The Project Gutenberg EBook of Elsie Inglis, by Eva Shaw McLaren

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Title: Elsie Inglis
The Woman with the Torch

Author: Eva Shaw McLaren

Commentator: Lena Ashwell

Release Date: June 7, 2006 [EBook #18530]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ELSIE INGLIS

[Illustration: _Photo by Bassano_

ELSIE INGLIS

AFTER HER RETURN FROM SERBIA IN 1916

_Frontispiece_]

PIONEERS OF PROGRESS

WOMEN

EDITED BY ETHEL M. BARTON

ELSIE INGLIS

THE WOMAN WITH THE TORCH

BY

EVA SHAW McLAREN

WITH A PREFACE BY

LENA ASHWELL

LONDON

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1920

_Great souls who sailed uncharted seas,
Battling with hostile winds and tide,
Strong hands that forged forbidden keys,
And left the door behind them, wide_.

_Diggers for gold where most had failed,
Smiling at deeds that brought them Fame,--
Lighters of Lamps that have not failed,--
Lend us your oil and share your flame._

TO
AMY SIMSON

PREFACE

"To light a path for men to come" is the privilege of the pioneer; and
the life of a pioneer, the hewer of a new path, is always encouraging,
whether he who goes before to open the way be a voyager to the Poles or
the uttermost parts of the earth, in imminent danger of physical death,
or whether he be an adventurer, cutting a path to a new race
consciousness, revealing the power of service in new vocations, evoking
new powers, and living in hourly danger of mental suffocation by
prejudices and inhibitions of race tradition.

The women's irresistible movement, which has so suddenly flooded all
departments of work previously considered the monopoly of