WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN
‘God the all-terrible King, Who ordainest
Great winds Thy clarion, the lightnings Thy sword,
Show forth Thy pity on high where Thou reignest,
Give to us peace in our time, O Lord.
God the All-wise, by the fire of Thy chastening
Earth shall to freedom and truth be restored,
Through the thick darkness Thy kingdom is hastening,
Thou wilt give peace in Thy time, O Lord.’
The year of the war coincided with that period in the life of Dr.
Inglis when she was fully qualified for the great part she was to play
among the armies of the Allied nations.
It is now admitted that this country was unprepared for war, and
incredulous as to the German menace. The services of women have now
attained so high a value in the State that it is difficult to recast
their condition in 1914.
In politics there had been a succession of efforts to obtain
their enfranchisement. Each effort had been marked by a stronger
manifestation in their favour in the country, and the growing force
of the movement, coupled with the unrest in Ireland, had kept all
political organisations in a high state of tension.
It has been shown how fully organised were all the Women Suffrage
societies. Committees, organisers, adherents, and speakers were at
work, and in the highest state of efficiency. Women linked by a common
cause had learnt how to work together. The best brains in their midst
were put at the service of the Suffrage, and they had watched in the
political arena where to expect support, and who could be trusted among
the leaders of all parties. No shrewder or more experienced body of
politicians were to be found in the country than those women drawn from
all classes, in all social, professional, and industrial spheres, who
acknowledged Mrs. Fawcett as their leader, and trusted no one party,
sect, or politician in the year 1914.
When the war caused a truce to be pronounced in all questions of acute
political difference, the unenfranchised people realised that this
might mean the failure of their hopes for an indefinite time. They
never foresaw that, for the second time within a century, emancipation
was to be bought by the life blood of a generation.
The truce made no difference to any section of the Suffrage party.
It was accepted by the whole people. War found both men and women
unprepared, but the path of glory was clear for the men. A great army
must be formed in defence of national liberty. The army was mobilised.
It would have been well had the strength of the women been mobilised in
the same hour. Their long claim for the rights of citizenship made them
keenly alive and responsive to the call of national service.
War and its consequences had for many years been uppermost in their
thoughts. In the struggle for emancipation, the great argument they
had had to face among the rapidly decreasing anti-party, was the one
that women could take no part in war, and, as all Government rested
ultimately on brute force, women could not fight, and therefore must
not vote.
In countering this outlook, women had watched what war meant all over
the world, wherever it took place. With the use of scientific weapons
of destruction, with the development of scientific methods of healing,
with all that went to the maintenance of armies in the field, and the
support of populations at home, women had some vision in what manner
they would be needed if war ever came to this country.
The misfortune of such a controversy as that of the ‘Rights of Women’
is that it necessarily means the opposition has to prove a negative
proposition--a most sterilising process. Political parties were so
anxious to prove that women were incapable of citizenship, that the
whole community got into a pernicious habit of mind. Women were
underrated in every sphere of industry or scientific knowledge. Their
sense of incapacity and irresponsibility was encouraged, and when they
turned militant under such treatment, they were only voted a nuisance
which it was impossible to totally exterminate.
Those who watched the gathering war clouds, and the decline of their
Parliamentary hopes, did not realise that, in the overruling providence
of God, the devastating war among nations was to open a new era for
women. They were no longer to be held cheap, as irresponsibles--mere
clogs on the machinery of the State. They were to be called on to
take the place of men who were dying by the thousand for their homes,
fighting against the doctrine that military force is the only true
Government in a Christian world.
After mobilisation, military authorities had to make provision for the
wounded. We can remember the early sensation of seeing buildings raised
for other purposes taken over for hospitals. Since the Crimea, women as
nurses at the base were institutions understood of all men. In the vast
camps which sprang up at the commencement of the war, women modestly
thought they might be usefully employed as cooks. The idea shocked the
War Office till it rocked to its foundations. A few adventurous women
started laundries for officers, and others for the men. They did it on
their own, and in peril of their beneficent soap suds, being ordered to
a region where they would be out of sight, and out of any seasonable
service, to the vermin-ridden camps.
