Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/117

 consequence to them both; for when Mr Herbert became the head of the War Department, charged with the duty of removing the scandal created by the unhappy condition in which our wounded soldiers were permitted to lie during the Crimean war, it was to his friend Florence Nightingale that his thoughts turned when needing just the kind of help he knew she could give. It is pleasant to know that the same thought struck each of them at the same time, and that a letter from the War Minister to Miss Nightingale asking her to go to the Crimea, crossed in the post one from her to him offering her services. These services were accepted, and in 1854 she and her band of assistants set sail.

Can it be believed that this devoted woman was actually slandered and abused without mercy by a large part of the British public? and that even a portion of the Press lent itself to insulting suggestions? The idea of a woman of position and refinement turning nurse to rough soldiers appeared to many as an unthinkable and intolerable degradation of womanhood. Others, more coarse, loudly accused her of seeking a husband. This is always said of women who take any individual line in public work, and the thought that it has been said of the world's best women should console lesser ones of whom it is said, and help them to shoulder their burden bravely. It