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.
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