and in the stricken silence looked with sickening dismay on the destruction of the beautiful temple of worship builded with such exquisite art and such infinite labour. But I assure you not all the cathedrals of Europe piled in a single colossal ruin, broken sculptured saint on saint, can stir the beholder with the poignant pain of one war hospital! There in the whitewashed wards with the smell of blood and ether, where the maimed lie stiff and still and the dying moan and the mad rave in wild delirium, stand there and your soul shall shrivel in horror at the destruction of men! It is the agony of it all, and the suffering and the sorrow and the grief of it all—and then something more. You creep with the feeling that every one of these men once was builded with such exquisite art and such infinite labour and such toilsome pain and anguish by God and a woman! It is a stupendous task of creation to be done over again when the armies shall have finished their work. Bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh, God and woman must rebuild the race. You unto whom a child can be born to-day, to you Parliaments make their prayer!
Not a captain of industry assembles the engines of war, not a general who directs the armies, may do for his country what you can do who stand beside its cradles. The cry that rings out over Empires bleeding in the throes of death is the oldest cry in the world. Women wanted for maternity!
