Council of Delegates met in Geneva from September 2 to 9, 1963, in the spacious premises of the Palais des Nations. The Council and the Board of Governors of the League together constituted the Centenary Congress. As is known, the Council of Delegates includes the International Committee, the League and the National Societies, that is to say, the constituent bodies of the International Red Cross other than government representatives. Usually it meets just before the International Conference for the purpose of settling questions of procedure. This was only the second occasion upon which it met between Conferences and discussed basic questions. The first time this occurred was the 1961 assembly in Prague.

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.

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 22nd, 1963, of the Red Cross Society of Burundi by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

We have the honour to inform you of the official recognition, on August 22nd, 1963 of the Red Cross Society of Dahomey by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

We have the honour to inform you of the official recognition, on August 26, 1963 of the Red Cross Society of Madagascar by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

I wanted to take up this book, but found difficulty in closing it until I had read it through from cover to cover.

At the beginning of autumn 1962, following the death of the Imam Ahmed and the overthrow of his successor, the Imam El Badr, conflict broke out in the Yemen which was to pit the Republican forces under President Sallal, aided by the Egyptians, against the Royalist forces entrenched in the mountainous regions of the country. A year after the beginning of these events fighting is still continuing and the International Committee of the Red Cross is aware that there are still many victims in need of assistance.

The International Committee of the Red Cross in 1900, 1910, 1919 and 1939, published a general classified index covering the contents of its Bulletin International des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, the title of which was changed in 1919 to the Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge.

In the following pages may be found the balance sheet of the ICRC drawn up as at December 31, 1962, a summary of expenditure and receipts for the year as well as statements covering the Special Funds, i.e. those of the Foundation of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Augusta Fund and the Florence Nightingale Medal Fund. The accounts referring to the Empress Shoken Fund were published in the May 1963 number of the International Review.

During the year which preceded the celebration of its Centenary, the International Committee of the Red Cross found itself in the forefront of the news when the United Nations asked it for its help in controlling vessels bound for Cuba. It did not in the end have to undertake this mission which was outside its traditional humanitarian activity. The episode, however, was a striking manifestation of the moral authority and the confidence felt today in the neutral body which founded the Red Cross a hundred years ago. The Cuban crisis also gave the ICRC the opportunity of denning the contribution it can, in cases of grave peril, bring to the maintenance of peace.