About founder Dunant, America's Clara Barton, and eight other neutralists who fought for medical care for the wounded, a missing persons and POW listing, and provided other nonpartisan services during wartime. By dramatizing isolated incidents (rather than attempting either individual biographies or a history of the organization's development, the author projects the personalities of his subjects: novelist Rolland tracing a young woman's fiance through a nickname; Guy Volant experiencing a motorcycle ride blindfolded; Francois-Eugene David bluffing his right to inspect a Nazi concentration camp; Olivet, investigating atrocities in the Congo, becoming a victim. The image of timid souls is clearly dispelled, as is any suspicion of cowardice. However, even more valuable as a history and just as broad an examination of the services available is the Epsteins' Story of the International Red Cross.