Elsie Inglis Part 6

"It is a graceless task to suggest spots in so excellent a sun, and we feminists who worked with her and loved her can never be glad enough or proud enough that the world now knows the greatness of her quality."

Again, an organizer who worked constantly with Dr. Inglis before the war, and who later raised large sums for the Scottish Women's Hospitals in India and Australia, writes:

"You have asked me for some personal memories of my dear Dr. Elsie Inglis, for some of those little incidents that often reveal a character more vividly than much description and explanation. And to me, at least, it is in some of those little memories that the Dr. Inglis I loved lives most vividly. What I mean is that her splendid public work, in medicine, in Suffrage, in that magnificent triumph of the Scottish Women's Hospitals--they were _her_ hospitals--is there for all the world to see and honour. But the things behind all that, the character that conquered, the spirit that aspired, the incredible courage, optimism, indomitability of that individuality, the very self from which the work sprang--all that, it seems to me, had to be gathered in and understood from the tiny incident, the word, the glance.

"There stands out in my mind my first meeting with Dr. Inglis. The scene was dismal and depressing enough. It was an empty shop in an Edinburgh Street turned into a Suffrage committee-room during an election. Outside the rain drizzled; inside the meagre fire smoked; there was a general air of lifelessness over everything. I wondered, ignorant and uninitiated in organizing and election work, when something definite would happen. Giving away sodden handbills in the street did not seem a very vigorous or practical piece of work.

"Suddenly the doors swung open and Dr. Inglis came into that dull place, and with her there came the very feeling of movement, vitality, action.

She had come to arrange speakers for the various schoolroom election meetings to be held that night. The list of meeting-places was arranged; then came the choice and disposal of the speakers. Without hesitation, Dr. Inglis grouped them; with just one look round at those present, and another, well into her own mind, at those not present who could be press-ganged! At last she turned to me and said, 'And you will speak with Miss X. at ----' I was horrified. 'But I must explain,' I said; 'I am quite "new." I don't speak at all. I have never spoken.' I can imagine a hundred people answering my very decided utterance in a hundred different ways. But I cannot imagine anyone but Dr. Inglis answering as she answered. There was just the jolliest, cheeriest laugh and, 'Oh, but you _must_ speak.' That was all. And the remarkable thing was that, though I had sworn to myself that I would never utter a word in public without proper training, I did speak that night. It never occurred to me to refuse. Confidence begat confidence. It was during this time of work with Dr. Inglis that I began really to understand and appreciate that wonderful character.

"Another incident runs into my memory, of desperate, agonizing days in Glasgow, when Suffrage was unpopular and the funds in our exchequer were very low. How well I remember writing to Dr. Inglis at the ridiculous hour of two in the morning, that we must get some money, and that I should get certain introductions and do a lecturing tour in New York and try to make Suffrage 'fas.h.i.+onable.' The answer came by return of post, and was deliciously typical. 'My dear, your idea is so absolutely mad that it must be thoroughly sane. Come and talk it over.'

"It was a happiness to work with Dr. Inglis, for her confidence, once given, was complete. There were no petty inquiries or pedantic regulations. 'Do it your own way,' was the one comment on a plan of organization once it was settled.

"Dr. Inglis was one to whom the words 'can't' and 'impossible' really and literally had no meaning; and those who worked with her had to 'unlearn' them, and they did. It did, indeed, seem 'impossible' to leave for India at ten days' notice to carry on negotiations for the Scottish Women's Hospitals and raise an Indian fund, especially when one had been in no way officially or intimately connected with the Hospitals' work.

And to be told on the telephone, too, that one 'must' go. That was adorably Dr. Inglis-ish. I laughed with glee at the very ridiculous, fantastic impossibility of the whole thing--and promptly went! And how I looked forward to seeing Dr. Inglis on my return! When she saw me off at Waterloo in 1916, and, still fearfully ignorant of what awaited one, I wailed at the eleventh hour (literally, for we were in the railway carriage), 'But where am I to stay and where am I to go?' 'Don't worry,'

said Dr. Inglis, with that sublime faith and optimism of hers; 'they'll put you up and pa.s.s you on. Good-bye, my dear. _It will be all right_.'

And so it was. But one has missed the telling of it all to her; the hard things and the good things and the dreadfully funny things. For she would have appreciated every bit of it, and entered into every detail."

