scrubbing and dish-washing, and by now the more ambitious and
honourable--but not more indispensable--tasks of nursing itself. In this
second year of the war, the first army of V.A.D.'s, now promoted, has
everywhere been succeeded by a fresh levy, aglow with the same eagerness
and the same devotion as the first. Or I could dwell on the women's
hospitals--especially the remarkable hospital in Endell Street, entirely
officered by women; where some hundreds of male patients accept the
surgical and medical care of women doctors, and adapt themselves to the
light and easy discipline maintained by the women of the staff, with
entire confidence and grateful good-will. To see a woman dentist at work
on a soldier's mouth, and a woman quartermaster presiding over her stores,
and managing, besides, everything pertaining to the lighting, heating, and
draining of the hospital, is one more sign of these changed and changing
times. The work done by the Scottish Women's Hospital in Serbia will rank
as one of the noblest among the minor episodes of the war. The magnificent
work of British nurses, everywhere, I have already spoken of. And
everywhere, too, among the camps in England and abroad, behind the
fighting lines, or at the great railway-stations here or in France,
through which the troops pass backwards and forwards, hundreds of women
have been doing ardent yet disciplined service--giving long hours in
crowded canteens or Y.M.C.A. huts to just those small kindly offices,
which bring home to the British soldier, more effectively than many things
more ambitious, what the British nation feels towards him. The war has put
an end, so far as the richer class is concerned, to the busy idleness and
all the costly make-believes of peace. No one gives "dinner-parties" in
the old sense any more; the very word "reception" is dying out. The high
wages that munition-work has brought to the women of the working class,
show themselves, no doubt, in some foolish dressing. "You should see the
hats round here on a Saturday!" said the Manager of a Midland factory. But
I am bound to say he spoke of it proudly. The hats were for him a
testimony to the wages paid by his firm; and he would probably have
argued, on the girls' part, that after the long hours and hard work of the
week, the hats were a perfectly legitimate "fling," and human nature must
out. Certainly the children of the workers are better fed and better
clothed, which speaks so far well for t