We are somewhat superstitious down
here still, and not a few believe that shoals and
submerged rocks are like sirens which charm vessels
to their doom.
On one occasion, as late in the fall
we were creeping up the Straits of Belle Isle in the
only motor boat then in use there, our new toy broke
down, and with a strong onshore wind we gradually drifted
in toward the high cliffs. It was a heavy boat,
and though we rowed our best we realized that we must
soon be on the rocks, where a strong surf was breaking.
So we lashed all our lines together and cast over
our anchors, hoping to find bottom. Alas, the
water was too deep. Darkness came on and the
prospect of a long, weary night struggling for safety
made us thrill with excitement. Suddenly a schooner’s
lights, utterly unexpected, loomed up, coming head
on toward us. Like Saul and his asses, we no
longer cared about our craft so long as we escaped.
At once we lashed the hurricane light on the boat-hook
and waved it to and fro on high to make sure of attracting
attention. To our dismay the schooner, now almost
in hail, incontinently tacked, and, making for the
open sea, soon left us far astern. We fired our
guns, we shouted in unison, we lit flares. All
to no purpose. Surely it must have been a phantom
vessel sent to mock us. Suddenly our amateur
engineer, who had all the time been working away at
the scrap-heap of parts into which he had dismembered
the motor, got a faint kick out of one cylinder a
second a third, then two, three, and then
a solitary one again. It was exactly like a case
of blocked heart. But it was enough with our
oars to make us move slowly ahead. By much stimulating
and watchful nursing we limped along on the one cylinder,
and about midnight found ourselves alongside the phantom
ship, which we had followed into the harbour “afar
off.” Angry enough at their desertion of
us in distress, we went aboard just to tell them what
we thought of their behaviour. But their explanation
entirely disarmed us. “Them cliffs is haunted,”
said the skipper. “More’n one light’s
been seen there than ever any man lit. When us
saw you’se light flashing round right in on
the cliffs, us knowed it was no place for Christian
men that time o’ night. Us guessed it was
just fairies or devils trying to toll us in.”
We had no lighthouses on Labrador
in those days, and though hundreds of vessels, crowded
often with women and children, had to pass up and
down the coast each spring and fall, still not a single
island, harbour, cape, or reef had any light to mark
it, and many boats were unnecessarily lost as a result.
Most of the schooners of this
large fleet are small. Many are old and poorly
“found” in running gear. Their decks
are so crowded with boats, barrels, gear, wood, and
other impedimenta, that to reef or handle sails on
a dark night is almost impossible; while below they
were often so crowded with women and children going
North with their men for the summer fishing on the
Labrador shore, that I have had to crawl on my knees
to get at a patient, after climbing down through the
main hatch. These craft are quite unfitted for
a rough night at sea, especially as there always are
icebergs or big pans about, which if touched would
each spell another “vessel missing.”
So the craft all creep North and South in the spring
and fall along the land, darting into harbours before
dark, and leaving before dawn if the night proves
“civil.” Yet many a time I have seen
these little vessels with their precious cargoes becalmed,
or with wind ahead, just unable to make anchorage,
and often on moonless nights when the barometer has
been low and the sky threatening. As there were
no lights on the land, it would have been madness
to try and make harbours after sundown.
I have known the cruel, long anxiety
of heart which the dilemma involved. It has been
our great pleasure sometimes to run out and tow vessels
in out of their distress. I can still feel the
grip of one fine skipper, who came aboard when the
sea eased down. The only harbour available for
us had been very small, and the water too deep for
his poor gear. So when he started to drift, we
had given him a line and let him hold on to us through
the night, with his own stern only a few yards from
the cliffs under his lee, and all his loved ones,
as well as his freighters, a good deal nearer heaven
than he wished them to be.
We had frequently written to the Government
of this neglect of lights for the coast. But
Labrador has no representative in the Newfoundland
Parliament, and legislators who never visited Labrador
had unimaginative minds. Year after year went
by and nothing was done. So I spoke to many friends
of the dire need for a light near Battle Harbour Hospital.
Practically every one of the Northern craft ran right
by us many times as they fished first in the Gulf and
later on the east coast, and so had to go past that
corner of land. I have seen a hundred vessels
come and anchor near by in a single evening. When
the money was donated, our architect designed the building,
and a friend promised to endow the effort, so that
the salary of the light-keeper might be permanent.
