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Elsie Inglis - The Woman with the Torch by Eva Shaw McLaren
page 61 of 118 (51%)
to some rather remote place, in very stormy weather. It howled and
rained and was pitch dark. Suddenly we ran, or nearly ran, into a great
tree which had been blown down across the road. It had brought with it a
mass of telegraph wire, and altogether afforded an apparently complete
'barrage.' We were still some six or seven miles from our destination,
and were wearing evening frocks and thin shoes. We got out and wrestled
with the obstacle, and when at one time it seemed quite hopeless to get
the car through, and I suggested that she and I would have to walk, I
shall never forget the look of approval that she turned on me. As a
matter of fact, I doubt very much whether I really _could_ have walked.
I am a little lame, and the circumstances made it almost an
impossibility. But the determination of Dr. Inglis that somehow we
_should_ get to our meeting infected me, and, like many others who have
followed her since, I felt able to achieve the impossible.

"It is true that Dr. Inglis seemed to me--since, after all, she was
human--to have the faults of her qualities. No consideration of herself
prevented her complete devotion to her work. I sometimes felt that there
was an element of relentlessness in this devotion, which would have
allowed her to sacrifice not only other people, but even perhaps
considerations which it is not easy to believe ought to be sacrificed.
It is extraordinarily difficult to judge how far any end may justify any
given means. It is, of course, a shallow judgment which dismisses this
dilemma as one easily solved. Rather, I have always felt it exceedingly
difficult, at any rate to an intellect that is subtle as well as
powerful. I am reminded, in thinking of Dr. Inglis, of the controversy
between Kingsley and Newman, from which it appears that Charles Kingsley
thought it a very easy matter to tell the truth, and Newman found it a
very difficult one. One's judgment of the two will, of course, vary, but
I personally have always felt that Newman understood the truth more
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