The year of the war coincided with that period in the life of Dr. Inglis when she was fully qualified for the great part she was to play among the armies of the Allied nations.

It is now admitted that this country was unprepared for war, and incredulous as to the German menace. The services of women have now attained so high a value in the State that it is difficult to recast their condition in 1914.

In politics there had been a succession of efforts to obtain their enfranchisement. Each effort had been marked by a stronger manifestation in their favour in the country, and the growing force of the movement, coupled with the unrest in Ireland, had kept all political organisations in a high state of tension.

It has been shown how fully organised were all the Women Suffrage societies. Committees, organisers, adherents, and speakers were at work, and in the highest state of efficiency. Women linked by a common cause had learnt how to work together. The best brains in their midst were put at the service of the Suffrage, and they had watched in the political arena where to expect support, and who could be trusted among the leaders of all parties. No shrewder or more experienced body of politicians were to be found in the country than those women drawn from all classes, in all social, professional, and industrial spheres, who acknowledged Mrs. Fawcett as their leader, and trusted no one party, sect, or politician in the year 1914.

When the war caused a truce to be pronounced in all questions of acute political difference, the unenfranchised people realised that this might mean the failure of their hopes for an indefinite time. They never foresaw that, for the second time within a century, emancipation was to be bought by the life blood of a generation.

The truce made no difference to any section of the Suffrage party. It was accepted by the whole people. War found both men and women unprepared, but the path of glory was clear for the men. A great army must be formed in defence of national liberty. The army was mobilised. It would have been well had the strength of the women been mobilised in the same hour. Their long claim for the rights of citizenship made them keenly alive and responsive to the call of national service.

War and its consequences had for many years been uppermost in their thoughts. In the struggle for emancipation, the great argument they had had to face among the rapidly decreasing anti-party, was the one that women could take no part in war, and, as all Government rested ultimately on brute force, women could not fight, and therefore must not vote.

In countering this outlook, women had watched what war meant all over the world, wherever it took place. With the use of scientific weapons of destruction, with the development of scientific methods of healing, with all that went to the maintenance of armies in the field, and the support of populations at home, women had some vision in what manner they would be needed if war ever came to this country.

The misfortune of such a controversy as that of the ‘Rights of Women’ is that it necessarily means the opposition has to prove a negative proposition—a most sterilising process. Political parties were so anxious to prove that women were incapable of citizenship, that the whole community got into a pernicious habit of mind. Women were underrated in every sphere of industry or scientific knowledge. Their sense of incapacity and irresponsibility was encouraged, and when they turned militant under such treatment, they were only voted a nuisance which it was impossible to totally exterminate.

Those who watched the gathering war clouds, and the decline of their Parliamentary hopes, did not realise that, in the overruling providence of God, the devastating war among nations was to open a new era for women. They were no longer to be held cheap, as irresponsibles—mere clogs on the machinery of the State. They were to be called on to take the place of men who were dying by the thousand for their homes, fighting against the doctrine that military force is the only true Government in a Christian world.

After mobilisation, military authorities had to make provision for the wounded. We can remember the early sensation of seeing buildings raised for other purposes taken over for hospitals. Since the Crimea, women as nurses at the base were institutions understood of all men. In the vast camps which sprang up at the commencement of the war, women modestly thought they might be usefully employed as cooks. The idea shocked the War Office till it rocked to its foundations. A few adventurous women started laundries for officers, and others for the men. They did it on their own, and in peril of their beneficent soap suds, being ordered to a region where they would be out of sight, and out of any seasonable service, to the vermin-ridden camps.

The Suffrage organisations, staffed and equipped with able practical women Jacks of all trades, in their midst, put themselves at the call of national service, but were headed back from all enterprises. It had been ordained that women could not fight, and therefore they were of no use in war time. A few persisted in trying to find openings for service. Among these were Dr. Inglis. It is one thing to offer to be useful without any particular qualification; it is another to have professional knowledge to give, and the medical women were strong in the conviction that they had their hard-won science and skill to offer.

Those who have read the preceding pages will realise that Dr. Inglis carried into this offer a perfect knowledge how women doctors were regarded by the community, and she knew political departments too well to believe that the War Office would have a more enlightened outlook. In the past she had said in choosing her profession that she liked ‘pioneer work,’ and she was to be the pioneer woman doctor who, with the aid of Suffrage societies, founded and led the Scottish Women’s Hospitals to the healing of many races.

