310 A Short History of Nursing might be. Thus the contingents from Holland and Germany were the minority groups of brave pioneer women, and not the powerfully organized societies that included hospital directors, and training school authorities, who regarded them- selves as the entire nursing world of their re- spective countries. In Great Britain, where the conflict between conservatism and democracy was intense, the affiliation with the International Council was a hall-mark, distinguishing the groups that claimed for nurses the right to self-direction as against the old regime that denied it. Countries that had already joined before the war were Canada, the United States, Great Britain and Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany, and Finland. From a number of other countries came fraternal delegates. Be- tween 1899, when the first gathering took place in London, meetings were held in Buffalo, U. S. A. ( 1 901), in Berlin, Germany (1904), in Paris (1907), in London (1909), and in Cologne, Germany (1912). REFERENCES Nutting and Dock. History of Nursing. Vols. iii. and iv. Report of Charities and Corrections, 1893, Chicago. Section on Hospitals, Dispensaries and Nursing, Part III., page 444. Reports of the International Council of Nurses {Congresses in 1901, 1904, 1907, 1909, 1912). Proceedings of the Jubilee Congress of District Nursing at Liverpool, 1909.
