Women and War Work

WOMEN HAVE SERVED OR ARE SERVING ON THE FOLLOWING GOVERNMENT COMMITTEES.

Belgian Refugees' Committee. 1914.

Clerical and Commercial Occupation Committee, do (Scotland.) 1915.

Disabled Officers and Men.

Education After the War. April, 1916.

Educational Reform. (August, 1916.)

Food, Committee of Inquiry Into High Cost of—June, 1916.

Advisory Committee on Women in Industry. March, 1916.

Labor Commission to Deal with Industrial Unrest. (Ministry of Labor.) June, 1917.

Munitions Central Labor Supply Committee.

Munitions, Arbitration Tribunals.

Munitions, Committee on the Supply and Organization of Women's Service in Canteens, Hostels, Clubs, etc. December, 1916.

Naval and Military War Pensions Statutory Committee. January, 1916.

Nurses, Supply of—October, 1916.

Polish Victims' Relief Fund.

Prevention and Relief of Distress. 1914.

Professional Classes Sub-Committee.

Prisoners of War Help Committee.

Reconstruction Committee. (To advise the Government on the many national problems which will arise at the end of the war.) 1916.

Shops: Committee of Inquiry, to Consider Conditions of Retail Trade to Secure the Enlistment of Men. (November, 1915.)

Teachers' Salaries. Departmental Committee of Enquiry. June, 1917.

War Charities. April, 1916.

National War Savings Committee. April, 1916.

COMMITTEES EXCLUSIVELY COMPOSED OF WOMEN.

Committee, Report on Joint Standing Industrial Councils. 1917.

Women's Wages Committee. 1917.

Central Committee on Women's Employment. 1914.

Drinking Among Women, Committee of Enquiry. November, 1915.

There are also two women on the—

Executive Committee of National Relief Fund.

Ministry of Food has two women Co-Directors—

CHAPTER III

HOSPITALS—RED CROSS—V.A.D.

—MATT., Chap. 25.

—H.W. LONGFELLOW,
"To Florence Nightingale."

When war broke out on August 4, 1914, probably the only women in our country who knew exactly how they could help, and would be used in the war, were our nurses in the Navy and Army nursing services.

In the Army, Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service had in it at that time about 280 members, matrons, sisters and staff nurses, Miss Becher, R.R.C., being Matron-in-Chief for Military Hospitals. The Q.A.I.M.N.S. had a large Reserve which was also immediately called out and these nurses were used at once, six parties being sent to France and Belgium by August 20th.

The Second Branch was the Territorial Force Nursing Service, which was in 1914 eight years old. It was initiated by Miss Haldane and a draft scheme of an establishment of nurses willing to serve in general hospitals in the event of the Territorial Forces being mobilized, was submitted at a meeting held in Miss Haldane's house, Sir Alfred Keogh, Medical Director General, being present. This scheme was approved and an Advisory Council appointed at the War Office.

The Matrons of the largest and most important nurse-training centres in the Kingdom were appointed as principal matrons (unpaid) and to them the success of this Force is largely due. They received the applications of matrons, sisters and nurses willing to join, looked after their references and submitted them, after approval by the Local Committee, to the Advisory Council. To their splendid work was due the ease of the vast mobilization of nurses when war broke out. There were then 3,000 nurses on their rolls. On August 5th they were called out and in ten days 23 Territorial General Hospitals in England, Wales and Scotland were ready to receive the wounded and the nurses were also ready.

Each hospital had 520 beds, but this accommodation was quite inadequate after a few months of war, and the accommodation of practically every hospital was increased to 1,000 to 3,000 beds and many Auxiliary Hospitals had to be organized. By June, 1915, the Territorial Nursing Staff was 4,000 in number and in Hospitals in France and in Belgium and in clearing stations, there were over 400 Territorial Nurses as well as Imperial Nurses.

The Naval Nurses were about 70 in number with a Reserve, and their Reserve was called up at once also, and they went to their various Hospitals. The other two great organizations, the British Red Cross and the order of St. John of Jerusalem, now working together through the joint committee set up to administer the Times Fund for the Red Cross, which has reached over $30,000,000, had their schemes also. In time of war they are controlled by the War Office and Admiralty. The Red Cross had, since 1909, organized Voluntary Aid Detachments to give voluntary aid to the sick and wounded in the event of war in home territory. There were 60,000 men and women trained in transport work, cooking, laundry, first aid and home nursing. St. John's ambulance had the same system of ambulance workers and V.A.D.'s to call on.