The Suffrage organisations, staffed and equipped with able practical
women Jacks of all trades, in their midst, put themselves at the call
of national service, but were headed back from all enterprises. It
had been ordained that women could not fight, and therefore they were
of no use in war time. A few persisted in trying to find openings for
service. Among these were Dr. Inglis. It is one thing to offer to be
useful without any particular qualification; it is another to have
professional knowledge to give, and the medical women were strong in
the conviction that they had their hard-won science and skill to offer.
Those who have read the preceding pages will realise that Dr. Inglis
carried into this offer a perfect knowledge how women doctors were
regarded by the community, and she knew political departments too well
to believe that the War Office would have a more enlightened outlook.
In the past she had said in choosing her profession that she liked
‘pioneer work,’ and she was to be the pioneer woman doctor who, with
the aid of Suffrage societies, founded and led the Scottish Women’s
Hospitals to the healing of many races.
After bringing the story of Dr. Inglis to this point, it is easy
to imagine the working of her fertile brain, and her sense of vital
energy, in the opening weeks of the war. What material for instant
action she had at hand, she used. She had helped to form a detachment
of the V.A.D. when the idea of this once despised and now greatly
desired body began to take shape. Before the war men spoke slightingly
of its object, and it was much depreciated. Dr. Inglis saw all the
possibilities which lay in the voluntary aid offer. Dr. Inglis was in
Edinburgh at the commencement of the war, and the 6th Edinburgh V.A.D.,
of which she was commandant, was at once mobilised. For several weeks
she worked hard at their training. She gave up the principal rooms in
her house for a depot for the outfit of Cargilfield as an auxiliary
hospital. The hospital was not accepted. If it had been, and Dr. Inglis
put in charge of it, the wider work of her life might never have had
its fulfilment. Dr. Inglis from the first advocated that the V.A.D.
should be used as probationers in military hospitals, and the orderlies
who served in her units were chiefly drawn from this body.
In September she went to London to put her views before the National
Union and the War Office, and to offer the services of herself
and women colleagues. Miss Mair expresses the thoughts which were
dominating her mind. ‘To her it seemed wicked that women with power
to wield the surgeon’s knife in the mitigation of suffering and with
knowledge to diagnose and cure, should be withheld from serving the
sick and wounded.’
Her love for the wounded and suffering gave her a clear vision as
to what lay before the armies of the Allies. ‘At the root of all her
strenuous work of the last three years,’ says her sister, ‘was the
impelling force of her sympathy with the wounded men. This feeling
amounted at times to almost agony. Only once did she allow herself to
show this innermost feeling. This was at the root of her passionate
yearning to get with her unit to Mesopotamia during the early months
of 1916. “I cannot bear to think of them, _our Boys_.” To the woman’s
heart within her the wounded men of all nations made the same
irresistible appeal.’
In that spirit she approached a departmental chief. Official reserve at
last gave way, and the historic sentence was uttered--‘My good lady, go
home and sit still.’ In that utterance lay the germ of that inspiration
which was to carry the Red Cross and the Scottish women among many
nations, kindreds, and tongues.
It is easy to picture the scene. The overworked red-tape-bound
official: the little figure of the woman with the smile, and the ready
answer, before him. There is a story that, while a town in Serbia was
under bombardment, Dr. Inglis was also in it with some of her hospital
work. She sought an official in his quarters, as she desired certain
things for her hospital. The noise of the firing was loud, and shells
were flying around. Dr. Inglis seemed oblivious of any sound save her
own voice, and she requested of an under officer an interview with his
chief. The official had at last to confess that his superior was hiding
in the cellar till the calamity of shell-fire was overpast. In much
the same condition was the local War Office official when confronted
with Dr. Inglis and her practical importunity. No doubt she saw it was
useless to continue her offers of service. Mrs. Fawcett says:
‘Nearly all the memorial notices of her have recorded the fact that at
the beginning of her work in 1914 the War Office refused her official
recognition. The recognition so stupidly refused by her own country
was joyfully and gratefully given by the French and later the Serbian
A.M.S. and Red Cross.’
