THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



381 



WINNING THE HEARTS OF SOLDIERS BY SERVICE 



# Before the establishment of canteens it frequently happened that soldiers waiting for 

 trains at junction points would spend from 24 to 48 hours without any comforts, sleeping on 

 the ground and getting practically no food. Now, thanks to the cooperation of the Ameri- 

 can Red Cross with the French Army, the men from the front are given wholesome meals 

 below cost (15 cents per meal) and are provided with places to bathe and sleep. 



that the poor sufferers pleaded to be left 

 between the blankets and spared the lux- 

 ury of sheets altogether. 



Dysentery, typhus, and cholera were 

 raging, and by February, 1855, the mor- 

 tality had reached 42 per cent. The Brit- 

 ish army was in a fair way of being ex- 

 terminated. 



She had other difficulties than wounds 

 and disease and unhygienic environ- 

 ment — the opposition of stiff conserva- 

 tive military officers, of the medical staff, 

 and of religious sectarians. Sturdy old 

 officers who had been wounded in the 

 Peninsular campaign, thrown in carts on 

 a bed of straw and who had recovered, 

 could see no sense in all this modern 

 flummery of ambulances and scrubbed 

 hospital floors. 



Such feminization of the army was ab- 

 horrent, and they angrily asked if they 

 were to anticipate courts-martial held by 



women as the next effete step in this 

 degeneracy. 



WHAT FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE ACCOM- 

 PLISHED IN THE CRIMEA 



Nor will it do to smile at this as a mere 

 example of "British conservatism." A 

 reading of some of the reports of our 

 own military officers of as recent date as 

 the Spanish-American War will reveal 

 equivalent humors in the attitude of the 

 stiffer sort of military mind toward the 

 idea of women in the war zone. 



What Florence Nightingale accom- 

 plished in the Crimea is a part of his- 

 tory — history too long and involved to be 

 summarized in this brief article. But 

 among the things she accomplished was 

 this, the setting of an example of mo- 

 mentous consequence for subsequent 

 events. 



Among those inspired by her example 



