Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/118

 never seems to occur to these coarse-minded and ignorant critics that there are women in the world who set so high a price upon themselves that few men are qualified to claim them; or that a woman can put aside domestic happiness for herself in order to help to achieve the conditions of domestic happiness for other people.

When Miss Nightingale arrived at the scene of her duties, she discovered that the rumours of the sufferings of our men had not been exaggerated and that Britain did well to be angry. Our poor soldiers in those long hospital corridors at Scutari lay in filth and misery too bad for description. They were without the barest necessaries of comfort, hungry and cold, and having little care and attention paid to their wounds and their sickness. But these brave women, undaunted, got to work at once, and after some time brought order out of chaos, and some measure of comfort to the sufferers.

It is not possible to tell the splendid story in detail, but this much may be said: That it is to Florence Nightingale's great gifts as a leader, a commander, an organiser, that this country owes even more than to her work as a nurse. The sentimental figure of the Lady with the Lamp, created by poet and painter to be a household goddess for British homes, has obscured for many the more valuable part