As the war proceeded it was quite clear that the nursing staffs, though we had secured 3,000 more trained nurses through the Red Cross in the first few weeks of the war, would be quite inadequate, and it was found necessary to use V.A.D.'s and to open V.A.D. Hospitals, most of them being established in large private houses lent for the purpose. Within nine months there were 800 of these at work in every part of England, Scotland and Wales. The V.A.D.'s suffered a little at first from confusion with the ladies who insisted on rushing off to France after taking a ten day's course in first aid. We had suffered a great deal from that kind of thing in the South African War and were determined to have no repetition of it, so they were firmly and decisively removed from France without delay.

To get more trained nurses, rules were relaxed and the age limit raised. Many nurses, retired and married, returned to work, but very quickly it was perfectly clear our trained nurses were inadequate in number for the great work before us, and in less than a year in most hospitals every ward had one V.A.D. worker assisting who had been nominated by her Commandant and County Director, and in March, 1915, the Hospitals were asked by the Director General of the Army Medical Service to train V.A.D.'s in large numbers as probationers, for three or six months, to fit them for work under trained nurses. Every possible woman, trained or partially trained, was mobilized and thousands have been trained during the three years of war, and V.A.D. members have been drafted to military and Red Cross Hospitals, abroad and at home, in addition to doing the work of the V.A.D. Hospitals. A V.A.D. Hospital with a hundred beds will have two trained nurses, and all the other work is done by V.A.D.'s. The Commandant-in-Chief now is Lady Ampthill. Dame Katharine Furse was Commandant-in-Chief until quite recently, but is now head of the new Women's Royal Navy Service.

Many have gone to France and done distinguished work and there is no body of women in our country who have done more faithful and useful work than our V.A.D.'s, who nurse, cook and wash dishes, serve meals, scrub the floors, look after the linen and do everything for the comfort and welfare of our men, with a capacity, zeal and endurance beyond praise. About 60,000 women have helped in this way. Our nurses and V.A.D.'s have distinguished themselves at home and abroad. They have been in casualty lists on all our fronts. They have been decorated for bravery and for heroic work. The full value of all they have done cannot yet be appraised. They have spent themselves unceasingly in caring for our men. They have nursed them with shells falling around. Hospitals have frequently been shelled and in one case two nurses worked in a theatre, wearing steel helmets during the bombardment, with patients who were under anaesthetics and could not be moved. They have waited out beside men who could not be got in from under shell fire of the enemy until darkness fell. Two V.A.D. nurses in another raid saw to the removal of all their patients to cellars and, while they themselves were entering the cellars after everyone was safe, bombs fell upon the building they had just left and completely demolished it. Some of our nurses have died of typhus. They have been wounded in Hospitals and on Hospital Trains, and they have done all their work as cheerfully and with the same high courage as our men have. We have had helping us in our nursing numbers of Canadian nurses, not only for the beautiful Canadian Hospital at Beechborough Park, but for many other Hospitals in England and France, and nurses from Australia and New Zealand.

We have had American nurses, also, but these will now be absorbed, as needed, by the American Army in France.

The records of our Medical women in the war are among the very best. The belief that nursing was woman's work but that medicine and surgery were not, was dying before the war, but it existed, and it was the war that gave it the final death blow. Immediately war broke out Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson, a daughter of our pioneer woman doctor, Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and Dr. Flora Murray formed the Women's Hospital Corps, a complete small unit and offered it to the British Government. It was refused but accepted by the French Government, and was established by them at Claridge's Hotel in Paris, where it did admirable work. Its work aroused the interest and admiration of the British Royal Army Medical Corps, and they were asked to form a Hospital at Wimereux, which afterwards amalgamated with the R.A.M.C. Later Sir Alfred Keogh established them in Endell Street, London, where they have a Hospital of over 700 beds. The women surgeons and doctors and staff are graded for purposes of pay in the same way as men members of R.A.M.C.

In July, 1916, the War Office asked for the services of 80 medical women for work at home and abroad, and later for 50 more.

The Women's Service League sent a unit to Antwerp which did some excellent work, though it was there only a very short time. The members of the unit were among the last to leave the city, escaping in the last car to cross the bridge before it was blown up.

