AUSTRALIAN WOMENS WORK

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2701, 22 February 1916, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN WOMENS WORK

IN EGYPTIAN HOSPITALS. • Mrs. Read, the wife of Major George Read, who returned to Sydney by tho Medina recently from Egypt, had some interesting things to say of Australian women workers, and hospital nurses, states a writer in the "Herald." Sho had spent ten weeks as a sowing workci at No. 2 Australian General Hospital, Egypt, (Ghezireh Palace), and found many other Australian women doing similar work or otherwise attending, to tho wants of the boys by entertaining them or taking them trips. "The Bed Cross work is simply wonderful," said the returned worker, "and those who havo seen its groat achievements unhesitatingly state that it has reached its highest point of success in Egypt,, thanks to its thorough organisation, -and to tho spontaneous generosity of tho Australian people. Everything that the soldier needß is supplied by tho society, and now grateful the poor boys are for ilie least thing. We used to put in time sewing pyjamas, sheets, and clothing of all sorts, for tho native washermen or women are most terribly destructive on clothes. If they can't wring them out they tear them, and things evon after the first wash used to come back almost in rags sometimes, and it kept us busy darning and sewing Them together again. Mrs. Read had a word to say about letters and newspapers. She remarked that there were tons of letters and papers held up owing to tie fact that people, with the best of intentions this end, would porsist in ' posting huge masses of papers every mail. They naturally had to accumulate at the base, with the result that the soldier to whom much was sent often received nothing, whereas the man to -"diom one letter and one weekly paper were posted each mail generally liad no complaint to make that he was forgotten at home.

"If people this end would c-nly realiso this, and confine their mail to one paper and one letter there is no reason why each should not reach the man to whom it is written, hut it is the big weekly bundles which simply have to be thrown aside by the authorities at the base in favour of the small ones, which can readily be delivered."