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and developing the Swedish Red Cross in national as
well as international fields. The organization was
well prepared when the First World War broke out.
The Red Cross was ready to be of service to Swedish
defence forces according to the obligations which the
supervisory board had undertaken to fulfill in case
Sweden should have entered the war.
When, however, developments indicated that there
were good prospects for Sweden’s remaining neutral,
Prince Carl directed his interest more and more
toward international relief. Well known are the
extensive exchanges of war prisoners arranged through :
Sweden, between Russia on one side, and
Germany and Austro-Hungary on the other. Less well
known perhaps is that Prince Carl, in the very midst
of the war, succeeded in assembling representatives
from the belligerent camps to negociate for the
humanitarian betterment of conditions during the war.
Three such conferences took place during the years
1915 and 1916. By applying directly to the Czar of
Russia and the Emperor of Germany, Prince Carl
succeeded in preventing certain reprisals against
prisoners of war, reported by Swedish delegates who,
in the service of the Swedish Red Cross, worked in
different prison camps. The most well known of these
delegates was, of course, Elsa Brändström, who with
her collaborators performed, under enormous
hardships, such wonderful work among the prisoners in
Siberia.
Even after the end of the First World War, Prince
Carl took the initative in international humanitarian
relief work among the destitute peoples. In this
connection, we can mention the relief to Germany,
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