During the years of that great campaign, Dr. Inglis spoke, pleading the
cause of Suffrage, at hundreds of meetings all over the United Kingdom.
At one large meeting she had occasion to deal with the problem of the
"outcast woman." She referred to the statement once made that no woman
would be safe unless this class existed.

Then she said: "If this were true, the price of safety is too high. I,
for one, would choose to go down with the minority."

It is difficult to declare which was the more impressive, the
silence--one that could be felt--which followed the words, or the burst
of applause which came a moment later. But to one onlooker, from the
platform, the predominant feeling was wonder at the amazing power of the
woman. Without raising her voice, or putting into it any emotion beyond
the involuntary momentary break at the beginning of the sentence, she
had, by the transparent sincerity of her feeling, conveyed such an
impression to that large audience as few there would forget. The subtle
response drawn from those hundreds of women to the woman herself, to the
personality of the speaker, was for the moment even more real than the
outward response given to the idea. More than one woman there that day
could have said in the words of the British Tommy, who had heard for the
first time the story of Serbia, "It would not be difficult to follow
her!"




CHAPTER IX

THE SCOTTISH WOMEN'S HOSPITALS