The work of the Scottish Women's Hospitals, organized by the Scottish Federation of the Nation Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, and initiated by Dr. Elsie Inglis, of Edinburgh, would require a volume to themselves, and American women, who have given so generously and so freely to them, know a great deal about their work. The first unit went to Royaumont in France, and established itself at the old Abbaye there. It stood from the beginning in the very first rank for efficiency. A leading French expert, Chief of the Pasteur Laboratory in Paris, speaking of this Hospital, said he had inspected hundreds of military Hospitals, but not one which commanded his admiration so completely as this. Another unit was sent to Troyes and was maintained by the students of Newnham and Girton Colleges. Dr. Elsie Inglis's greatest work began in April, 1915, when her third unit went to Serbia, where she may he truly said to have saved the Serbian nation from despair. The typhus epidemic had at the time of her arrival carried off one-third of the Serbian Army Medical Corps, and the epidemic threatened the very existence of the Serbian Army. She organized four great Hospital Units, initiated every kind of needful sanitary precaution, looked into every detail, regardless of her own safety and comfort, hesitating at no task, however loathsome and terrible. Her constant message to the Serbian Medical Headquarters Staff was "Tell me where your need is greatest without respect to difficulties, and we will do our best to help Serbia and her brave soldiers."

Two nurses and one of the doctors died of typhus. Miss Margaret Neil Fraser, the famous golfer, was one of those who died there, and many beds were endowed in the Second Unit in her memory.

The Third Serbian Unit when on its way out was commandeered by Lord Methuen at Malta for service among our own wounded troops, a service they were glad to render. Later when the Germans and Austrians overran Serbia, one of the Units retreated with the Serbian Army, but the one in which Dr. Inglis was, remained at Kralijevo where she refused to leave her Serbian wounded, knowing they would die without her care. She was captured with her staff and, after difficulties and indignities and discomforts, were released by the Austrians and returned through Switzerland to England. On her return she urged the War Office to send her, and her Unit, to Mesopotamia. Rumors had already reached England of the terrible state of things there from the medical point of view, which was fully revealed later by the Mesopotamian Commission. She was refused permission to go, though it is perfectly clear their assistance would have been invaluable and ought to have been used. Once more she returned to help the Serbians and established Units in the Balkans and South Russia. The Serbian people have shown every token of gratitude and of honor which it was in their power to bestow upon her. The people in 1916 put up a fountain in her honor at Mladenovatz, and the Serbian Crown Prince conferred on her the highest honor Serbia has to give, the First Order of the White Eagle. Dr. Inglis died, on November 26th, three days after bringing her Unit safely home from South Russia. Memorial services were held in her honor at St. Margaret's, Westminster, and in St. Giles's Cathedral, Edinburgh. Those who were there speak of it not as a funeral but as a triumph. The streets were thronged; all Edinburgh turned out to do her homage as she went to her last resting place. The Scottish Command was represented and lent the gun-carriage on which the coffin was borne and the Union Jack which covered it.

In the Cathedral the Rev. Dr. Wallace Williamson, Dean of the Order of The Thistle, said: "We are assembled this day with sad but proud and grateful hearts to remember before God a very dear and noble lady, our beloved sister, Elsie Inglis, who has been called to her rest. We mourn only for ourselves, not for her. She has died as she lived, in the clear light of faith and self-forgetfulness, and now her name is linked forever with the great souls who have led the van of womanly service for God and man. A wondrous union of strength and tenderness, of courage and sweetness, she remains for us a bright and noble memory of high devotion and stainless honor.... Especially today, in the presence of representatives of the land for which she died, we think of her as an immortal link between Serbia and Scotland, and as a symbol of that high courage which will sustain us, please God, till that stricken land is once again restored, and till the tragedy of war is eradicated and crowned with God's great gifts of peace and of righteousness."

The National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies also sent the Millicent Fawcett Unit, named after its honoured President, to Russia in 1916 to work among the Polish refugees, especially to do maternity nursing, and work among the children.

In February a Maternity Unit started work in Petrograd. With an excellent staff of women doctors, nurses and orderlies, the little hospital proved a veritable haven of helpfulness to the distressed refugee mothers. It soon established so good a reputation for its thorough and disinterested work that the help of the workers was asked for by the Moscow Union of Zemstovos (Town and Rural Councils) for Middle Russia and Galicia.