After bringing the story of Dr. Inglis to this point, it is easy to imagine the working of her fertile brain, and her sense of vital energy, in the opening weeks of the war. What material for instant action she had at hand, she used. She had helped to form a detachment of the V.A.D. when the idea of this once despised and now greatly desired body began to take shape. Before the war men spoke slightingly of its object, and it was much depreciated. Dr. Inglis saw all the possibilities which lay in the voluntary aid offer. Dr. Inglis was in Edinburgh at the commencement of the war, and the 6th Edinburgh V.A.D., of which she was commandant, was at once mobilised. For several weeks she worked hard at their training. She gave up the principal rooms in her house for a depot for the outfit of Cargilfield as an auxiliary hospital. The hospital was not accepted. If it had been, and Dr. Inglis put in charge of it, the wider work of her life might never have had its fulfilment. Dr. Inglis from the first advocated that the V.A.D. should be used as probationers in military hospitals, and the orderlies who served in her units were chiefly drawn from this body.

In September she went to London to put her views before the National Union and the War Office, and to offer the services of herself and women colleagues. Miss Mair expresses the thoughts which were dominating her mind. ‘To her it seemed wicked that women with power to wield the surgeon’s knife in the mitigation of suffering and with knowledge to diagnose and cure, should be withheld from serving the sick and wounded.’

Her love for the wounded and suffering gave her a clear vision as to what lay before the armies of the Allies. ‘At the root of all her strenuous work of the last three years,’ says her sister, ‘was the impelling force of her sympathy with the wounded men. This feeling amounted at times to almost agony. Only once did she allow herself to show this innermost feeling. This was at the root of her passionate yearning to get with her unit to Mesopotamia during the early months of 1916. “I cannot bear to think of them, our Boys.” To the woman’s heart within her the wounded men of all nations made the same irresistible appeal.’

In that spirit she approached a departmental chief. Official reserve at last gave way, and the historic sentence was uttered—‘My good lady, go home and sit still.’ In that utterance lay the germ of that inspiration which was to carry the Red Cross and the Scottish women among many nations, kindreds, and tongues.

It is easy to picture the scene. The overworked red-tape-bound official: the little figure of the woman with the smile, and the ready answer, before him. There is a story that, while a town in Serbia was under bombardment, Dr. Inglis was also in it with some of her hospital work. She sought an official in his quarters, as she desired certain things for her hospital. The noise of the firing was loud, and shells were flying around. Dr. Inglis seemed oblivious of any sound save her own voice, and she requested of an under officer an interview with his chief. The official had at last to confess that his superior was hiding in the cellar till the calamity of shell-fire was overpast. In much the same condition was the local War Office official when confronted with Dr. Inglis and her practical importunity. No doubt she saw it was useless to continue her offers of service. Mrs. Fawcett says:

‘Nearly all the memorial notices of her have recorded the fact that at the beginning of her work in 1914 the War Office refused her official recognition. The recognition so stupidly refused by her own country was joyfully and gratefully given by the French and later the Serbian A.M.S. and Red Cross.’

She went home to her family, who so often had inspired her to good work, and as she sat and talked over the war and her plans with one of her nieces, she suddenly said, ‘I know what we will do! We will have a unit of our own.’

The ‘We’ referred to that close-knit body of women with whom she had worked for a common cause, and she knew at once that ‘We’ would work with her and in her for the accomplishment of this ideal which so rapidly took shape in her teeming brain.

She was never left alone in any part of her life’s work. Her personality knit not only her family to her in the closest bonds of love, but she had devoted friends among those who did not see eye to eye with her in the common cause. She never loved them the less for disagreeing with her, and though their indifference to her views might at times obscure her belief in their mental calibre, it never interfered with the mutual affections of all. She did not leave these friends out of her scheme when it began to take shape.

The Edinburgh Suffrage offices, no longer needed for propaganda and organisation work, became the headquarters of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, and the enlarged committee, chiefly of Dr. Inglis’ personal friends, began its work under the steam-hammer of her energy. Miss Mair may again be quoted.

