They crossed the English Channel and arrived at Boulogne in France on
the following morning, where they were given a rousing greeting by the
voluble French fish-wives, who had heard of their mission and who
crowded around them to get a sight of the angels of mercy. From there
they made their way to the seat of the war, and Miss Nightingale looked
for the first time on the hospital where she was so soon to acquire
immortal fame.

It may well be thought that her heart sank when she saw the enormity of
the task that lay before her, for she had been sent to bring order from
chaos, plenty from want, comfort from torture and cleanliness from
wholesale filth. She had to contend not only with these awful
conditions, but with the dislike and distrust of the medical officers
with whom she was to work, who resented the fact that a woman had been
sent out to reorganize what they considered a part of their department,
and who doubted, because she was a woman, that she would be capable of
doing so efficiently.

And when she arrived there was no time to spend in preliminary
planning, for active fighting had been going on at the front and the
wounded from recent battles were pouring in, adding to the confusion
that already existed. They were laid groaning in hallways and on the
bare ground until such time as the doctors could look after them.

Then Florence Nightingale, hardly taking breath, plunged into the task
that awaited her and sent her nurses to the quarters where they were
most needed. With their own hands these brave Englishwomen scrubbed the
reeking floors and supervised the work of the orderlies. They visited
the quartermasters and obtained the supplies that had been tied up
through faulty administration and through army red tape, and in a short
time they had established a diet kitchen where several hundred sick and
wounded men could have the food they required, food that would save
their lives.

The death rate, we are told, before this woman nurse and her little
company arrived at the hospital was sixty percent of all the cases that
were treated there--and after she had effected the changes that she saw
were necessary, the death rate was only one percent--a fact in itself
that speaks more loudly than any words for her efficiency and her
bravery.

At times this indomitable woman was on her feet for twenty hours out of
the twenty-four, supervising, directing, taking the last message of
some dying soldier for his family, feeding another who was too weak to
feed himself. The doctors who had been her opponents soon looked up to
her and became her devoted friends, and the men who had been through
such terrible sufferings thought she was indeed an angel from heaven,
and, as she passed down the long wards would furtively kiss her shadow
as it fell across their blankets. Many a time she took charge of cases
that had been given up by the doctors, who turned their attention
always to those whom they believed had a fighting chance for life, and
she nursed them back to life with a patience and a tenderness that the
doctors could not spare.

From the ships and warehouses there commenced to appear the comforts
that sick men demanded--sheets and nightgowns, socks and pillows; in
the place of the nauseous beef stew, the wounded began to get broths
and jellies. Should they die they were sure of a woman's hand and a
kindly ministration at the last, for Florence Nightingale had resolved
that no man should die unattended in her hospital. And the wonders she
performed were heard of back in England, where her name became
national.

She had gone to Scutari in 1854. In May, 1855, she visited other
hospitals that were nearer the seat of war and went into the trenches
themselves before Sebastopol. One of her biographers tells us that when
she entered the trenches she was warned by a sentinel to go no further,
because the enemy had the place under close watch and would certainly
open fire when they beheld a group of people at that particular point.

"My good young man," replied Miss Nightingale, "more dead and wounded
have passed through my hands than I hope you will ever see on the
battlefield during the whole of your military career; believe me, I
have no fear of death."

Then she fell ill with Crimean fever, and through the army the news was
received with more consternation than a severe defeat. Men broke down
and cried like children when they heard that Miss Nightingale lay at
the point of death, and the Commander in Chief, Lord Raglan, rode
through sleet and mud for hours to visit her personally. She did not
die, however, but recovered to take up again her duties as chief nurse
and organizer.

When the war was ended Miss Nightingale remained at the Crimea until
the last soldiers were sent home, and then, and not till then, she
followed them. After most of the men had left and only a few remained
she still worked faithfully to serve them, establishing "reading huts"
and places of recreation such as the Red Cross and the Y.M.C.A.
established in France and Belgium in the course of the World War some
sixty years later.

As a matter of fact the work performed by Miss Nightingale was
indirectly responsible for the birth of the Red Cross which was
organized in Switzerland some four years after she had finished her
work at the Crimea, and certainly no name in the Red Cross, in spite of
the host of noble men and women who have served there, has ever equaled
the glory of her own.

She returned to England quietly as she had left, although a British
Government placed a battleship at her service--and she lived in England
engaged in useful and philanthropic work for a great many years. With a
fund of about $250,000 she founded the Nightingale Home for the proper
training of nurses, a fund that she could have doubled or trebled had
she so desired, or if the needs of the home had required it. In the
following years she was frequently consulted on hospital organization
in the armies not only of Great Britain but of Continental nations as
well. She died in 1910, one of the great figures among the heroines of
history.

CHAPTER XXVI

FATHER DAMIEN

Many are the stories of brave doctors and ministers who have sacrificed
themselves in times of pestilence and plague, caring for the sick,
allowing experiments to be performed on their own bodies, and giving
their lives without fear in the hope of saving invalids and sufferers;
but no story is more thrilling than that of the Belgian priest named
Father Damien.

Father Damien's real name was Joseph de Veuster, and he was born in the
year 1840, in the little village of Tremeloo in Belgium, not far from
the city of Louvain that became famous in the World War when the
Germans sacked it, burned its university and murdered its inhabitants.

A strong religious impulse ruled the de Veuster family, and out of
three children two were destined for a religious life. As a matter of
fact all three finally entered the service of the Church--a girl named
Pauline who entered a convent and two brothers, Auguste and Joseph, who
became respectively Father Pamphile and Father Damien.

Originally the parents of these three children had decided that Auguste
was to become a priest and Joseph was to enter business and be a
merchant, but it could easily be seen the priesthood was also the life
for Joseph, who had a serious and contemplative nature even when very
young, and spent much of his time in prayer and meditation. On one
occasion, when only four years old, Joseph had been found on his knees
before the altar of the church when it was supposed that he had
wandered away from home and been lost in the woods or the fields about
the town, and when still a young boy he was fond of taking long walks
by himself in the fields and of herding sheep until he became known as
"the little shepherd."

When Joseph was eighteen his sister Pauline left home to enter the
convent, and even before that time his brother had gone to Paris to
study at the home of the Picpus Fathers. Joseph himself, in accordance
with his parents' design that he was to become a business man, went to
a town in France called Braine le Comte to learn the rudiments of a
commercial career and to study the French language. But while he had
gone there willingly, he felt the desire for a religious life more and
more strongly, until he finally told his parents that he desired to be
a priest. It was not difficult for him to obtain their consent and
Joseph went to Paris to study at the same school that his brother had
attended.

In Paris Joseph served as a novice and when this term was ended he went
to Louvain where his brother was already a priest in holy orders,
having adopted the name of Father Pamphile. Joseph himself planned to
take the name of Father Damien.

For some time Joseph lived with his brother in Louvain where he
continued his studies, but he was not yet ordained as a priest when an
event took place that changed the whole course of his life and was
destined in the end to make his name famous throughout the civilized
world.

The Picpus Fathers, like many other Catholic brothers, were great
missionaries, carrying on this service in what were then called the
Sandwich Islands, now better known as the Hawaiian Islands, under the
Government of the United States. At that time, however, the islands
formed an independent state under a native king and there was a great
deal to be done by the missionaries that went there.

Father Pamphile received orders to go to the Sandwich Islands and
engage in missionary work. He was delighted, for this work appealed to
him and he felt that he could serve his Church better in that far
country than by remaining in Louvain where he had his parish. After his
passage had been engaged, however, Father Pamphile was smitten with an
attack of typhus fever, and found himself unable to answer the call to
foreign service when the time came.

Now Joseph was even more ardent than his brother, and he burned to
answer this call himself, although he was not yet a priest. He asked
Father Pamphile, however, if it would be his pleasure for him to take
his place and engage in the missionary work that had been intended for
the elder brother; and Father Pamphile was only too glad to have Joseph
perform the task that his illness had rendered him unable to perform
himself. So Joseph wrote to his superiors, volunteering to go to the
Sandwich Islands in place of Father Pamphile, and soon a letter was
received consenting to the new arrangement. Wild with delight he told
his brother of what had taken place and at once commenced making his
preparations for the voyage.

The islands to which Father Damien was bound are of the greatest
tropical beauty, and the natives have become known all over the world
for their strange customs, their unusual music and their skill in
swimming the deep blue waters that surround the land where they live.
At that time, however, they were suffering from the ravages of the most
terrible disease, perhaps, in the entire world,--certainly the one most
feared from the times of the Bible down to the present day. This was
the disease of leprosy.

Leprosy was not a native disease in the Hawaiian Islands originally,
but had been carried there by merchants or voyagers from the Far East
where was its home, but it spread so rapidly among the natives that
before long it seemed as if the Hawaiian Islands themselves had been
the cradle of this terrible scourge. This was due, we are told, to the
hospitable habits of the islanders, who lived closely together, and to
their kindness in persisting in keeping with them those members of
their families who had already fallen its victims. At about the time
that Father Damien reached the islands, however, the Government had
taken the matter in hand, and all the lepers that could be found were
torn from their families and carried to a lonely island named Molokai.
Here they were outcasts, deserted by their friends and relatives,
living in wretchedness and desolation and, in that time, provided only
with the barest necessities of life.

After a voyage of five months, in which his ship contended with many
gales and much rough weather, Father Damien arrived in the Sandwich
Islands and was at once made a full priest and given a parish in a wild
part of the country--a parish so large that it took him days to go from
one end of it to the other. He worked hard and soon became well known
among the natives under his care, and to his fellow churchmen as a man
of great earnestness and much physical strength.

One day Father Damien happened to be at a meeting of churchmen which
was being addressed by the Bishop who said that he deeply regretted
that he could spare no priest to send to the Island of Molokai to the
unfortunate lepers, who seemed to be cast off there forsaken of God and
man alike and whose condition was wretched beyond belief. But Father
Damien at once arose and pointed out to the Bishop that a priest
_could_ be spared for such service, for one of the newcomers to the
islands could take charge of his own parish, while he himself, he said,
would go to Molokai and spend his life in caring for the lepers, whose
condition made his heart bleed whenever he thought of them.

It can be imagined that a gasp of astonishment and admiration went
through the assemblage that heard this courageous offer, for the man
who volunteered for such service was going to living death--to a place
of horror and human suffering where life appeared in its most hideous
form, and where disease wrote its imprint on the human body with such a
terrible flourish that the very sight of Father Damien's future
companions was enough to strike fear to the heart's core. But Father
Damien thought little of all this; he knew that he could do much good
among the lepers, and he made the offer in simple sincerity without a
thought of himself or of the dangers that he would encounter.

It is needless to say that it was accepted. On the spot Bishop Maigret
assigned to Father Damien the island of Molokai for a parish, and the
brave priest left on the next boat, not even having time to take with
him a change of linen or the simplest necessities of life.

It may be thought that Father Damien's heart sank when he reached the
island. A high and gloomy cliff of rock towered above the settlement of
the lepers, and he found them living in the rudest of huts, dying from
vice as well as from disease. Water was difficult to obtain and there
were none of the conveniences and few of the necessities of life.
Moreover, in that settlement, which was one that had lost all hope, the
only law that was known was the law of despair, and those that lived
there tried to forget their unhappy lot in wild orgies and revels,
drinking a fiery spirit they distilled themselves called "Ki" which was
made from the root of a plant that grew in profusion on the island,
fighting and gambling as they chose, and dying like dogs with none to
care for them, and with little hope for even a decent burial.

Here in this hell hole Father Damien was left to his own devices and
surrounded by the misshapen and hideous creatures for whose lives he
had sacrificed his own. Bishop Maigret accompanied him to Molokai, and
told the lepers he had brought them a new Father, who loved them so
much that he was willing to live with them and become one of them. Then
the good bishop went back to Honolulu, and Father Damien set himself
about the task that he had made his entire life work.

As he could not sleep in the huts of the lepers, the brave priest made
his lodging on the ground beneath a pandanus tree, and calling his new
parishioners together he preached to them with brave and comforting
words, telling them that they must not despair, but make the most of
their lives as they were, and that he would help them to build better
houses and bring to them the comforts that they needed. And at once he
busied himself getting building materials from the Government, with
which trim cottages were built, and water pipes, through which he had
fresh water piped down to the settlement from a cold spring above the
cliff. He built a chapel and a dispensary, and not content with this he
bandaged the sores of the lepers with his own hands, and washed their
wounds. Through his efforts a hospital was finally provided and a
doctor came to Molokai, and following his example sisters of mercy and
brave missionaries came there to work, but for a long time Father
Damien was alone with his charges, performing rough tasks with none to
aid him, except the aid that he obtained from the lepers themselves.

