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On Thursday, June 3rd, I drove in the "bug" to Boulogne, and took the steamer to England. I went through a nasty time in Belgium, but now a good deal of queer affection is shown me, and I believe they all rather like me in the corps. The following brief impression of Miss Macnaughtan's work at the soup-kitchen forms the most appropriate conclusion to her story of her experiences in Belgium.
There was one wounded Belgian to whom my aunt gave my address before she left for Russia that he might have someone with whom he might correspond. I used to hear from him regularly, and every letter breathed gratitude to "la dame écossaise." He said she had saved his life. Miss Macnaughtan's lectures to munition-workers were, perhaps, the best work that she did during the war.
They are bright and witty about amputations, and do not shudder at anything. I am feeling rather out-of-date amongst them. Letter to Miss Macnaughtan's Sisters. DR. HECTOR MUNRO'S AMBULANCE, FURNES, BELGIUM, 23 October. I think I may get this posted by a war correspondent who is going home, but I never know whether my letters reach you or not, for yours, if you write them, never reach me.
If one might for once feel that by paying a fare, however high, one could ensure having something a railway journey, a motor-car, or even a bed! My work isn't so heavy at the kitchen now, and the hours are not so long, so I hope to do some work of a literary nature. To Miss Macnaughtan's Sisters. VILLA LES CHRYSANTHÈMES LA PANNE, BELGIUM, Sunday, 28 February.
The vans would have to have the Red Cross painted on them, and in small letters, somewhere inconspicuous, "Miss Macnaughtan's Travelling-Kitchens." This is only for identification. I thought we might begin with three, and get them sent out at once, and go on as they are required. I must have a capable person and a helper in charge of each, so that limits my number.
A large and enthusiastic audience assembled at the Park-hall, Cardiff, on Monday evening, to hear and see Miss Macnaughtan's "Stories and Pictures of the War."
To her poorer and humbler friends she was kindness itself, and she was extraordinarily staunch in her friendships. Nothing would make her "drop" a person with whom she had once been intimate. In attempting to give a character-sketch of a person whose nature was as complex as Miss Macnaughtan's, one admits defeat from the start.
But when one remembered how splendidly she always responded to any claim on her own kindness one forgave her for being a little exacting. Perhaps Miss Macnaughtan's greatest handicap in life was her immense capacity for suffering suffering poignantly, unbearably, not only for her own sorrows but for the sorrows of others.
The old question arises: "To what purpose is this waste?" And the old answer comes still to teach us the underlying meaning and beauty of what seems to be unnecessary sacrifice: "She hath done what she could." Indeed, that epitaph might fitly describe Miss Macnaughtan's war work. She grudged nothing, she gave her strength, her money, her very life.
Moscow. 2 December. Hilda Wynne was rather feverish to-day, and lay in bed, so I had a solitary walk about the Kremlin, and saw a fine view from its splendid position. But, somehow, I am getting tired of solitude. I suppose the war gives us the feeling that we must hold together, and yet I have never been more alone than during this last eighteen months. To Miss Macnaughtan's Sisters.
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