The material was cut and sent North, when we were
politely told that the Government could not permit
private ownership of lights a very proper
decision, too. They told us that the year before
money had been voted by the House for lights, and
the first would be erected near Battle Harbour.
This was done, and the Double Island Light has been
a veritable Godsend to me as well as to thousands
of others many times since that day.
One hundred miles north of Indian
Tickle, a place also directly in the run of all the
fishing schooners, a light was much needed.
On a certain voyage coming South with the fleet in
the fall, we had all tried to make the harbour, but
it shut down suddenly before nightfall with a blanket
of fog which you could almost cut with a knife, and
being inside many reefs, and unable to make the open,
we were all forced to anchor. Where we were exactly
none of us knew, for we had all pushed on for the
harbour as much as we dared. There were eleven
riding-lights visible around us when a rift came in
the fog. We hoped against hope that we had made
the harbour. A fierce northeaster gathered strength
as night fell, and a mighty sea began to heave in.
Soon we strained at our anchors in the big seas, and
heavy water swept down our decks from bow to stern.
Our patients were dressed and our boats gotten ready,
though it all had only a psychological value.
Gradually we missed first one and then another of the
riding-lights, and it was not difficult to guess what
had happened. When daylight broke, only one boat
was left a large vessel called the Yosemite,
and she was drifting right down toward us. Suddenly
she touched a reef, turned on her side, and we saw
the seas carry her over the breakers, the crew hanging
on to her bilge. Steaming to our anchors had saved
us. All the vessels that went ashore became matchwood.
But before we could get our anchors or slip them,
our main steam pipe gave out and we had to blow down
our boilers. It was now a race between the engineers
trying to repair the damage and the shortening hours
of daylight. On the result depended quite possibly
the lives of us all. I cannot remember one sweeter
sound than the raucous voice of the engineer just
in the nick of time calling out, “Right for’ard,”
and then the signal of the engine-room bell in the
tell-tale in our little wheel-house. The Government
has since put a fine little light in summer on White
Point, the point off which we lay.
Farther north, right by our hospital
at Indian Harbour, is a narrow tickle known as the
“White Cockade.” Through this most
of the fleet pass, and here also we had planned for
a lighthouse. When we were forbidden to put our
material at Battle Harbour, we suggested moving to
this almost equally important point. But it fell
under the same category, and soon after the Government
put a good light there also. The fishermen, therefore,
suggested that we should offer our peripatetic, would-be
lighthouse to the Government for some new place each
year.
We have not much now to complain of
so far as the needs of our present stage of evolution
goes. We have wireless stations, quite a number
of lights, not a few landmarks, and a ten times better
mail and transport service than the much wealthier
and more able Dominion of Canada could and ought to
give to her long shore from Quebec to the eastern
“Newfoundland” boundary on the Straits
Labrador.
He is not a great legislator who only
makes provision for certainties. True, the West
has shown such riches and capacity that it has paid
better to develop it first. But there is no excuse
now whatever for neglecting the East. The Dominion
would have been well advised, indeed, had she years
ago built a railway to the east coast, shortening
the steamer communication with England to only two
nights at sea, and saving twenty-four hours for the
mails between London and Toronto. The war has
shown how easily she could have afforded it. Most
ardently I had hoped that she might have turned some
of her German prisoner labour in so invaluable a direction.
Had the reindeer installation been
handled by the Newfoundland Government years ago as
it should have been, Labrador would have yielded to
our boys in France a very material assistance in meat
and furs. Canada now could and should, if only
in the interest of her native population, begin on
this problem as soon as peace is declared.
The fact that a thing possesses vitality
is a guarantee that it will grow if it can. Each
new focus will expand, and caterpillar-like cast off
its old clothing for better. The first necessity
for economy and efficiency in our work has been to
get our patients quickly to us or to be able to get
to them. Experience has shown us that while boats
entirely dependent on motors are cheapest, it is not
always safe to do open-sea work in such launches without
a secondary and more reliable means of progression.
The stories of a doctor’s work in these launches
would fill a volume by themselves. The first Northern
Messenger, a small “hot-head” boat, was
replaced and sold to pay part of the cost of Northern
Messenger number two. This in its turn was wrecked
on an uncharted shoal with Dr. West on board, and
her insurance used to help to procure Northern Messenger
number three which is the beautiful boat
which now serves Harrington, our most westerly hospital.
