Do you suppose that people always felt that they should help everybody in such ways?

No; the Red Cross is not yet sixty years old.

War is thousands of years old.

In olden days when soldiers fought, there were no kind Red Cross nurses to care for the wounded. There were no faithful Red Cross dogs to search for wounded soldiers after the battle was over.

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Often the suffering men died of neglect when proper nursing would have saved their lives. But no one ever thought of sending a band of women nurses to wars to help the soldiers, before the days of Florence Nightingale.
Florence Nightingale

Florence was a little English girl who always said that when she grew up she would be a nurse.

She felt sorry to see any living creature suffer and always tried to help it. Sometimes it was a bird with a broken wing or an injured rabbit that she tended.

All the neighbors brought their sick pets to her. The little nurse finally had so many patients that her father gave her a corner of the greenhouse for a hospital. The animals learned to love her and she had many friends among them as you may imagine.

When she was a young woman nursing in a London hospital, England’s soldiers were sent to war with............