NURSE CAVELL’S WORDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 July 1939, Page 8

NURSE CAVELL’S WORDS

OLD UNHAPPY FAR-OFF THINGS.

We all made a great fuss of Nurse Cavell during the war. writes Miss Naomi Jacob, the novelist, in her book of reminiscences, -More About Me.” But wo have done that poor lady more injustices since the war than by merely erecting a hideous statue to her memory. We have forgotten those words of hers —wo quote glibly enough: “Patriotism is not enough”—and forget the rest. "I must have no bitterness nor hatred in my heart against anyone.” We forget a whole lot of things, and one of them is—too often —the man who did the fighting, If war is the great and glorious thing that so many people declare it to be, if it is a vital necessity as many more people protest: if our only protection against the wickedness of other nations lies in tiie men who carry arms : to defend us. then surely those men ought to be regarded as saviours, not I only while the memory cf war is with us, but for ever. Of course, they are in theory as in sentimental songs and ■ stories. In real life —well, for a short time wo were ready to cry at every word end: “Thank you, Mr Atkins,” wo applauded when we heard the famous slogan that England was to be a land fit for heroes to live in. That's why we let so many cf the returned soldiers find cut for themselves when they were discharged men. looking for work, that it took a hero to live in it at all. Let's face it fairly. Wo have forgotten, the majority of us at all events, what we felt like during air raids, we have ceased to be frightened when wd see a telegraph boy walking up the garden path to our front door, we have forgotten what the streets looked like round Drury Lane and the Aldwych one night after the aeroplanes had been over. It might do us good to remember those things when wc—(and even in England wo have some pretty good “fire-eaters") —talk about defending our honour, when we listen to war scares with a kind of savage satisfaction and talk of glory.