It cannot be thought that a man who performed such services could
forever escape contracting the disease, and after Father Damien had
been ten years on Molokai he found himself a victim of the scourge
against which he had so bravely and successfully contended. A visit to
the resident doctor confirmed the worst of his fears, and after that
when speaking to his congregation he used the words "we lepers,"
telling them that he himself had received the cross from which they
suffered, and henceforth was one of them in something more than name.

Although he was now an invalid, he did not fail to perform his priestly
duties until the end, but he never told his family in Belgium of the
misfortune that had befallen him. They learned it eventually from
others, and the shock of the discovery hastened his mother's death.

After fifteen years' service among the lepers Father Damien died of the
disease, leaving behind him a name for pure self-sacrifice that has not
been surpassed since the beginning of the Christian era. He had lived
to see the leper colony grow from a ribald, obscene settlement to an
orderly hospital where as much as was possible was done for the
sufferers that were compelled to remain there. And he had the
satisfaction of knowing that others would carry on efficiently the work
that he had begun.

But in spite of all his bravery and his self-sacrifice this heroic
priest was not without his traducers. A short time after his death a
certain missionary named Dr. Hyde made scurrilous charges against him
which were answered by that great writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, in a
letter that has become one of the classics of English literature, and
in which it was predicted that Father Damien would be made a saint by
the Church of Rome, as he is indeed a saint in the bravery and purity
of his life and his deeds.

CHAPTER XXVII

CATHERINE BRESHKOVSKY

In the year 1844 in Russia was born one of the most remarkable women of
modern times. Her full name is Ekaterina Constantinovna
Breshko-Breshkovskaya, but in America she is called Catherine
Breshkovsky, and as such she will be known in these pages. Both her
father and her mother were of noble birth, and when she was a little
girl her father had a large estate on which hundreds of serfs were held
in bondage.

While the negroes in the United States were kept in slavery, the
peasants in Russia were in almost as bad a plight. They lived on the
estates of the great nobles and formed a part of the nobles' property.
Toiling from dawn until far into the night with frequent floggings and
browbeatings from their masters they bore the burdens of the Russian
government that gave them nothing in return. While the noblemen feasted
on the fruits of the peasants' toil, the peasants themselves starved to
death. When war came it was the peasants who furnished the armies while
the nobles themselves seldom went to the front but remained behind the
lines in safety.

When Catherine was a little girl she saw many instances of injustice
and oppression, although the serfs on her father's estate were treated
far better than many others. She did not know why she herself had fine
clothes and delicate food, when the children of her father's servants
were ragged and dirty, and often had just enough to eat to keep them
from starving. She used to ask her parents what was the reason that
they had no work to perform, while others had to get up when the stars
were still shining and labor until long after the sun had set at night.
And why the ones who did not work were so much better off than the
others who did. And before she was eight years old, she had formed the
habit of giving away her own possessions to the children of the serfs,
who never had the pretty things with which she was surfeited.

Before she was nine, Catherine, we are told, had read a long history of
Russia in nine large volumes, and when she was a girl of sixteen she
had made an especial study of the French Revolution and the causes that
led up to it.

The Crimean war came, and soldiers went to the front in large numbers.
They were all taken from the families of the serfs, and while a certain
number of the noblemen went to the war as officers of the Russian army,
many others stayed at home safely, not being compelled to fight for
their country as the peasants were. And the injustice of the system was
very evident to the young girl, who even then was forming the idea of
devoting her life to aiding the suffering and oppressed people who
surrounded her.

About the time that the Civil War began in the United States a great
change came over the peasantry in Russia, but it was a change that
seemed to do them little good. The Russian Czar issued a proclamation
in 1861 in which he declared that all serfs in his dominions were at
liberty, and if they chose could leave the estates of their former
masters and seek work where they wished.

But the serfs were worse off than ever before, because in the
proclamation nothing was said about the land on which they had been
living and which belonged to the nobles. They knew no trade except that
of tilling the soil, and now that they were no longer the property of
the nobles, their land was taken away from them and they had no means
by which they could earn a living. Then terrible scenes commenced to be
enacted. The serfs were ruthlessly driven from their homes and when
they sought to remain were beaten in great numbers, being flogged so
severely with the knout that many of them died as a result. Most of
them were densely ignorant, and reading and writing were far beyond
their knowledge. They could not understand why the land on which they
had always lived and worked was taken from them, and why they were now
denied even the bitter bread that they had formerly been able to earn.

Among the Russian nobility, however, were many high minded young men
and women, who like Catherine felt the injustice of the serfs' hard lot
and desired to help them. These young people formed into philanthropic
bands, and went into the villages to teach the serfs, help them with
their labor, minister to them in sickness and to make their condition
better in every way possible. Thousands of boys and girls of gentle
birth flocked to the Russian Universities and from there went to
befriend the serfs. Throughout the younger generation a different
feeling existed toward the common people than ever before in Russian
history.

Catherine's father himself was liberal in his views and had already
done what he could to alleviate the sufferings of his former bondsmen.
When Catherine came to him and told him that she did not think that she
could endure living in idleness any longer, but desired to support
herself, he consented, and the girl who all her life had been used to
the greatest luxuries went away to become a governess in the house of a
nobleman, where she could live honestly by the fruits of her own labor.

Her father did not long consent to this, however, and helped her to
open a boarding house for girls, where she taught school until she was
twenty-five years old when she was married. Her husband was a young
nobleman who sympathized with her liberal ideas, and himself had done a
great deal to better the condition of the Russian people. He helped his
wife work for the peasants and began a cooperative banking scheme by
which they might benefit.

But Catherine grew more and more discontented with the terrible
conditions that surrounded her on every side. She happened to go to the
city of Kiev to visit her sister and she took her meals at a student's
boarding house. She heard a great deal of discussion of the condition
of Russia there and saw a great many young students who were interested
in public affairs. And one day she held a secret meeting of students in
her room to talk over what more could be done to make Russia a better
place to live in.

While the younger generation had been striving in every way possible to
help the serfs, the Russian Government did all in its power to hinder
them. This government was then an absolute autocracy, which means that
it was under the complete control of one ruler and a few advisors. The
Czar of Russia knew that when his people grew better educated and more
enlightened his own power would grow less, so he did all that he could
to keep them in the state of darkness and ignorance in which they had
languished for centuries. When young noblemen and girls sought to teach
or help the peasants, they met with obstacles on every side, and many
of them were treated with great severity by the officers of the Czar.
This naturally angered them, and they began to form plans to overthrow
the Czar's power, since they saw that any real progress would be
impossible so long as the regime that then existed remained in force.
In short they became revolutionists; and Catherine herself was well on
the road to becoming one.

When Catherine came home from Kiev she and her husband conducted a
series of meetings in which they made speeches to the peasants and
labored harder than ever to improve their condition, but this soon
brought them under the eye of the Czar's spies, and they were warned
that they had better discontinue their efforts and let the peasants
take care of themselves. And this was the final event that determined
Catherine to become a revolutionist and bend all her energies to
overthrowing the Czar's government.

She talked it over with her husband and asked him if he were ready to
throw in his lot with those who sought to change the government, saying
that she herself had resolved to do so. It meant suffering, poverty,
hardships and very probably prison or death. Her husband was unwilling
to take the risk and they parted forever. Soon after this Catherine had
a son, and on account of the life that she had chosen was obliged to
leave him with friends. It was a bitter moment for her when she gave
him up, but it only strengthened her in her purpose.

Many revolutionists were at work in Russia at that time, and were
scattered all through the country in various disguises. They were sent
from various revolutionary centers to preach revolution to the peasants
and to kindle the flames of revolt against the Czar. Others did social
work, and sought to educate the peasants to the point where they would
have sufficient knowledge to understand the revolutionary doctrines
when they heard them--and it was in this form of work that Catherine
first engaged.

At last, however, she entered into the more active work of the
revolutionists, and in person commenced to spread revolutionary ideas
among the common people. With two companions disguised as peasants, and
in peasant garb herself, carrying a pack crammed with revolutionary
pamphlets and literature, Catherine made her way to a little village,
where she took a small hut and pretended to be a woman who dyed
clothes. As soon as she grew to know the peasants she commenced to
preach to them and to incite them to revolution. She told them that the
Czar was an evil ruler, and that he and his nobles had always fattened
themselves at the peasants' expense; that the Russian people would
always be poor and miserable so long as the Czar remained in power;
that they had a right to the land that was taken from them, and were no
better than slaves who dared not call their souls their own--and
furthermore that their only salvation lay in rising throughout Russia,
overthrowing the Czar and establishing a government where all men
should be free and equal, and where every man would have a right to
earn his daily bread.

When the peasants in one village failed to respond Catherine and her
comrades moved on to another town, and little by little they brought
the doctrines of revolution to the mass of ignorant people, who were
looking for some means to better themselves and realize a little of the
happiness of life.

The life of a traveling preacher of this sort was filled with hardship.
Catherine, who had been used to every luxury, was forced to eat the
coarsest food and often to go hungry. She had to sleep in houses that
were filled with dirt and vermin. Her audiences were stupid in the
extreme, and were often as afraid of the revolutionists as they were of
the Cossacks and the Czar's officials. Moreover there was always the
danger of arrest and imprisonment, followed by exile to Siberia, or
death on the gallows.

One day in the town of Zlatopol, where Catherine was carrying on her
revolutionary work, a police officer stopped her and demanded her
passport. This passport was forged and when she showed it he suspected
her. Then, when he commenced to treat her with the indignities to which
the peasants were accustomed she resented it, disclosing the fact that
she was from the upper classes. Her pack was torn open and the
revolutionary pamphlets were found. The case against her was complete.

She was hurried to prison and thrown into a foul dungeon, where the
filth and suffering forced on her were indescribable. And here she was
kept for long, weary months until her case should come to trial.

It was in this prison that she first learned the secret code that
prisoners in Russia used to communicate with one another. One day, as
she lay on the bundle of rags that formed her couch, she heard a faint
tapping on an iron pipe that ran through her cell. She responded, and
on the pipe tapped out the alphabet, one tap standing for "a", two for
"b" and so on. From this laborous method she learned another code which
was the one generally in use among the imprisoned revolutionists; and
she spent long hours communicating with friends in different parts of
the prison who were in solitary confinement like herself, and whom she
had never seen.

At last Catherine was brought up for trial and was sentenced to exile
in Siberia. Because she told her judges that she refused to acknowledge
the authority of the Czar she was given an extra sentence of five years
at hard labor in the mines. She had already been in prison several
years awaiting trial--and out of three hundred who had been imprisoned
in the same jail more than one hundred had died or become insane.

Catherine then commenced a weary two months journey into Siberia, where
she was first to go to prison and later remain as an exile. The
prisoners traveled in covered wagons, that jolted and bumped endlessly
over the rough roads, and at night they were thrown into roadside
jails, filthy beyond description. For eight long weeks this journey
continued until Catherine reached the prison at Kara.

Here she was not compelled to work after all, but was forced to eat the
vilest food and wear out her soul in idleness, with no occupation
except to witness the sufferings of her companions. When her prison
term was ended she was taken to a little town called Barguzon near the
Arctic Circle, where the thermometer often dropped to fifty below zero,
and here she was kept under close guard for many years.

Words cannot describe the misery of the Siberian exiles as Catherine
saw them--men, women and children, sick and forlorn, compelled to march
for miles over the bleak countryside, surrounded by brutal guards who
prodded them on with their bayonets. After she had been for some time
at Barguzon she tried to escape with three men who were also political
exiles, and sought to gain the Pacific coast a thousand miles away,
where she hoped she might take ship for America. She was pursued and
recaptured, and given another term in the prison at Kara on account of
her attempt to escape.

Catherine was a young woman when she went into exile; she remained
until she was old and her hairs were gray before her term of punishment
ended. She had been in exile more than twenty years and in all that
time she had not seen one of her relatives or heard the voice of a
friend. At last she was set free.

When she arrived at her former home she spent several months in making
visits to relatives, and once again entered the work of the
revolutionists. She was now famous in their circles and known to great
numbers of peasants who loved her dearly and called her "Grandmother."
She had many narrow escapes from the police, but her friends always
succeeded in concealing her.

On one occasion she was hiding in a house, while the police officers
searched for her. It was the cook's day off, and Catherine, in the
cook's dress, was stirring the soup at the stove while the police
officers ranged the house to discover her.

