d a livelier air. The station-master appeared from his den.
Officers of the Army Medical Service and the Red Cross strolled down.
And the stairs and platform echoed to the pattering of the feet of hosts
of industrious "Bluebottles," fetching stretchers and blankets.

The blue-uniformed volunteers who form a portion of the London Ambulance
Column are nicknamed the Bluebottles in allusion to their dress. It is a
nickname which, let me say at once, any man might be proud of. I know
not whether the history of the Bluebottles has yet been written, but
certain it is that their doings have got into newspaper print less often
than they deserved. For theirs is a double role which truly merits the
country's admiration. While carrying on the commerce of the Empire--that
vital commerce without which there would be bankruptcy and no sinews of
war, nor indeed any England left to defend--they have vowed themselves
also, of their own free-will, to the helping of the wounded. Day or
night the Bluebottle is liable to be called from his desk or his home by
the telephone: like the Florentine Brother of the Misericordia he must
instantly hurry into his uniform and rush to the place appointed. He may
be busy or he may be tired; no matter: his vow holds good. Off he goes,
to the railway-station to meet the hospital train and evacuate its
stretchers.

Myself, I have the deepest respect for the Bluebottles and for their
energy in a cause which must often be not only fatiguing, but, from a
commercial point of view, extremely inconvenient. It would be absurd to
pretend, nevertheless, that the less responsible khaki-wearing R.A.M.C.
do not cherish a mild contempt for all Bluebottles. There is no reason
for that contempt. It is idiotic, childish--a humiliating exhibition of
the silliness of masculine human nature. Members of our station-party
who had enlisted but a week back, and who knew nothing whatever of
their work, would, in a whisper, mock the Bluebottles--although every
Bluebottle had taken first-aid classes and passed examinations at which
most of the mockers would have boggled. The Bluebottles were "civilians"
... there you have it. We--who would probably never do any battlefield
soldiering in our lives--looked down on all civilians who had the
impudence to wear a uniform of any sort. Such is the behaviour of the
sterner sex at a moment when its sole thought should be of sensible and
efficient co-operation in the performance of duty.

Fo