She went home to her family, who so often had inspired her to good
work, and as she sat and talked over the war and her plans with one of
her nieces, she suddenly said, ‘I know what we will do! We will have a
unit of our own.’
The ‘We’ referred to that close-knit body of women with whom she had
worked for a common cause, and she knew at once that ‘We’ would work
with her and in her for the accomplishment of this ideal which so
rapidly took shape in her teeming brain.
She was never left alone in any part of her life’s work. Her
personality knit not only her family to her in the closest bonds of
love, but she had devoted friends among those who did not see eye
to eye with her in the common cause. She never loved them the less
for disagreeing with her, and though their indifference to her views
might at times obscure her belief in their mental calibre, it never
interfered with the mutual affections of all. She did not leave these
friends out of her scheme when it began to take shape.
The Edinburgh Suffrage offices, no longer needed for propaganda and
organisation work, became the headquarters of the Scottish Women’s
Hospitals, and the enlarged committee, chiefly of Dr. Inglis’ personal
friends, began its work under the steam-hammer of her energy. Miss Mair
may again be quoted.
‘Well do I recall the first suggestion that passed between us on the
subject of directing the energies of our Suffrage Societies to the
starting of a hospital. Let us gather a few hundred pounds, and then
appeal to the public, was the decision of our ever courageous Dr.
Elsie, and from that moment she never swerved in her purpose. Some of
us gasped when she announced that the sum of £50,000 must speedily
be advertised for. Some timid souls advised the naming of a smaller
amount as our goal. With unerring perception, our leader refused to
lower the standard, and abundantly has she been proved right! Not
£50,000, but over £200,000 have rewarded her faith and her hope.
‘This quick perception was one of the greatest of her gifts, and it
was with perfect simplicity she stated to me once that when on rare
occasions she had yielded her own conviction to pressure from others,
the result had been unfortunate. There was not an ounce of vanity in
her composition. She was merely stating a simple fact. Her outlook was
both wide and direct. She saw the object aimed at, and she marched
straight on. If, on the road, some obstacles had to be not exactly
ruthlessly, but very firmly brushed aside, her strength of purpose
was in the end a blessing to all concerned. Strength combined with
sweetness--with a wholesome dash of humour thrown in--in my mind sums
up her character. What that strength did for agonised Serbia only the
grateful Serbs can fully tell.’
A letter written in October of this year to Mrs. Fawcett tells of the
rapid formation of the hospital idea.
‘8 WALKER STREET,
‘_Oct. 9, 1914_.
‘DEAR MRS. FAWCETT,--I wrote to you from the office this morning,
but I want to point out a little more fully what the Committee felt
about the name of the hospitals. We felt that our original scheme
was growing very quickly into something very big--much bigger than
anything we had thought of at the beginning--and we felt that if the
hospitals were called by a non-committal name it would be much easier
to get all men and women to help. The scheme is _of course_ a National
Union scheme, and that fact the Scottish Federation will never lose
sight of, or attempt to disguise. The National Union will be at the
head of all our appeals, and press notices, and paper.
‘But--if you could reverse the position, and imagine for a moment
that the Anti-Suffrage Society had thought of organising all these
skilled women for service, you can quite see that many more neutrals,
and a great many suffragists would have been ready to help if they
sent their subscriptions to the “Scottish Women’s Hospital for Foreign
Service,” than if they had to send to the Anti-Suffrage League
Hospital.
‘We were convinced that the more women we could get to help, the
greater would be the gain to the woman’s movement.
