Some of the surgeons have their specially trained nurses, but nursing as a profession for the classes who are alone competent to undertake it is a conception which has yet to dawn upon the Continent, for only a woman of education and refinement can really be a nurse.

The absence on the Continent of a nursing profession such as ours is not without its influence on medicine and surgery abroad.  The individual patient meets with far less consideration than would be the case in this country, and is apt to be regarded as so much raw material.  In Belgium this tendency is counteracted by the natural kindliness of the Belgian, but in other countries patients are often treated with a callousness which is amazing.  There is in many of the great clinics a disregard of the patient’s feelings, of his sufferings, and even of his life, which would be impossible in an English hospital.  The contact of a surgeon with his hospital patients as individuals is largely through the nursing staff, and his point of view will be largely influenced by them.  There is no one in our profession, from the youngest dresser to the oldest physician, who does not owe a great part of his education to Sister.

V. Termonde

Anyone who has worked in hospitals will realize how important it is for the health of the staff, nurses and doctors, that they should get out into the fresh air for at least some part of every day.  It is still more necessary in a war hospital, for not only is the work more exacting, but the cases themselves involve certain risks which can only be safely taken in perfect health.  Practically every one is septic, and to anyone in the least run down the danger of infection is considerable; and infection with some of the organisms with which one meets in war is a very serious thing indeed.  We had four large motors in Antwerp belonging to the members of our hospital, and always at its service, and every afternoon parties were made up to drive out into the country.  As a rule calls were made at various Croix Rouge posts on the way, and in that way we kept in contact with the medical service of the army in the field, and gave them what help we could.  We were always provided with the password, and the whole country was open to us—­a privilege we very greatly appreciated; for after a hard morning’s work in the wards there are few things more delightful than a motor drive.  And it gave us an opportunity of seeing war as very few but staff officers ever can see it.  We learnt more about the condition of the country and of the results of German methods in one afternoon than all the literature in the world could ever teach.  If only it were possible to bring home to the people of Britain one-hundredth part of what we saw with our own eyes, stringent laws would have to be passed to stop men and women from enlisting.  No man who deserved the name of man, and no woman who deserved to be the mother of a child, would rest day or night till the earth had been freed from the fiends who have ravaged Belgium and made the name of German vile.