In 1904 she came to the United States to do what she could to spread
the work of the revolution by gaining money from Russians in America.
She received a cordial reception and made many friends among the
Americans, some of them being the most prominent men and women in the
country. The Russians themselves received her most enthusiastically
wherever she went, and she returned with $10,000 for the Cause.

Through the double dealing of one of her supposed friends, Catherine
was arrested again in 1908 and sent once more to Siberia. She remained
there until after the outbreak of the World War, while the Germans
overran Belgium and Russia in turn. She remained, in fact, until the
revolution for which she had labored for so many years at last took
place, and the Czar was overthrown. Then she was invited to return by
the Government of Kerensky, who came into power when the Czar fell.

Her return from Siberia with the other political exiles was like a
triumphal ovation. At every stop the train made crowds thronged about
her carriage, cheering and shouting for "the little grandmother of the
Russian Revolution," as she was called on account of her many years of
labor for the cause. On her arrival in Moscow she was placed in the
Czar's former coach of state, and was driven in triumph through the
city to the assembly of the people called the Douma, which was then
sitting. At Petrograd she was given a sumptuous apartment in the Czar's
former palace. Everywhere her name was on the lips of thousands, and
everywhere she received cheers, kisses and handclasps. It may almost
have been worth the suffering she went through to receive a triumph so
generous as that afforded her by the Russian people, who realized that
she had been one of the chief leaders of the revolutionary movement and
that her heart was bound up in its ultimate triumph.

But the revolution did not succeed, and it was not long before Russia
was once more in the grip of a force even more deadly than that of the
former Czar. The Bolshevists soon organized and drove Kerensky from
power, and anarchy ruled throughout Russia. Catherine Breshkovsky was
declared a public enemy by the Government of Lenine and Trotsky. She
was in danger of her life if captured, as the Bolshevists were talking
of putting her to death. After an unsuccessful attempt to organize
resistance to the new government, Catherine was hidden by friends while
the Bolshevists sought her, and after traveling for six hundred miles
on horseback reached Vladivostok, where she found a steamer ready to
take her to America. Here she was again welcomed cordially and made
much of on every side, and here too she made many speeches against the
Bolshevist government. Although she is over seventy-five years old she
declares that she will still aid Russia to gain the freedom and peace
it craves and if given an opportunity she will no doubt take part in
the future development of her country.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Among the great men who have been President of the United States,
Theodore Roosevelt holds a unique position. Although he had no great
trial to undergo in the term of his office--no trial similar to what
Washington and Lincoln were forced to endure,--he endeared himself to
his fellow countrymen almost equally with these two for his splendid
Americanism, his vitality, his kindness and the force of his
personality. After his term of office ended and when he was a simple
citizen once more, the bare word of Roosevelt's opinion had more
influence on the country than the utterance of any public man who still
held office. For the power of Roosevelt as a man and an American was
greater than any other in the nation.

Roosevelt was born in New York City, as his fathers had been before him
for six generations. He was the son of Theodore Roosevelt, a glass
manufacturer, and of a southern girl named Martha Bulloch, who came
from Georgia. Both his father and mother were unusual people, and of a
quality to have a son whose greatness might be of the first
magnitude--but until Roosevelt had graduated from college, he showed no
signs that he was different from other boys.

He did not even seem to have been given the same chance for success
that is granted to other boys, for from his infancy his health was
feeble, he was undersized, and nervous, and suffered so greatly from
asthma and other troubles that he was not able to attend school
regularly.

When he was still a small boy, however, he made a resolution to gain
the bodily strength that he needed and set about conquering the
weaknesses that handicapped him. He secured a set of boxing gloves from
his father, and with great determination went to work to learn how to
defend himself from the other boys in his neighborhood, who were prone
to annoy him because he was an easy victim. He became fond of athletics
of all kinds and was intensely interested in naturalism intending at
one time to make science his life work; and he drilled himself in doing
the things that were difficult for him to do, until, though naturally
somewhat timid or shy, he did not know the meaning of the word fear,
and has been looked on as a prodigy of courage, both physical and
moral.

Roosevelt was popular in Harvard University, and gained a number of
steadfast friends who stood by him throughout his life. He received his
degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1880, and soon after married a girl named
Alice Lee. After a brief trip to Europe, where he climbed the
Matterhorn in Switzerland, he settled down to the study of law in
Columbia University, and at the same time learned its more practical
side in the downtown law offices of a relative.

But Roosevelt had not yet found himself. He had no love for the law,
and cast about for some career in which his natural energy could show
itself to better advantage. He no longer desired to be a naturalist,
for the scientific side of that profession was too sedentary for him.
He had wished to be an author, and for some time had been working on "A
History of the War of 1812," which was published soon after he left
Harvard. But in politics he found the career he was seeking, and soon
became influential in the Republican Club of the assembly district to
which he belonged, where, in spite of the fact that he was considered a
"silk stocking" because he was a gentleman, he gained the liking of the
political bosses and was elected to the State Assembly.

The slightly-built young man wearing glasses and with the reputation of
a college dude was not taken seriously in the Assembly at first, but it
was not long before he had become one of its leaders and a man of
national reputation.

He won fame in his first term by rising one day and demanding that a
certain judge be impeached. He was received with ridicule and laughter,
and was warned not to injure the party, or to make "loose charges" that
might cause trouble. He stood alone, a young and inexperienced man,
against the combined weight of machine politics in the state, and it
was practically certain that his own political future was dead as a
result of his act. But in spite of this Roosevelt demanded once more
that the judge be impeached and kept up his demand until he was
supported by certain newspapers. At last his action resulted in a
statewide cry for the impeachment of the judge, and the Assembly, which
could not afford to ignore the letters and newspaper articles which
came pouring in, was compelled to give in and do as Roosevelt had
demanded.

At another time he was attacked by a bully and ex-prize fighter who was
hired by some of his enemies to teach him the rewards to be won from
"meddling." The result was unexpected. The bully went sprawling,
knocked down by a well directed blow from the undersized, bespectacled
young assemblyman--and some of the gang that attempted to bring aid to
the fallen also found themselves upon the floor. Roosevelt, flashing
his teeth in characteristic manner, told the little knot of his enemies
who had gathered to witness the affair that he was much obliged to
them,--that he hadn't enjoyed himself so much since he had been in the
Assembly!

A terrible and bitter sorrow ended Roosevelt's political career for the
time being. His mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, died in
1884, and only twelve hours after this his wife, who had just borne him
a daughter, died also. Roosevelt's father had already passed away, and
this double tragedy was too much for him. He quitted politics and
bought a ranch in Dakota, where he hoped to find forgetfulness from
sorrow, and in a short time he was leading the wild life of a cowboy,
roping steers and riding horseback from the first break of dawn until
far after dark.

For two years Roosevelt remained in his ranch on the Little Missouri
River, hunting, cow punching and engaging, heart and soul, in the free
and strenuous life of the West. He did some writing, but believed that
his political career was ended for good and all, and he believed too
that he had become a Westerner and should remain one. But he had not
been forgotten in the East, and before he was thirty years old he
returned to New York by invitation to run on the Republican ticket for
Mayor.

He was badly beaten and for a time retired again from politics,
traveling in Europe. In London he married again, this time a girl whom
he had known from his early boyhood, named Edith Kermit Carow.

Roosevelt was not long out of public life. Two years after he had been
beaten as Mayor he was appointed on the Civil Service Commission and
worked hard and with great ability for six years. Then he was made
President of the Police Board of New York City, where he found a fight
to his liking. The New York police were notoriously corrupt, and
Roosevelt entered with all his might into the task of reorganizing and
cleaning up his department. He was thoroughly successful and not only
left a more efficient and cleaner police, but added to the national
reputation that he had already acquired.

Before his term as President of the Police Board had ended, he was
offered the position of Assistant Secretary of the Navy by President
McKinley, and accepted with alacrity. Roosevelt had always been a
staunch advocate of national preparedness for war, and was delighted to
have the opportunity of aiding this cause himself. He did what he could
for the navy and it was due to him, more than to any other man, that
Admiral Dewey was so well supplied with fuel and munitions when war
broke out with Spain that he was able to attack the Spanish fleet in
Manilla Bay without delay.

But Roosevelt was not content with working at a desk when his country
was at war. He recruited a regiment of cavalry called the "Rough
Riders" and made up largely from the cowboys and westerners he had
known in Dakota, although it included men from all parts of the United
States. This regiment was placed under the command of Roosevelt's
friend, Colonel Leonard Wood, and Roosevelt himself received the
appointment of Lieutenant Colonel. He could have had the command of the
regiment but did not think that he knew enough about army
administration, and it was due to Roosevelt that Leonard Wood received
the Colonelcy.

The Rough Riders were sent promptly to Cuba, and when Col. Wood was
promoted to the rank of Brigadier General, Roosevelt took charge of the
regiment and personally led it into action at San Juan Hill, where he
fought with the utmost gallantry. As his men charged up the hill,
Roosevelt's horse was killed under him, and with drawn sword he led his
men on foot, the most conspicuous target to be seen, far ahead of his
men, yelling and cheering them on until they swarmed over the hilltop
and the Spaniards were driven from the field.

When the war ended Roosevelt returned to New York in a blaze of glory.
The Republicans took advantage of his popularity and nominated him for
Governor of New York. He was elected by a large majority, and began at
Albany once more the work of reform that he had carried on so
courageously as a Member of the Assembly and on the Civil Service and
Police Commissions.

It was necessary for Roosevelt to gain the good will of the party
leaders, for without the support of the Republican machine he could
accomplish little at Albany. His administration was fearless and at the
same time tactful, and he soon had a reputation for being the leading
figure in progressive American politics. But he was feared and
distrusted by many of the machine politicians, who were compelled to
recognize his ability and look on him in the light of a possible
President of the United States, so when Roosevelt's second term as
Governor ended, strong efforts were made to force on him the office of
Vice President, by which his enemies hoped he would be safely put out
of the way for four years at least, and that his political career might
be ended for good and all.

In addition to the efforts of his enemies to gain this position for
him, Roosevelt's admirers throughout the country joined the demand,
thinking that the position was both an honor and a step forward. And
the demand was so strong that Roosevelt could not refuse, but accepted
the nomination to the huge delight of those who were afraid of him.

Roosevelt and McKinley were elected to office in 1900. Roosevelt had
thrown himself into the campaign with characteristic energy, and had
traveled north and south and east and west almost as many miles as
would girdle the globe, while his eyeglasses and teeth were seen and
his fiery speeches heard by millions of Americans. It is said that on
this trip Roosevelt made nearly seven hundred speeches. The result was
plain. The election was a Republican landslide, and in March, 1901,
Roosevelt entered his new duties.

Fate was against the men who had wanted him shelved, for in September
of the year when he entered office, the martyr, McKinley, was laid low
by the bullet of a red anarchist, and Roosevelt was called upon to take
up the reins of government. He was in the Adirondack Mountains at the
time of the assassination, and he made his way to Buffalo as speedily
as possible, taking a dangerous drive in the dark over a mountain road
at a full gallop.

The eyes of the nation were now centered on this comparatively young
man, who was called to the post of Chief Executive in so trying a
manner. And Roosevelt's first public act was such as to inspire the
utmost confidence in him, for he declared that he would follow out the
McKinley policies and retain the McKinley Cabinet. Throughout his term
he strove conscientiously to keep the letter of his promise, although
it was inevitable that with his own powerful character the trend of the
administration must be changed.

"His conduct of domestic as well as foreign affairs," says Herman
Hagedorn, "was fearless and vigorous. He saw clearly that the question
of most vital importance before the country was the control and strict
regulation of the great corporations. In the famous Northern Securities
merger he presented a test case to the Supreme Court which ultimately
opened the way for the prosecution of the other great corporations
which had violated the Sherman Anti-trust Law. His fight against the
conservative forces of both parties on this question, and kindred
matters of railroad regulation, was intensely bitter and extended
throughout his period of office.

"His dealings with labor were equally far sighted and firm. He favored
combinations of labor as he favored combinations of capital, but stood
as firmly against lawlessness on the part of laboring men as he stood
against it on the part of capitalists.

"'At last,' said one of the 'labor men' at a luncheon one day, 'there
is a hearing for us fellows.'

"'Yes,' cried the President emphatically. 'The White House door, while
I am here, shall swing open as easily for the labor man as for the
capitalist _and no easier_.'"

