.
Not only the nurses, but the doctors and ambulance drivers are women. We
have supplied about 72,000 women for this work alone."

"How have women regarded the discipline of army life?" was asked.

"Wonderfully!" said Lady Frances. "It has been good for them. Just see
our women 'bus conductors. They work hard, handle all kinds of people,
but I never heard them say they are unable to meet the emergencies which
arise. And for the most part they are women who come from very humble
surroundings. You hear that women have broken down in health under their
work, but it seems to me I have read frequently about American business
men suffering from nervous breakdowns and overwork."

SUCCESS BUILT ON RUINS OF FAILURE.

No great victories, either in war or in the ordinary relations of life,
are attained without initial blunders. Many a splendid success is built
upon the ruins of failure, and this is a fact that the women of Europe
learned after the first hysteria occasioned by the marching soldiers,
the beat of drums and all the excitement incident to real warfare.
American women, when they joined hands with the Allies against
Prussianism and all that it meant, builded splendid records of their
usefulness upon the mistakes that these women made.

In the summer of 1914 every girl and woman clamored to be a nurse. Women
with a great deal of money and no experience opened "hospitals" that
were about as fit for the reception and treatment of wounded men as a
henroost is capable of housing an eagle. They all wanted to be in the
"Red Cross" or "V.A.D." (Voluntary Aid Department) and wear caps and
bandage wounds.

Then there were the amateur nurses who didn't know much about nursing,
"but would love to try." The daughter of a duke tried to go through a
probationary course at St. Bartholomew's Hospital because she thought
the uniform "perfectly sweet." But of course this element of
"fluffiness" exists on the outside of any great movement. It has to be
blown away so that the hard surface of genuine and practical endeavor
can be seen and felt. And that is what happened to England. The "fluff"
disappeared and women knew where they were, and men realized that women
possess a force, a firm and splendid resolve, that gives them the right
to step beside men in the march toward victory.

Another craze that amounted to a vice was the furious and ill-considered
efforts of totally unskilled women to make shirts and hospital garments
for sol