e Battle
of Verdun, during four black nights without a light, among those
delirious men, and then during the long, long ride with her dying
patients over the shell-swept roads. Listen to her as she speaks of
herself at the end of that ride, without a place to lay her head: "Oh,
then I did feel tired! That morning for the first time I knew how
tired I was, as I went dragging myself from door to door begging for a
room and a bed. It was because I was no longer working, you see. As
long as you have work to do you can go on." Then listen to her as she
receives her orders to rush to a new post, before she has had time to
lay herself on the bed she has finally found. "Then at once my
tiredness went away. It only lasted while I thought of getting to bed.
When I knew we were going into action once more, I was myself again."
Watch her as she rides on through the afternoon and the long dangerous
night; as she swallows her coffee and plum-cake, and operates for five
hours without stopping; as she sleeps in the only place there is--a
"quite comfortable chair" in a corner; and as she keeps up this life
for twenty days before she is sent--not on a vacation, mind you, but
to another strenuous post.[51]

[Footnote 51: Dorothy Canfield: _The Day of Glory._]

This brave little woman is not an isolated example of extraordinary
powers. The human race in the great war tapped new reservoirs of power
and discovered itself to be greater than it knew. Professor James's
assertions are completely proved,--that "as a rule men habitually use
only a small part of the powers which they actually possess," and that
"most of us may learn to push the barrier (of fatigue) further off,
and to live in perfect comfort on much higher levels of power."

=How?= The practical question is: how may we--the men and women of
ordinary powers, away from the extraordinary stimulus of a crisis like
the great war--attain our maximum and drop off the dreary mantle of
fatigue which so often holds us back from our best efforts? It may be
that the first step is simply getting a true conception of physical
fatigue as something which needs to be feared only in case of a
diseased body, and which is quite likely to disappear under a little
judicious neglect.

In the second place, fatigue shows itself to be closely bound up with
emotions and instincts. The great releasers of energy are the
instincts. What but the mothering instinct and the love of country
could uncover all t