WORKING FOR NOTHING

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 46, 19 November 1918, Page 3

WORKING FOR NOTHING

. She was serving out maonrcii cheese, quickly, daintily, watching carefully for any required second helpings for any of hei fifty/'blue-boy" charges, removing dirty plates, bringing/in fresh supplies and otherwise "waiting" smartly • and deftly. She was young, pretty, and gent'y'born—and she had been doing that and similar duties since December, 1914.

A 'remark which we nurses abroad often passed came into m'y mind. ''It is the women and girls iii {he home—and especially in the auxiliary—hospitals who ,nre doing/the hardest, dullest grind in the nursing service. Work abroad has its unquestionable glamour and interest. Work in the home miliMrv hospitals has its immense interest. Work in the auxiliary hospitals, where the men are convalescent, is unending, incessant, and positively heroic iu its monotonous con» linuityr I I have been in several auxiliary hosI pitnls recently, and that opinion has been confirmed. i

.After four years such work is roblwd of its piquancy. It was so easy in those early days to tuck up one's sleeves and 'ine's "tango" curls—it is more difficult to keep them up. It was so amusing for girls to clean out the waiting-room of the local railway f.tation n» a 'rejl pose' 'he whilo tho population came surreptitiously. peeping and nudging ono another to look. The amusement disappears after thousands of ficrubbings and black-leadings—and tho population ceasea to nudge.

Tho novelty has worn off the work, leaving only its humdrum sameness. l its tedious'repetition, its constant plodcjing, and its drab loinmonplaces. Nevertheless, the work is being done, not by women presswi int: service or attracted by monetary conoidcrations, but. by volun-' teers—womeh whoso sole reward is a sense of patriotic duty effiicently performed and a pleasure in helping others. The efforts of th;so regular and steady workers are ocoaiiionally and unjustly forgotten in. the recitals one sometimes hears of "butterfly" nurses who "(ill in" an "exhausting" hour of the afternoon session at Such-and-Snch Hospital.

While a small part of the work in auxiliary hnspihls is done by business and work girls, who nobly give such portion- of their leisure as they can spare, by far the greater part of it is, naturally, done by girls and women of the "professional" and so-called, "leisured classes." They work to definite timetables drawn up some weeks, and even months, in Advance by their respective commandant;.

These time-tables are strictly .adhered to; not by moans of any compulsion, but by the workers' code of honour. And that is sufficient spur to maintain a continuous service among 90,000 women, many of whom are giving the best years of their life to the work; a girl who hos u slight disability cleaning- cruets and plate each day, a peer's sister regularly scraping carrots and peeling potatoes under' tho direction (f the paid cook, a General's daughter undertaking night duty—the Burse's bugbear—for months. Examples-could be multiplied. A favenrita phrase, glibly Irequont, of certain trained nurses is "tho. divinity of drudgery." That has been given repeated actuality ,in auxiliary hospitals by many V.A.D.'s who in tho great scheme of mercy are doing n work which is truly admirable.—Olive Dent, in' the "Daily' Mail."