World's Benefit for Red Cross

Magnificent Entertainment at the Grand Central Palace to Aid Heroic Nurses on Fields of Battle.

MANY FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN VOLUNTEER TO AID.

Chauncey M. Depew, Clara Barton, Bishop Potter, Thos. A. Edison, Nikola Tesla and Eloise Vitti Will All Take Part.

SOCIETY HAS DISPLAYED A VERY PATRIOTIC INTEREST.

The World’s Red Cross benefit at the Grand Central Palace to-night is assured of success.

The cablegrams telling of our dead and wounded in the war have intensified interest in the work of Red Cross nurses — “the angels of the battle-field.”

A most interesting programme has been arranged for this benefit.

Clara Barton, although she is in Key West, will “open the exercises.” She will touch a button which will illuminate a mammoth electric red cross placed in the centre of the main hall. Then Bent Brothers’ Military Band will play for the first time a march composed for and dedicated to The World.

Andrew H. Green, the “Father of Greater New York,” will call the assembly to order, and after telling briefly of the work of the Red Cross Society will act as presiding officer.

Arthur Classen, the chorus leader, will direct a full chorus of 300 voices.

Dr. Chauncey M. Depew will deliver the oration of the evening. His subject will be “What the Red Cross Has Done and Is Doing.”

Bent Brothers’ Band will play between the numbers, “Review of the Troops at Camp Black,” “Maryland, My Maryland,” “Old Zip Coon,” “Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground,” “Dixie,” “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” “Highland Hornpipe,” “The Gem of the Ocean,” Keller’s American Hymn and other patriotic selections.

On the platform will be the Rev. Charles H. Eaton, the Rev. John P. Peters, famous as an Oriental traveller; the Rev. Dr. Frank Mason North, head of the city Methodist missions; the Rev. David H. Greer, rector of St. Bartholomew’s Church; Bishop Potter, the Right Rev. J. M. Farley, Auxiliary Bishop of New York; the Right Rev. Joseph F. Mooney, Vicar-General of New York, and the Rev. J. M. Lavelle, rector of the Cathedral. Many of these clergymen will make “five-minute speeches” appropriate to the occasion.

One hundred cadets from Grammar School No. 87 will give their celebrated ambulance drill, in which men apparently wounded fatally are carried from the mimic battle-field by the ambulance corps.

Liquid remedies, bandages, splints and litters are all in sight. Commands are made by bugle, and a cadet drum corps of fifteen pieces assists in the drill.

A feature of the evening will be the first appearance in this country of the celebrated prima donna Mlle. Eloise Vitti.

At the special request of The World she will preface her professional debut with singing for the friends of the Red Cross. She comes from Europe after a most successful season in grand opera. She received her musical education in Berlin, Milan and Paris, studying principally under the celebrated maestro, Alberto Giovannini. Her debut in Milan was one of the great musical events of the season. She is considered as one of the greatest Margueritas abroad.

David Lynch, the chief operator of the Western Union Cable Company, at the request of The World, will, in a box near the presiding officer, receive by special wire a message from Clara Barton, sent to The World from her headquarters “at the front.”

And all this isn’t all.

Nicola Tesla and Thomas A. Edison will tell what disaster electricity may cause in warfare.

Then there will be two hundred trained nurses in full uniform, who will march and sing songs of the battlefield.

The box next to that of the presiding officer will be that of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Gould. In another box will be Dr. and Mrs. George F. Shrady and party.

George Dewey, jr., son of Admiral Dewey, the hero of Manila, will occupy a box with friends.

Mrs. W. E. Dodge wrote to The World yesterday from Connecticut to reserve a box for her and her family.

Dr. and Mrs. A. Monal Lesser, the heads of the Red Cross Hospital in New York, will also entertain friends in a box.

Mrs. Thomas C. Platt and Mrs. Ricard Butler have also purchased boxes.

Stephen Barton, a telegrapher in the civil war, who is a nephew of Clara Barton, and one of her representatives here, will be one of a box party, as will be John P. Faure, former Commissioner of Charity.

W. T. Wardwell, treasurer of the Standard Oil Company, was one of the first to purchase a box, and Eugene Blackford another.

The box seats are from $1 to $5. General admission, fifty cents; children, twenty-five cents. Every penny for the boxes goes to the Red Cross Society.