One hundred years ago this week the jingoism-resistant Brisbane Worker ran Arthur Guiterman's new verse about the saintliness of the Great War's nurses and ran an essay about lessons mankind might learn from nurses' war workplaces.
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The Red Cross Nurse.
She goes amid the maddened press
Of Teuton, Briton, Slav, and Gaul,
Our Nation's White Ambassadress,
The foe of none, the friend of all.
Above the guns, above the cheers
For flag of Kaiser, Folk or King
The common cry alone she hears,
The cry of human suffering.
Still men will play the devil's game,
Though all must lose and none may win,
And still a foolish world's acclaim
Exalts the sworded paladin.
But tears will fall and Iips will pray
And hearts beat warm in every land
For her who saves while heroes slay
Oh valiant soul! Oh gentle hand!
"A Victorian doctor, who has served for a while at a field hospital in France, talking about what he had seen there, said, 'Our Tommies and the Germans were splendid pals.'
"What a powerful, though unconscious, condemnation of the artificial rancour of war! When the artificial glamour departs and sore stricken combatants are removed to the hospital quarters together, each sees that the other is not the outrageous monster he had been wont to depict, but an ordinary poor wretch just like himself."