One of Roosevelt's greatest pieces of diplomacy that was kept secret at
the time, and is such a striking example of his complete and utter
fearlessness is his dealing with the German Kaiser in 1901, when
Germany broke off diplomatic relations with Venezuela, and prepared to
occupy Venezuelan territory by force of arms. Roosevelt called the
German Ambassador to the White House; he told him that unless the
Kaiser arbitrated the matter with Venezuela, the American fleet under
Admiral Dewey would be sent to Venezuelan waters to prevent any
hostilities that the Germans might undertake; he stated this as a fact,
he said, not as a threat, and he gave the German Government a week to
accede to his request.

As the week passed without word from Germany, Roosevelt told the
Ambassador that in view of the Kaiser's silence, the American fleet
would sail a day earlier than had been planned, and as promptly as
cables could do the work, Germany gave in and consented to arbitration.
Roosevelt's prompt action in this matter and the courageous stand he
took with the Berlin government undoubtedly prevented war, which might,
when started, very easily have embroiled the world.

The power of America, Roosevelt believed, was the strongest influence
against war. When he was conscious of a "veiled truculence" in the
Japanese diplomatic communications, the American battle fleet was
ordered to make a cruise around the world, ostensibly for training, but
really to show the world, and particularly the Asiatics, that the
United States had ample means to enforce its rights in all waters and
on every sea.

"Every particle of trouble with the Japanese Government and the
Japanese press," says Roosevelt in a letter, "stopped like magic as
soon as they found that our fleet had actually sailed and was obviously
in good trim. As I told Von Tirpitz (the German admiral), I thought it
a good thing that the Japanese should know there were fleets of the
white races which were totally different from the fleet of poor
Rojestvensky."

But Roosevelt was not a lover of war in spite of the warlike stand he
took on several occasions. And his efforts in bringing about peace
between Japan and Russia resulted in the award to him of the Nobel
Peace Prize of $40,000.

The constructive work he accomplished while in office is too great to
be even sketched in these brief pages. It was in Roosevelt's term,
however, that the famous Panama Canal was begun and pushed toward
completion.

When his administration had ended and he was a private citizen once
more, Roosevelt started on his famous hunting trip to the jungles of
Africa, where he indulged to the full his love of excitement and his
interest in natural history. He killed lion, hippopotamus and elephant,
tracking his game on foot and having several narrow escapes from death
by infuriated and wounded wild beasts. He then toured Europe on a trip
the like of which has not fallen to the lot of any other living man,
for he was feted and cheered like a monarch wherever he went, and
received honors that never before in the history of the world had been
accorded to a man in private life.

Roosevelt returned to America more honored and loved than any other man
in its wide boundaries, and with his usual energy he plunged once more
into the political fight. He had everything to lose and nothing to
gain, but entered the struggle with a spirit of heroism and patriotic
duty that all men must respect, whatever they think of his political
ideas. When the time came again for the Presidential struggle,
Roosevelt, who disliked the way things had been going since his term of
office, once more became a candidate, and as he was repudiated by the
Republicans he formed a party of his own which he called the
Progressive Party and ran for President against Taft and Woodrow
Wilson.

Wilson had the solid Democratic vote behind him, and while the total of
the votes he received made him a minority president, he was able
nevertheless to win on account of the friction between Roosevelt and
Taft. And Roosevelt now retired to his home on Sagamore Hill, Long
Island, where although he was a private citizen again, his voice was
constantly heard throughout the country, with more influence on public
affairs than any other force outside the Administration.

When time for the next election came, the Republicans nominated Hughes
and Roosevelt retired from the race to aid the fight against Wilson,
who was nevertheless reelected. In spite of his political defeat these
years may well be considered as among the greatest in Roosevelt's life.
More than any other man he stood for true Americanism, and showed a
bewildered country the straight path toward the light of patriotism. He
was among the first to condemn the German outrages, to silence the
voices of supine pacifists and plead for action on the part of the
American Government. He was the staunchest advocate of national
preparedness, and we may say that the military training camps that gave
America officers for the war were fathered by Roosevelt as well as by
his friend and comrade in arms, General Wood, who was sponsor of "The
Plattsburg Idea."

Before this, however, Roosevelt's restless spirit took him again into
the wilderness, and with a body of chosen companions he had explored
the Brazilian jungles and penetrated wilds where no white man had ever
set foot before. In this journey, however, Roosevelt fell ill to a
severe attack of tropical fever that even his robust frame and vigorous
constitution could not shake off. He was now a sick man and growing
old, but his bodily weakness did not hinder his strong voice that was
so bravely uplifted in behalf of the best ideals of his country.

When the war broke out with Germany Roosevelt wished to go. He offered
to raise and train a force for service on European battlefields, just
as he had done in the Spanish war, nineteen years before. His offer was
refused, and, bitterly disappointed, Roosevelt was compelled to stay at
home and watch other men fight--a fact that is thought to have hastened
his death. He had hoped that his might be the lot of dying on the field
of battle. But as he could not do this, he did the next best thing--he
sent his four sons to represent him.

As all four were among the first to volunteer it can hardly be said,
however, that Roosevelt sent them. None the less the training they had
received at his hands is doubtless partly responsible for their
splendid service and the fact that all strove for and obtained
positions with combat troops.

On January 6, 1919, Theodore Roosevelt died in his sleep, a prey to the
fever that he had contracted in South America and to inflammatory
rheumatism with other complications. His death caused mourning all over
the United States and brought a personal sense of loss to the heart of
every true American. Like Lincoln, Roosevelt is a man of the ages, and
his name has been made immortal. And his last message, which he read
only the night before he died, to the members of the American Defense
Society, is symbolic and typical of Roosevelt the man.

"We have room but for one flag," he said, "the American flag--we have
room but for one loyalty and that is loyalty to the American people."

So spoke Theodore Roosevelt a few hours before he died, and his words
sum up the work of his great life.

CHAPTER XXIX

EDITH CAVELL

As the name of Florence Nightingale became world famous at the close of
the Crimean War more than sixty years ago, the name of another English
nurse who suffered martyrdom in the World War will go down into history
with the lustre of glory and self-sacrifice surrounding it. That name
is Edith Cavell.

Edith Cavell was born at Swardeston in Norwich, England, in 1873. Her
father was an English minister of the old school who was rector of a
single parish in Norwich for more than half a century. Edith and her
sister were brought up in strict conformance with church ideas and were
taught the value of leading useful lives and the glory of
self-sacrifice. As was customary at the time when she was a young girl
she received her education on the continent, attending school in the
city of Brussels in Belgium. She then returned to her home and remained
there until, when twenty-one years old and resolved to give her life to
some useful and benevolent occupation, she decided to become a trained
nurse and went to London to study that calling.

She studied at the London Hospital--a place, we are told, where the
hardest and most difficult conditions prevailed, and where the nurses
were worked to the limit of their strength. She also held the position
of a nurse in two other hospitals--the Shoreditch Infirmary in Hoxton,
and the St. Pancras Infirmary; and she gained a reputation both for
hard work and efficiency, while her patients often spoke of her
gentleness and her kindness. Not content with forgetting a patient when
discharged from the hospital, Edith Cavell often followed him to his
home and continued there the lighter nursing that would assure his
convalescence. Her regular duties were severe enough but she used a
large part of her scanty leisure for such purposes as these.

In 1906 Edith Cavell left the English hospitals, where she had made a
reputation for herself, and went back to Brussels, where she took a
position as matron in a Medical and Surgical Home. Nursing in Brussels
had been conducted hitherto by Roman Catholic Sisters of Mercy, and at
first they were inclined to look upon Miss Cavell as an untrained
outsider, but her tact, efficiency and skill soon won the hearts of
these good women, who afforded her every courtesy and entered into
cordial cooperation with her.

Her home succeeded so well that three years after its commencement,
Miss Cavell started also a training school for nurses. She was popular
everywhere in the Belgian capital, and although Protestant, she gained
the praise of the Roman Catholic priests for the generous and unselfish
work that she performed.

When the war broke out Miss Cavell was on a vacation with her mother.
Every year she returned twice to England to visit her family. Her
father had died by this time, but her mother was close to her heart and
she saw her as often as she could.

"I may be looked on as an old maid," she is reported as saying, "but
with my work and my mother I am a very happy one, and desire nothing
more as long as I have these two."

When war was declared Miss Cavell lost no time in hurrying back to
Brussels, believing that her duty called her there. She wrote a letter
commenting on the German army when it swept through Belgium--and in it
she voiced her pity for the tired, footsore German soldiers,--who were
later to slay her. Brussels became a part of the German Empire and a
tyrannical governor came there to establish his headquarters, issuing
proclamations threatening the Belgians with death for minor offenses,
and filling Brussels with spies and intrigue. Miss Cavell desired to
continue her hospital work and went to the Governor, Von Bissing, to
get permission to do so. He granted it, for the quiet English nurse
made an impression upon him. We are told that the arrogant German
formed a high opinion of her--so much so that he secretly determined to
keep her under the strictest supervision!

From that time on spies dogged her tracks. She cared for the wounded
German soldiers and nursed a number of German officers, as well as the
Belgians who were in her care, but this made no difference to the
authorities. They were determined to detect her in some crime and
punish her. It was not fitting, they thought, that an enemy should be
engaged in works of mercy, even though they themselves might benefit
thereby. And soon spies began to come to the Governor with tales and
fabrications of the crimes that she had been committing in their eyes.
They bore witness that she had given an overcoat to a Frenchman who was
cold and hungry--and the Frenchman later escaped over the Dutch
frontier. Once she gave a glass of water to a Belgian soldier. She had
given money to poor people, perhaps to soldiers. But the main reason
that the Germans hated her was because she was held in great affection
by the people of Brussels.

On the night of August fifth, 1915, we are told, Miss Cavell was tying
up the wounds of a wounded German soldier, when a group of armed men
entered the room and their leader told her roughly that she was under
arrest. A blow was the only response when she tried to expostulate. She
was taken to prison and placed in solitary confinement. Her arrest was
shrouded with the most careful secrecy, for the Germans did not want to
have the representatives of neutral governments, such as the United
States, know of the affair or of what they proposed to do.

But word of her plight did reach England through a traveler, and at
once the British Government requested the American Ambassador, Dr.
Page, to get what information he could from Brand Whitlock, the
American Minister in Belgium. He went at once to the German
authorities, but they evaded his questions and waited ten days before
giving him a reply. Then the Germans sent him a statement declaring
that Edith Cavell herself had admitted giving money to English and
Belgian soldiers and furnishing them with guides to help them to the
Dutch frontier, whence they might escape into Holland and return to
England.

This was the German statement. If what they said were true, there was
still no cause for killing the unfortunate woman in their power, for
she was not accused at any time of having been a spy. But they had
planned to try her for her life, and Mr. Whitlock soon guessed this, in
spite of the fact that the Germans kept their preparations from him so
far as possible.

An American lawyer, Mr. de Leval, was requested by Mr. Whitlock to take
Miss Cavell's case and do whatever was possible in her behalf. He was
not allowed to see the prisoner--and was not even allowed to look at
the documents in the case until the trial began. Another lawyer, who
was a Belgian, suddenly appeared and told the Americans that there was
not the least cause for them to worry as Miss Cavell was sure to
receive only just treatment. He also promised to let them know when the
trial was to take place, and that he would keep them informed of all
the developments in the case. All these promises were broken. It is
true that he sent a note a few days before the trial telling Mr.
Whitlock that the case was about to come to court, but that is all that
he told them. He never informed them that the death sentence had been
imposed. He never came to see them afterward. And when they sought him
for an explanation and for assistance, he had disappeared.

Miss Cavell was kept in solitary confinement for two months and then
was tried with a number of other persons who were accused of crimes
against the German Government. It was only from a private source that
Mr. de Leval learned that the trial was under way, and that the death
sentence had been given. Miss Cavell herself, we are told, was calm,
dignified and brave at the trial and faced her accusers heroically. She
was dressed in her nurse's uniform and wore the badge of the Red Cross.

When Mr. Whitlock learned that she had been tried and sentenced to
death he did everything possible to secure her pardon, or at least a
moderation of the punishment. He wrote to Baron Von der Lancken,
pointing out in a clear and decisive manner that Miss Cavell had served
the Germans by caring for their wounded, and that the death sentence
had never before been inflicted for the crime of which she was accused.
He also wrote a note to the Baron which is as follows:

    "My dear Baron:

    "I am too ill to present my request to you in person, but I appeal
    to your generosity of heart to support it and save this unfortunate
    woman from death. Have pity on her.

    "BRAND WHITLOCK."

