In 1919 Bela Kun, the Hungarian revolutionary who, for a few months, was the head of the Soviet Republic of Hungary, declared to the delegate of the ICRC that he fully understood the position and the role of that institution. That private association of Swiss citizens, who, free from any governmental ties, were giving aid and comfort to the victims of war, wherever these might be found and without any distinction of nationality, religion or ideology, appeared to him to be truly representative of the Swiss people. In his view, the ICRC, because it was independent, because it was addressing itself direct to governments, reminding them of their moral duties towards prisoners, towards the soldiers of the other side, belonged to the revolutionary camp.

The International Red Cross held its meeting in Istanbul from 6 to 13 September 1969. No less than 610 delegates, representing 77 States and 83 National Societies of the Red Cross, Red Crescent and Red Lion and Sun, as well as 51 observers, gathered in the fine new Culture Palace. Generously welcomed by the country's high authorities and organized by the Turkish Red Crescent with the assistance of the international institutions of the Red Cross, the XXIst Conference was presided over by Mr. Riza Ceçrel, President of the Turkish Red Crescent. He asked Lady Limerick, Chairman of the Standing Commission, to assume the actual direction of most of the proceedings. Both acquitted themselves of their delicate task with distinction.

The date of 12 August 1949 takes its place amongst the important historic events of which the Red Cross can be justly proud: on 22 August 1864 there was the signing of the First Geneva Convention; the second revision of that Convention and the signing of the Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war were made on 27 July 1929 and on 12 August 1949 there were the revision of the old Conventions and the adoption of the Geneva Convention for the protection of civilian persons in time of war. On each occasion protection of the individual was extended to further categories of victims.

Jointly with the Editions de l'Age d'homme, Lausanne, the Henry Dunant Institute has published a remarkable book of which the first part is Henry Dunant's Un Souvenir de Solférino and the second part various texts written by Dunant between 1864 and about 1897 under the general heading L'avenir sanglant. A foreword by the Swiss writer Denis de Rougemont brings out the novelty of the ideas in L'avenir sanglant and their contrast with Un souvenir de Solférino. The aim of the latter was “to reduce the horrors of war” whilst the former, of a more violent style, denounces war. As this preface says, L'avenir sanglant reveals “without the shadow of a doubt, Dunant's real feelings which he could perhaps not admit—even to himself—when he started writing A Memory of Solférino”.

The year 1969 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Polish Red Cross.

In our country the assistance brought by the population and voluntary associations to wounded soldiers originated from a very ancient and fine tradition. It goes back to the time of Kosciuszko's Insurrection and was continued during the national insurrections of 1830 and 1863. Throughout the 120 years and more of Poland's servitude and dismemberment it was extended to those who had been imprisoned for fighting for liberty and justice. One of the organizations of voluntary assistance and first-aid was called the Red Cross Society (1862–1886).

Today, the practice of nursing and the education of nurses are going through the most exciting period in modern times. Throughout a long and turbulent history, nursing has faced almost insurmountable difficulties. In the main, these have stemmed from an attempt to maintain stability while conducting innovation, and from an attempt to change while retaining the useful part of the old. But to their credit, nurses have attempted to keep pace with the needs made by a rapidly changing social structure. It is these present needs that now should force nursing into a new, enlarged, and more crucial role in the health professions.

Socrates recommended that one should begin a dissertation by denning one's terms.

For some time now, the name, “humanitarian law”, has been used to describe the large body of public international law derived from humanitarian sentiments and centred upon the protection of the individual.

The term has both a broad and a narrow sense. In the broad sense, international humanitarian law consists of those rules of international conventional and customary law which ensure respect for the individual and promote his development to the fullest possible extent compatible with law and order and, in time of war, with military necessities.

With the first number of the Bulletin international des Societes de secours aux militaires blesses edited in Geneva in October 1869 by the International Committee of Aid to the Wounded, not yet known as the International Committee of the Red Cross, there originated a publication which in 1919 was to become the Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge, now widespread throughout the world and in which the activities, researches and intentions of our movement are described. We are therefore celebrating both the fiftieth aniversary of the Review's founding and also the centenary of the Bulletin to which it has succeded without any interruption.

