As long as I live I shall lift my hat to the red cross. It is, of
course, the symbol of the highest sacrifice earth's history ever knew;
and it is still the mark of the tenderest devotion and most perfect
self-surrender for the sake of others. Every man in khaki, and every
man that has a soldier boy to love, should salute that symbol which
speaks of love amid the hate and turmoil of war. For it means womanhood
consecrated to gentle service, reckoning neither wage nor worry in
aught it does, and it takes the sting from broken manhood that has
ventured for the sake of honour and of duty, through comradeship in
suffering, to the verge of life, and beyond it.
War takes a man in the splendid vigour of his full manhood and flings
him out of trench and battlefield a bleeding thing. The devoted
women of the hospital tent shrink from no duty when the suffering
and mire-stained man is brought to them. There can be no greater
self-mastery and no more sublime self-forgetfulness than the washing
of the bodies of the stricken and the dressing of the terrible wounds
that have broken their murderous way into the fair flesh of the soul's
house. And how they work! It has to be seen to be understood, and once
seen it can never be forgotten. Faithfulness, tenderness, and loving
devotion are the marks of those ministering angels, "when pain and
anguish wring the brow." There is no question of adherence to hours.
It becomes a question of adherence to duty when a rush is on. There is
no strike for shorter hours, or an increased wage, or a war bonus with
them or the brave men whom they serve. The men, even to the roughest
"grouser," appreciate it fully. "O sister! go to rest now," I have
heard them say, pleadingly, to the tired woman with the red cross on
her breast and the white cross in her heart.