She began her nursing career as a tuberculosis nurse in Baltimore and then served as an army nurse in Europe during World War I. After that she traveled to Asia where she saw the effects of opium addiction. The Backwash of War (1934) was based on her diaries kept during her time at the front. La Motte speaks of her time in an army hospital in France as periods of boredom interspersed with moments of fright. The Backwash of War is an excellent memoir of war from the viewpoint of a woman army nurse.

    

    As the founder of the Bolshevik political party, he was a successful revolutionary leader who presided over Russia's transformation from a country ruled by czars (emperors) to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), the name of the communist Russian state from 1922 to 1991.