ven in this black picture of war as have seen it, as it
has touched me, has been the scarlet of the Red Cross. To a faith that
the terrible scene at the front had almost destroyed, came every now
and then again the flash of the emblem of mercy Hope, then, was not
dead. There were hands to soothe and labour, as well as hands to kill.
There was still brotherly love in the world. There was a courage that
was not of hate. There was a patience that was not a lying in wait.
There was a flag that was not of one nation, but of all the world; a
flag that needed no recruiting station, for the ranks it led were
always full to overflowing; a flag that stood between the wounded
soldier and death; that knew no defeat but surrender to the will of
the God of Battles.

And that flag I followed. To the front, to the field hospitals behind
the trenches, to railway stations, to hospital trains and ships, to
great base hospitals. I watched its ambulances on shelled roads. I
followed its brassards as their wearers, walking gently, carried
stretchers with their groaning burdens. And, whatever may have failed
in this war--treaties, ammunition, elaborate strategies, even some of
the humanities--the Red Cross as a symbol of service has never failed.

I was a critical observer. I am a graduate of a hospital
training-school, and more or less for years I have been in touch with
hospitals. I myself was enrolled under the Red Cross banner. I was
prepared for efficiency. What I was not prepared for was the absolute
self-sacrifice, the indifference to cost in effort, in very life
itself, of a great army of men and women. I saw English aristocrats
scrubbing floors; I found American surgeons working day and night
under the very roar and rattle of guns. I found cultured women of
every nation performing the most menial tasks. I found an army where
all are equal--priests, surgeons, scholars, chauffeurs, poets, women
of the stage, young girls who until now have been shielded from the
very name of death--all enrolled under the red badge of mercy.

CHAPTER XXXIV

IN TERMS OF LIFE AND DEATH

One of the first hospitals I saw was in Calais. We entered a muddy
courtyard through a gate, and the building loomed before us. It had
been a girls' convent school, and was now a military hospital for both
the French and British armies, one half the building being used by
each. It was the first war hospital I had seen, and I was taken
through the building by M