‘Well do I recall the first suggestion that passed between us on the subject of directing the energies of our Suffrage Societies to the starting of a hospital. Let us gather a few hundred pounds, and then appeal to the public, was the decision of our ever courageous Dr. Elsie, and from that moment she never swerved in her purpose. Some of us gasped when she announced that the sum of £50,000 must speedily be advertised for. Some timid souls advised the naming of a smaller amount as our goal. With unerring perception, our leader refused to lower the standard, and abundantly has she been proved right! Not £50,000, but over £200,000 have rewarded her faith and her hope.

‘This quick perception was one of the greatest of her gifts, and it was with perfect simplicity she stated to me once that when on rare occasions she had yielded her own conviction to pressure from others, the result had been unfortunate. There was not an ounce of vanity in her composition. She was merely stating a simple fact. Her outlook was both wide and direct. She saw the object aimed at, and she marched straight on. If, on the road, some obstacles had to be not exactly ruthlessly, but very firmly brushed aside, her strength of purpose was in the end a blessing to all concerned. Strength combined with sweetness—with a wholesome dash of humour thrown in—in my mind sums up her character. What that strength did for agonised Serbia only the grateful Serbs can fully tell.’

A letter written in October of this year to Mrs. Fawcett tells of the rapid formation of the hospital idea.

‘8 Walker Street,
‘Oct. 9, 1914.

‘Dear Mrs. Fawcett,—I wrote to you from the office this morning, but I want to point out a little more fully what the Committee felt about the name of the hospitals. We felt that our original scheme was growing very quickly into something very big—much bigger than anything we had thought of at the beginning—and we felt that if the hospitals were called by a non-committal name it would be much easier to get all men and women to help. The scheme is of course a National Union scheme, and that fact the Scottish Federation will never lose sight of, or attempt to disguise. The National Union will be at the head of all our appeals, and press notices, and paper.

‘But—if you could reverse the position, and imagine for a moment that the Anti-Suffrage Society had thought of organising all these skilled women for service, you can quite see that many more neutrals, and a great many suffragists would have been ready to help if they sent their subscriptions to the “Scottish Women’s Hospital for Foreign Service,” than if they had to send to the Anti-Suffrage League Hospital.

‘We were convinced that the more women we could get to help, the greater would be the gain to the woman’s movement.

‘For we have hit upon a really splendid scheme. When Mrs. Laurie and I went to see Sir George Beatson—the head of the Scottish Red Cross, in Glasgow—he said at once: “Our War Office will have nothing to say to you,” and then he added, “yet there is no knowing what they may do before the end of the war.”

‘You see, we get these expert women doctors, nurses, and ambulance workers organised. We send our units wherever they are wanted. Once these units are out, the work is bound to grow. The need is there, and too terrible to allow any haggling about who does the work. If we have a thoroughly good organisation here, we can send out more and more units, or strengthen those already out. We can add motor ambulances, organise rest stations on the lines of communication, and so on. It will all depend on how well we are supplied with funds and brains at our base. Each unit ought to be carefully chosen, and the very best women doctors must go out with them. I wrote this morning to the Registered Medical Women’s Association in London, and asked them to help us, and offered to address a meeting when I come up for your meeting. Next week a special meeting of the Scottish Medical Women’s Association is being called to discuss the question.

‘From the very beginning we must make it clear that our hospitals are as well-equipped and well-manned as any in the field, more economical (easy!), and thoroughly efficient.

‘I cannot think of anything more calculated to bring home to men the fact that women can help intelligently in any kind of work. So much of our work is done where they cannot see it. They’ll see every bit of this.

‘The fates seem to be fighting for us! Sometimes schemes do float off with the most extraordinary ease. The Belgian Consul here is Professor Sarolea—the editor of Everyman. He grasped at the help we offered, and has written off to several influential people. And then yesterday morning he wrote saying that his brother Dr. Leon Sarolea, would come and “work under” us. He is an M.P., a man of considerable influence. So you can see the Belgian Hospital will have everything in its favour.

‘Then Mr. Seton Watson, who has devoted his life to the Balkan States, has taken up the Servian Unit. He puts himself “entirely at our service.” He knows all the powers that be in Servia.

‘Two people in the Press have offered to help.

‘The money is the thing now. It must not be wasted, but we must have lots.

