It gives us pleasure to publish extracts from a remarkable unpublished work by an Australian author, Ian Harding. In four chapters (Antiquity, Islam, Some European Developments, Henry Dunant) it covers the origins of the Geneva Conventions from ancient civilizations, and then goes on to explain their significance in international law and action (The Conventions, The Propositions, The Conclusions). The passages we quote below deal with the history of humanitarian ideas and the laborious efforts, repeated time and time again throughout the centuries, for the ever more effective protection of human dignity. (Ed.).

Mr. Marcel A. Naville, President of the ICRC, and Mr. M. Borsinger, ICRC Delegate-General for Europe and North America, recently were in Romania from 5 to 18 May as guests of the Government and the Red Cross of the Socialist Republic of Romania.

At a plenary meeting held on 3 May 1973, the International Committee appointed Mr. Paul Ruegger and Mr. Guillaume Bordier honorary members.

In a letter dated 27 April 1973, which reached the Swiss Government on the same day, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Singapore informed the Swiss Federal Council of Singapore's accession to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Last month we mentioned that the ICRC had produced a series of ten posters on the Geneva Conventions and the Red Cross principles. Now the ICRC is offering National Societies and Ministries of Defence in all countries the chance to acquire a set of colour slides intended particularly to promote the dissemination of knowledge of the Geneva Conventions. Each set consists of twenty slides and brief comments in ten languages.

On several occasions in 1970, International Review published news of an International Red Cross medical mission to the Amazon, and in June 1971 it gave extracts of the report drawn up by the three doctors who carried out that mission. Now we give details on the preparation and launching of an ICRC medical assistance programme for the benefit of the Indians of the Brazilian Amazon region.

Summary of relief supplies forwarded or distributed by the ICRC in 1972