But who are we that we should speak like this,
even for the best of causes, to any section of the women of England ? It has been the special, the priceless, privilege of the present writer to live during the past two and a half years in a small Red Cross hospital (thirty-five beds) staffed (save for a professional Sister-in-Charge of great skill and two able masseuses) by V.A.D.'s, and he has there learnt how worthy is the work done by these Volunteers who wear the Red Cross on a white field—the emblem of England centuries before it was adopted by the Congress of Geneva. But there are some things too good for panegyric, and the V.A.D. nurse is one of them. She has her faults, of course. She is very human. She is often very young. Her high spirits sometimes make discipline diffi- cult. She is largely untrained. Her ignorance is oc,casionally as bound- less as her zeal and her willingness for self-sacrifice. But no one who has seen her at work at close quarters, tired by long hours of standing and of hard labour, wearied by sick men's whims, tortured by wounded men's agonies, haunted by the mental horrors of the shell-shocked or the gassed, exhausted by night duty or by long wakeful days in which sleep evades capture, will refuse the respect duo to high endeavour.
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