Women wanted: The story written in blood red letters on the horizon of the Great World War — John Shaqi
Women wanted: The story written in blood red letters on the horizon of the Great World WarDaggett, Mabel Potter
History
Women wanted: The story written in blood red letters on the horizon of the Great World War
Daggett, Mabel Potter
Women -- Employment; World War, 1914-1918 -- Women
At eight o’clock that night in Havre, my passport and the letter from
the French consul in New York are handed down the steel line of ten
men at a table. Each looks up with the same curious smile when his
glance arrives at the last visé: “Who put that on your passport?” asks
the officer at the head of the line. “The British Control Office?” he
says with heat. “It’s none of their business.” In an inner room, four
more men examine my documents. “Did the British officer see this letter
from the French consul?” I am asked. I nod assent. A laugh goes round
the room. “Pardon, madame,” says the man with the most gold braid, “the
British Control Office does not control France. You are welcome to
France, madame, welcome to France any time you choose to come.”
That is the War Office that speaks. So, with the French Government’s
cordial invitation ringing pleasantly in my ears, I go on board the
Channel boat. But I have no intention of returning to France right
away, gentlemen. I lay out my life-preserver with a feeling of great
relief that if I survive this crossing, it will not have to be done
over again. And once more the boat in the darkness steals safely and
silently across the Channel.
In the morning, in Southampton, the major from Salonica hands me his
card: “Letters,” he says, a trifle wistfully, “will always reach me at
that address.” I look at the card here before me on my desk as I write
and I wonder. The major with his Irish smile may now be lying dead on
the field of battle somewhere on the front. In the midst of life we are
in death almost anywhere in the world to-day.
[Illustration:
THE STAFF OF THE GREAT WOMEN’S WAR HOSPITAL IN ENDELL STREET, LONDON
This is the shining citadel that marks the capitulation the world over
of the medical profession to the new woman movement.
]
IN COLDEST ENGLAND
I have again “established my residence” with the police in London. I
feel on terms of the most intimate acquaintance with the London police.
So many of them have my photograph and are conversant with all the
biographical and genealogical details of my life. You have to do it,
register at a police station, every time you change your hotel. I have
moved so often, I am nervous lest I seem like a German spy. But at the
Bow Street Station, the officer in charge just nods genially: “Oh,
that’s quite all right. Looking for more heat, aren’t you? I know. You
Americans are all alike.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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