We are largely indebted for her to Mr. William Bowditch,
of Milton, Massachusetts.
Dr. Hare, our first doctor at that
station, never wrote his own experiences, but one
of the Yale volunteers who worked under him wrote
a story founded on fact, from which the following incident
is suggestive.
Once, running home before a wind in
the Gulf, the doctor suddenly missed his little son
Pat, and looking round saw him struggling in the water,
already many yards astern. Dr. Hare, who was at
the tiller at the time, instantly jumped over after
him. The child was finally disappearing when
he reached him at last and held his head above water.
Meanwhile the engineer, who had been below, jumped
on deck to find the sails flapping in the wind and
the boat head to sea. With the intuitive quickness
of our people in matters pertaining to the sea, he
took in the situation in a second, and though entirely
alone manoeuvred the boat so cleverly as to pick them
both up before they perished in these frigid waters.
Pat’s young life was saved, only to be given
a short few years later in France for the same fight
for the kingdom of righteousness which his home life
had made his familiar ideal.
The forty-five-foot, “hot-head”
yawl Daryl, given us by the Dutch Reformed friends
in New York, was sold to the Hudson Bay Company.
At first she was naturally called the Flying Dutchman,
and was most useful; but here we have learned when
a better instrument is available that it is the truest
economy to scrap-heap the old. We were to give
delivery of the boat in Baffin’s Land. There
were plenty of volunteers for the task, for the tough
jobs are the very ones which appeal to real men.
It would be well if the churches realized this fact
and that therein lies the real secret of Christianity.
The impression that being a Christian is a soft job
inevitably brings our religion into contempt.
I had been in England that spring, and had been able
to arrange that the mail steamer bound for Montreal
on which I took passage should stop and drop me off
Belle Isle if the crusaders who were to take this
launch on her long voyage North would stand out across
our pathway. Mr. Marconi personally took an interest
in the venture. The launch was to wait at our
most easterly Labrador station, and we were to keep
telling her our position. The boat was in charge
of Mr. John Rowland and Mr. Robert English, both of
Yale. It created quite a furor among the passengers
on our great ship, when she stopped in mid-ocean,
as it appeared to them, and lowered an erratic doctor
over the side on to a midget, whose mast-tops one looked
down upon from the liner’s rail. The sensation
was all the more marked as we disappeared over the
rail clinging to two large pots of geraniums an
importation which we regarded as very much worth while.
With an old Hudson Bay man, Mr. George
Ford, to act as interpreter, and a Harvard colleague,
who to his infinite chagrin was recalled by a wireless
from his parents almost before starting, the little
ship and her crew of three disappeared “over
the edge” beyond communication. I should
mention that the Company had promised an engineer for
the launch, but he had begged off when he understood
the nature of the projected expedition; so Yale decided
that they were men enough to do without any outside
help.
September had nearly gone, and no
news had come from the boys. I owe some one an
infinite debt for a temperament which does not go halfway
to meet troubles; but even I was a little worried when
unkind rumours that we had sold a boat that was not
safe were capped by a father’s letter to say
that he “had heard the reports”! Fortunately,
two days later, as the Strathcona lay taking on whale
meat for winter dog food at the northernmost factory,
the Northern mail steamer came in. On board were
our returned wanderers, and papa, who had gone down
as far as the Labrador steamer runs to look for them,
as proud and happy as a man has a right to be over
sons who do things. The boys had not only reached
Baffin’s Land, but had explored over a hundred
miles of its uncharted coast-line, crossed to Cape
Wolstenholme, navigated Stupart’s Bay northeast
of Ungava and finally returned to Baffin’s
Land, coming back to Cartwright on the Hudson Bay Company’s
steamer Pelican. It was a splendid record, especially
when we remember the fierce currents and tremendous
rise and fall of tides in that distant land.
This latter was so great that having anchored one night
in three fathoms of water in what appeared to be a
good harbour, they had awakened in the morning to
the fact that they were in a pond a full mile in the
country, left stranded by the retiring tide.
Our last “hot-head,” the
Pomiuk, in a heavy gale of wind was smashed to atoms
on a terrible reef of rocks off Domino Point a mile
from land fortunately with no one aboard.