All through the day the American Legation sent message after message to
the German authorities asking for information. They received none. At
6:20 in the evening they were told by a subordinate that the sentence
had not been given--only to learn later that it had indeed been
declared, and that Miss Cavell would face a firing squad at two o'clock
the following morning. Mr. Whitlock then urged Baron Von der Lancken to
appeal to Gen. Von Bissing to mitigate the sentence, and at eleven in
the evening he was told that Von Bissing refused to do anything to save
Miss Cavell's life.

At the same time that the Governor denied this appeal, Edith Cavell was
allowed to see a British chaplain. She told him that she was not in the
least afraid of death and willingly gave her life for her country. Her
words resembled those of Florence Nightingale that have been quoted
elsewhere in this book. Death, she said, was well known to her, and she
had seen it so often that it was not strange or fearful to her.

Early in the morning with her eyes bandaged Miss Cavell was led out to
face the rifles of the Huns. She wore an English flag over her bosom.
Only Germans were witnesses of the execution, but the German chaplain
who attended said that she died like a heroine.

When her death became known, the entire civilized world was shocked and
horrified. In England this murder did more to stimulate recruiting than
anything else up to that time. All day long lines of men waited to sign
the papers of enlistment, and in Miss Cavell's home town every eligible
man was sworn into the army.

A bitter denunciation of the German act was made by Sir Edward Grey.
The Germans themselves had only a poor excuse for what they had done.
In brief the case against the German authorities is as follows: they
had not previously inflicted the death penalty for the offense of which
Miss Cavell was accused; they had kept her in solitary confinement and
prevented her from consulting an advocate up to the time of her trial;
she was tried with great haste and with great secrecy, and after the
trial the sentence was carried out far more speedily than usual.
Moreover they had deceived Mr. Whitlock and the other members of the
American Legation, and had done so deliberately. After the execution
they refused to return the body.

But the name of Edith Cavell has become one of the world's great names
and her fame grows brighter as time passes. In the hospital where she
was in training for her high calling a fitting memorial to her is being
prepared--it is the Edith Cavell Home to be a permanent part of the
London Hospital where she served her difficult apprenticeship. But her
chief memorial is in the hearts and minds of the British nation.

CHAPTER XXX

KING ALBERT OF BELGIUM

The greatness of kings is not always proportionate to the size of the
kingdoms they rule, and their fame does not run in accord with the
breadth of their dominions, or the number of subjects who serve them.
This has been proved many times in history,--but never more
conclusively than in the little kingdom of Belgium, whose present
ruler, Albert the First, has already won glory equal to that of any
hero-king of any age.

Until he was a young man it was never expected that Albert would ever
be King, for he was the younger son of the younger brother of King
Leopold the Second. Much would have to take place before he could win
the throne, and Albert, in consequence, was not trained for the severe
duties of a ruler. But in the end this worked good rather than harm,
for Albert received so thorough a military education that by practical
advice and prompt action he was able to save his country in the
terrible ordeal through which it passed. And as he had expected to be
no more than one of the King's subjects, he had learned the ways of the
people more intimately than he could have done if he had always been
hemmed in with the restrictions of royalty.

When Albert was seventeen years old, his brother Baldwin died, and it
was then seen that he might indeed become King, for Leopold had no
direct male heirs. But this was not yet sure, for under certain
conditions the King had the right to appoint his successor, and he did
not decide to make Albert the heir to the throne until the Prince
married and had two sons who would ensure the permanence of the royal
Belgian family.

Albert was born in 1875 on the Eighth of April. His father was Count
Philippe of Flanders who was Leopold's youngest brother. As a boy the
young prince received an education such as would be given to any
cultivated well bred gentleman, but as it was customary for younger
sons of princes to enter the army particular attention was paid, as we
have said, to his military training.

The young prince attended military school, was drilled as a common
soldier and gradually worked his way up through the different grades to
the rank of Major. He was intensely interested in the profession of
arms and gave more than the required zeal and attention to its pursuit,
following his training in a regiment of Grenadiers, and instructed by
the most experienced officers.

Albert was not only studious, but fond of all sorts of athletic sports
and exercises. He frequently visited the Tyrol for mountain climbing,
and later tried his skill on the most rugged Alps. He was fond of
shooting and shot well; he was an excellent horseman and his tall
figure was frequently to be seen astride his hunter, which he managed
with great skill.

The possibility that he might become King had effected a change in the
young man's character, who became more reserved and serious, ardently
devoted to his studies and eager to find out as much as possible about
the lives of the people that one day he was to rule. He often lectured
on military topics. He visited the mines and viewed the working
conditions of the men that toiled incessantly underground. He watched
the fishermen at work and even accompanied them on their trips; he
worked in machine-shops and ran locomotives himself. To learn the
secrets of modern shipping he visited foreign countries and traveled in
disguise as a reporter of a newspaper, paying calls on various
shipyards and taking notes on what he saw there.

In the year of the war between America and Spain, 1898, Albert came to
the United States and saw President McKinley, and in his travels
through our great country he paid a visit to the great financier James
J. Hill with whom he talked about the problems that confronted Belgium
and from whom he doubtless received valuable advice. He was much
impressed by his visit to America, and often talked about it afterward,
and thought out means by which the modern improvements he saw in
America might be applied to the people of Belgium.

All this time, however, the Prince remained unmarried, and King
Leopold, who was growing old, was worried about the succession to the
throne. Finally he decided that as long as Albert was without issue he
must choose a different heir which was a royal privilege in such a
contingency, and his choice fell upon the Duc de Vendome, who had
married Albert's sister.

But Albert, who had given no signs of attraction toward any one of the
various beautiful ladies he might have married, was soon to fall in
love and make a marriage that would gladden the heart of old King
Leopold, and please the Belgian people.

Among other things that he had studied in his young manhood was the
science of medicine, and a year after he came to America he went to
Germany to see the clinic of a Bavarian duke named Charles Theodore,
whose skill as an occulist had made him famous throughout Europe.
Albert visited this Duke and was presented to his daughters, with one
of whom, the Duchess Elizabeth, he promptly fell in love. The passion
was mutual, and as the match was a good one from all points of view the
young couple were married in Munich on October 2, 1900, where a
celebration was held in honor of the event. When the newly wedded
couple returned to Belgium no one less than King Leopold was waiting at
the railroad station to receive them and offer his congratulations.
Leopold was now more predisposed in favor of Albert, and when a son was
born he was delighted. On the birth of a second son, the King made a
speech in which he publicly confirmed Albert's claim to the throne, and
public attention was now focussed on the Prince who was to be King.

Albert had no intention of meddling with political affairs until he
actually should become the ruler of Belgium, and he gave scant
encouragement to those who sought to sound him and find out what his
future policies would be. While he surveyed all public affairs with a
keen eye and attentive mind, he kept the public from knowing what he
thought of them, and his mind seemed now as much of a mystery as his
personality had seemed obscure before it had been known that he was to
come to the throne.

Albert was greatly interested in the Belgian colony in Africa and asked
permission from King Leopold to visit it and make a tour of inspection.
The King was unwilling to have the heir to the throne take so long and
presumably so dangerous a journey, but at last he consented and Albert
departed for Africa and the Congo, where he spent three arduous months
in which time, it is said, he walked more than fifteen hundred miles.
The colonists took a great liking to the tall, reserved young man who
studied all their interests and doings with such careful attention, and
the impression that Albert made upon this part of his future kingdom
was more than favorable.

He had not been at home long before King Leopold died, and on the 23rd
of December, 1909, Albert came into his capital as King of the
Belgians. After taking the oath to guard the constitution and preserve
the territory of the Belgian nation, he made a carefully prepared and
well thought out speech, in which he declared that the Belgian monarch
must always obey the laws of the country and preserve the law with the
utmost respect and care. And the first public appearance of Albert as
King added to the good impression with which he was regarded
everywhere.

His liberty and privacy were now over, and he was absorbed with the
affairs of his country. He had become so interested in the Congo colony
that he gave a great deal of his own money to better conditions there
and to further medical research. The Queen was busy also. With her
medical skill she visited the various hospitals and engaged in many
charitable enterprises that endeared her to the hearts of the common
people. It seemed that she could not do enough to relieve the
sufferings of others, and the humblest of her subjects came to look on
her as a member of their family, and almost literally worshipped the
ground she walked on.

The threat of war was still far off, but Albert, who was greatly
concerned over the state of the Belgian army, did all he could to
increase its efficiency. He was not only concerned with the military
preparedness of Belgium, but observed that the Germans seemed to be
taking a firmer and firmer grip on his country. German merchants and
business men swarmed in Brussels, and it was not hard to see too that
German military experts were studying the topography of Belgium and
sending reports back to the Fatherland.

The position of Belgium was peculiar in many ways. Not only did it lie
as a little and weak nation between the great armed powers of France
and Germany, exposed to the advance of an invading army in case of war,
since it was the most convenient way from one country to the other, but
its position on the coast made it a favorable vantage ground from which
Germany might launch an attack on England. This geographical situation
of Belgium has caused it throughout history to be the scene of some of
the greatest battles that have ever been fought, and has gained for it
the name of "the cockpit of Europe."

Even for its size, Belgium was in a woeful state of military
unpreparedness for war, because it was supposed to be exempt from
conflict through an agreement of the great powers. All the great
nations of Europe had decided that it was safer and better to make
Belgium neutral ground, and one and all they had promised to protect
the neutrality of this little state with force of arms if necessary.
This, as we have said, had given the Belgians a feeling of security.
They believed that even if war broke out, Belgium would not be forced
into the conflict, but sinister signs of danger, like the distant
warnings of a hurricane, gradually obtruded themselves before King
Albert's clear sighted vision. He received letters, not from one but
from many sources, warning him that the Germans had decided in secret
council to send their invading armies across Belgium in case of war
with France, and he had seen only too clearly that German spies and
military experts were mapping out the country for their own secret
ends. So Albert struggled to increase the army and secured the passage
of a favorable bill in October, 1913.

But the iron forces of Germany were forged and ready; the uniforms and
equipment of her invading hordes were packed away in her storehouses
and arsenals. Only the stroke of a pen was needed to loose the blind
forces and mighty armaments of a war greater than any that history has
known. King Albert's efforts in behalf of the Belgian army were too
late, although he did not know it at the time.

In the summer of 1914, Albert went to Switzerland on a vacation, but
his fear that Germany was preparing for speedy war forced him to return
to Belgium in the middle of his holiday. And events soon proved that he
was justified. War leaped up over night like a devouring flame, and
immediately the German Government sent to Belgium a threat which
declared that it was the purpose of the German High Command to move
German troops across Belgium, and that the Belgians would resist at
their own peril.

Many a ruler would have acceded to the terms that Germany gave. If a
small boy is confronted by a trained pugilist of great weight and
gigantic stature, surely none can blame the boy for consenting to the
pugilist's demands. None could have blamed King Albert if he had
yielded to such force and accepted the tyrant's terms. But the King
determined to defend his country to the last drop of Belgian blood, not
sparing his own, and the Belgians sent the following reply back to the
German war lords:

"The German ultimatum has caused the Belgian Government deep and
painful astonishment, and Belgium refuses to believe that her
independence could only be preserved at the cost of violating her
neutrality."

And Albert grimly added to some of his followers, "Germany appears to
believe that Belgium is a road, not a country."

The German armies entered Belgium, and soon the roar of the guns was
heard almost from one end of the little nation to the other. King
Albert at once put on his uniform and took to the field with the
Belgian army. The Germans laid siege to the Belgian fortress of Liège,
expecting to overpower it easily. They advanced against it in mass
formation, only to be met with such a hail of machine gun fire that
they numbered their dead by thousands. The little Kingdom of Belgium
had thrust a stick between the cogs of the great German war machine,
and by doing so saved the world from a German victory. By delaying the
Germans at Liège they allowed the French the vital time to organize
their army and mobilize on the frontier, and by the splendid and
stubborn resistance that the Germans encountered in Belgium the English
too were given a breathing space. On the breast of this weak nation
fell the whole weight of the mailed fist, and while the result was
inevitable the burden was bravely supported.

Liège fell at last, and the Germans moved onward, in spite of attacks
by the Belgians that temporarily halted them. With their great 42
centimeter howitzers the Germans pulverized the forts that held out
against them and soon compelled King Albert to shift the seat of
Belgian Government to Antwerp. Albert himself, however, stayed in the
field with his army and when it fell back he was among the brave men
that covered the retreat. He seemed to be everywhere that he was
needed, and often in the front line the Belgian soldiers would be
cheered by the sight of their King loading and firing a rifle by their
side, in the place of some wounded comrade.

