THE DECISION 
3 
had told me that a doctor was badly needed there on 
account of the constantly spreading sleeping sickness. 
The mission was prepared also to place at my disposal 
one of the houses at their station at Lambarene, and to 
allow me to build a hospital in their grounds, promising 
further to give me help with the work. 
The actual expenses of the undertaking, however, I 
had to provide myself, and to that I devoted what I 
had earned by giving organ concerts, together with 
the profits from my book on Bach, which had appeared 
in German, French, and English. In this way the old 
Thomas Cantor of Leipsig, Johann Sebastian himself, 
helped me in the provision of a hospital for negroes in 
the virgin forest, and kind friends in Germany, France, 
and Switzerland contributed money. When we left 
Europe, the undertaking was securely financed for two 
years, the expenses — apart from the journey out and 
back — being, as I reckoned, about 15,000 francs* a 
year, and this calculation proved to be very nearly 
correct. 
The keeping of the accounts and the ordering of all 
the things needed had been undertaken by self-sacrific- 
ing friends in Strasbourg, and the cases, when packed, 
were sent to Africa by the mission with their own. 
My work then lived — to use a scientific term — in 
symbiosis with the Paris Evangelical Mission, but it 
was, in itself, undenominational and international. It 
was, and is still, my conviction that the humanitarian 
work to be done in the world should, for its accom- 
plishment, call upon us as men, not as members of any 
particular nation or religious body. 
* Le., about ^600 p.a. at the then normal rate of exchange. 
B 2 