‘For we have hit upon a really splendid scheme. When Mrs. Laurie and
I went to see Sir George Beatson--the head of the Scottish Red Cross,
in Glasgow--he said at once: “Our War Office will have nothing to say
to you,” and then he added, “yet there is no knowing what they may do
before the end of the war.”
‘You see, we get these expert women doctors, nurses, and ambulance
workers organised. We send our units wherever they are wanted. Once
these units are out, the work is bound to grow. The need is there,
and too terrible to allow any haggling about who does the work. If
we have a thoroughly good organisation here, we can send out more
and more units, or strengthen those already out. We can add motor
ambulances, organise rest stations on the lines of communication, and
so on. It will all depend on how well we are supplied with funds and
brains at our base. Each unit ought to be carefully chosen, and the
very best women doctors must go out with them. I wrote this morning to
the Registered Medical Women’s Association in London, and asked them
to help us, and offered to address a meeting when I come up for your
meeting. Next week a special meeting of the Scottish Medical Women’s
Association is being called to discuss the question.
‘From the very beginning we must make it clear that our hospitals are
as well-equipped and well-manned as any in the field, more economical
(easy!), and thoroughly efficient.
‘I cannot think of anything more calculated to bring home to men the
fact that women _can help_ intelligently in any kind of work. So much
of our work is done where they cannot see it. They’ll see every bit of
this.
‘The fates seem to be fighting for us! Sometimes schemes do float off
with the most extraordinary ease. The Belgian Consul here is Professor
Sarolea--the editor of _Everyman_. He grasped at the help we offered,
and has written off to several influential people. And then yesterday
morning he wrote saying that his brother Dr. Leon Sarolea, would come
and “work under” us. He is an M.P., a man of considerable influence.
So you can see the Belgian Hospital will have everything in its favour.
‘Then Mr. Seton Watson, who has devoted his life to the Balkan States,
has taken up the Servian Unit. He puts himself “entirely at our
service.” He knows all the powers that be in Servia.
‘Two people in the Press have offered to help.
‘The money is the thing now. It must not be wasted, but we must have
lots.
‘And as the work grows do let’s keep it _together_, so that, however
many hospitals we send out, they all shall be run on the same lines,
and wherever people see the Union Jack with the red, white and green
flag below it, they’ll know it means efficiency and kindness and
intelligence.
‘I wanted the Executive, for this reason, to call the hospitals
“British Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service,” but of course it was
their own idea, and one understood the desire to call it “Scottish”;
but if there is a splendid response from England and from other
federations, that will have to be reconsidered, _I_ think. The great
thing is to do the thing well, and do it as _one_ scheme.
‘I do hope you’ll approve of all this. I am marking this letter
“Private,” because it isn’t an official letter, but just what I
think--to you, my Chief. But you can show it to anybody you like--as
that.
‘I can think of nothing except these “Units” just now! And when one
hears of the awful need, one can hardly sit still till they are ready.
Professor Sarolea simply made one’s heart bleed. He is just back from
Belgium. He said, “You talk of distress from the war here. You simply
know nothing about it.”--Ever yours sincerely,
‘ELSIE MAUD INGLIS.’
In October 1914 the scheme was finally adopted by the Scottish
Federation, and the name of Scottish Women’s Hospitals was chosen.
At the same meeting the committee decided to send Dr. Inglis to London
to explain the plan to the National Union, and to speak at a meeting
in the Kingsway Hall, on ‘What women could do to help in the war.’ At
that meeting she was authorised to speak on the plans of the S.W.H.
The N.U.W.S.S. adopted the plan of campaign on 15th October, and the
London society was soon taking up the work of procuring money to start
new units, and to send Dr. Inglis out on her last enterprise, with a
unit fully equipped to work with the Serbian army, then fighting on the
Bulgarian front.
The use she made of individuals is well illustrated by Miss Burke. She
was ‘found’ by Dr. Inglis in the office of the London Society, and sent
forth to speak and fill the Treasury chest of the S.W.H. It is written
in the records of that work how wonderfully Miss Burke influenced her
countrymen in America, and how nobly, through her efforts, they have
aided ‘the great adventure.’