‘And as the work grows do let’s keep it together, so that, however many hospitals we send out, they all shall be run on the same lines, and wherever people see the Union Jack with the red, white and green flag below it, they’ll know it means efficiency and kindness and intelligence.

‘I wanted the Executive, for this reason, to call the hospitals “British Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service,” but of course it was their own idea, and one understood the desire to call it “Scottish”; but if there is a splendid response from England and from other federations, that will have to be reconsidered, I think. The great thing is to do the thing well, and do it as one scheme.

‘I do hope you’ll approve of all this. I am marking this letter “Private,” because it isn’t an official letter, but just what I think—to you, my Chief. But you can show it to anybody you like—as that.

‘I can think of nothing except these “Units” just now! And when one hears of the awful need, one can hardly sit still till they are ready. Professor Sarolea simply made one’s heart bleed. He is just back from Belgium. He said, “You talk of distress from the war here. You simply know nothing about it.”—Ever yours sincerely,

‘Elsie Maud Inglis.’

In October 1914 the scheme was finally adopted by the Scottish Federation, and the name of Scottish Women’s Hospitals was chosen.

At the same meeting the committee decided to send Dr. Inglis to London to explain the plan to the National Union, and to speak at a meeting in the Kingsway Hall, on ‘What women could do to help in the war.’ At that meeting she was authorised to speak on the plans of the S.W.H. The N.U.W.S.S. adopted the plan of campaign on 15th October, and the London society was soon taking up the work of procuring money to start new units, and to send Dr. Inglis out on her last enterprise, with a unit fully equipped to work with the Serbian army, then fighting on the Bulgarian front.

The use she made of individuals is well illustrated by Miss Burke. She was ‘found’ by Dr. Inglis in the office of the London Society, and sent forth to speak and fill the Treasury chest of the S.W.H. It is written in the records of that work how wonderfully Miss Burke influenced her countrymen in America, and how nobly, through her efforts, they have aided ‘the great adventure.’

‘U.S.M.S. St. Paul,
‘Saturday, February 9th.

‘Dear Lady Frances,—Certainly I am one of Dr. Elsie’s children. It was largely due to her intuition and clear judgment of character that my feet were placed in the path which led to my reaching my maximum efficiency as a hospital worker and a member of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. I first met Dr. Elsie after I had been the Secretary of the London Committee for about a month. There was no question of meeting a “stranger”; her kindly eyes smiled straight into mine.

‘Was I young and rather shy? Well, the best way to encourage me was to give me responsibility.

‘“Do you speak French?”

‘“Yes.”

‘“Very well, go and write me a letter to General de Torcy, telling him we accept the building he has offered at Troyes.”

‘Some one hazarded the suggestion that the letter should be passed on.

‘“Nonsense,” replied Dr. Elsie, “I know the type. That girl probably speaks six languages. If she says she speaks French, she does.”

‘She practically signed the letter I wrote her without reading it. Doubtless all the time I was with her I was under her keen scrutiny, and when finally, after arranging a meeting for her at Oxford, which she found impossible to take, owing to her sudden decision to leave for Serbia, she had already judged me, and without hesitation she told me to go to Oxford and speak myself. I have wondered often whether any one else would have sent a young and unknown speaker—it needed Dr. Elsie’s knowledge of human character and rapid energetic method of making decisions.

‘It would be difficult for we young ones of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals to analyse our feelings towards Dr. Elsie. A wave of her hand in passing meant much to us.’

Space utterly forbids our following the fortunes of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals as they went forth one by one to France, to Belgium, to Serbia, to Corsica, and Russia. That history will have some day to be written. It is only possible in this memoir to speak of their work in relation to their founder and leader. ‘Not I, but my unit,’ was her dying watchword, and when the work of her unit is reviewed, it is obvious how they carried with them, as an oriflamme, the inspiration of unselfish devotion set them by Dr. Inglis.

Besides going into all the detailed work of the hospital equipment, Dr. Inglis found time to continue her work of speaking for the cause of the hospitals. We find her addressing her old friends:

‘I have the happiest recollection of Dr.I. addressing a small meeting of the W.L. Association here. It was one of her first meetings to raise money. She told us how she wanted to go to Serbia. She was so convincing, but with all my faith in her, I never thought she would get there! That, and much more she did—a lesson in faith.