In May the Millicent Fawcett Hospital Units were sent out and at Kazan on the Volga a badly needed Children's Hospital for infectious diseases was opened. The only other hospital in the place was so full that it had two patients in each bed. They had a fierce fight against diphtheria and scarlet fever, which in many cases was very bad, and they succeeded in saving most of the children, who would certainly have died in their miserable homes.

In the summer, the Units took over a small hospital at Stara Chilnoe, a district without a doctor, and they treated not only refugees, but the peasants who came in daily in crowds from the surrounding districts. Other Units of the same kind were started in remote districts and in summer a Holiday Home at Suida was run to which the women and children could come from the Petrograd Maternity Hospital for a rest. They also took charge of two hospitals, temporarily without any medical staff, in a remote part of the Kazan district, where they were objects of the most intense curiosity.

The interpreters were kept busy answering questions about the ages, salaries and husbands of the staff, and the nurses' wrist watches roused great excitement.

That their gratitude and kindness was very real, though their notions of suitability of place and time were primitive, was shown by the gift of three live hens being dumped, at 4 a.m., on the bed of a sister sound asleep.

The final piece of work was the establishing of an infectious Hospital for peasants and soldiers in Volhynia, sixty miles behind the firing line in Galicia. This was done at the urgent request of the Zemstovos Union.

There they had to deal with a great deal of smallpox and in another case with scabies which they stamped out in one small village. These Units left Russia before the recent changes, but their work was valuable and appreciated, and again American women helped us in raising the necessary funds, having subscribed $7,500 towards the Units.

One of the workers, Ruth Holden, of Radcliffe College, Boston, died in one of the epidemics. We have had American women, as we have had men, helping us from the beginning of the war. The American Women's War Relief Fund most generously offered to fully equip and maintain a surgical hospital of 250 beds at Oldway House, Paignton, South Devon, at the beginning of the war, and this offer was gratefully accepted by the War Office through the Red Cross Society.

They also gifted six motor ambulances for use at the front—and these and the hospital have been of the very greatest service to our wounded men.

Others of our medical women are with mixed Units, such as The Wounded Allies' Relief Committee. Dr. Dickinson Berry went out with others in a Unit from the Royal Free Hospital to help the Serbian Government, and Dr. Alice Clark is in the Friends' Unit.

Our medical women have won rich laurels and have established themselves in their own profession permanently and thoroughly. Behind the Hospitals, we have the thousands of women who every day are working at the Hospital Supply Depots of our country. These are everywhere and nothing is more wonderful than the way in which our voluntary workers have gone on faithfully working, conforming to discipline and hours and steady service as conscientiously as any paid worker.

The organizing ability displayed by our women in this amounts to genius. The buying of material, cutting and making up, parcelling, storing, and packing of gigantic supplies, all the secretarial and clerical work involved has been the work of women and mostly of women of the leisured classes, many of them without any previous training. From the organization of the big schemes of supply down to such work as the collecting of sphagnum moss, everything that was needed has been done, and done well.

CHAPTER IV

"BRINGING 'BLIGHTY' TO THE SOLDIER"

"Cheero."

"Blighty" is Home, the British soldiers in India's corruption of the Hindustanee, and Blighty is a word we all know well now.

The full records of this are not easy to give—so much has been done. Perhaps the simplest way is to begin with the soldier at the training camp and follow him through his soldier's existence. The first work lies in giving him comforts, and the women of our country still knit a good deal and in the early days knitted, as you do now to get your supplies, in trains and tubes and theatres and concerts, and public meetings. This was happening while many of our working women were without work and it was felt that this was likely to compete very seriously with the work of these women. The Queen realized there was likely to be hardships through this and also that there would probably be a great waste of material if voluntary effort was not wisely guided. So she called at Buckingham Palace a committee of women to consider the position and Queen Mary's Needlework Guild was the outcome of it. The following official statement, issued on August 21, 1914, intimated the Queen's wishes and policy.

