We know that she had helped German wounded and had shown them all the care and tenderness that the sight of a suffering man could arouse in her. She did this, not because she had any desire to help the rulers of Germany whose ways she hated, but because the men were human beings.
Her kindness to German wounded and her last words which are twice quoted above were her woman’s protest against the folly and the wickedness of all war. She could put aside with a quiet smile the pompous military rule which laid down that certain things were to be done because men were living in a state of war. She followed a higher rule, the law of pity and of mercy, remembering the words of the great poet of her beloved country:
“Earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.”
JACK CORNWELL, THE BOY WHO “CARRIED ON”
One day, in the summer of 1917, a group of people were standing before a large picture which was hung upon the wall of one of the rooms in the Royal Academy.
The painting showed a wounded sailor-boy standing on the deck of a warship near the shield of a naval gun while shells were bursting all round him, and the gun’s crew were lying dead or wounded at his feet.
“What did he do?” asked a lady after looking closely at the picture for some time. “Oh,” said a gentleman who was with her, “he just stuck it, you know.” That was all that the boy had done, “just stuck it” at the post of honour, although hurt so cruelly that he afterwards died.
But his simple action had been enough to rouse the admiration of the whole British Empire, to win for him the Victoria Cross, and to afford an example to every boy and man in the British Navy. There were many brave deeds done in the Battle of Jutland, but when Admiral Beatty afterwards made out his report it was John Travers Cornwell whom he picked out as at least one glorious example.
The boy won his Cross at the Battle of Jutland Bank, which began in the afternoon of Wednesday, May 31st, of the year 1916. This fight was one of the most important naval battles of the Great War and might have been as momentous as Trafalgar if the Germans had not retired when Admiral Jellicoe came up to the aid of Admiral Beatty with the Grand Fleet.