CHAPTER VI

"HER CHILDREN"


"Wonderful courage," "intrepidity of action," "strength of purpose," "no
weakening pity"--these are terms that are often used in describing Elsie
Inglis. But there is another side to her character, not so well known,
from its very nature bound to be less known, which it is the purpose of
this chapter to discover.

Elsie Inglis was a very loving woman, and she was a child-lover. From
every source that touched her life, and, touching it, brought her into
contact with child-life, she, by her interest in children, drew to
herself this healing link with the future. The children of her poorer
patients knew well the place they held in her heart. "They would watch
from the windows, on her dispensary days, for her, and she would wave to
them across the street. She would often stop them in the street, and ask
after their mother, and even after she had been to Serbia and had
returned to Edinburgh she remembered them and their home affairs."[11]

The daily letters to her father, written from Glasgow and London and
Dublin, are full of stories about the children of her patients. Who but
a genuine child-lover could have found time to write to a little niece,
under twelve, letters from Serbia and Russia--one in August, 1915,
during "The Long, Peaceful Summer," and the other in an ambulance train
near Odessa?