Queen Mary's Needlework Guild has received representations to the effect that the provision of garments by voluntary labor may have the consequence of depriving of their employment workpeople who would have been engaged for wages in the making of the same garments for contractors to the Government. A very large part of the garments collected by the Guild consists, however, of articles which would not in the ordinary course have been purchased by the Government. They include additional comforts for the soldiers and sailors actually serving, and for the sick and wounded in hospital, clothing for members of their families who may fall into distress, and clothing to be distributed by the local committees for the prevention and relieving of distress among families who may be suffering from unemployment owing to the war. If these garments were not made by the voluntary labor of women who are willing to do their share of work for the country in the best way open to them, they would not, in the majority of cases, be made at all. The result would be that families in distress would receive in the winter no help in the form of clothing, and the soldiers and the sailors and the men in hospitals would not enjoy the additional comforts that would be provided. The Guild is informed that flannel shirts, socks, and cardigan jackets are a Government issue for soldiers; flannel vest, socks, and jerseys for sailors; pajama suits, serge gowns for military hospitals; underclothing, flannel gowns and flannel waistcoats for naval hospitals. Her Majesty the Queen is most anxious that work done for the Needlework Guild should not have a harmful effect on the employment of men, women, and girls in the trades concerned, and therefore desires that the workers of the Guild should devote themselves to the making of garments other than those which would, in the ordinary course, be bought by the War Office and Admiralty. All kinds of garments will be needed for distribution in the winter if there is exceptional distress.

The Queen would remind those that are assisting the Guild that garments which are bought from the shops and are sent to the Guild are equally acceptable, and their purchases would have the additional advantage of helping to secure the continuance of employment of women engaged in their manufacture. It is, however, not desirable that any appeal for funds should be made for this purpose which would conflict with the collection of the Prince of Wales's Fund.

Branches of Queen Mary's Needlework Guild were started everywhere and the Mayoresses of practically every town in the Kingdom organized their own towns. Gifts came from all over the world and a book kept at Friary Court, St. James', records the gifts received from Greater Britain and the neutral countries.

The demand for comforts was very great and in ten months the gross number of articles received was 1,101,105, but this did not represent anything like all. It was the Queen's wish that the branches of her Guild should be free to do as they wished in distribution, send to local regiments, or regiments quartered in the neighborhood, or use them for local distress. Great care was taken to see there was no overlapping, and this is secured fully by Sir Edward Ward's Committee.

Our men have been well looked after in the way of comforts, socks and mitts and gloves and jerseys, and mufflers and gloves for minesweepers and helmets, everything they needed, and the Regimental Comforts Funds and work still exists as well, all co-ordinated now.

The Fleet has also had fresh vegetables supplied to it the whole time by a voluntary agency.

At the Training Camps, in France, in every field of war, we have the Y.M.C.A., and there is no soldier in these days and no civilian who does not know the Red Triangle. There are over 1,000 huts in Britain and over 150 in France. It is the sign that means something to eat and something warm to drink, somewhere cozy and warm out of the cold and chill and damp of winter camp and trench, somewhere to write a letter, somewhere to read and talk, somewhere that brings all of "Blighty" that can come to the field of war. In our Y.M.C.A. huts, 30,000 women work. In the camp towns we have also the Guest Houses, run by voluntary organizations of women. In the Town Halls we have teas and music and in our houses we entertain overseas troops as our guests.

Our men move in thousands to and from the front, going and on leave, moving from one camp to another, and Victoria Station, Charing Cross and Waterloo are names written deep in our hearts these days. We have free buffets for our fighting men at all of these, and at all our London stations and ports, and these are open night and day. All the money needed is found by voluntary subscriptions.

Our men come in on the leave train straight from the trenches, loaded up with equipment, with their rifles canvas-covered to keep them dry and clean, with Flanders mud caked upon them to the waist, very tired, with that look they all bring home from the trenches in their eyes, but in Blighty and trying to forget how soon they have to go back. The buffets are there for them, and those who have no one to meet them in London and who have to travel north or west or east to go home, are met by men and women who direct them where to go by day and motor them across London to their station at night. The leave trains that get in on Sunday morning brings Scottish soldiers that cannot leave till evening, and St. Columba's, Church of Scotland, has stepped into the breach. The women meet the train, carry off the soldier for breakfast in the Hall, which is ready, and they entertain them all day. Thousands have been entertained in this way, and "It's just home," said one Gordon Highlander.

The soldier is in France and there he finds we have sent him Blighty, too—canteens and Y.M.C.A. Huts. Our books and our magazines, everything we can think of and send, goes to every field of war.