The King combined shrewdness with bravery. He ordered Brussels not to
resist the German horde, but he fought to the knife wherever resistance
would be effective. While the British were yet far away and the French
were unable to help, Belgium alone held the enemy in check, and Belgium
was animated more by the spirit of their King than by any other cause.
It has been said in turn that each one of the Allied Nations won the
war. And this is true of them all. Without the aid of the British navy,
the bravery of the French army, the fresh strength that America lent to
the fight, the Germans must have conquered. But it is practically
certain that they would have won if Belgium had not withstood them.
With their forces once in Paris and the French and British forces
separated no human power could have triumphed against the Kaiser--and
it remained for little Belgium to delay him to such an extent that
Joffre was able at last to beat the Germans at the Marne and save the
world.

Then the Germans turned their guns against the city of Antwerp and soon
the giant shells from the monster howitzers were picking up whole
buildings in the force of their blast and scattering bricks and timbers
broadcast in crashing explosions. Queen Elizabeth had remained with the
King, serving as a nurse in the hospitals and doing what she could to
relieve the suffering of her people, but when it was seen that Antwerp
must fall she decided to take her children to a place of safety. King
Albert's eldest son served as a private with a Belgian regiment, but
his brother and little sister were too young for any service and were
taken to England by the Queen. She refused to remain, however, but
returned to the stricken country to take her place with the remainder
of her subjects who had not yet received the yoke of German slavery.

Albert refused to allow his army to be driven from Belgian territory.
"It would be better to die here," he declared, "than in a foreign
land." And always he was with the army, directing its strategy or
wielding a weapon himself. "My place is with my brave soldiers," he
declared.

All through the sinister days of the war the King's spirit did not
weaken. When the Germans were pushing on again toward Paris in the
spring of 1918, he kept his head cool and his heart composed. Then the
gray lines broke, and the tide turned. The Allied Armies swept onward
and the Germans retreated pell mell to save themselves from utter ruin.
Back from the ruined villages and the oppressed and tortured
countryside the German hordes retreated, and King Albert and Queen
Elizabeth triumphantly took possession once more. Their children had
returned and the royal family had passed the last year of the war
within sound of the guns on the Nieuport front. Their hour of triumph
was now come and they entered Brussels after four years of exile.

Their entry was planned to be as glorious and beautiful as possible and
it is needless to say with what rejoicing they were received. Allied
troops marched past in review, and the King and Queen were accompanied
by the most famous generals of the Allied armies. The soldiers of the
Belgian army were crowned with flowers when reviewed by the King that
so bravely led them.

Peace terms were drawn up and the Germans compelled to repay the
Belgians to the last penny for the havoc and vandalism they had
wrought. And it is a kind of poetic justice that Albert was reigning,
while the Kaiser fled from his own country to cling to the skirts of
another weak little power that he would surely have violated as
remorselessly as he violated Belgium if it had chanced to stand in his
way.

In 1919, twenty-one years after his first trip to this country, King
Albert with Queen Elizabeth came to the United States again. They
received a warm welcome from one end of the country to the other and
the good wishes of all Americans have gone back with them to the
wrecked and devastated land that they are striving to restore. Whether
King Albert will perform as great work in reconstruction as he has
already performed as a soldier and a King the future will decide, but
he has already gained an immortal place in the history of the world.

CHAPTER XXXI

MARIA BOTCHKAREVA

Not since the time of Molly Pitcher has there been a woman soldier so
famous in her own country as a Russian girl named Maria Botchkareva,
who fought beside the men in the Russian army in the World War and
afterward became the commander of a battalion of women soldiers, who
called themselves the "Battalion of Death." It is only because the
World War was so huge that the name of this girl is not known
everywhere. Not only did she make as good a soldier as a man, but she
was decorated for bravery. She carried to safety out of No Man's Land
on her own back nearly a hundred wounded Russians, while the shells
burst and the bullets flew around her, and in the course of the war she
was wounded four times.

Maria Botchkareva, who is still living, was born in 1889, the daughter
of a Russian fisherman, who was originally a serf. He was too poor to
buy a wagon to market his fish, and was compelled to sell them at less
than the market price to traveling pedlers. Her mother did manual labor
for twelve hours a day to earn five cents. Starvation was constantly at
the door, and the father was of a surly and cruel disposition, and
frequently beat his wife and his little children.

When quite a young girl Maria became a servant in the family of a
Russian army officer, and when still young she married a soldier named
Afanasi Botchkarev, who gave her her present name. He beat her so often
and treated her so brutally when he was drunk that she tried to drown
herself, but was saved because some workmen had seen her plight.
Shortly afterward she ran away from Botchkarev and worked her way to
the town of Irkutsk in Siberia.

There she underwent many adventures. Her great strength enabled her to
work as a man in a gang of laborers who were paving the courtyard of
Irkutsk prison with asphalt, and she continued this work for a year,
until she became ill and forced to go to a hospital.

War broke out between Russian and Germany. It was the beginning of the
great war that was to shake the entire world, and echoes and rumors of
terrible events were not long in reaching even so remote a town as
Irkutsk. Soldiers commenced to go away to the front and stories of
defeats and victories were in the air. And although Maria, unlike
Jeanne d'Arc, never heard the voices of the Saints, still a voice
within her called on her to go to war to save her country.

But how was a woman to go to war? If it had been difficult in the
remote past when Jeanne d'Arc was alive, how much more was success
beyond her grasp in a country controlled by modern law and the
regulations of a well organized national army. But Maria dressed
herself in man's clothes and made her way back to her home, beating her
way with difficulty on trains that were crowded with soldiers, and
taking over two months to accomplish the difficult journey from
Siberia.

When she arrived at her native village she found that her worthless
husband had been drafted into the army, taken to the front and was
listed as "missing." Nobody knew if he were alive or dead.

Her father and mother were glad to see Maria, but exclaimed in horror
and surprise when she told them that she intended to be a soldier.

"You are crazy," they shouted at her. "Women do not go to war! Stay at
home with us, for we are old and need your help." But in spite of their
entreaties she was obdurate, and going to a clerk in the 25th Reserve
Battalion which was quartered there, she declared to him her purpose of
enlisting and of fighting in the trenches.

Laughter greeted her on every side. A grinning adjutant took her to the
Colonel, who received her kindly, his astonishment only equalled by his
admiration for her patriotism.

"But women do not go to war, my dear," he ejaculated when Maria told
him her decision.

"Nevertheless I intend to go and I desire you to enlist me," the brave
girl answered.

The Colonel could not disobey regulations and enlist a woman in the
army, but a telegram was sent to the Czar himself, and in a short time
an answer was received from the Czar's official headquarters,
announcing that Maria Botchkareva was entitled to become a soldier in
the Russian army.

So Maria put on her uniform and was nicknamed "Yashka," a name that
soon was known throughout her regiment. Dressed in a man's clothes and
bearing arms like a man, she went through the regular drill and fatigue
and in a very short time became proficient in handling a rifle which
increased the respect in which her comrades held her. They had
ridiculed her at first, and made life a burden to her with insults and
practical jokes, but she bore these things stolidly and at last won
their respect and affection.

The regiment entrained for the front and Yashka went with it. A Russian
general heard of the presence of a girl soldier in its ranks and
angrily ordered that she be taken from the line and sent to the
rear--but Yashka was clever enough to point out that her enlistment had
been received by the Czar himself and so superseded the order of the
General, who wished to send her home from whence she had come.

The regiment went into the trenches, and Maria, for the first time,
heard the roar of the cannon and the whistling of the shells. Her
comrades had jokingly told her that she would run when the first shot
was fired, but she minded the bombardment no more than any one else.
The Germans threw over large quantities of their favorite weapon, gas,
and the trenches and the hollows in the ground were filled with the
noxious vapors that it was death to breathe, but the Russians put on
their gas masks and still went forward.

Then, after serving in the line for some time, the girl soldier had her
first experience in more active warfare, for her company was ordered
over the top to capture the German sector opposite them, and with fixed
bayonets the men moved forward under a heavy fire from the batteries of
their own artillery. It was a severe attack, bravely delivered, but
doomed to failure because the barbed wire entanglements of the enemy
had not been destroyed by the Russian shells. Men dropped by the score,
and when the company was finally compelled to retreat there were only
seventy left out of two hundred and fifty that had begun the advance.
Maria was one of the survivors, her woman's heart torn with pity at the
cries of the wounded who had been left dying in No Man's Land. Crawling
back from the shelter of the Russian trenches, she dragged a wounded
soldier to safety and returned for another. All night she toiled
bringing them in until more than fifty owed their lives to her. For
this she was recommended for a decoration for bravery, but never
received it. Later, however, she won her badge of courage for more work
of the same sort performed under heavy fire and in the face of the
greatest obstacles.

Then her own turn came. She was wounded and sent to the rear as a
casualty. When her wound was healed she returned to the front, only to
sustain further wounds and win another decoration. On one occasion she
was captured by the Germans, but an attack freed her from their hands
after she had been a prisoner for a little over eight hours.

In all the fighting that she had experienced this girl personally did
her share, handling a rifle with skill and on several occasions using
the bayonet with as much strength as a man. Her fame by this time had
penetrated beyond her own regiment. The name of Yashka was known
throughout the Russian army, and numbers of curious soldiers crowded
around her when she happened to go to some part of the field where she
had not previously been seen.

Then began the terrible Russian revolution--a revolution more dreadful
than the French Terror in 1793. The Czar was deposed, and word of this
was not long in reaching the front line, where groups of rejoicing
soldiers hastened to form councils and committees regardless of the
discipline that alone could hold them together to an extent to present
a solid front to the enemy.

The Germans ceased firing when they learned the cause of the Russians'
celebrations, and at once commenced to fraternize with the men they had
so recently been fighting, telling the Russians that they desired peace
and that the war now would soon be over. Vodka and beer were passed
from side to side, and German and Russian soldiers strolled about in No
Man's Land without a shot being fired. Nor was this all. A pilgrimage
of inflammatory speakers and demagogues commenced to visit the ranks of
the Russians, inciting them to revolt against all authority and to
drive away their officers. The heads of the soldiers were turned, and
good and bad, brave men and cowards, joined in the confusion that was
increasing day by day, and the ruin that was sweeping over Russia's
fortunes.

The simple heart and mind of Yashka, however, proved to be more astute
and better versed in the conduct of war than most of the Russians. She
saw what disorder was doing to the army, and worn out in spirit as well
as in body, sought leave to return from a war where there was no
fighting to her own home.

But finally the idea came to her to form a battalion of women soldiers
and shame the men into returning to the front, from which they had been
deserting in large numbers. She thought that if the soldiers saw
Russian women in the ranks, doing battle with the enemy and proving
themselves braver than the men themselves, perhaps they would be shamed
into renewing the combat; that if women advanced in the front rank, the
men would follow and the war would be resumed. Yashka knew too well
that there could be no real peace so long as the Germans remained on
Russian soil; and that further war was the only way to drive them out
of Russia.

Fired with her idea she went to the leading powers of the Russian
Government and asked permission to form a battalion of women soldiers,
who were to make every sacrifice, visit the most dangerous parts of the
battle front, and unhesitatingly be killed in order that the men might
follow them into battle. The Government leaders, including Kerensky,
approved of the idea; and Maria commenced to make speeches, calling on
the women to enlist beneath her standard in the "Battalion of Death,"
as her new organization was to be named.

The response was instantaneous. So many women offered to enlist that
she had difficulty in accepting all of them, and she resolutely weeded
out those that seemed unfit, enacting a strict and severe discipline,
more rigorous, in fact, than any that had been undergone by the male
soldiers. With rifles supplied by the Government, and with men acting
as drill sergeants, she trained her girls until they were well versed
in the elements of soldiering, and after they had become proficient in
the use of the rifle she prepared to entrain for the front, this time
an officer with a thousand or more soldiers under her command.

But her system of training and the severe penalties she exacted from
her soldiers brought her into opposition to the Russian Government,
which, fatuously believing that rule by the people could be carried
into war, insisted on her forming committees in her command and
allowing her soldiers a share in the administration of the battalion.
This she refused to do, declaring that she would resign her commission
first and disband her battalion. If men were difficult to control at
the front under the committee system, how much more would this be the
case with girls, unused to discipline and more prone by nature than the
men to give way to the difficulties and the temptations of war!

After several stormy interviews with the army chiefs and with Kerensky
himself, Yashka was allowed to have her own way, and in direct command
of her own battalion she set out for the front line. Already the
Battalion of Death had had a beneficial effect upon the soldiers at the
front, and she believed that when once her women went into action the
men would follow without question.

