“Up to the time of the war,” the Viscountess said in her pretty broken English as she looked reminiscently out on the broad avenue of Paris, “I was doing nothing but going to fêtes all day and dancing most of the nights. But I think there is no reason why a woman who has danced well should not be able to do her duty as well as she did her pleasure. N’est ce pas?” And from the records of the European war offices, I think so, too.
THE WOMAN WHOM A NATION ADORES
Among the English war heroines is Lady Ralph Paget, whose name has gone round the world for her splendid service in Serbia. In that defenceless little land, exposed so cruelly to the ravages of this terrible war, she commanded with as efficient executive skill as any of the generals who have been leading armies, one of the best-managed hospitals that have faced the enemy’s fire.
Leila Paget had lived all her life in the environment where ladies have their breakfast in bed and some one does their hair and hands them even so much as a pocket handkerchief. “Leila going to command a hospital?” questioned some of her friends, “Leila who has always been so dependent on her mother?”
She is the daughter, you see, of the Lady Arthur Paget, the beautiful Mary Paran Stevens of New York, who, ever since her marriage into the British aristocracy, has been one of the leaders in the Buckingham Palace set. Leila Paget was, of course, brought up as is the most carefully shielded and protected English girl in high life. She grew up in a stately mansion in Belgrave Square. She was introduced to society in the crowded drawing-room there which has been the scene of her brilliant mother’s so many social triumphs. But she had no ambition to be a social butterfly. She was a débutante who did not care for a cotillion. You see, it was not yet her hour. She was a tall, rather delicate girl who continued to be known as the beautiful Lady Paget’s “quiet” daughter. A few seasons passed and she married her cousin, the British diplomat, Sir Ralph Paget, many years her senior.
She had never known responsibility at all when one day she sat down in the great red drawing-room in Belgrave Square to make out a list of the staff personnel and the supplies that would be required for running a war hospital in Serbia. Her heart at once turned to this land in its time of trouble because she had for three years lived in Serbia when Sir Ralph was the British Minister there. They had but recently returned to England on his appointment as under secretary of foreign affairs. And now she had determined to go to the relief of Serbia with a hospital unit. I suppose British society has never been more surprised and excited about any of the women who have done things in this war than they were about Leila Paget. This day in the great red drawing-room Leila Paget found her metier. She is the daughter of a soldier, General Sir Arthur Paget, and what has developed as her amazing organising and administrative ability is an inheritance from a line of American ancestors through her beautiful mother. But from her reserved, retiring manner none of her friends had suspected that she was of the stuff of which heroines are made. Now, as she laid her plans for war relief, she did it with an expeditious directness and a mastery of detail with which some Yankee forefather in Boston might have managed his business affairs. With a comprehensive glance she seemed to see the equipment that would be needed. Here in the red drawing-room she sat, with long foolscap sheets before her on the antique carved writing desk. She listed the requirements, item by item, a staff of so many surgeons, so many physicians, so many nurses. Then she estimated the supplies, so many surgeon’s knives, so many bottles of quinine, everything from bandages and sheets down to the last box of pins. And she planned to a pound the quantity of rice and tapioca. Her hospital ultimately did have jam and tea when all the others were scouring Serbia in a frantic search to supplement diminishing supplies. Without any excitement, with an utter absence of hysteria as a woman ordering gowns for a gay season in Mayfair, Leila Paget gave her instructions and assembled her equipment. It was, you see, her hour.
She arrived at Uskub in October, 1914, with the first English hospital on the scene to stem the tide of the frightful conditions that prevailed toward the end of 1914. After the retreat of the Austrians, Serbia had been left a charnel house of the dead and dying. Every large building of any kind—schools, inns, stables—was filled with the wounded, among whom now raged also typhus, typhoid, and smallpox. There were few doctors and no nurses, only orderlies who were Austrian prisoners. At one huge barracks fifteen hundred cases lay on the cots and under them; at another three thousand fever patients overflowed the building and lay on the ground outside in their uniforms, absolutely unattended. Facing conditions like these, Lady Paget opened her hospital in a former school building. And here in the war zone she instituted for herself such a régime as probably was never before arranged for an Englishwoman of title.