He is followed where he can be by amusement and entertainment. Concert parties are arranged by our actors and actresses, and they go out and sing and act and amuse our men behind the lines. Lena Ashwell has organized Concert parties and done a great work in this way.

Such work as Miss McNaughton's, recorded in her "Diary of the War," and for which she was decorated before her death, largely caused by overwork, as Lady Dorothie Fielding's ambulance work, for which she also was decorated, and the work of the "Women of Pervyse" stand out, even among the wonderful things done by individual women in this war.

The "Women of Pervyse," Mrs. Knocker, now the Baronnes de T'Serclas, and Miss Mairi Chisholm, went out with the Field Ambulance Committee, and were quartered with others at Ghent before and during and after the siege of Antwerp. When the ambulance trains started to come in from Antwerp they worked day and night moving the wounded from the station to the hospitals—they worked for hours under fire moving wounded, unperturbed and unshaken.

After the battle of Dixmude and the armies had settled on the Neuport-Ypres line, Mrs. Knocker started the Pervyse Poste de Secours Anglis, a dressing station so close to the firing line that the wounded could literally be lifted to it from the trenches.

There they have worked and cared for the men in conditions almost incredible. In February, 1915, they were decorated by King Albert, and since March they have been permanently attached to the Third Division of the Belgian Army.

In June, 1915, they were mentioned in dispatches for saving life under heavy fire. They have saved hundreds of lives by being where they can render aid so swiftly, and the military authorities do not move them, not only because they wish to pay tribute to their valor but because they are so valuable.

Most of all, "Blighty" goes to the soldier in his letters and there is nothing so dear to the soldier as his letters, and nothing is worse than to have "no mail." The woman who does not write, and the woman who writes the wrong things, are equally poor things. The woman who wants to help her man sends him bright cheerful letters, not letters about difficulties he can't help, and that will only worry him, but letters with all the news he would like to have, and the messages that count for so much. Every woman who writes to a soldier has in that an influence and a power worthy of all her best. Not only our letters but our thoughts and our prayers are a wall of strength to, and behind our men.

In this war some have talked of spiritual manifestations that saved disaster in our great retreat. In that people may believe or disbelieve, but no person of intelligence fails to realize the power of thought, and love, and hope, and the spirit of women can be a great power to their men in arms. There are so many ways of giving and sending that none of us need to fail.

Then he is in it—in the trenches—over the top—and he may be safe or he may be wounded—a "Blighty one," as our men say, and we get him home to nurse and care for—or he may make the supreme sacrifice and only the message goes home.

To everyone it must go with something of the consolation of the poem written by Rifleman S. Donald Cox of the London Rifle Brigade.

He may be a prisoner and then we follow him again. There are over 40,000 of our men prisoners and we have over 200,000 of the enemy. The treatment and conditions of our prisoners in Germany were sometimes terrible—the horrors of Wittenberg we can never forget, and we are deeply indebted to the American Red Cross, for all it did before America's entry into the war, for our prisoners.

From the beginning of the war we have had to feed our prisoners, and for the first two years parcels of food went from mothers, sisters and relatives of the men. Regimental Funds were raised and parcels sent through these. Girls' Clubs and the League of Honour and Churches and groups of many kinds sent also. The Savoy Association had a large fund and did a great work.

Parcels, which must weigh under eleven pounds, go free to prisoners of war and there are some regulations about what may be sent. Now the whole work is regulated by the Prisoners of War Help Committee—an official committee, and parcels are sent out under their supervision to every man in captivity.

Books, games and clothing also go out from us. In most of the Camps and at Ruhleben, where our civilians are interned, studies are carried on, and classes of instruction, and technical and educative books are much needed and demanded. Schools and colleges have sent out large supplies of these.

We have also raised funds for the Belgian Prisoners of War in Germany.

We have exchanged prisoners with Germany and have secured the release and internment in Switzerland of some hundreds of our worst wounded, and permanently disabled, and tubercular and consumptive men. In Switzerland, among the beautiful mountains, they are finding happiness and health again and many of them are working at new trades and training.

We sent out their wives to see them and some girls went to marry their released men. Some of our prisoners have escaped from Germany and reached us safely after many risks and adventures.

