evidently a courageous man, but there is something to be said in support of his declaration. It is equally possible, of course, that America's twelve greatest men are equally obscure. But it is a fair question whether the modern woman has been trained amid conditions which are likely to produce in her those qualities that are fairly entitled to be called heroic. To this question we have a partial answer in the type of womanhood which America and the world displayed in the World War. America's own part in that war was brief, but it did not fail to disclose the essential quality of her womanhood.

Foremost among the women who realized in the popular mind the ideal of the heroic in the World War was Edith Cavell. She was born in 1872, in the village of Swardeston, Norfolk, where her father was rector of the parish church. In her childhood she knew Florence Nightingale and she gave herself to the work of nursing. She qualified in 1896, and did ten years of responsible work in England. In 1906 she became the first directress of a "Belgian School of Certified Nurses" at Brussels. For eight years she continued at this work, raising up a group of nurses for Belgium, and then came the war. For a year she worked as military nurse and was active also in assisting the escape of convalescent prisoners of war and of Belgian civilians of military age. On

August 5, 1915, she was arrested at her hospital by German soldiers and carried away to the military prison of St. Gilles. Although the American Legation intervened on her behalf, she was given a secret trial, found guilty, condemned to death and shot on Tuesday morning October 12. A few hours before she died, she was permitted to be visited by a British chaplain, who brought back to the world the simple story of the heroic spirit in which she met death. Utterly unterrified by the fear of what lay before her, and with no regret for what she had done, or with hatred or bitterness toward those who were about to execute a cruel sentence upon her, she received the Holy Communion and sent her parting messages to her relations and friends. As for the rest, we have the word of the German military chaplain who was with her at the end:

"She was brave and bright to the last. She professed her Christian faith, and that she was glad to die for her country. She died like a heroine."

No incident in the War produced a more profound impression than the death of the brave Christian woman. The heart of Belgium, the heart of England, the heart of America responded with admiration and a kindled spirit. Germany could ill afford to compass the death of a woman whose execution so profoundly stirred the heart of the world.

Edith Cavell was the follower of Florence Nightingale. That eminent humantarian, Miss Nightingale, was born May 12, 1820, and died August 13, 1910. Well born, and reared in comfort, she turned her back upon opportunities for marriage and gave herself to the work of scientific nursing. It was she who instituted nursing as a profession, in Great Britain and very largely in the world. Her most notable achievement was in the Crimean War, when she took charge of the hospital at Scutari opposite Constantinople. After this notable achievement she almost disappeared from public life, and her death surprised many people who had thought of her as belonging to a past generation. But she continued her work, though in less public fashion, and exerted a profound influence in the British hospital service almost to the end of her life. Since her death her biographers have told us that she was not altogether the woman whom popular fancy had painted. She had been thought of as all gentleness and grace, ministering with the sweetest of smiles to dying soldiers, stepping noiselessly through the wards at night, "the lady with the lamp.' We are now told that Florence Nightingale was a self-willed woman, with a violent temper, and a vitrolic tongue; that she drove her associates mercilessly, and that those who withstood her suffered from the lashings of her tongue. Probably all this is true,

but when Florence Nightingale arrived in Scutari, forty-two wounded men out of every hundred were dying, and when she left her hospitals were showing a death rate of twenty-two out of every thousand. It took a sharp tongue and an inflexible will to overcome lethargy and prejudice and hostility and inertia ; all these Florence Nightingale had to face and she faced them and conquered them to the world's lasting profit.

A roll call of her American contemporaries who gave themselves successfully to the work of nursing, reveals some necessity for the same qualities. Mother Bickerdike, whom the soldiers of Sherman's Army loved so well, was a terror to evil-doers. When she discharged an incompetent or drunken surgeon and that officer appealed to General Sherman, the appeal met with no encouragement. "She ranks me", said the General.

The Superintendent of Nurses in America's Civil War was Dorothea Lynde Dix, who was born in Maine, April 4, 1802, and died July 17, 1887. Not alone by her work in the organization and training of nurses should she be remembered; she herself distinctly desired that that should not be the work with which her life memory should be associated. The effort to which she gave the labor of her years was that of the care of the insane. No other one person in America has

done so much for the more humane treatment of these unfortunate people as Dorothea Dix. Her work in the Civil War was a great work, but it was compassed about by many difficulties and pursued with much vexation of spirit. Miss Dix was too far advanced in years and too infirm in health for so heavy a responsibility, but she carried it through with a very large degree of success. It grieved her that she could not inspire all her associates with her own high sense of loyalty to her country and humanity. And she could not sufficiently make allowance for the infirmi ties of human nature. But spite of her limitations, hers was a monumental contribution to the work of patriotism and humanity.

Most notable of all women whom the American Civil War gave to the world, and largest in the permanent influence of her life work upon succeeding decades was Clara Barton. She was born at Oxford, Massachusetts, on Christmas day, 1821. She was the youngest child in a family whose other children had almost reached maturity, and she found herself an isolated little girl in a family of grown-ups. She was by nature so timid that looking back upon her child. hood she said, "I remember nothing but fear.'

While still a little girl, she began teaching school, her skirts being lengthened by way of celebration of her sudden transition from girlhood to womanhood.