From the Millennial Star, May 1944 —

Mending the Nets

By Edith Russell

There was a picture of women mending the nets. Their men had faced death in the night, and were tired with the struggle. The faces of the women were calm. Always they mend the nets. Even now. . . .

Men put on uniform and go to war. They put aside all gentleness, because they are faced with bestiality, cruelty and lust for power, and grow hard in the struggle. The bomber boys drop death upon petrified cities and laugh among themselves and cover the horror of it all with brave jokes. They are peaceful men, and humour is their only refuge sometimes.

But later, when they come home, there are wounds to be healed, which no surgeon’s skill can reach. The nets are broken and hang limp and futile, waiting for the fingers of a woman, a wife or a mother, to mend them. It is a woman’s hands which gather up the ravelled ends of war and knit them together again into a pattern of goodness, humanity and love. Always they mend the nets. . . .

-oOo-

From the Millennial Star, June 1944 —

Woman’s Sphere

By Edith Russell

Men were dying on the battlefields of Crimea. They were wounded and there was no one to heal them. Their conditions were so appalling that fevers and disease were rampant. Their cries filled Europe.

In London, in one of its most elegant drawing rooms, a young woman, delicately bred and nurtured, heard them. She did not hesitate. She called together a handful of nursing sisters and announced her intention of going out to the war-zone, there to nurse the wounded. She set aside the protests of those who loved her and would have prevented her.

Thus another war was waged and won on the battlefields of Crimea; a war against ignorance, prejudice and indifference, which had to be fought by the sheer pluck and unconquerable determination of one slight, delicate woman.

The story is old of how the wounded, often sleepless at night, would wait for the visit of the “Lady with the Lamp.” and how in their gratitude they would kiss the very shadow of her as she passed. Her nobility lay in service. To scrub floors was not beneath the dignity of her to whom the entire world later paid homage.

She was the genesis of the great Nursing Profession of today.

Women are still needed to take the lamp into the dark places of suffering caused by war and accident. The General Board of the Relief Society recommends that Relief Society women take advantage of Red Cross classes in first-aid, and home-nursing, wherever possible. To nurse the sick is an inherent quality of womanhood. They can give to the world a noble contribution which only women can make with all the attributes natural to their sex.