The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-04-05
DEFENCE OF
 MISS BARTON
NO INTENTION ON HER PART
 OF ACCEPTING A PENSION.
Leafist from Water Phillips, Chair man of Executive Committee of Red Cross Association on Sub ject of Dissension in Associa-
 tion-Miss Mabel q.
 Boardman's Part.

Red Cross affairs, which have now come to mean the progress of the division of that organization against itself, with par tisans of It's President, Miss Clara Bar ton, in one camp, and her active adver- saries in tis other. have reached the cli- max of rather bitter denunciation of these adversaries by officers who support Miss Barton.
 Present conditions were precipitated by the memorial to Congress which took Miss Barton to task for several things, among them the change in the bylaws of the organization. eliminating the Board of Control of thirty members. and authoriz- ing the President of the Red Cross to act upon her own initiative in time of calam- fly. and giving her power to appoint her own executive committee. Further. 1t vas alleged that Miss Barton had ex- pended moneys. sent to her direct. in- stead of handing them to the Treasurer.
 One of the foremost champions of Miss Barton is Walter P. Phillips of Bridge port, Conn.,, Chairman of the Executive Committee. In a leafiet which has just been issued over his signature. Mir. Phil lips says:
 As already noted. the signers of the me- morial to Congress are, with one excep- ton, citizens of the District of Columbia, and most of them are new members, the most persistent agitator-Miss Mabel T. Boardman-having been swept into mem- bership on the flood tide that brought us the new act of incorporation in 1900. Among the suggestions made by Miss Boardman. in a letter written to Mrs. John A. Logan. vice-President of the Red Cross. is one providing that Miss Barton be relegated to the rear-made honorary President-and an annuity arranged for her by Miss Boardman's father and oth- CTS, amounting to $500 per annum. If anything were needed to show that Miss Boardnan is a very new element in the Red Cross, her proposition to pension Miss BTrton would be quite sufficient. For a quarter of a century Miss Barton has been giving both time and money to the cause of the Red Cross. She has yet other things that she intends to give it. but she has no designs on pension. have spoken of her depleted income. but not of her impaired fortune. She Is wo- man of ample means.
 I am reminded by the meddiers with Red Cross matters. and the fact that they are residents of Washington. of what President Garfield once said to me on an important subject. Senator Hawiey call cd at my office. about midnight. a week before President Garfield was shot. and informed me that he had just left the President who had requested him to call and ask me to come to the White House at o'clock the next morning. I went and President Garfield said he was going on a trip, the following week, and, as the Star Route cases were coming on. he wished me to know. for my own informa- tion, as the representative of the Asso- ciated Press. that all stories that he was going to protect Second Assistant Post master General Brady and Senator Dor sey were false: that he intended to let the law take its course. "But," he add ed. ''so many people in Washington live of of the government in one way or an- other. and the idea of rendering a real equivalent for the money received is so hazy that the moral sense of some of the people has become blunted. I very much doubt, therefore, If District jury can be found who will regard the charges against General Brady and Senator Dor sey as implying a measure of iniquity very much out of the ordinary; parttc- ulaEly as the cause of one of them Is to be espoused by such an eloquent defend CT as Colonel Ingersoil." The result of the trial demonstrated that President Gar neld's words were almost prophetic.
 Had Miss Bartou's work been done from headquarters in New York. Chicago, Bos- ton. or any American city other than | washington, it is doubtful if a clique of people who were new in the organiza- | ton. and none of whom ever visited a single field where Red Cross work was
 under way, for the purpose of participat.
 ing in it. would have dared to raise
 their voices against her. Washington i. surely peculiar fin respect of producing certain class of people whose sense ot
 fairness and propriety constitutes a strik
 ing case of arrested development.
 A year ago. after having served the Rec Croas as It's General Secretary for mor'
 than twenty years. declined a re-elec
 ton; but I cannot let this occasion past
 without raising my voics in protest. fol | I owe 1t to myself to defend a woman
 who Is being unjustly assaiied. and I hav' spoken because owe it also to the rapid Ak alsaaRsAsisG fragments of the Fed