Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch by Eva Shaw McLaren
page 113 of 118 (95%)
page 113 of 118 (95%)
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THE HIGH STREET, EDINBURGH, LOOKING TOWARDS ST. GILES]
In the two Memorial Services held to commemorate Dr. Inglis, one in St. Giles's Cathedral and the other in St. Margaret's, Westminster, a week later, the whole nation and all the interests of her life were represented. Royalty was represented, the Foreign Office, the War Office, the Admiralty, different bodies of women workers, the Suffrage cause, the Medical world, the Serbians, and--the children. Scores of "her children" were in St. Giles's, scattered through the congregation; in the crowds who lined the streets, they were seen hanging on to their mothers' skirts; and they were round the open grave in the Dean Cemetery. These were the children of the wynds and closes of the High Street, some of them bearing her name, "Elsie Maud," to whom she had never been too tired or too busy to respond when they needed her medical help or when "they waved to her across the street." "The estimate of a life of such throbbing energy, the summing up of achievement and influence in due proportion--these belong to a future day. But we are wholly justified in doing honour to the memory of a woman whose personality won the heart of an entire brave nation, and of whom one of the gallant Serbian officers who bore her body to the grave said, with simple earnestness: 'We would almost rather have lost a battle than lost her!'"[23] "Alongside the wider public loss, the full and noble public recognition, there stands in the shadow the unspoken sorrow of her Unit. The price |
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