Grey and Scarlet. Edited by Ada Harrison. (Hodder and Stoughton.
6s.)
Tuts book, to which H.M. Queen Mary writes a foreword, consists of letters and reports sent by Army Sisters on active service to their Matron-in-Chief, Dame Katherine Jones. From Iceland, where the portraits of "stern bygone Icelanders" looked down on con- verted classrooms and busts "made good hanging when it was too wet outside drying," to Eritrea, where the hospital huts were full of bugs ; from West Africa (" the sanitary arrangements in Sierra Leone are not up to date ") to Singapore ; through gales and sand- storms, shipwrecks and retreats, these remarkable women have nursed, washed, sterilised and contrived with a matter-of-fact cheerfulness which if in some cases it verges on professional bright- ness, in others approaches the heights of heroism. "Alas! I cannot report our arrival safe and sound. Our ship was torpedoed at 2.30 a.m. on Monday," writes a Matron from North Africa, and goes on to suggest that, in view of the mud, khaki uniforms would be more practical than the correct scarlet and grey. Whether it is a baby born in a French railway station among crowds of refugees, or native troops who insist on wearing their pyjamas wrapped round their heads, or Greeks arriving half-dead with frost-bites from the Albanian mountains, the sisters cope with equal resource ; and their stories of hairbreadth escapes in France, at sea, or in Malaya are almost less impressive than the record of day-to-day routine successfully performed in the face of every conceivable difficulty. All those who wish to refresh their faith -in steadfast human virtue should read this lively an I unpretentious book.
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