Editorial August 27, 1910 Issue

THE CALL OF DUTY

Annie M. Knott

The press of England and America has devoted many columns in the last week to giving heartfelt expressions of love and reverence for Florence Nightingale, the noble Englishwoman whose earthly career has so recently closed. In reading of what she had undertaken and accomplished, one could but recall Admiral Nelson's famous signal to the fleet, "England expects every man to do his duty." This call did not extend to women, whose duties were supposed to lie strictly within the sphere of the home, but a good many years after the "mighty seaman" had passed away, the brave woman, already named, stepped from the seclusion of a happy home to prove woman's fitness to serve the world, even on the battlefield, if need be; though never to hurt but to heal, to correct existing abuses, never in anywise to perpetuate them.

It is of course well known that Florence Nightingale had to encounter the fiercest opposition, and the most scathing ridicule, not only from men, but also from the many of her own sex who held narrow views respecting woman's duty, and possibilities, the majority insisting that women must fulfil their destinies by wifehood and motherhood, and that the one who failed to enter this sphere missed the greatest opportunity for the development of character. The melancholy tone of much of the literature of the earlier part of the last century, in dealing with this question, seems almost amusing today, as we think upon the wonderful achievements of the women who have stood alone with God and their own divinely-bestowed capabilities, in some of the many lines of reform work which are making for human progress. Longfellow has said,—

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