When the Battalion of Death was actually in the front line Yashka saw
very quickly, however, that things were far worse than she had
imagined, for in the time that she had been recruiting and training her
new force, the army had undergone complete demoralization. There was
now open friendship between the Russians and the Germans in many
quarters of the front, and fighting was unheard of, the soldiers'
committees refusing to give their consent to any proposal of that sort.
It was in the midst of such a situation that Yashka and her women
reached the line.

The Bolsheviki, as the revolutionists were called, had gained almost
complete control over the soldiers, and under their influence the army
had become a savage mob. Only a few loyal men remained. Soon after
Yashka's arrival the officers attempted to put her plan into operation
and launch an attack against the Germans, but the soldiers refused to
obey and the battalion of women moved out almost unsupported against
the enemy, who promptly opened a heavy fire. Their example was tardily
followed by the men and a general attack was delivered on a wide
portion of the line. After a severe fight, the women soldiers captured
the German trenches that lay in front of them, but only to be
confronted with a new and terrible difficulty,--for the supports that
they had relied upon refused to march any further, declaring that they
would defend what they had already gained from the enemy but that under
no circumstance would they attack again. This made it necessary for the
Battalion of Death to make a headlong retreat, for while they waited
for support they had nearly been surrounded by the Germans.

Then the army, incited by the Bolshevist agitators, became completely
unmanageable. When Yashka herself opened fire on some Germans who were
walking openly through No Man's Land, the Russians on her flanks turned
their machine guns against the women and prepared to mow them down. The
usefulness of the Battalion was at an end and the lives of the girls
were in danger from the Russian soldiers. It became necessary to take
them to the rear. Even there, however, when quartered in reserve
barracks, they were not safe from interference. With vile threats and
taunts deserters and Bolshevists crowded about their quarters and were
finally driven away by a volley fired by the girls from the windows of
their barracks.

Knowing that this action would result in an attack by the Russians,
Yashka hastily assembled her Battalion and marched them away with all
their equipment, taking concealment in a nearby wood from which the
girls were hurried to the rear and discharged in a score of stations,
making their way to their homes as best they might. Revolution now had
the upper hand, the army was completely destroyed by the revolutionary
doctrine and there was no longer any use in continuing the Battalion,
which had become a center for the attacks of friends and foes alike.

Yashka herself returned to Petrograd where she was arrested by the
Bolsheviki, but, after a searching examination, she was allowed to
proceed to her home. She determined, however, to use all her remaining
energy in helping the few loyal Russians who were grouped under a
general named Kornilov and were now at open war with the Bolsheviki,
so, after procuring a disguise, she made her way through the Bolshevik
lines to the loyal forces. Kornilov desired her to return with word
from him for the loyalists who were hiding in many places in Russia,
but in trying to cross the lines again Yashka found herself entrapped
by her enemies. Throwing off her disguise she boldly disclosed herself
to them, saying she was on her way to undergo treatment at a hospital
for a severe wound she had received while in the Russian army.

And then this courageous girl underwent dangers far more deadly than
any she had suffered at the front. She was tried by the Bolsheviki and
sentenced to be shot, although she had destroyed all the evidence of
her relations with Kornilov, and her foes knew nothing more about her
than that she had been commander of the woman's battalion. This alone,
however, was crime enough in their eyes to warrant her instant
execution, and with part of her clothing taken from her she stood in
line with twenty Russian officers to receive her death blow. It
happened, however, that on the Bolshevik committee that was present to
witness the execution was one of the men who had served beside her in
the trenches, and he recognized his old comrade.

"Are you Yashka?" he asked. When she replied in the affirmative he
pulled her from the line and took her place in the squad of the
condemned, saying that they would have to shoot him before they could
shoot Yashka whom he knew and loved. After a stormy argument a reprieve
was shown to the executioners and Yashka was allowed to be taken from
the field of death and returned to prison.

Through the intercession of friends she was sent to Moscow, and there,
after further imprisonment, was set at liberty. She had witnessed
enough of the Bolshevist horrors to be even a more bitter enemy of
their regime than she had been before. She determined to fly from
Russia and gain aid from the Allies to carry on a war against them and
the Germans alike, and with this end in view was secretly carried
aboard the American steamer _Sheridan_ and brought to the United
States. Here, for the time being, her career ends. It will remain for
the future to show if she takes further part in the affairs of her
country for which she so bravely fought, bled and suffered,--but
whether circumstances allow her to do so or not, she has carved her
name in lasting letters on the tablets of modern history.

HEROES OF FICTION

CHAPTER XXXII

WILLIAM TELL

Many hundreds of years ago, at the end of the Thirteenth Century to be
exact, in the country that is now Switzerland, there lived a Swiss
hunter and herdsman named William Tell. He lived in the little town of
Burglen among the mountains, and with him lived his wife and his two
sons, who, when this story opens, were about ten and twelve years old.
William Tell was so strong that his name was known far and wide; he was
so skilful a hunter that nothing seemed ever to escape his keen arrow
when once it was on the wing; he was so venturesome a mountain climber
that the steepest precipice was not too dangerous for him; and with all
these great abilities he had a kindly disposition and was liked as well
as admired by his neighbors.

William Tell had won more than one prize at the fairs and competitions
that were sometimes held near his town; on one occasion he had shot a
small bird on the wing with his sure arrow, for the bullseye of the
target had seemed too large for him. And so it came to pass that when
his neighbors revolted from the foreign yoke that Austria had thrown
over Switzerland Tell was one of the first to be called on by the
patriots who desired to free their country.

Switzerland was not a single country in those days, but was divided
into the three cantons or districts of Schwyz (from which it takes its
present name) Uri and Unterwalden. The Austrians had nominally governed
the country for a long time without any dissent on the part of the
Swiss people, for the Austrian ruler, named Adolph, had treated them
extremely well and allowed them to keep their ancestral rights and
customs.

Then, however, the Hapsburg Emperor, Albrecht, came to the throne; and
discontent and misery were soon apparent in the Swiss cantons. For the
new monarch did not follow the policy of the former king, but sent
cruel governors to rule over the honest Swiss, with secret orders to
oppress them in many ways until their love of liberty, for which they
had always been famous, might be destroyed.

All the time that these changes were taking place, William Tell went
quietly about his affairs. He looked after his herds and hunted in the
mountains, while his wife, Hedwig, saw to his house and brought up his
two boys, William and Walter. He had everything to make him happy--a
clean and well ordered home on the side of the mountain, a devoted
wife, two manly boys, and a herd of cattle that included the most
beautiful cow for miles around. This cow was named Hifeli, and wore a
sweet toned bell about her neck.

Driving a cow over the mountain paths was a difficult and dangerous
undertaking, and one that Tell had never entrusted to either of his
children, but as his son William seemed to be able and venturesome he
was allowed one day as a great pleasure to drive Hifeli and her calf up
to the mountain pasture. The way led along the side of a cliff, and in
one place it was so narrow that only a few inches separated those on
the path from a terrific gulf so deep that the clouds sometimes hid the
trees below it.

While the boy was driving Hifeli over this place, with a sudden rush a
fierce eagle swooped down to attack the calf, beating the air with its
wings to drive the calf to the edge of the precipice,--and although the
lad struck at the bird of prey with his mountain staff until the air
was filled with feathers it was to no avail. The calf plunged over the
ledge and was dashed to death on the rocks beneath, where the eagle
descended and promptly reappeared flying heavily away, bearing the dead
body of the calf in its claws. But this was not all the trouble that
young Tell was to undergo, for the cow lurched toward the edge of the
precipice and sought some way to descend to the spot where she believed
the body of her calf had fallen, and try as he would young Tell could
not get her away from the spot or drive her back to her stall.

So he tied Hifeli to a tree and went in search of his father to whom he
told the misfortune that had befallen him. Whereupon father and son
went in search of the eagle and the elder Tell slew it with an arrow
from his crossbow. And on this trip he taught his son to show no fear
of the high precipices they had to skirt or of the gulfs that had to be
crossed by fallen trees. And from that time on he instructed his son to
avoid the least sign of fear which later saved both their lives in a
curious manner.

There was nothing that Tell hated more than the Austrian rule under the
tyrannical governors who were sent to oppress the Swiss, and he engaged
in opposing them first of all.

One of the Swiss named Wolfshot had treacherously deserted his
countrymen and joined the Austrian cause, for which he was rewarded by
the Emperor and given a position under the Austrian Governor. In this
position he did all that he could to annoy his neighbors and frequently
insulted the Swiss women.

On one occasion Wolfshot tried to make love to the wife of a Swiss
peasant named Baumgarten who was an honest as well as a brave man. She
ran to her husband for protection and Baumgarten in great anger went to
the room where Wolfshot was staying and slew him with an ax. Then,
taking horse, he fled for his life pursued by the Austrian guards.

Baumgarten came to the shores of Lake Zurich and would have crossed the
lake to safety, but a terrible wind called the Fohn was blowing and the
waves of the lake rolled so high that escape by water seemed
impossible. The horsemen were close at Baumgarten's heels, and he
begged the ferryman to take him across the water in spite of the
danger, but to no avail. The ferryman replied that he would not venture
out on the lake in that storm to save the life of any one, for it was
impossible for any boat to live in the sea that was raging there. But
William Tell was present, and seeing that Baumgarten would soon be
captured by the Austrians he ran with him to the ferryboat and pushed
off just as the Austrians rode up to the shore. The boat was tossed
about like a cork, but still it lived under the powerful strokes of
Tell, who was skilful above all others with the oar; and the Austrians
were forced to go back to their castle without their prisoner, bitterly
angry at Tell for having helped the fugitive to escape them.

This was soon brought to the ears of the new Governor named Gessler who
determined that he would entrap Tell into committing some other act by
which he could be imprisoned and put to death. To accomplish this
purpose Gessler conceived the design of placing a cap with the royal
arms of Austria upon it in the midst of the public square of the town
of Altdorf, where Tell frequently came, and of ordering all people to
bow before it as if this cap were the Emperor of Austria himself.

Great was the anger felt by the Swiss when they heard of this infamous
design on Gessler's part--but how much more when the cap was actually
taken to the public square by a force of heavily armed soldiers and a
proclamation was read ordering all who saw it to salute it on pain of
whatever penalty the Governor saw fit to impose!

Now Tell happened to be in Altdorf at this very time with his little
son William; and in order to avoid saluting this hated emblem, he left
town earlier than he had planned and by a street where he thought he
would not see the cap or encounter any of the Austrians who had come to
Altdorf to see that the Governor's order was enforced. As luck would
have it, however, Tell walked right into the square where the cap had
been placed and came right upon it before he noticed it. And several
Austrian men at arms stood near it.

Without a word, leading his little son by the hand, Tell strode past
the cap without bowing his head--and was at once stopped by the
soldiers who told him he was under arrest for defying the Governor's
order and made ready to take him before Gessler for trial. But Gessler
himself had seen all this and was so eager to punish Tell that he did
not wait for the soldiers to come to him, but with his servants and
retainers hastened out into the square.

Gessler knew Tell by sight and spoke to him by name.

"What does this mean, Tell?" he demanded. "Have you not heard that this
cap represents the Emperor and is to be saluted by all that pass it?"

"Aye, your Lordship," answered Tell.

"And so you propose to add defiance of my person to your other crime?"
said the Governor. "I have you in my power now and you shall pay a dear
penalty. All the more dearly shall you pay because you go about the
streets armed with your crossbow at your side."

"My bow is used for hunting, your Lordship," said Tell proudly, "a
right that all free men possess and have possessed from the very
earliest times."

"I'll curb your right and your talk of freedom," said Gessler fiercely.
"Yonder is your son. Now harken to your punishment. Take your bow and
shoot an apple from the child's head."

Now the Governor never thought that Tell could hit so difficult a mark,
and Tell himself, good shot as he was, quailed at shooting at so small
a target, when the slightest slip would cause him to kill his beloved
son. And he begged the Governor to take his property if he would or to
do what he chose to his person, but to spare an innocent boy who had
done no harm or wrong of any kind.

Gessler, however, was inexorable, and he mocked Tell with the utmost
cruelty, telling him that such a mark should be easy for one whose fame
as a bowman had traveled through all Switzerland, as Tell's had done.

"And mark well my words," said Gessler. "See that you hit the apple,
for if you miss it, even by a hair's breadth, then you shall die and
the boy with you."

A groan went through the crowd that had assembled as Gessler spoke
these words. But young William himself was not afraid and went bravely
to the tree where he was to stand and with his own hand put the apple
on his head.

