" SISTER."
THERE is a deal of difference, in hospital, between the word " Sister " and the word " Nurse." Sister is, of course, a Nurse. But Nurse is not a Sister. However, there is nothing to prevent you calling Nurse " Sister "—provided that Sister herself is not at your elbow. If she is, you had better be careful, both for your own sake and for Nurse's.
Some wearily-wise orderlies, and many patients of experience, apostrophize all the female officials of a hospital as "Sister." The plan has its merits. Apart from the fact that it can offend none, and will cajole not a few, some universal appellation of this sort is—the soldier finds—almost a necessity in his constant dealing with women who are strangers to him. He comes in contact with a host of women, especially after he is wounded—not only nursing women, but women on the ambulances, women who serve refreshments at halting-places, women clerks who take his particulars. women who trace casualties, women who transact postal errands. and so on. One and all, these women, whether paid or otherwise. aro serving him and his follows in some form or another—one and all they are uniform-wearers. Their names and titles are mostly unfamiliar to him : to address them each indiscriminately as " Miss " is absurd. Moreover, " Mies " has a cheap tosshop tang. " Madam " is pedantic. " Nurse " is. in many instances, mani- festly ridiculous : you cannot call a clerical V.A.D. or a Y.M.C.A. waitress "Nurse." So, by a process of elimination, " Sister " is reached. Thus it comes to pass that Mlle. Peroxide, of the Frivol Theatre, who takes a turn at ladling out cups of coffee in a railway station canteen (with a Press photographer handy), finds that the mud-stained " Tommies " at the bar are saying : "Another slice of cake, please, Sister," or, " Any fags for sale hero, Sister ? " The Duchess, too, who is cutting broad and butter, hears herself hailed by the same designation. And if both Mlle. Peroxide and the Duchess are not flattered (and maybe a little moved, too). I alsould be surprised. For really, you know, " Sister " is the happy word. It fits the situation—all such situations. Wouldn't it be possible to add the one perfect touch : that our women comrades should drop into the habit of addressing us as " Brother " ? Officers and men alike. . . " Brother " ! It would be a symbol, this, of what the war ought to mean to us all : a fine collaboration of high and low, equals in endeavour.
In a war hospital, as I have hinted, the old hand knows letter than to address a mere Nurse as Sister—if the genuine Sister is within earshot. For the genuine Sister considers (as she has ovary right to consider) that hors is a title of rank, and that no person wise has not graduated to her rank is properly given the t itle. Unfortu- nately a certain complication here obtrudes itself. Thoro is a beim called the Staff Nurse. She wears a Cape. (Ono speaks the word " Cape " with a capitaL) Because of her Cape she resembles, at a alight distance, that other but more august Cape-wearer, the veritable Sister. Closer inspection reveals the trifling detail that the Staff Nurse, though Capod, is not Striped. Sister sports twa stripes on her cuff : Staff Nurse has none. Bath ladies will fre- quently roll up their sleeves. (And Heaven may bear witness that the act typifies the businesslike but merciful logordomain in which these admirable preetidigitenses excel.) How are you to fathom whether there are stripes on a cuff when the cuff is crumpled is a tight screw around the top of a shapely forearm, the owner of which is performing deft miracles with forceps and foments. tions ? It is a hopeless fix, for the newcomer. He will bo wise te " lie low and say nuffin" until he has ascertained from some informa- tive neighbour the straight tip as to which is Sister and which Staff Nurse : he can trim his sails accordingly, addressing the Sister as " Sister " always and the Staff Nurse as " Sister" sometimes. When Sister and Staff Nurse are both present, and ho is addressing the latter, he must contrive to use no title, inasmuch as if he call, her " Nurse," she will not like it, and if he calls her " Sister; Sister will not like it. So there you are.
