The War Museum

Women are marching, women are demonstrating in every district of Great Britain on Saturday, 17th February. Women are asking that Governments should negotiate a just peace Now. Women see that war has no result but the destruction of the sons and husbands, homes and children, of other women. Women realise the futility of a fight to the finish and foreseeing the vengeful character of a peace dictated by victor to vanquished, demand that war should cease before the final degradation. Women know the price of peace is heavy, involving immense national sacrifices, but they know that the cost of war is even greater. Women have worked for years in the cause of humanity and peace. Now they see that the hope of achievement lies in a united demand that constructive ways should be explored. Women are determined that wars shall cease. Come and hear the case for negotiating.

The women's peace campaign.

Surrender Speech : Chief Joseph : Dateline October 1877

I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led the young men is dead. It is cold and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are - perhaps freezing to death. I want to have some time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs. I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more, forever.

Memories of a War bride : Dateline February 1944

That evening we reached the spot where our house once stood. All we found was ashes and rubble... The day after the bombing I heard that an enemy aircraft had been shot down and that pieces of the aircraft were scattered all over the area where our house had been. I saw the wreckage and in it a human torso, probably the pilot, burnt beyond recognition.

They said it was a British plane. I felt nothing. My own tragedy had numbed all my feelings. Later, when working in the garden, I found a human arm lying there between the dungheap and the cabbages. It was a mans arm, quite hairy, with the hand still attached. Probably what was left of one of the crew. That shocked me deeply. I reported the find to the authorities .....

Hanna Lambrecht.

A Lamp goes out : Dateline August 20th 1910

Soldiers and citizens from all over Britain paid quiet tribute today to The Lady of the Lamp - Florence Nightingale, the founder of nursing, who died last week at the age of 90. They packed St. Pauls Cathedral for a solemn memorial service held at noon in her honour. And hundreds more stood bareheaded as her hearse, drawn by two horses, rolled through the streets of London.

The coffin was covered with a white pall almost hidden beneath flowers. Among the tributes was one from Alexandra, the Queen Mother, a huge white floral cross from the matrons and nurses of the London hospitals, a cushion of flowers sent by the survivors of the charge of the Light Brigade, and a wreath shaped like an Army lantern of the type she carried on her rounds in Scutari hospital during the Crimean War.

At Waterloo, the coffin was put onto a special train for the journey to her family's home in Hampshire, where she was buried beside her parents in the churchyard at East Wellow.