Yet another of our fine yawls, the Andrew McCosh,
given us by the students of Princeton, was driven
from her anchors on to the dangerous Point Amour, where
years ago, H.M.S. Lily was lost, and whose bones
still lie bleaching on the rocky foreshore at the
foot of the cliffs. Much as I love the sea, it
made one rather “sore” that it should
serve us such a turn as wrecking the McCosh.
I have been on the sea for over thirty years and never
lost a vessel while aboard her, but to look on while
the waves destroyed so beautiful a handmaid almost
reconciled me to the statement that in heaven there
shall “be no more sea.”
It was near this same spot that in
November, 1905, a very old vessel, while trying to
cross the Straits in a breeze, suddenly sprung a leak
which sent her to the bottom in spite of all the pumping
which could be done. The six men aboard were
able to keep afloat at that time of year in the open
Atlantic out of sight of land for five days and nights.
They had nothing to eat but dry bread, and no covering
of any kind. The winds were heavy and the seas
high all the while. By patiently keeping their
little boat’s head to the wind with the oars,
for they had not any sails, day after day and night
after night, and backing her astern when a breaker
threatened to overwhelm them, they eventually reached
land safe and sound.
The special interest about the launches
has always been the pleasant connection which they
have enabled us to maintain with the universities.
Yale crews, Harvard crews, Princeton crews, Johns
Hopkins crews, College of Physicians and Surgeons crews,
and combined crews of many others, have in succeeding
years thus become interested. Occasionally these
men have taken back some of their Labrador shipmates
to the United States for a year’s education,
and in that and other ways, so they say, have they
themselves received much real joy and inspiration.
In order to maintain the interest
which Canada had taken in our work, it had in some
way to be organized. We had volunteer honorary
secretaries in a few cities, but no way of keeping
them informed of our needs and our progress.
In New England a most loyal friend, Miss Emma White,
who ever since has been secretary and devoted helper
of the Labrador work there, had started a regular
association with a board of directors and had taken
an office in Beacon Street, Boston. This association
now and again published little brochures of our work,
or ordered out a few copies of the English magazine
called “The Toilers of the Deep.”
It was suggested that we might with advantage publish
a quarterly pamphlet of our own. This was made
possible by the generous help of the late Miss Julia
Greenshields, of Toronto, who undertook not only to
edit, but also personally to finance any loss on a
little magazine to be entitled “Among the Deep-Sea
Fishers.” This has been maintained ever
since, and has been responsible for helping to raise
many of the funds to enable us to “carry on.”
We had also begun to get friends in
New York. Dr. Charles Parkhurst, famous especially
for his plucky exposure of the former rottenness of
the police force of that city, had asked me to give
an illustrated lecture at his mission in the Bowery.
After my talk a gentleman present, to my blank astonishment,
gave me a cheque for five hundred dollars. It
was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with one
who has, for all the succeeding years, given far more
than money, namely, the constant inspiration of his
own attitude to life and his wise counsel to
say nothing of the value of the endorsation of his
name. His eldest son, one of the ablest of the
rising New York architects, became chairman of the
Grenfell Association of America, and gave us both
of his time and talent he being responsible,
as voluntary architect, for many of our present buildings,
including the Institute at St. John’s, Newfoundland.
This spread of interest in the United
States greatly increased our correspondence, with
an odd result. Americans apparently all believed
that this Colony was part of Canada, and that the postage
was two cents as to the Dominion. This mistake
left us six cents to pay on every letter, and sixteen
on any which were overweight. On one occasion
the postmaster offered me so many taxable letters that
I decided to accept only one, and let the others go
back. That one contained a cheque for a hundred
dollars for the Mission. I naturally took the
rest, and found every one of them to be bills, gossip,
or from autograph-hunters.
On inquiry, our Postmaster-General
informed me that it was not possible to arrange a
two-cent postal rate with America. It had been
tried and abandoned, because Canada wanted a share
for carrying the letters through her territory.
He told me, however, that he would agree gladly if
the United States offered it. On my visit to
Washington I had the honour of dining with Lord Bryce,
our Ambassador there and an old friend of my father’s,
and I mentioned the matter to him. He could not,
however, commend my efforts to the Government, as I
had no credentials as a special delegate. There
was nothing to do but take my place in the queue of
importunates waiting to interview the Postmaster-General.
