THE SOCIETY NURSE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 35, 12 February 1915, Page 7

THE SOCIETY NURSE.

TITLED LADIES AT THE FRONT. The latest fad oi' the society woman in Kngland is nursing—and, of course, nursing officers, of soldiers—and many of them are in training at Loudon Hospital for three months. What amount of scientific nursing is acquired in that time it is impossible to say (writes the correspondent of the Sydney Daily Telegraph), but one Li tied lady, dressed as a probationer, and treated as one, was heard to remark she had never been ordered to do anything in her life before, so presumably sure discipline is being inculcated which must bear fruit of some sort.

The difficulty of the problem of nursing wounded men is not disposed of by these means, however, and while ureat gratitude and thanks are due to these women for the weight of their influence and wealth in organising voluntary hospitals am motor ambulances for the front, a great part of the real good they could achieve is cancelled by the conditio' they impose on their gifts, which i nothing more or less than being al lowed to go with the hospital. 11 is hard to ask them to stay behind and let more compotont but lens wok' thy people take their places. Yet such hospitals are often kept back from the firing line, and their use fulness curtailed because the little lady's precious life must not be in any nay risked. And meanwhile literally hundreds of trained nurses with vast experience are told they are not wanted, that they cannot be sen: out.

In Loudon the women who have giv en their beautiful homes for hospital dress to imitate nurses. Yet hardl; imitate because the severely plain aprons arc garnished with fancy beading, and outside the bib is sometimes hung a huge red cross on a

gold chain, which merely looks unprofessional and is not particularly hygienic. His recognised that the object of their work is worthy-; they want to help, and so does almost everyone in the British Empire, but if a little less selfishness actuated them, and a little more common sense could be installed into them greater results would follow.

Turning to another side of the question, however, we hear, of women who do actually go with their own motors to the very front, actually into the firing line to pick tip the wounded and bring them back to safety. We read of others who .await no red tape permission, but go to railway station" between Paris and the front, and o?

eoife stalls for feeding the woundt who i>as through', This work is greatly appreciated by R.A.M.C. Ts many instances only the first-aid work is attempted notu- the battlefield. Men are patched up whenever life is not endangered by small delays, and sent to one of the mam hospitals waiting in England to receive them. Nurses are all, it is believed, working at half fees, or even less, and many tales of selfsacrifice and heroism will doubtless be told as soon as time permits their record being written.