‘She looked round the little gathering in the Good Templar Hall and said, “I suppose nobody here could lend me a yacht?” She did get her ship there.’

To one of her workers in this time, she said, ‘My dear, we shall live all our lives in the shadow of war.’ The one to whom she spoke says, ‘A cold chill struck my heart. Did she feel it, and know that never again would things be as they were?’

At the close of 1914 Dr. Inglis went to France to see the Scottish Women’s Hospital established and working under the French Red Cross at Royaumont. It was probably on her way back that she went to Paris on business connected with Royaumont. She went into Notre Dame, and chose a seat in a part of the cathedral where she could feel alone. She there had an experience which she afterwards told to Mrs. M‘Laren. As she sat there she had a strong feeling that some one was behind her. She resisted the impulse to turn round, thinking it was some one who like herself wanted to be quiet! The feeling grew so strong at last, that she involuntarily turned round. There was no one near her, but for the first time she realised she was sitting in front of a statue of Joan of Arc. To her it appeared as if the statue was instinct with life. She added: ‘Wasn’t it curious?’ Then later she said, ‘I would like to know what Joan was wanting to say to me!’ I often think of the natural way which she told me of the experience, and the practical conclusion of wishing to know what Joan wanted. Once again she referred to the incident, before going to Russia. I see her expression now, just for a moment forgetting everything else, keen, concentrated, and her humorous smile, as she said, ‘You know I would like awfully to know what Joan was trying to say to me.’

Elsie Inglis was not the first, nor will she be the last woman who has found help in the story of the Maid of Orleans, when the causes dear to the hearts of nations are at stake. It is easy to hear the words that would pass between these two leaders in the time of their country’s warfare. The graven figure of Joan was instinct with life, from the undying love of race and country, which flowed back to her from the woman who was as ready to dedicate to her country her self-forgetting devotion, as Jeanne d’Arc had been in her day. Both, in their day and generation, had heard—

‘Abbaye de Royaumont,
‘Dec. 22, 1914.

‘Dearest Amy,—Many, many happy Christmases to you, dear, and to all the others. Everything is splendid here now, and if the General from headquarters would only come and inspect us, we could begin. The wards are perfect. I only wish you could see them with their red bedcovers, and little tables. There are four wards, and we have called them Blanche of Castille (the woman who really started the building of this place, the mother of Louis IX., the Founder, as he is called), Queen Margaret of Scotland, Joan of Arc, and Millicent Fawcett. Now, don’t you think that is rather nice! The Abbaye itself is a wonderful place. It has beautiful architecture, and is placed in delightful woods. One wants to spend hours exploring it, instead of which we have all been working like galley slaves getting the hospital in order. The equipment has come out practically all right. There are no thermometers and no sandbags. I feel they’ll turn up. Yesterday, I was told there were no tooth-brushes and no nail-brushes, but they appeared. After all the fuss, you can imagine our feelings when the “Director,” an official of the French Red Cross, who has to live here with us, told us French soldiers don’t want tooth-brushes!

‘Our first visitors were three French officers, whom we took for the inspecting general, and treated with grovelling deference, till we found they knew nothing about it, and were much more interested in the tapestry in the proprietor’s house than in our instruments. However, they were very nice, and said we were bien meublÉ.

‘Once we had all been on tenterhooks all day about the inspection. Suddenly, a man poked his head round the door of the doctor’s sitting-room and said, “The General.” In one flash every doctor was out of the room and into her bedroom for her uniform coat, and I was left sitting. I got up, and wandered downstairs, when an excited orderly dashed past, singing, “Nothing but two British officers!” Another time we were routed out from breakfast by the cry of “The General,” but this time it turned out to be a French regiment, whose officers had been moved by curiosity to come round by here. The General has not arrived yet.

‘We have had to get a new boiler in the kitchen, new taps and lavatories, and electric light, an absolute necessity in this huge place, and all the theatre sinks. We certainly are no longer a mobile hospital, but as we are twelve miles from the point from which the wounded are distributed (I am getting very discreet about names since a telegram of mine was censored), we shall probably be as useful here as anywhere. They even think we may get English Tommies.