When at length I had been moved to the top of the
bench, I was called in, and very soon explained my
mission. I received a most cordial hearing, but
merely the information that a note would be made of
my request and filed.
It suddenly flashed upon me that Americans
had equal fishing rights with ourselves on the Labrador
coast, and that quite a number visited there every
year. Possibly the grant of a two-cent postage
would be a welcome little “sop” to them.
Mr. Meyer, who was the Postmaster-General at the time,
said that it made all the difference if the reduced
rate would in any way encourage the American mercantile
marine. He bade me draw a careful list of reasons
in favour of my proposal, and promised to give it
careful attention.
It so happened that a few days later
I mentioned the matter to Colonel McCook at whose
home I was staying in New York. Colonel McCook,
known as “Fighting McCook,” from the fact
that he was the only one of nine brothers not killed
in the Civil War, at once took up the cudgels in my
behalf, left for Washington the following day, and
wired me on the next morning, “All arranged.
Congratulations” and I had the pleasure
of telegraphing the Postmaster-General in St. John’s
that I had arranged the two-cent postage rate with
the United States and Newfoundland. A few days
later I received a marked copy of a Newfoundland paper
saying how capable a Government they possessed, seeing
that now they had so successfully put through the two-cent
post for the Colony and that was all the
notice ever taken of my only little political intrigue;
except that a year or two later, meeting Mr. Meyer
in Cambridge, he whispered in my ear, “We were
going out of office in four days, or you would never
have got that two-cent post law of yours through so
easily.”
In the spring of 1907 I was in England,
and before I left, my old University was good enough
to offer me an honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine
of Oxford. As it was the first occasion that that
respectable old University had ever given that particular
degree to any one, I was naturally not a little gratified.
The day of the conferring of it will ever live in
my memory. My cousin, the Professor of Paleontology,
half of whose life was spent in the desert of Egypt
digging for papyri in old dust-heaps, was considered
the most appropriate person to stand sponsor for me a
would-be pioneer of a new civilization in the sub-arctic.
The words with which the Public Orator
introduced me to the Vice-Chancellor, being in Latin,
seem to me interesting as a relic rather than as a
statement of fact:
“Insignissime Vice-Cancellarie
vosque egregii Procuratores: Adest civis
Britannicus, hujus academiae olim alumnus,
nunc Novum Orbem incolentibus quam nostratibus
notus. Hic ille est qui
quindecim abhinc annos in litus Labradorium
profectus est, ut solivagis in mari
Boreali piscatoribus ope medica succurreret;
quo in munere obeundo Oceani pericula, quae ibi
formidosissima sunt, contempsit dum miseris et
maerentibus solatium ac lumen afferret.
Nunc quantum homini licet, in ipsius Christi
vestigiis, si fas est dicere, insistere
videtur, vir vere Christianus.
Jure igitur eum laudamus cujus laudibus
non ipse solum sed etiam
Academia nostra ornatur.
“Praesenta ad vos Wilfredum
Thomassum Grenfell, ut admittatur ad gradum Doctoris
in Medicina Honoris Causa.”
As we, the only two Doctors Grenfell
extant, marched solemnly back down the aisle side
by side, the antithesis of what doctorates called
for struck my sense of humour most forcibly. I
had hired the gorgeous robes of scarlet box cloth
and carmine silk for the occasion, never expecting
to wear them again. But some years later, when
yet another honorary Doctorate, of Laws, was most
generously conferred upon me by a University of our
American cousins, I felt it incumbent on me to uphold
if possible the British end of the ritual. A cable
brought me just in time the box-cloth surtout.
Commencement ceremonies in the United States are in
June; and the latitude was that of Rome. For
years I had spent the hot months always in the sub-arctic.
The assembly hall was small and crowded to bursting not
even all the graduating class could get in, much less
all their friends. The temperature was in three
figures. The scarlet box cloth got hotter and
hotter as we paraded in and about the campus.
My face outrivalled the gown in colour. I have
made many lobster men out of the boiled limbs of those
admirable adjuncts of a Northern diet, but I had never
expected to pose as one in the flesh. The most
lasting impression which the ceremony left on my mind
is of my volunteer summer secretary, who stood almost
on my toes as he delivered the valedictory address
of his class. I still see his gradually wilting,
boiled collar, and the tiny rivulet which trickled
down his neck as he warmed to his subject. We
were the best of friends, but I felt that glow of
semi-satisfaction that comes to the man who finds that
he is no longer the only one seasick on board.