‘U.S.M.S. _St. Paul_,
‘_Saturday, February 9th_.
‘DEAR LADY FRANCES,--Certainly I am one of Dr. Elsie’s children. It
was largely due to her intuition and clear judgment of character that
my feet were placed in the path which led to my reaching my maximum
efficiency as a hospital worker and a member of the Scottish Women’s
Hospitals. I first met Dr. Elsie after I had been the Secretary of the
London Committee for about a month. There was no question of meeting a
“stranger”; her kindly eyes smiled straight into mine.
‘Was I young and rather shy? Well, the best way to encourage me was to
give me responsibility.
‘“Do you speak French?”
‘“Yes.”
‘“Very well, go and write me a letter to General de Torcy, telling him
we accept the building he has offered at Troyes.”
‘Some one hazarded the suggestion that the letter should be passed on.
‘“Nonsense,” replied Dr. Elsie, “I know the type. That girl probably
speaks six languages. If she says she speaks French, she does.”
‘She practically signed the letter I wrote her without reading it.
Doubtless all the time I was with her I was under her keen scrutiny,
and when finally, after arranging a meeting for her at Oxford, which
she found impossible to take, owing to her sudden decision to leave
for Serbia, she had already judged me, and without hesitation she told
me to go to Oxford and speak myself. I have wondered often whether any
one else would have sent a young and unknown speaker--it needed Dr.
Elsie’s knowledge of human character and rapid energetic method of
making decisions.
‘It would be difficult for we young ones of the Scottish Women’s
Hospitals to analyse our feelings towards Dr. Elsie. A wave of her
hand in passing meant much to us.’
Space utterly forbids our following the fortunes of the Scottish
Women’s Hospitals as they went forth one by one to France, to Belgium,
to Serbia, to Corsica, and Russia. That history will have some day to
be written. It is only possible in this memoir to speak of their work
in relation to their founder and leader. ‘Not I, but my unit,’ was
her dying watchword, and when the work of her unit is reviewed, it is
obvious how they carried with them, as an oriflamme, the inspiration of
unselfish devotion set them by Dr. Inglis.
Besides going into all the detailed work of the hospital equipment, Dr.
Inglis found time to continue her work of speaking for the cause of the
hospitals. We find her addressing her old friends:
‘I have the happiest recollection of Dr. I. addressing a small meeting
of the W. L. Association here. It was one of her first meetings to
raise money. She told us how she wanted to go to Serbia. She was so
convincing, but with all my faith in her, I never thought she _would_
get there! That, and much more she did--a lesson in faith.
‘She looked round the little gathering in the Good Templar Hall and
said, “I suppose nobody here could lend me a yacht?” She did get her
ship there.’
To one of her workers in this time, she said, ‘My dear, we shall live
all our lives in the shadow of war.’ The one to whom she spoke says, ‘A
cold chill struck my heart. Did she feel it, and know that never again
would things be as they were?’
At the close of 1914 Dr. Inglis went to France to see the Scottish
Women’s Hospital established and working under the French Red Cross at
Royaumont. It was probably on her way back that she went to Paris on
business connected with Royaumont. She went into Notre Dame, and chose
a seat in a part of the cathedral where she could feel alone. She there
had an experience which she afterwards told to Mrs. M‘Laren. As she
sat there she had a strong feeling that some one was behind her. She
resisted the impulse to turn round, thinking it was some one who like
herself wanted to be quiet! The feeling grew so strong at last, that
she involuntarily turned round. There was no one near her, but for the
first time she realised she was sitting in front of a statue of Joan of
Arc. To her it appeared as if the statue was instinct with life. She
added: ‘Wasn’t it curious?’ Then later she said, ‘I would like to know
what Joan was wanting to say to me!’ I often think of the natural way
which she told me of the experience, and the _practical_ conclusion
of wishing to know what Joan wanted. Once again she referred to the
incident, before going to Russia. I see her expression now, just for a
moment forgetting everything else, keen, concentrated, and her humorous
smile, as she said, ‘You know I would like awfully to know what Joan
was trying to say to me.’