"Shoot, father, why do you hesitate?" he cried. "Well do I know that
you will hit the apple."

With a shudder Tell took his crossbow and drew two arrows from his
quiver. Then holding his breath he aimed at the living mark.

The bowstring twanged. The arrow, like a flash of lightning, split the
apple in two halves and imbedded itself in the tree trunk. Tell had
triumphed and the deed was accomplished. Turning to Gessler and taking
his boy by the hand Tell asked leave to go his way, now that his order
had been obeyed.

But Gessler was determined to slay Tell and was only seeking some
pretext for getting him into his power.

"Not so fast," said the crafty governor, while he eyed the bow with
which Tell had so bravely performed the cruel operation. "Tell me, my
shrewd archer, who does not hesitate to aim at his own flesh and blood,
why did you draw two arrows from your quiver instead of one?"

Tell drew himself to his full height and, captive as he was, the
Governor quailed beneath his glance.

"The second arrow was for _you_ in case I had struck my son!" said Tell
fiercely. "If so much as a drop of his blood had been drawn, my second
bolt would have been lodged in your false heart."

"Bind him!" shouted Gessler, overjoyed that Tell had delivered himself
into his hands. "In my own castle it shall be decided what sort of
death and torture he shall suffer." And with Tell led between two
horsemen the Governor's retinue went to the shore of the lake to cross
to the castle where he made his home.

When the boat was well out in the lake, however, the same terrible wind
that so often blew upon its waters arose with the swiftness of a
thunderclap and threatened to overwhelm them all. Tell lay bound in the
boat, calmly watching what he could see of the storm, when one of the
Governor's servants told him that Tell himself was the most skilful
boatman in that part of the country and the only one who could save
them from the waves that threatened each minute to swamp them.

At this Tell's bonds were cut and he was ordered by the Governor to
take his place at the helm and guide the boat to shore, and Gessler
added that if he brought it safely in it would serve to lessen the
punishment that he planned to inflict upon him.

Tell did as he was ordered and took the tiller. And by his skilful
guidance the craft gradually drew near to shore.

But Tell had planned shrewdly as he guided the boat and he gradually
drew it toward a ledge of rock that was greatly feared by all the
boatmen of the lake. When the boat was directly beneath the rock Tell
waited until a wave flung the boat on high and seizing his crossbow and
arrows he sprang from the gunwale, landed on the rock and disappeared
into the forest.

Gessler was enraged at Tell's escape, but he and his party had all they
could do to save their lives from the fury of the lake. At last, more
by luck than skill, they drew the craft into smoother waters and he and
his retinue were saved.

Tell, however, had formed a stern purpose while fleeing through the
forest. He knew that his own life and that of his son and perhaps of
his entire family would be lost if Gessler lived, for the Governor
would certainly send soldiers to take and slay him. So Tell resolved to
slay the governor with the same crossbow with which he had shot the
apple from his son's head.

He waited in the woods on the edge of a ravine through which Gessler
must pass on the way to his castle at Kussnacht, for no other way led
there; and when the Governor's escort finally appeared, Tell aimed his
bow, the arrow hissed from the string and imbedded itself squarely in
Gessler's heart. The deed was accomplished surely and with skill, and
the Swiss would suffer no more from the heavy hand of the tyrant
Gessler.

This act rang through Switzerland, and everywhere people were soon in
revolt against the power of Austria. And the ultimate result of the
action of William Tell was in the end the freedom of the Swiss people
from the oppression of Austria. And throughout Switzerland the name of
William Tell is revered to this day and there are statues in his honor,
while many a legend has been born in his name and many a great writer
has celebrated his deeds.

CHAPTER XXXIII

DON QUIXOTE

In the year 1605 a Spanish author named Cervantes wrote the story of a
lean and elderly gentleman named Don Quixote who had the strangest
attack of madness in the world. For this Don Quixote, who lived in La
Mancha in Spain, lost his mind through reading books of chivalry, and
he so stuffed his poor weak brain with preposterous tales of knights
and giants that at last he thought he must take horse and armor and
ride through Spain righting wrongs and doing battle with all that
opposed him.

Now this fancy of Don Quixote's was just as ridiculous as it would be
to-day to go in search of Indians upon the streets of New York or other
American cities,--for at the time when he lived there were no knights,
nor had there been any for a great many years. The people were honest
peasants and burghers who made their living much in the fashion that we
do to-day, and had forgotten all about the idle tales of dragons and of
knights that rode armed through the forests. But none the less Don
Quixote had so addled his mind with stories of bygone times that he
must needs become a knight without any delay.

In the attic of his house he found an old suit of rusty armor that had
belonged to his grandfather, and he scoured this until it shone like
silver. He found a helmet too, and as only part of it remained he
repaired it with strips of pasteboard. Then he took an old and worn out
horse whose ribs stuck out from his hide and who was more used to
hauling vegetables than to warlike adventures, and he called the horse
by the high sounding name of "Rocinante," and really believed that the
senile old animal was a greater charger than Bucephalus, the famous
horse that bore the conqueror, Alexander.

With his armor, a sword, a lance and a horse, all that remained for Don
Quixote was to have a fair lady to do bold deeds for, whose colors he
could wear on his lance when going into battle. A peasant girl lived
near his house whose name was Aldonca Lorenso, a fat girl of squat
figure and broad shoulders who smelled of onions, strong enough to
carry a sack of potatoes on her head. And Don Quixote decided that she
must be his lady fair, and he called her by the high sounding name of
Dulcinea del Toboso, ready to uphold the marvelous beauty that he alone
believed that she possessed, by doing battle with any man in Spain who
should deny it.

Early one morning in the hottest part of the summer Don Quixote arose,
put on his armor, took his shield and lance and saddled Rocinante.
Then, climbing into the saddle as nimbly as his old and rheumatic
joints would allow, he rode forth in quest of adventures. After riding
all day, he approached an inn that his disordered brain transformed
before his eyes into a castle of goodly size, and riding up to the inn
door he spoke to two peasant girls who were sitting there, calling them
great ladies and saying that he would do all that they should ask of
him and protect them with his weapons.

The girls could not understand his talk, and viewing his strange
appearance had all that they could do to withhold their laughter, but
seeing that he looked tired and worn they asked if he would like
something to eat, and on his assenting they took him into the inn and
spread supper before him. Don Quixote took off his armor, but he could
not get off his helmet which he had tied firmly on his neck with green
ribbons, and sooner than cut these he left his helmet on, so that it
was necessary for one of the girls to feed him with a spoon, and to
give him wine by pouring it into his mouth through a hollow cane that
the innkeeper prepared for this strange purpose.

After supper Don Quixote decided that he must mount guard over his suit
of armor, spending the small hours in prayer and vigilance, in order to
become a knight, and putting it by the well in the courtyard of the
inn, he stood beside it, leaning on his sword. This caused great
inconvenience to all the guests and servants at the inn, for so
fiercely did he guard it that he allowed nobody to draw water from the
well and knocked down a peasant who approached with pails, threatening
to slay him. Whereupon the peasant's comrades, standing at a safe
distance, pelted Don Quixote with stones.

[Illustration: DON QUIXOTE SUFFERED NOBODY TO DRAW WATER FROM THE WELL]

All this did not please the innkeeper, and he thought of some way to
quiet the madman. At last he came up to Don Quixote and told him that
he would now make him a knight--a ceremony that the poor crazy
gentleman believed he must go through before he had any right to wander
about the country righting the wrongs of the people. And as Don Quixote
took the innkeeper for a great nobleman, he only felt pleased and
flattered at the offer and prepared to accept it without delay.

Then the innkeeper took Don Quixote into the barn, a small boy brought
a candle and the two girls who had fed Don Quixote came in giggling to
see the ceremony. And the innkeeper pretended to read something from
his day book, in which he kept accounts of hay and grain; and bidding
Don Quixote to kneel struck him a resounding smack with the flat of the
sword between the shoulder blades. Then one of the girls, still
giggling, tied the sword about Don Quixote's middle, and said to him:
"Good sir, may you be a fortunate knight and meet success in all your
adventures." And in this way the ceremony of knighting the poor man was
concluded.

Nearly bursting with joy Don Quixote rode away from the inn--where he
had neglected to pay for his board and lodging. And on his way an
actual adventure did befall him for he came upon a sturdy peasant
beating a boy who was tied to a tree.

With a loud voice Don Quixote bade him desist at once and on seeing the
strange armed figure with sword and lance that threatened him, the man
stood gaping with amazement. He explained that he was beating his boy
for laziness, but the boy complained that his master had not paid him
the wages due him.

"Pay them at once," thundered Don Quixote. "Woe betide the man who does
not give heed to my orders." Without further parley he rode off,
whereupon the man tied the boy again to the tree and gave him so severe
a beating that he left him for dead. And in this way Don Quixote
righted the first wrong that he encountered.

Having no money or clean clothes he returned home to get these things,
and when he sallied forth a second time he took with him a simple
country fellow named Sancho Panza, who was so very stupid that he did
not understand his master's madness at all but really believed a number
of the wild tales that Don Quixote told him, notably one about an
island of which Don Quixote planned to make him governor. And with
Sancho following at his heels on a donkey Don Quixote commenced riding
up and down the countryside looking for adventures.

In the course of their travels many adventures befell them, for the
disordered brain of the old knight errant transformed the happenings of
every day life into the scenes that he had read of in his wild romances
of chivalry. One day, as he and Sancho Panza were riding along the
road, talking of the island that Sancho was to govern when Don Quixote
should have won it by the power of his sword, they came upon thirty or
forty old-fashioned windmills that were flourishing their sail-clad
wooden arms with every breeze that blew.

"By my faith!" exclaimed Don Quixote, "here are a group of giants that
I mean to destroy, and with the money we gain from them we will start
on our great fortunes, for I certainly shall kill them all and give you
some of the gold in payment for your services."

"Where are the giants?" asked the puzzled Sancho Panza in amazement.

"There, straight ahead of us, brandishing their arms in anger," shouted
Don Quixote. "Let us attack them instantly."

"But, Master," cried Sancho Panza, "those are not giants but windmills
that turn their arms with the breeze. Have a care how you approach them
or they will unhorse you."

"They are giants," insisted Don Quixote. "If you are afraid, go home
and I will battle with them alone."

And driving home his spurs into the bony flanks of Rocinante he charged
the windmills so furiously that his lance was shivered in the arms of
the first of them and he and his horse after being hurled in the air
were thrown stunned and bruised upon the ground.

Sancho Panza hurried to help the poor mad knight who could not move, so
great had been the force with which he had fallen, and coming to
himself Don Quixote sat up and seeing the windmills declared that an
enchanter had put a spell on the giants and changed them into that
form,--but nevertheless, he continued, the enchanter's wiles would
prove to be weak against his own stout will and strong right arm and he
would triumph over his enemies.

Soon after that they came upon a company consisting of two friars of
the order of St. Benedict and a coach and retinue that was taking a
lady to the City of Seville, and seeing them Don Quixote declared that
the friars were enchanters who were carrying the lady off against her
will. Setting his lance in rest he galloped against them with such
force that if the one that met his charge had not thrown himself to the
ground he would certainly have been killed, while the other, seeing how
his companion had fared, took to his heels as fast as possible.

Sancho Panza, when he saw the friar lying on the road, ran up to him
and soon would have stripped him of his clothes but some of the
servants hastened up and demanded what he was doing.

"These clothes belong to me by right of conquest," said Sancho. "My
master has overthrown in fair combat him that owned them."

The servants, knowing nothing of the laws of chivalry, fell on Sancho
with their cudgels, belabored him lustily and plucked his beard out in
handfuls, leaving the unfortunate fellow lying on the ground in far
worse plight than the friar.

In the meantime Don Quixote was talking to the lady in the coach to
whom he swore eternal devotion. He told her that since he had rescued
her from the enchanters she must return to the town of Toboso and tell
the lady Dulcinea what he had done and the glorious feat of arms he had
performed in Dulcinea's name. But at this a Biscayan Squire rode up and
told Don Quixote to leave at once or he would soon be unable to perform
any more glorious feats because he would promptly be slain.

And a combat began between Don Quixote and the Biscayan that nearly
ended in the death of the latter, for in spite of the carriage cushion
that the squire used as a shield, Don Quixote struck him such a
tremendous blow that he fell from his horse and lay as dead on the
ground. But the crazy knight had not come unharmed from the fight, for
part of his ear was cut away by the sword of the Biscayan. And telling
the astonished lady to take the Biscayan with her to Toboso, Don
Quixote remounted and rode away with Sancho Panza.