M PREFACE ISS MACNAUGHTAN had visited Canada just before the Great War, and was busily engaged upon writing her experiences in the new country, which had impressed her so much, when the cataclysm of the war burst upon Europe. She at once volunteered for service, though she was not young and was far from strong. With the heroic little band of English nurses at Antwerp, and in the battered corner of Belgium which continued to hold out against the Germans, she laboured devotedly till June, 1915, when she came home to lecture on the war to the munition workers. In October of that year she left for Russia with an ambulance party, her keen sympathy having been aroused by the news that the Russian wounded were getting no nurses. The little unit got as far as Persia, where Miss Macnaughtan was taken seriously ill. She struggled back, how no one ever really knew, all the long way from Teheran to her own home in Norfolk Street, where she lingered through some summer days, till she passed away on July 24, 1916. I had had the privilege of knowing Miss Macnaughtan intimately, and when the unfinished book was found among her MSS., I was asked to edit it, having previously written a short history of Canada and being interested in everything Canadian. The work is substantially as the author left it, for it was 485010 thought better to leave things somewhat unfinished rather than spoil the atmosphere of the book. Miss Macnaughtan always put her own stamp upon her writing, investing it with her own personality in a very marked degree. She had evidently intended to have written other chapters, notably one on the emigrants, but the notes were too fragmentary to be used. It is hoped that this book, the outcome of a much-enjoyed visit to Canada, will stimulate the same enthusiastic love for one of Great Britain's daughter nations, with which the author was inspired. BEATRICE HOME. LONDON, 1920. |