Elsie Inglis was not the first, nor will she be the last woman who has
found help in the story of the Maid of Orleans, when the causes dear to
the hearts of nations are at stake. It is easy to hear the words that
would pass between these two leaders in the time of their country’s
warfare. The graven figure of Joan was instinct with life, from the
undying love of race and country, which flowed back to her from the
woman who was as ready to dedicate to her country her self-forgetting
devotion, as Jeanne d’Arc had been in her day. Both, in their day and
generation, had heard--
‘The quick alarming drum--
Saying, Come,
Freemen, come,
Ere your heritage be wasted, said the quick alarming drum.’
‘ABBAYE DE ROYAUMONT,
‘_Dec. 22, 1914_.
‘DEAREST AMY,--Many, many happy Christmases to you, dear, and to
all the others. Everything is splendid here now, and if the General
from headquarters would only come and inspect us, we could begin.
The wards are perfect. I only wish you could see them with their
red bedcovers, and little tables. There are four wards, and we have
called them Blanche of Castille (the woman who really started the
building of this place, the mother of Louis IX., the Founder, as he
is called), Queen Margaret of Scotland, Joan of Arc, and Millicent
Fawcett. Now, don’t you think that is rather nice! The Abbaye itself
is a wonderful place. It has beautiful architecture, and is placed in
delightful woods. One wants to spend hours exploring it, instead of
which we have all been working like galley slaves getting the hospital
in order. The equipment has come out practically all right. There are
no thermometers and no sandbags. I feel they’ll turn up. Yesterday,
I was told there were no tooth-brushes and no nail-brushes, but they
appeared. After all the fuss, you can imagine our feelings when the
“Director,” an official of the French Red Cross, who has to live here
with us, told us French soldiers don’t want tooth-brushes!
‘Our first visitors were three French officers, whom we took for the
inspecting general, and treated with grovelling deference, till we
found they knew nothing about it, and were much more interested in the
tapestry in the proprietor’s house than in our instruments. However,
they were very nice, and said we were _bien meublé_.
‘Once we had all been on tenterhooks all day about the inspection.
Suddenly, a man poked his head round the door of the doctor’s
sitting-room and said, “The General.” In one flash every doctor was
out of the room and into her bedroom for her uniform coat, and I was
left sitting. I got up, and wandered downstairs, when an excited
orderly dashed past, singing, “Nothing but two British officers!”
Another time we were routed out from breakfast by the cry of “The
General,” but this time it turned out to be a French regiment, whose
officers had been moved by curiosity to come round by here. The
General has not arrived yet.
‘We have had to get a new boiler in the kitchen, new taps and
lavatories, and electric light, an absolute necessity in this huge
place, and all the theatre sinks. We certainly are no longer a
_mobile_ hospital, but as we are twelve miles from the point from
which the wounded are distributed (I am getting very discreet about
names since a telegram of mine was censored), we shall probably be as
useful here as anywhere. They even think we may get English Tommies.
‘You have no idea of the conditions to which the units came out, and
they have behaved like perfect bricks. The place was like an ice hole:
there were no fires, no hot water, no furniture, not even blankets,
and the equipment did not arrive for five days. They have scrubbed the
whole place out themselves, as if they were born housemaids; put up
the beds, stuffed the mattresses, and done everything. Really, I am
proud of them! They stick at absolutely nothing, and when Madame came,
she said, “What it is to belong to a practical nation!”
‘We had a service in the ward on Sunday. We are going to see if they
will let us use the little St. Louis Chapel. There are two other
chapels, one in use, that we hope the soldiers will go to, and a
beautiful chapel the same style of architecture as the chapel at Mont
St. Michel. It is a perfect joy to walk through it to meals. The
village curé has been to tea with us.