During the years of that great campaign, Dr. Inglis spoke, pleading the cause of Suffrage, at hundreds of meetings all over the United Kingdom.

At one large meeting she had occasion to deal with the problem of the "outcast woman." She referred to the statement once made that no woman would be safe unless this cla.s.s existed.

Then she said: "If this were true, the price of safety is too high. I, for one, would choose to go down with the minority."

It is difficult to declare which was the more impressive, the silence--one that could be felt--which followed the words, or the burst of applause which came a moment later. But to one onlooker, from the platform, the predominant feeling was wonder at the amazing power of the woman. Without raising her voice, or putting into it any emotion beyond the involuntary momentary break at the beginning of the sentence, she had, by the transparent sincerity of her feeling, conveyed such an impression to that large audience as few there would forget. The subtle response drawn from those hundreds of women to the woman herself, to the personality of the speaker, was for the moment even more real than the outward response given to the idea. More than one woman there that day could have said in the words of the British Tommy, who had heard for the first time the story of Serbia, "It would not be difficult to follow her!"

CHAPTER IX

THE SCOTTISH WOMEN'S HOSPITALS

"_From the first the personality of Dr. Inglis was the main a.s.set in this splendid venture. She continued to be its inspiration to the end._"

August, 1914, found many a man and woman unconsciously prepared and ready for the testing time ahead. Elsie Inglis was one of these.

It is interesting to note that Dr. Inglis completed her fiftieth year in the August that war broke out. She started on her great work of the next years with all the vigour and freshness of youth.

In her own words, already quoted, we can describe her at the beginning of the war:

"Her s.h.i.+p was flying over a sunlit sea, the good wind bulging out the canvas. She felt the thrill and excitement of adventure in her veins as she stood at the helm and gazed across the dancing waters.... Joy had done its work, and sorrow and responsibility had come with its stimulating spur, and the ardent delight of battle in a great crusade....

"New powers she had discovered in herself, new responsibilities in the life around her.... She was ready for her 'adventure brave and new.'

Rabbi Ben Ezra waited for death to open the gate to it, but to her it seemed that she was in the midst of it now, that 'adventure brave and new' _in which death itself was also to be an adventure_.... 'The Power of an Endless Life.' The words thrilled her, not with the prospects of rest, but with the excitement of advance...."

War was declared on August 4. On the 10th the idea of the Scottish Women's Hospitals--hospitals staffed entirely by women--had been mooted at the committee meeting of the Scottish Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies. Once the idea was given expression to, nothing was able to stop its growth. A special Scottish Women's Hospital committee was formed out of members of the Federation and Dr. Inglis's personal friends. Meetings were organized all over the country; an appeal for funds was sent broadcast over Scotland; money began to flow in; the scheme was taken up by the whole body of the N.U.W.S.S.[12] Mrs. Fawcett wrote approvingly. The Scottish Women's Hospitals Committee at their headquarters in Edinburgh divided up into subcommittees: equipment, uniforms, cars, personnel, and so on. Offers for service came in every day, until soon over 400 names were waiting the choice of the personnel committee. The headquarters offices in 2, St. Andrew Square became a busy hive. Enthusiasm was written on the face of every worker. By the end of November the first fully equipped Unit, under Miss Ivens of Liverpool was on its way to the old Abbey of Royaumont in France. Dr.

Alice Hutchison with ten nurses was in Calais working under the Belgian surgeon, Dr. de Page. A second Unit as well equipped as the first was almost ready to start for Serbia. It sailed in the beginning of January, under Dr. Eleanor Soltau, Dr. Inglis herself following in the April of 1915.

But even with all this dispatch, the S.W.H. were not the first Women's Hospital in the field. As early as September, 1914, Dr. Flora Murray and Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson had taken a Unit, staffed entirely by women, to Paris, where they did excellent work.

Until Dr. Inglis's departure for Serbia, her whole time and strength and boundless energy had been thrown into the building up of the organization of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. She addressed countless meetings all over the Kingdom, making the scheme known and appealing for money, and at the same time her insight and enthusiasm never ceased to be the mainspring of the activity at the office in Edinburgh, where the heart of the Scottish Women's Hospitals was to be found. Miss Mair describes Dr. Inglis during these months thus:

"A certain stir of feeling might be perceptible in the busy hive at the office of organization when a specially energetic visit of the Chief had been paid. Had the impossible been accomplished? If not, why? Who had failed in performance? Take the task from her; give it to another. No excuses in war-time, no weakness to be tolerated--onward, ever onward.