About this time King Edward most graciously
presented me, as one of his birthday honours, with
a Companionship in the Order of St. Michael and St.
George most useful persons for any man to
have as companions, especially in a work like ours,
both being famous for downing dragons and devils.
My American friends immediately knighted me. The
papers and magazines knighted me in both the United
States and Canada. But that got me into trouble,
for only kings can make pawns into knights, and I
had to appeal several times to the Associated Press
to save myself being dubbed poseur. I
have protested at meetings when the chairman has knighted
me; at banquets, when the master of ceremonies has
knighted me. I gave it up lest accusation should
arise against me, when at a semi-religious meeting
I uttered a feeble protest against the title to which
I have no right, and my introducer merely repeated
it the more firmly, informing the audience meanwhile
that I was “too modest to use it.”
There was attached to the conferring
of the Order one elective latitude it could
either be sent out or wait till I returned to England
and attended a levee with the other recipients.
I had a great desire to see the King, and, though
it meant a year’s waiting, I requested to be
allowed to do so. This not only was most courteously
granted, but also the permission to let my presence
in England be known to the Hereditary Grand Chamberlain,
and the King would give me a private audience.
When the day arrived, I repaired to Buckingham Palace,
where I waited for an hour in the reception room in
company with a small, stout clergyman who was very
affable. I learned later that he was the Archbishop
of Canterbury, who was carrying a fat Bible from Boston,
England, I believe, to be presented to the United States
of America.
At last Sir Frederick Treves, who
kindly acted as my introducer, took me up to the King’s
study that King whose life his skill had
saved. There a most courteous gentleman made
me perfectly at home, and talked of Labrador and North
Newfoundland and our work as if he had lived there.
He asked especially about the American helpers and
interest, and laughed heartily when I told him how
many freeborn Americans had gladly taken the oath
of loyalty to His Majesty, when called up to act as
special constables for me in his oldest Colony.
He left the impression on my mind that he was a real
Englishman in spirit, though he had spoken with what
I took to be a slight German accent. The sports
and games of the Colony I had noticed interested him
very much, and all references to the splendid seafaring
genius of the people also found an appreciative echo
in his heart. When at last he handed me a long
box with a gorgeous medal and ribbon, and bade me good-bye,
I vowed I could sing “God save the King”
louder than ever if I could do so without harrowing
the feelings of my more tuneful neighbours.
When later, as a major in an American
surgical unit in France, I was serving the R.A.M.C.,
the ribbon of the Order was actually of real service
to me. It undoubtedly opened some closed doors,
though it proved a puzzle to every A.D.M.S. to whom
I had to explain the anomaly of my position when I
had to go and worry him for permission to cross the
road or some new imaginary line. In England, and
even in America, I found that the fact that the King
had recognized one’s work was a real material
asset. It was a credential only on
a larger scale like that from our Minister
to the Colonies, the Marquis of Ripon, who kindly
had given me his blessing in writing when first I visited
Canada.
How far signs of superiority are permissible
is to my mind an open question. Hereditary human
superiority does not necessarily exist, because selective
precautions are not taken, and the environment of
the superior is very apt to enfeeble the physical machine,
anyhow. The question of the hereditary superiority
of a man’s soul, being outside my sphere, I
leave to the theologians. History, which is the
school of experience, belies the theory, whatever
current science may say. As for the giving of
hereditary titles, it is significant that they do
not as a rule go to scholars or even scientific men,
but to physical fighters, being physical rewards for
material services. When these are in the possession
of offspring no longer capable of rendering such services,
it appears ridiculous that they should sail under false
colours.
To make a man a hereditary duke for
being humble and modest, or hereditary marquis for
being unselfish and generous, or an earl for being
a man of peace, and a benefactor in the things which
make for peace, such as a good husband and father
and comrade, has, so far as I know, never been tried.
Some of the so-called lesser honours, such as knighthood,
are reserved for these. However, an order of knightly
citizens, so long as they are real knights, is, after
all, little more than the gold key of the Phi Beta
Kappa, or the red triangle of the Y.M.C.A. worker,
or the Red Cross badge of the nurse. We are human,
anyhow, and such concessions, seeing that they do have
an undoubted stimulating value in the present stage
of our development, to an Englishman seem permissible.