When I was first put into a ward to serve as an orderly I was instructed beforehand that the only person to be entitled Sister was the goddess with the Stripes. Eager to be correct, I addressed the Staff Nurse as " Nurse." At once I divined that thorn was something wrong. Her lips tightened. In a frigid voice she informed me of the significance of the Cape : all Cape-wearers hold a status equivalent to that of a commissioned officer in the Army and must bo treated as such by privates like myself. All Cape- wearers were to be accorded the proper courtesies and addressed as Sister. Furthermore, the speaker, realizing that I was a now recruit, and therefore perhaps ignorant, would have me know that all Cape-wearers had undergone certain years of training, and that most of them wore, in ordinary times, Matrons of important institu- tions. In her own case, for instance, her civilian position was a higher one—as it happened—than that of the Sister in command of the ward : higher, in fact, than that of the Matron herself. The speaker concluded by a sketch of her met career—I was hold up is the middle of an urgent job to hearken to it—and a rough estimate of the relative indispensability of the female as contrasted wits the male staff. Finally, I was dismissed with an injunction Lu hurry and finish my uncompleted task. "Very good, S.stor," I replied.
Half-an-hour later, in a pause in the morning's rush, I was beckoned aside, into the ward kitchen, by Sister herself. She gently apprised me that, as I was a now recruit, she thought perhaps I was not yet aware of the accurate modes of address and the etiquette customary in a military hospitaL Etcetera, etcetera. She had overheard me call the Staff Nurse "Sister."
Enough. One may smile at these exhibitions of feminine human nature (and I could match them, absolutely, on the male side), but.
when all is said and done, " Sister " is a beautiful title, and most of the women who receive it—whether correctly or because, by war serviee, they have had it bestowed upon them—richly deserve it as n token of gratitude and honor. Doubtless there has been a foolish amount of gush, spoken and printed, about Sister." Far be it from Inc to add to the harvest of that insipid commodity : one of the few commodities of which we might with profit have endured a shortage in war time. A woman does not cease to he a womap when she dons a Cape uniform embellished with striped cuffs. I have known all sorts of Sisters. Sonic were irascible, some were calm, some tremendously clever in government, some the reverse, some conducted their wards as an affectionate family, some were " cats " and set everybody squabbling, some were methodical, some wore muddlers, some were "ladylike" and made one loathe lady- likeness, and some wore not " ladies " and made one feel that to be a " lady " was the last thing that mattered. To give a composite portrait of " Sister " is therefore a vain dream. Individual Sisters have been drawn for us by many writers, since the war began, and I do not think that the Sisterhood need be ashamed of the place they hold in current literature's pages. Most normal males had little or no acquaintance with the nursing profession before this time of trial. We had read of nurses in sentimental novels, and took it for granted—the occurrence was automatic, according to recipe—that the patient, having been restored to life, married I he golden-haired damsel who, it would seem, achieved these cures by " hovering round the sick-bed " or " smoothing the sufferer's brow." The public was seldom permitted a glimpse of what really might have been more convincing detail. In a war hospital the detail is extremely convincing. Let there be no mistake about that. Much of it is detail not generally printed for drawing-room con- sumption. The maidenhood of England (such is our .theory) must be sheltered from the unpleasant. And le ! this sheltered maiden- hood has come forward and without a qualm lent a hand in the very tasks which it could not be trusted to read of : without, also, any " hovering round " or " smoothing the brow " illusions. The phenomenon has its humorous side : perhaps, paradoxically, its humorousness may be discerned in its seriousness. The amateur nurse and the professional alike have at all events demon- ttrated that our countrywomen are a shade less namby-pamby than the novelists painted them : it should be added that they have proved that marriage is not the only consummation of a hearty friendship between a wounded man and the woman who tends him. To he sure, there have been " romances " in the war hospital ; but it is not simply the mathematics of the situation (thirty men per ward, to four women, at any given moment !) which render the romance; relatively rare. There is another reason, and a braeingly sound one. It is summed up in the name, Sitter.
Yes, " Sister " is the ideal noun, to portray each of there women of England who, in whatever avocation, are ministering to England's
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