It is brave in a man to face death on the battlefield, instantaneous
death, or, what is worse, death after long suffering, after lying
between trenches, perhaps, on the “no-man’s ground” which neither friend
nor foe can reach, grasping the earth in agony, seeing the dark night
coming on, and then dying in the cold shiver of the dawn. Yes, it is
brave in a man to face death like that. But perhaps it is even braver in
a woman to face life, with three or four fatherless children to provide
for, on nothing but the charity of the State. Then battle is in the
blood of man, and the heroic part falls to him by right, but it is not
in the blood of woman, who shrinks from it and loathes it, and yet such
is her nature, the fine and subtle mystery of it, that she flies to
the scene of suffering with a bravery which far out-strips that of the
man-at-arms.
On the breasts that have borne tens of thousands of the sons who have
fallen in this war the Red Cross is now enshrined. It is the new scarlet
letter--the badge not of shame, but glory. And “through the rolling of
the drums” and the thundering of the guns a voice comes to us in this
year of service and sacrifice whose message no one can mistake. Woman,
who faces death every time she brings a man-child into the world,
must henceforth know what is to be done with him. It is her right, her
natural right, and the part she has taken in this war has proved it.