Flag of Mercy (1942)

John Nesbitt: Narrator

Quotes 

• Narrator : Remarkably enough it was from the ancient battlegrounds of bloody Europe that there sprang the symbol of hope: and international organization carrying a banner marked with a scarlet cross. Every nation solemnly swearing to respect it, save one, peace-loving United States. And this cry for help sent broken weary Clara Barton marching again into the halls of the United States Senate. There, of course, she knew they'd find lots of reasons for calling her new idea nonsense. America doesn't like to sign papers with foreign countries.

• Narrator : She gave to a man's world a new idea: that a woman, having given man his life in the beginning, fights hardest of all to keep that life in him to the very end.

• Narrator : Here in the most powerful man in the land was the one man who understood: a world respected symbol of mercy must fly over all our hospitals, he said, to keep women safe to work beside men.

• Narrator : Clara Barton is, after all, the first woman in our history to go on the field during combat. And it does beat everything how they stand it. Not one of them faints at the sight of a wounded man anymore. But, why can't they see that this is no place for a woman. Girls with soft bodies and white hands.

• Narrator : Can you imagine? That Miss Barton turns up at the recruiting office the other day, bold as brass, and says she wants to meddle around in the hospital corp. Women living in an Army Camp? The boys cussing and drinking around and ladies in the sick ward. Well, the Sergeant sent her about her business in double time. And, of course, it served her right! That female! But, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

• Narrator : Women didn't talk much. There's is an Army without banners. The excitement is for man. The woman gets the drudgery alone. They simply went to work. For after the man has fought his battle, it is the woman who must carry him through the darkness that will follow.

• Narrator : In the mind of Clara Barton, the idea that would shock the nation: let women go to war and tend their men.

• Narrator : Clara Barton played a new game. Waited through the years until she held a single trump card.