In his book A Memory of Solferino, Henry Dunant vividly communicates his emotion to the reader when he describes the relentless development of the battle between the French and Sardinian armies and the Austrian forces. But he shows in the second part of the book the wide-spread feeling, in the face of so much misery, which stirred the people from Mantua to Milan and Turin during those June and July days of 1859.

Since the beginning of the fighting the International Committee of the Red Cross has tried to give help and protection to all victims, such as detainees or prisoners, regrouped populations in the interior of Algeria and, during the first phase of their exile, refugees in Tunisia and Morocco.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has received from the Federal Political Department in Berne, duly certified copies of the instruments by which the Governments of Paraguay and Colombia have ratified the Geneva Conventions of 1949. These two ratifications will take effect on April 23, 1962 for Paraguay and on May 8, 1962 in the case of Colombia.

Mr. Léopold Boissier, President of the ICRC, spent several days in Rome from February 15 to 21, 1962.

On the 16th he was received in private audience by His Holiness Pope John XXIII with whom he spoke of various questions likely to interest the Vatican. The Holy Father listened with the utmost benevolence to all that the International Committee's representative had to say and assured him of his very keen interest in the humanitarian action of the Red Cross.

The Central Tracing Agency preserves, in Geneva its archives and card-indexes of the First World War with the greatest care. It is not a question of their being museum pieces which are kept for their historic interest, but on the contrary are documentary material of great practical usefulness, consulted almost daily.

Since the Geneva Conventions were signed on August 12, 1949, the International Committee of the Red Cross has endeavoured to make these texts universal since they constitute the basis of humanitarian law. Recently, it has put the emphasis on their dissemination in Africa because, in the critical phase which this continent is going through, it seems particularly desirable that all African states feel themselves bound by these treaties.

The Joint Commission entrusted with the distribution of the income of the Empress Shôken Fund met in Geneva on 27 February 1962. It noted the% statement of accounts and the situation of the Fund at 31 December 1961. It decided to distribute a sum of Sw.Fr. 12,000 from the balance available of Sw.Fr. 12,472,05.