There is not much time to lose; there will be much opposition to overcome, and the work of helping the helpless will be widely condemned by those who, having no feelings, are always able to control them. But the effort is worth making, and so I plead here, first, for ample facilities for those who wish to marry before they go abroad; secondly, for the legitimation of the children whose fathers, now at the war, come back and marry the mothers, and, lastly, for some special care of the mother and children themselves.
Abuses cling to a crisis as barnacles to a ship, and every aspect of war has its own peculiar abuses. While millions do their duty with quiet heroism, there is always a minority that takes advantage, that corrupts others--or itself. Some believe that fraud and foolishness stay at home, that they cannot approach the field of arms, but this is far from being the case.
My thoughts turn back to the South African war, when certain scandals were supposed to have reached their zenith; I look around me to-day, listen to the well-authenticated stories brought to me by relatives and friends, and know that South Africa did not tithe the possibilities of folly and excess. For once I am not pleading for my own sex, I plead for one part of it against the other, for a majority against a minority, for those who are doing what they are paid to do, against those who are voluntary workers. The position comes a little strangely to me when I look at it in this light, but the highly trained, conscientious, painstaking hospital nurse, whose patient heroism proclaims her a true follower of Florence Nightingale, has been exposed to scandalous annoyance for no good purpose and to no useful end, and I feel that I must plead her cause, since she is in the last degree unlikely to plead it for herself.
Society women of a certain class made themselves so notorious in the military hospitals and elsewhere during the South African war that at least one General threatened to send them home and another refused to allow any more to come out. As soon as the greatest struggle of our history started in August, 1914, certain women of means and position proceeded as silently and unostentatiously as was possible under the circumstances to equip hospitals and to set about their self-appointed work. They laboured conscientiously and sought no more publicity than was necessary to enable them to collect money from philanthropists and friends. They did their best, some were already qualified by previous experience, others acquired their knowledge under the most trying conditions possible. They have worked since war began, well content to "scorn delights and live laborious days," some who are near and dear to me have said that they have well-nigh forgotten the old life and the comforts they deemed indispensable only a little while ago. I think it may be claimed for them that they have played a good part, and that in helping others they have not sought to draw attention to themselves or minimise the credit due to the trained sisterhood of love and pity that cheers the wounded and comforts the dying as "The Lady with the Lamp" taught them to do in the far-off days of the great Crimean struggle. They have made many friends and no enemies; the hero of the trenches and the assaulting party has not given more to his country, for both have given their all, the man his strength, the woman her practical sympathy, and both a high degree of physical and moral courage.