Today, the practice of nursing and the education of nurses are going through the most exciting period in modern times. Throughout a long and turbulent history, nursing has faced almost insurmountable difficulties. In the main, these have stemmed from an attempt to maintain stability while conducting innovation, and from an attempt to change while retaining the useful part of the old. But to their credit, nurses have attempted to keep pace with the needs made by a rapidly changing social structure. It is these present needs that now should force nursing into a new, enlarged, and more crucial role in the health professions.

In his introductory address at the third International Refresher Course for Junior Medical Officers, Dr. H. Meuli, member of the ICRC, said “No one knows war better than the military medical officer, nor measures its horror, nor hates it more. No one has greater insight into war to enable him to take a stand for peace and against war”. From its very beginnings the Red Cross has been linked to medicine; it was the ICRC which obtained for doctors the means of exercising their profession in war, which are laid down in the Geneva Conventions.

It therefore seems appropriate to quote extensively from a communication submitted at the Course by an Italian doctor, bearing moving testimony to the difficulties facing the medical officer, the noble character of his mission and the principles underlying his activity in the prisoner of war camp. These principles were summed up in his conclusion : “Like peace and justice, medicine loses its significance if not accompanied by charity. If it is to stay universal, it must not lose its humanity”. (Ed.).

Each month these pages give an account of the ICRC's relief action in Nigeria and the secessionist province (Biafra). That operation has been ceaselessly developing, but cannot carry on unless the ICRC may in future count on help on a large scale. For this reason, Mr. Jacques Freymond, ICRC Vice-President, on May 30, made the following statement on world-wide television and radio.

Reuniting of Families.—Under the aegis of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the fifth operation for the reuniting of families took place in the region of the Golan Plateau at the beginning of May. This activity involves, with the agreement of the Israeli government, the repatriation of Arabs displaced by the war of June 1967 and part of whose families had remained in the Israeli-occupied zone. Thanks to the action of the ICRC, 367 people have been able to return to their families.