‘Will you believe it, that General hasn’t arrived _yet_!--Your loving
ELSIE.’
Mr. Seton Watson has permitted his article in the December number of
the _New Europe_ (1917) to be reprinted here. His complete knowledge
of Serbia enables him to describe both the work and Dr. Inglis who
undertook the great task set before her.
‘Elsie Inglis was one of the heroic figures of the war, one whose
memory her many friends will cherish with pride and confidence--pride
at having been privileged to work with her, confidence in the race
which breeds such women. This is not the place to tell the full story
of her devotion to many a good cause at home, but the _New Europe_
owes her a debt of special interest and affection. For in her own
person she stood for that spirit of sympathy and comprehension upon
which intercourse between the nations must be founded, if the ideal of
a New Europe is ever to become a reality.
‘Though her lifework had hitherto lain in utterly different fields,
she saw in a flash the needs of a tragic situation; and when war came
offered all her indomitable spirit and tireless energy to a cause
till recently unknown and even frowned upon in our country. Like
the Douglas of old, she flung herself where the battle raged most
fiercely--always claiming and at last obtaining permission to set up
her hospitals where the obstacles were greatest and the dangers most
acute. But absorbed as she was in her noble task of healing, she saw
beyond it the high national ideal that inspired the Serbs to endure
sufferings unexampled even in this war, and became an enthusiastic
convert to the cause of Southern Slav unity. To her, as to all true
Europeans, the principle of nationality is not, indeed, the end of
all human wisdom, but the sure foundation upon which a new and saner
internationalism is to be built, and an inalienable right to which
great and small alike are entitled. Perhaps the fact that she herself
came of a small nation which, like Serbia, has known how to celebrate
its defeats, was not without its share in determining her sympathies.
‘The full political meaning of her work has not yet been brought home
to her countrymen, and yet what she has done will live after her. Her
achievement in Serbia itself in 1915 was sufficiently remarkable, but
even that was a mere prelude to her achievement on the Eastern front.
The Serbian Division in Southern Russia, which the Scottish Women’s
Hospitals went out to help, was not Serbian at all in the _ordinary_
sense of the word. Its proper name is the Jugoslav Division, for
it was composed entirely of volunteers drawn from among the Serbs,
Croats, and Slovenes of Austria-Hungary who had been taken prisoners
by the Russian army. Thousands of these men enrolled themselves on the
side of the Entente and in the service of Serbia, in order to fight
for the realisation of Southern Slav independence and unity under the
national dynasty of Kara George. Beyond the ordinary risks of war
they acted in full knowledge that capture by the enemy would mean the
same fate as Austria meted out to the heroic Italian deputy, Cesare
Battisti; and some of them, left wounded on the battle-field after
a retreat, shot each other to avoid being taken alive. Throughout
the Dobrudja campaign they fought with the most desperate gallantry
against impossible odds, and, owing to inadequate support during the
retreat, their main body was reduced from 15,000 to 4000. Latterly the
other divisions had been withdrawn to recruit at Odessa, after sharing
the defence of the Rumanian southern front.
‘To these men in the summer of 1916 Serbia had sent a certain number
of higher officers, but, for equipment and medical help, they were
dependent upon what the Russians could spare from their own almost
unlimited needs. At the worst hour Dr. Inglis and her unit came to the
help of the Jugoslavs, shared their privations and misfortunes, and
spared no effort in their cause.
‘History will record the name of Elsie Inglis, like that of Lady
Paget, as pre-eminent among that band of women who have redeemed for
all time the honour of Britain in the Balkans. Among the Serbs it is
already assuming an almost legendary quality. To us it will serve to
remind us that Florence Nightingale will never be without successors
among us. And in particular, every true Scotsman will cherish her
memory, every believer in the cause for which she gave her life will
gain fresh courage from her example.
R. W. SETON-WATSON.