Entrusted with plenary powers over the nurses, and
accompanied by a trained staff of lady assistants, she went out to
wrestle with and overcome the crying evils which too truly existed,
and which were the despair of the army doctors. Her success in this
noble work, magnificently complete as it was, did indeed "multiply
the good," as Sidney Herbert had foretold: we may hope it will
continue so to multiply it "to all time." The horrors of war have
been mitigated to an incalculable extent by the exertions of the
noble men and women who, following in the path first trodden by the
Crimean heroines, formed the Geneva Convention, and have borne the
Red Cross, its most sacred badge, on many a bloody field, in many a
scene of terrible suffering--suffering touched with gleams of human
pity and human gratitude; for the courageous tenderness of many a
soft-handed and lion-hearted nursing sister, since the days of
Florence Nightingale, has aroused the same half-adoring thankfulness
which made helpless soldiers turn to kiss that lady's shadow, thrown
by her lamp on the hospital wall.
The horrors thus mitigated have become more than ever repugnant to
the educated perception of Christendom, because of the merciful
devotion which, ever toiling to lessen them, keeps them before the
world's eye.
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