Proclamation 2679—Red Cross Month, 1946

Whereas the American National Red Cross, under the provisions of its Congressional charter, continues to fulfill its manifold obligations to extend cheer and aid to our servicemen in distant areas overseas, to provide servicemen and veterans, and wounded and sick in hospitals, with solace and a link with home, and to maintain its traditional services of aiding victims of catastrophe, and of training men and women of our nation to combat sickness and accident and thus to reduce suffering and death; and

Whereas new obligations have arisen to assist veterans and their families in the many difficult problems of return to civilian life and resumption of long-interrupted normal peacetime relations, and to contribute to the care of peoples in areas devastated by military operations, whose distress appeals with utmost urgency to every source of help for months ahead; and

Whereas at this time when the foundations of peace are being established, the American National Red Cross by its very nature and purpose, and by its long record of humanitarian service, stands both as symbol and as tangible expression of the spirit of universal good will, recognizing no barriers in the unity of human welfare; and

Whereas this organization, which represents the solicitude of our people for the care of its servicemen and its lofty ideals for the prevention of suffering, and which is entirely dependent on voluntary contributions to carry out its purposes, is issuing its nation-wide appeal for the contribution of a minimum fund of $100,000,000:

Now, Therefore, I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, and President of the American National Red Cross, do hereby designate the month of March 1946 as Red Cross Month, and urge every citizen of this country to respond to the utmost of his ability in support of this indispensable humanitarian cause.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington this fourteenth day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and forty-six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and seventieth.

HARRY S. TRUMAN

By the President:

JAMES F. BYRNES,

Secretary of State.