‘You have no idea of the conditions to which the units came out, and they have behaved like perfect bricks. The place was like an ice hole: there were no fires, no hot water, no furniture, not even blankets, and the equipment did not arrive for five days. They have scrubbed the whole place out themselves, as if they were born housemaids; put up the beds, stuffed the mattresses, and done everything. Really, I am proud of them! They stick at absolutely nothing, and when Madame came, she said, “What it is to belong to a practical nation!”

‘We had a service in the ward on Sunday. We are going to see if they will let us use the little St. Louis Chapel. There are two other chapels, one in use, that we hope the soldiers will go to, and a beautiful chapel the same style of architecture as the chapel at Mont St. Michel. It is a perfect joy to walk through it to meals. The village curÉ has been to tea with us.

‘Will you believe it, that General hasn’t arrived yet!—Your loving

Elsie.’

Mr. Seton Watson has permitted his article in the December number of the New Europe (1917) to be reprinted here. His complete knowledge of Serbia enables him to describe both the work and Dr. Inglis who undertook the great task set before her.

‘Elsie Inglis was one of the heroic figures of the war, one whose memory her many friends will cherish with pride and confidence—pride at having been privileged to work with her, confidence in the race which breeds such women. This is not the place to tell the full story of her devotion to many a good cause at home, but the New Europe owes her a debt of special interest and affection. For in her own person she stood for that spirit of sympathy and comprehension upon which intercourse between the nations must be founded, if the ideal of a New Europe is ever to become a reality.

‘Though her lifework had hitherto lain in utterly different fields, she saw in a flash the needs of a tragic situation; and when war came offered all her indomitable spirit and tireless energy to a cause till recently unknown and even frowned upon in our country. Like the Douglas of old, she flung herself where the battle raged most fiercely—always claiming and at last obtaining permission to set up her hospitals where the obstacles were greatest and the dangers most acute. But absorbed as she was in her noble task of healing, she saw beyond it the high national ideal that inspired the Serbs to endure sufferings unexampled even in this war, and became an enthusiastic convert to the cause of Southern Slav unity. To her, as to all true Europeans, the principle of nationality is not, indeed, the end of all human wisdom, but the sure foundation upon which a new and saner internationalism is to be built, and an inalienable right to which great and small alike are entitled. Perhaps the fact that she herself came of a small nation which, like Serbia, has known how to celebrate its defeats, was not without its share in determining her sympathies.

‘The full political meaning of her work has not yet been brought home to her countrymen, and yet what she has done will live after her. Her achievement in Serbia itself in 1915 was sufficiently remarkable, but even that was a mere prelude to her achievement on the Eastern front. The Serbian Division in Southern Russia, which the Scottish Women’s Hospitals went out to help, was not Serbian at all in the ordinary sense of the word. Its proper name is the Jugoslav Division, for it was composed entirely of volunteers drawn from among the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes of Austria-Hungary who had been taken prisoners by the Russian army. Thousands of these men enrolled themselves on the side of the Entente and in the service of Serbia, in order to fight for the realisation of Southern Slav independence and unity under the national dynasty of Kara George. Beyond the ordinary risks of war they acted in full knowledge that capture by the enemy would mean the same fate as Austria meted out to the heroic Italian deputy, Cesare Battisti; and some of them, left wounded on the battle-field after a retreat, shot each other to avoid being taken alive. Throughout the Dobrudja campaign they fought with the most desperate gallantry against impossible odds, and, owing to inadequate support during the retreat, their main body was reduced from 15,000 to 4000. Latterly the other divisions had been withdrawn to recruit at Odessa, after sharing the defence of the Rumanian southern front.

‘To these men in the summer of 1916 Serbia had sent a certain number of higher officers, but, for equipment and medical help, they were dependent upon what the Russians could spare from their own almost unlimited needs. At the worst hour Dr. Inglis and her unit came to the help of the Jugoslavs, shared their privations and misfortunes, and spared no effort in their cause.

‘History will record the name of Elsie Inglis, like that of Lady Paget, as pre-eminent among that band of women who have redeemed for all time the honour of Britain in the Balkans. Among the Serbs it is already assuming an almost legendary quality. To us it will serve to remind us that Florence Nightingale will never be without successors among us. And in particular, every true Scotsman will cherish her memory, every believer in the cause for which she gave her life will gain fresh courage from her example.

R.W. Seton-Watson.