SOME GERMAN WOMEN IN 1870.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."] Sia,—I have lately come across Florence Nightingale to her Nurses (Macmillan, 1915), a collection of " messages " to members of the St. Thomas's School of Nursing, founded and fostered by that noble "lady with the lamp," equally great in heart and head. Quite apart from its special counsels for special work, the modest book is rich in stimulating suggestion for any reader who feels that we ought to be learning to the last how to live and serve. But I refer to it now for the sake of one incidental passage only. This occurs in a " message " written in 1873, when the Franco- German War was still recent. Miss Nightingale records (in the words I quote below) an incident of that time which should not be forgotten. It is well to know, with all we know of the terrible attitude of German women to-day, what some German women were then. And it is a reflection not without its caution for our- selves that little more than a generation and a half of mate- rialism, secularism, and cultivated national self-seeking has brought about in Germany a general deterioration of the heart which makes it, I am afraid, unthinkable that this scene of 1870 should be re-enacted in 1918.—I am, Sir, isc.,
" On ono of the severest days in the late war between France and Germany, an immense detachment, many thousands, of wretched French prisoners were passing through the poorest streets of one of the largest and poorest German towns. . . . Every door in this poor 'East End ' opened; not one remained closed; and out of every door came a poor German woman, carrying in her hand the dinner or supper she was cooking for herself, her husband, or children; often all she had in the house was in her hands. And this she crammed into the hands of the most sickly-looking prisoner as he passed by, often into his mouth, as he sank down exhausted in the muddy street. And the good-natured German escort . . . turned away their heads, and let the women have their way, though it was late, and they were weary too. Before the prisoners had been the first hour in their prison, six had lain dawn in the straw and died. But how many lives had been saved that night by the timely food of these good women, giving all they had, not of their abundance but of their poverty, God only knows, not we. This was told by an Englishman who was by and saw it; one of our own ' Aid Committee.' "—(Florence Nightingale to her N urses, pp. 42, 43.)
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