"Blighty" goes out to our men also in our Chaplains, the "Padres" of our forces, and many times soldiers have talked to me of their splendid "Padre" in Gallipoli, or France or Egypt. They have died with the men, bringing water and help and trying to bring in the wounded. They have been decorated with the V.C., our highest honor, the simple bronze cross given "For Valour." They write home to mothers and wives and relatives of the men who fall, and send last messages and words of consolation.

Their task is a great one, for to men who face death all the time, and see their dearest friends killed beside them, things eternal are living realities and there are questions for which they want answers. There is so much the Padre has to give and his messages are listened to in a new way and words are winged and living where these men are.

We have so many of our men from overseas among us who are far from their own homes, and in London we have Clubs for the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, for the two together, immortally to be known as the "Anzacs," and for the South Africans, where they can all find a bit of home. We have also just opened American Huts and the beautiful officers' Club at Lord Leconfield's house, lent for the purpose.

For the permanently disabled soldier we are doing a great deal. St. Dunstan's, the wonderful training school for the blind, has been the very special work of Sir Arthur Pearson, who is himself blind, and Lady Pearson.

The Lord Roberts Workshops for the disabled are doing splendid work in training and bringing hope to seriously crippled men.

The British Women's Hospital for which our women have raised $500,000, is on the site of the old Star and Garter Hotel at Richmond, and is to be for permanently disabled men.

There, overlooking our beautiful river, men who have been broken in the wars for us, may find a permanent home in this monument of our women's love and gratitude.

CHAPTER V

WOMAN-POWER FOR MAN-POWER

—PROV., Chap. 31.

The first result of the outbreak of war for women was to throw thousands of them out of work.

Nobody knew—not even the ablest financial and commercial men—just what a great European war was going to mean, and luxury trades ceased to get orders; women journalists, women writers, women lecturers, and women workers of every type were thrown out of work and unemployment was very great.

A National Relief Fund was started for general distress and the Queen dealt in the ablest manner with the women's problem. She issued this appeal: "In the firm belief that prevention of distress is better than its relief, and employment is better than charity, I have inaugurated the 'Queen's Work for Women Fund,' Its object is to provide employment for as many as possible of the women of this country who have been thrown out of work by the war. I appeal to the women of Great Britain to help their less fortunate sisters through the fund.

"MARY R."

This appeal was instantly responded to and large sums were subscribed. A very representative Committee of Women was established, with Miss Mary MacArthur, the well known Trade Union leader, as Hon. Secretary and the Queen was in daily touch with its work.

In the dislocation of industry which had caused the committee's formation, it was found that there was great slackness in one trade or a part of it and great pressure in other parts of it or other trades. The problem was to use the unemployed firms and workers for the new national needs.

The committee considered it part of their work to endeavor to increase the number of firms getting Government contracts, and they created a special Contracts Department, under the direction of Mr. J.J. Mallon, of the Anti-sweating League. They, as a result, advised in regard to the placing of contracts and they undertook to get articles for the Government, or ordered by other sources, manufactured by firms adversely affected by the war or in their own workrooms. They worked with the firms accustomed to making men's clothing and now unemployed, and found that they could easily take military contracts if certain technical difficulties were removed. They interviewed the War Office authorities, modifications were suggested and approved and the full employment in the tailoring trade which followed gave a greatly improved supply of army clothing. Contracts were secured from the war office for khaki cloth, blankets, and various kinds of hosiery, and these were carried out by manufacturers who otherwise would have had to close down.

The Queen gave orders for her own gifts to the troops, and considerable work was done through trade workshops, care being taken to see that this work was only done where ordinary trade was fully employed. Two contracts from the War Office, typical of others, were for 20,000 shirts and for 2,000,000 pairs of army socks. Over 130 firms received contracts through the committee.

New openings for trades were tested and the possibility of the transference of work formerly done in Germany.

In its Relief Work the committee had its greatest problems. It was clear that if rates paid were high, women would come in from badly paid trades, and it was clear that if they sold the work, it would injure trade—so in the end it was decided to pay a low wage, 11/6 a week—and to give away, through the right agencies, the garments and things made in the workrooms.

The inefficiency of many workers was very clear and training schemes resulted—for typing, shorthand, in leather work, chair seat willowing, in cookery, dressmaking and dress-cutting, home nursing, etc.

Professional women were helped through various funds and workrooms were established by other organizations, several being started in London by the N.U.W.S.S.