Each month the International Review gives an account of its current activities. We now think it will be of interest to give a more general description of some of the important actions in which the ICRC is at present engaged in various parts of the world, what these are and also how they are developing. Relief for the victims of the conflict in Nigeria has, in view of the considerable efforts demanded of the ICRC, often been the subject of largely recapitulatory articles. We therefore now reproduce information and figures showing the situation at the end of March 1969.

The question of the protection of victims of non-international conflicts was one item on the agenda of the XXth International Conference of the Red Cross at Vienna in 1965 which adopted a Resolution, No. XXXI, urging the ICRC to continue its work with the aim of strengthening Red Cross humanitarian, assistance to such victims. The same Resolution recommended governments of States parties to the Geneva Conventions and National Societies to support these efforts in their respective countries.

Material relief action undertaken by the ICRC in Nigeria and in the secessionist state (Biafra) has made it possible to feed almost one and a half million people. The size of the operation has overshadowed the International Committee's activities of protection and information in these regions: visiting prisoners of war, mail routing via the Central Tracing Agency, evacuation of the seriously wounded and of foreigners. Nevertheless, all these are presenting the ICRC with very real problems.

Month by month International Review publishes in this section an account of the large scale relief operation being carried out under the sign of the red cross in Nigeria and the secessionist province (Biafra). Our June issue gave details of resources involved and the considerable number of victims being assisted in both Federal and Biafran territory.

The international institutions of the Red Cross have always been in close touch with National Societies in Latin America, some of which are amongst the oldest members of our movement. We have asked Mr. P. Jequier, now retired from his office as ICRC Delegate-General for that part of the world, to give an account of his own experience in some events and to describe some of the International Committee's actions during internal disturbances.

We have the honour to inform you that the International Committee of the Red Cross on 3 July 1969 officially recognized the Somali Red Crescent Society.

The new Society, founded in 1963, formally applied to the International Committee for recognition on 9 April 1967. Some improvements and modifications to the statutes being considered necessary, these were realized in May 1969.

Assistance to Displaced Persons in Syria.—In December 1968 the International Committee of the Red Cross appealed to several National Societies for relief supplies for some 100,000 persons displaced from the occupied Golan territory now living in camps outside Damascus. Their plight has been aggravated by the rigours of a severe winter. By the end of the month 100 tons of flour, 73 tons of powdered milk, 20 tons of rice, 3 tons of cheese, meat and 5115 blankets had been sent to Damascus. Part of these supplies was conveyed in an aircraft chartered twice by the ICRC.

In a report which he had submitted to one of the preparatory committees for the first International Conference of National Aid Societies for the Nursing of the Sick and Wounded in the Field (which meetings were the predecessors of the International Conferences of the Red Cross) at Paris in 1867, Huber-Saladin, one of the French government delegates, put forward the idea “of a jointly financed publication in Geneva, in the form of a journal, or a periodical bulletin to which every Central Committee would contribute news items”. The International Committee, of which Gustave Moynier was president, adopted this idea and shortly afterwards, in its ninth circular of 21 September 1867, submitted it to the Central Committees which had been previously consulted and had given their approval.

United Arab Republic.—Towards the end of October two visits to Israeli prisoners of war were carried out in the United Arab Republic.

The ICRC delegate in Cairo, Mr. Marcel Boisard, on 26 October, visited a wounded prisoner of war who was captured by the Egyptian armed forces in September 1969.

The congress is held by some writers to be the present day antidote to modern man's isolation. Must this be seen as the reason for the constantly large participation in International Conferences on social welfare, in spite of the proliferation of seminars and meetings ?

Undoubtedly social workers and representatives of allied professions are not immune from this modern trend. Thus, every two years, when the International Council on Social Welfare organises its international forum there is a veritable “Migration” of office holders in the social welfare field. They come from all quarters to pool, for a week, their experiences and ideas on the selected theme.

The XXIst International Conference of the Red Cross,

having received the report of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the League of Red Cross Societies on the action taken on the Resolutions of the XXth International Conference of the Red Cross (Vienna, 1965),

accepts this report,

thanks the International Committee and the League for having submitted it.