"To those inclined to hesitate, or at least to draw breath occasionally in the course of their heavy work of organizing, raising money, gathering equipment, securing transport, pa.s.sports, and attending to the other innumerable secretarial affairs connected with so big a task, she showed no weakening pity; the one invariable goad applied was ever, 'it is war-time.' No one must pause, no one must waver; things must simply be done, whether possible or not, and somehow by her inspiration they generally were done. In these days of agonizing stress she appeared as in herself the very embodiment of wireless telegraphy, aeronautic locomotion, with telepathy and divination thrown in--neither time nor s.p.a.ce was of account. Puck alone could quite have reached her standard with his engirdling of the earth in forty minutes. Poor limited mortals could but do their best with the terrestrial means at their disposal.

Possibly at times their make-weight steadied the brilliant work of their leader."

In a letter to Mrs. Fawcett dated October 4, 1914, she says:

"I can think of nothing except those Units just now; and when one hears of the awful need, one can hardly sit still till they are ready."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELSIE INGLIS

FROM A BUST BY THE SERBIAN SCULPTOR IVAN MeSTROVIC]

FOOTNOTE:

[12] National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.

CHAPTER X

SERBIA

Serbia in January, 1915, was in a pitiable condition. Three wars following in quick succession had devastated the land. The Austrians, after their defeat at the Battle of the Ridges in October, 1914, had retreated out of the country, leaving behind them filthy hospitals crowded with wounded, Austrian and Serb alike. The whole land has been spoken of as one vast hospital. From this condition of things sprang the scourge of typhus which started in January, 1915, and swept the land.

Dr. Soltau and her Unit, arriving in the early part of January, were able to take their place in the battle against this scourge. Their work lay in Kraguevatz, in the north of Serbia, where Dr. Soltau soon had three hospitals under her command.

In April Dr. Soltau contracted diphtheria. Dr. Inglis was wired for, and left for Serbia in the end of April, 1915. She went gaily. There seems no other word to describe her att.i.tude of mind--she was so glad to go.

The sufferings of the wounded and dying touched her keenly. It was not want of sympathy with all the awful misery on every hand that made her go with such joy of heart, but rather she was glad from the sense that at last she, personally, would be "where the need was greatest." This had always been her objective.

THE aeGEAN SEA, "_May 2nd, 1915._ "DEAREST EVA, "We have had a perfectly glorious voyage from Brindisi to Athens, all yesterday between the coast and the Greek Islands, and then in the Gulf of Corinth. I never remember such a day--all day the suns.h.i.+ne and the beautiful hills, with the clouds capping them, or lying on their slopes, and the blue sky above, and blue sea all round. Then came the most glorious sunset, and when we came up from dinner the sky blazing with stars. We put our chairs back to the last notches, and lay looking at them, till a great yellow moon came up and flooded the place with light and put the stars out. It was glorious....

"Your loving sister, "ELSIE INGLIS."

She landed in Serbia when the epidemic of fever had been almost overcome, and with the long, peaceful summer ahead of her. It is a joy to think of Dr. Inglis all that summer. Her letters are full of buoyancy of spirit. She was keen about everything. She had left behind her a magnificent organization, enthusiastic women in every department, the money flowing in, and the scheme meeting with more and more approval throughout the country. In Serbia she was to find her power of organizing given full scope. She had splendid material in the personnel of the Scottish Women's Hospitals Units under her command. She made many friends--Sir Ralph Paget, Colonel Hunter, Dr. Curcin, Colonel Gent.i.tch, and many others. She was in close touch with, was herself part of, big schemes, a fact which was exhilarating to her. Everything combined to make her happy.

The scheme that eventually took shape was Colonel Hunter's. His idea was to have three "blocking hospitals" in the north of Serbia, which, when the planned autumn offensive of the Serbs took place, would keep all infectious diseases from spreading throughout the country. Innumerable journeys up and down Serbia were taken by Dr. Inglis before the three Scottish Women's Hospitals which were to form this blocking line had been settled, and were working at Valjevo, Lazaravatz, and Mladanovatz.

Dr. Alice Hutchison and her Unit, with "the finest canvas hospital ever sent to the Balkans," arrived in Serbia shortly after Dr. Inglis. Dr.