For the Red Cross Amid Alarms of War

Benefit at Grand Central Palace Saturday Evening for the Devoted Nurses Awakens Great Enthusiasm.

THE WORLD HAS ARRANGED FOR A GREAT SHOW.

Dr. Depew, Bishop Potter, Bishop Farley, Tesla, Edison, Dr. Shrady and Other Distinguished Persons Will Take Part.

MANY PROMINENT SOCIETY WOMEN WILL ACT AS PATRONESSES.

It is going to be a very fine show, one that should not be missed. To begin with, there may be people in this broad land who know nothing about the Red Cross Society, but they do not read newspapers and books. Anything that helps the work of the society, particularly at this time, when the country is at war, appeals to the whole nation. The men who fall on battlefields may need the gentle, fearless devoted nurses with the red crosses on their arms, who care for friend and foe alike, carrying to all who suffer mercy and care. The Red Cross nurses are willing to risk their lives, give them if need be, but something more than devotion on their part is necessary to make their work successful. They need money and a deal of it for hospital appliances are costly and the maintenance of the corps means a great sum.

It is to meet these necessary expenses that the entertainment will be given in the Grand Central Palace next Saturday night. It will realize an enormous sum. It is given under the auspices of The World, which has arranged for speakers which probably could not be found on the same platform for any other cause. Every penny that is taken in will go to the Red Cross Society.

It is appropriate that the entertainment should take place in connection with the Health Exposition that is in progress at the Grand Central Palace. Many thousands of people have visited it, and no one would venture to estimate the number of young men who have felt within them to give up the lives of pleasure they lead and devote themselves to the sick. The reproductions of hospital rooms, so completely and beautifully fitted up that they make the well person look upon sickness as a luxury, are not for the American soldiers who will fall in Cuba, nor for the Cuban fighters and the reconcentrados who are really struggling with death. They look to the Red Cross, that knows no race nor creed, to save them.

The foremost people in New York at once became interested in the movement to raise funds for Clara Barton and her followers. The clergy, the prominent physicians and society women at once offered to lend their aid.

Chauncey M. Depew will preside and he will deliver an address on the work of the Red Cross Society. Nothing inspires Dr. Depew to great eloquence than an occasion of this kind. His oration will be a revelation even to those who are familiar with the Red Cross in a general way.

Nicola Tesla will prepare a paper which he may read himself that will be a most important contribution to science and to humanity. Tesla’s paper will show how electricity will do away with war, make it impossible, and cause men to live in brotherhood and peace.

Thomas A. Edison will be there, too, and he will give a talk upon electricity in war.

Some of the foremost physicians of the world will take part. Dr. Jacobi, Dr. George F. Shrady, and Dr. William Tod Helmuth will explain the appliances which are used in modern surgery, dwelling more especially upon those used in the field.

On the platform also will be Bishop Farley, the auxiliary Bishop of New York; Bishop Potter, the Rev. Dr. Rainsford, the Rev. Dr. Greer and others, who will give five-minute talks.

One hundred cadets from Grammar School No. 87, the school boys whose fine appearance and skill in drill long ago marked them in this big city, will give an ambulance drill.

Of course such an occasion would be incomplete without music. Frank Damrosch will lead a chorus of 200 in patriotic songs and Bent Brothers’ Band will play. President Clara Barton cannot be present. She is in Tampa, Fla., at the post of duty. But she will send a message of 300 words, a message of congratulation and thanks, which Thomas A. Edison will receive at a telegraph key. Mr. Depew will read the message.

In far off Florida Miss Barton will press the button that will illumine the great electric red cross in the big hall.

The Grand Army of the Republic will take part, for the veterans have reason to remember the work of the Red Cross during the last war. They will have a camp that will faithfully illustrate how they lived on the field in war times.

Scores of society women have turned aside from their social duties to help make the occasion the success it must be. The list of patronesses includes many distinguished names. It follows:

Mrs. J. Pierpont Morgan, Mrs. George F. Shrady, Mrs. Wendell G. Phillips, Mrs. J. Cadwalader Jones, Mrs. F. H. Kennedy, Mrs. Charles B. Alexander, Mrs. Robert Hobbe, Mrs. Archibald Rogers, Mrs. Elbridge T. Gerry, Mrs. James Benedict, Mrs. Robert P. Huntington, Mrs. John Risley Putnam, Miss Ella Russell, Mrs. Victor Morchan, Mrs. Edward B. Wharton, Mrs. Malcolm Graham, Miss H. B. Fellowes, Mrs. Francis W. Scott, Mrs. John W. Auchincloss, Mrs. George S. Bowdoin, Mrs. Richard M. Hunt, Mrs. Valentine G. Hall, Mrs. William Butler Duncan, Mrs. William Preston Griffiths, Mrs. Pierson Hamilton, Mrs. John G. Smedburg, Mrs. Paul Peyer, Mrs. Stanford White, Mrs. John T. Alwaise, Mrs. Robert M. Thompson, Mrs. Frederic Bronson, Mrs. H. N. Bergholz, Mrs. Morris K. Jesup, Mrs. R. E. Livingston, Miss Grace H. Dodge, Mrs. Gordon Norrie, Mrs. Russell Sage, Mrs. Irving Grinnell, Mrs. Thomas Newbold, Mrs. Horace T. Hanks, Mrs. Sheffield Phelps, Mrs. Seth Low, Miss Margaret Pierson, Mrs. E. V. H. Kean, Mrs. Seneca D. Powell, Mrs. Louis Fitzgerald, Miss Mary Evarts, Mrs. Francis P. Kinnicutt, Mrs. Paul Dana, Mrs. William H. Osborn, Mrs. N. E. Bayliss, Mrs. Sydney Webster, Mrs. Daniel M. Stilson, Mrs. Charles Howard Russell, Mrs. Henry Villard, Mrs. Philip I. Sands, Mrs. E. L. Godkin, Mrs. William E. Dodge, Mrs. Nicholas Fish, Mrs. E. Livingston Ludlow, Mrs. Beekman de Peyster, Mrs. D. B. St. John Roosa, Mrs. Richard Irving, Mrs. Charles T. Barney, Mrs. John C. Brown, Mrs. M. H. Schuyler, Mrs. Francis Delafield, Mrs. Chester Griswold, Mrs. John J. McCook, Mrs. H. Walter Webb, Mrs. Frederick Allen, Mrs. C. Grant La Farge, Mrs. John Lyon Gardiner, Mrs. William Tod Helmuth, Mrs. August Belmont, Mrs. K. Gibbs, Mrs. Lloyd Brice, Mrs. R. P. Lincoln, Mrs. Richard Watson Gilder, Mrs. E. M. Taller, Mrs. Robert Stuyvesant, Mrs. Alfred T. White and Mrs. Donald MacLean.