up and down the pavements between Westminster and Charing Cross, wearing
little flags, buying every half-hour edition of the papers and watching
the stream of recruits at St. Martin's. All was excitement--no one knew
what was going to happen. Then the bad news began to come through from
Belgium, and every one steadied down and settled themselves to their
task of waiting or working, whichever it might happen to be.

I was helping at the Red Cross Centre in Vincent Square, and all day
long there came an endless procession of women wanting to help, some
trained nurses, many--far too many--half-trained women; and a great many
raw recruits, some anxious for adventure and clamouring "to go to the
front at once," others willing and anxious to do the humblest service
that would be of use in this time of crisis.

Surely after this lesson the Bill for the State Registration of Trained
Nurses cannot be ignored or held up much longer. Even now in this
twentieth century, girls of twenty-one, nurses so-called with six
months' hospital training, somehow manage to get out to the front,
blithely undertaking to do work that taxes to its very utmost the skill,
endurance, and resource of the most highly trained women who have given
up the best years of their life to learning the principles that underlie
this most exacting of professions. For it is not only medical and
surgical nursing that is learnt in a hospital ward, it is discipline,
endurance, making the best of adverse circumstances, and above all the
knowledge of mankind. These are the qualities that are needed at the
front, and they cannot be imparted in a few bandaging classes or
instructions in First Aid.

This is not a diatribe against members of Voluntary Aid Detachments.
They do not, as a rule, pretend to be what they are not, and I have
found them splendid workers in their own department. They are not
half-trained nurses but fully trained ambulance workers, ready to do
probationer's work under the fully trained sisters, or if necessary to
be wardmaid, laundress, charwoman, or cook, as the case may be. The
difficulty does not lie with them, but with the women who have a few
weeks' or months' training, who blossom out into full uniform and call
themselves Sister Rose, or Sister Mabel, and are taken at their own
valuation by a large section of the public, and manage through influence
or bluff to get posts that should only be held by trained nurses, and
generally end by bringi