She arose at four o’clock in the morning, and when she slipped from her cot, no one handed her a silk kimono. The regulation “germ proof” uniform worn by women relief workers in Serbia consisted of a white cotton combination affair, the legs of which tucked tight into high Serbian boots. Over this went an overall tunic with a collar tight about the neck and bands tight about the wrists. There was a tight-fitting cap to go over the hair. And beneath this uniform, about neck and arms, you wore bandages soaked in vaseline and petroleum. It was the protection against the attacking vermin that swarmed everywhere as thick as common flies. Wounded men from the trenches arrived infested with lice, and typhus is spread by lice. Lady Paget stood heroically at her post by their bedsides, with her own hands attending to their needs. What there was to be done in the way of every personal service, she did not shrink from. And she unpacked bales of goods. And she scrubbed floors. And she assisted with the rites for the dying. There had to be a lighted candle in a dying Serbian soldier’s hand, and often her own hand closed firmly about the hand too weak to hold the candle alone. Her wonderful nerve never failed, but there came a time when her frail physical strength gave out. She still held on, working for two days with a high fever temperature before she finally succumbed, herself the victim of typhus. Her husband was telegraphed for. She was unconscious when he arrived and it was three or four days before he could be permitted to see her. Her life hung in the balance for weeks. But finally recovery began and it was planned for her to return to England for convalescence. She and Sir Ralph were attended to the railroad station by the military governor of Macedonia, the archbishop of the Serbian Church, and a guard of honour of Serbian officers. The Serbian people in their devotion lined the street and threw flowers beneath her feet and kissed the hem of her dress. At the station the Crown Prince presented her with the highest decoration within his gift and the Order No. 1 of St. Sava, a cross of diamonds. Never before had it been bestowed on any other woman save royalty. Seldom has any woman in history been so conspicuously the object of an entire country’s gratitude. The street on which the hospital stood was renamed with her name. On the Plain of Kossova there stands a very old and historic church, on the walls of which from time to time through the centuries, have been inscribed the names of queens and saints. Leila Paget’s name also has been written there. A nation feels even as does that common Serbian soldier whom she had nursed back from death, who afterwards wrote her: “For me only two people exist, you on earth and God in Heaven.”
Well, Leila Paget stayed with Serbia to the end. After two months’ rest in England, she was back in July at her hospital in Uskub. Sir Ralph had returned with her, having been made general director of the British medical and relief work in Serbia, with his headquarters at Nish. In October the Bulgarians took Uskub. When the city was under bombardment during the battle that preceded its fall, Sir Ralph arrived in a motor car to rescue his wife. But four hours later he had to leave without her on his way in his official capacity to warn the other hospitals which were in his charge. “Leila, Leila,” he expostulated in vain. She only shook her head. “My place is here,” she said, glancing backward where 600 wounded soldiers lay. Lady Paget and her hospital were of course detained by the enemy when they occupied the town. She remained to nurse Bulgarians, Austrians and Serbians alike. And she organised relief work for the refugees, of whom she fed sometimes as many as 4,000 a day. For weeks and months, it was only by dint of the utmost exertion that it was possible to extract from the exhausted town sufficient wood and petrol just to keep fires going in the hospital kitchen and sterilisers in the operating rooms. “These,” says Lady Paget, “were strange times and in the common struggle for mere existence it did not occur very much to any one to consider who were friends and who were enemies.” In the spring of 1916, in March, arrangements were made by the German Government permitting the return to England of Lady Paget and her unit. Her war record reaching America, the New York City Federation of Women’s Clubs selected her as the recipient of their jewelled medal. It is awarded each year to the woman of all the world who has performed the most courageous act beyond the call of duty.
HEROIC SERVICE OF SCOTTISH WOMEN