INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25638, 29 October 1948, Page 2

INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS

REPORT ON STOCKHOLM CONFERENCE “I know of’no other organisation that could have gathered together such an assembly of people. Fifty-six nations were represented—mostly by both their Red Cross Societies and I their Governments.” wrote Lord WoolIton, chairman of the executive committee of the British Red Cross Society, in the “Sunday Times” (London). when describing the conference of Red Cross Societies of the world held recently in Stockholm, Sweden. The discussions, he said, had extended over a fortnight and had made one realise that the governments and the peoples of the nations there assembled regarded the preservation of the Red Cross as a tnatter of international importance. All the nations had not been there, continued Lord Woolton. The Balkan States had not sent a representative, and the Russians had come late, having indicated that they would attend the meetings of the League of Red Cross Societies but not the meetings of the International Committee, because of some past disagreement with the body. So they had sat in the gallery. On the initiative of the French Government representative, the conference had passed a resolution urging the Russians to so on the floor of the hall and state their grievances in open session, letting the conference judge them on their merits. The resolution had been carried unanimously; but the Russians had remained in the gallery. Plight of Greek Children Another resolution that had been carried with applause had come from the representative of the Greek Government, a distinguished lawyer. He had begged the conference to consider the plight of the thousands of Greek children who had been taken from their homes and their parents and “deported” in the recent episodes on the Greek frontier. If those responsible for this outrage had heard that discussion they would have known how deep was the loathing and condemnation of world opiniqn at their action, said Lord Woolton. ” Some people, he continued, ‘had thought that the appeal of the woman delegate from the Lebanon Red Cross about the position of refugees from Palestine ranked as one of the best speeches of the conference. There were more than 100,000 of these refugees and their plight was indeed desperate, said Lord Woolton. Conference Recommendations The conference had recommended the establishment of protected zones for hospitals for children and old people and the staff looking after them; it claimed protection for medical personnel looking after enemy sick and wounded in a friendly territory, or their own sick and wounded in an occupied territory—provided that there was no concealment from military authorities. It was also urged that there should be no executions of captured civilians except after judgment by a regularly-constituted Court. Resnect for the sanctity, in war, of the Red Cross emblem was urged upon all governments as of an international convention. The conference had ended by recalling that in the recent war all sides had respected the prohibition of poison gases and the use of bacteriological warfare, which were all strictly forbidden by the Protocols of 1925; it had urged nations to go further and to bind themselves to abandon the use of “blind arms” such as “rockets” and including the atomic bomb, since these instruments of warfare entailed the destruction of human values, which it was the mission of the . Red Cross to defend, and the use of which must imperil civilisation itself.