The Founder of Red Cross

His will overflowed onto war-torn battlefields.

One day, 31-year-old Jean Henri Dunant went to Solferino, located in what is now modern-day Italy, to expand his business in June 1859.

To continue his farm and milling business in Algeria, he needed to recruit the help of Napoleon III. Back in those times, France was warring against Austrian troops in Solferino, with Sardinian allied forces from north of Italy.

Dunant was born to wealthy parents who firmly instilled economic principles into Dunant at an early age. When their son started out into the world as a banker, they couldn’t have been more satisfied. While Dunant worked at a Swiss bank branch in Algeria, he discovered a good business opportunity and became a businessman. When he went looking for Solferino, he was operating his own private business.

There, however, he was struck by a life-changing dilemma.

“It was like watching a nightmarish play. There were 40,000 dead bodies sprawled on the fields, and soldiers without limbs were moaning from every corner.”

This is an excerpt from his journal. Afterwards, Dunant decided to pursue an even more dramatic way of life in Solferino. That night, he ripped apart his business in an appeal to Napoleon III.

“Money holds no meaning for me. The most important value is to help those in need.”

In Solferino he gathered civilians and helped treat the wounded, friendly or hostile. Persuading the allied forces, he worked with a POW doctor and captured medics.

With passion burning in his heart, he wrote “A Memory of Solferino” in 1862 to expound upon the need of a neutral organization to help the wounded during war. It was the beginning of the international humanitarian organization, the Red Cross.

In 1863, Dunant established the present-day International Committee of the Red Cross, then known as International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, and though he lived in poverty during his last years due to negligence of his own business, he was awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. He finally closed his eyes forever in the mountain village of Heiden on this day in 1910, October 30.

The trend among young people these days is to revere money. We need to think about the moral behind Solferino.

jameshuh@donga.com