ot who was convinced that chicane alone saved the
So-and-So Club from being dedicated to the service of the wounded was
quite unable to tell me whether the lifts--assuming that lifts
existed--were roomy enough to accommodate stretchers; whether, if so, no
interval of stairs prevented trollies from being wheeled to every ward;
whether the arrangement of the building would allow of the network of
plumbing necessitated by the introduction of numerous bathrooms and
lavatories (for each ward must possess both); whether the kitchens were
so located that they could supply food to top-floor patients without
waste of carrying labour on the part of the orderlies' staff. These
problems, the mere fringe of the subject, had never occurred to our
patriot. His idea of a hospital was a place where soldiers lie in bed
and get well. (What queer notions visitors absorb of the _easiness_ of
hospital life!) He had not glimpsed the organisation which made the cure
possible. The man in bed, a Sister hovering in the background with,
apparently, nothing to do but look pleasant--these constituted, for him,
the final phenomena of a war hospital. These phenomena, instead of being
housed in a wood-and-corrugated-iron shed, might have been staged
picturesquely in one of the luxurious salons of the So-and-So Club in
Pall Mall. It was a shame that they weren't. He would write to the
papers about it. Somebody must be blamed, somebody must be made to
hustle. And meanwhile the Sisters and doctors who _were_ installed in
gorgeous mansions for their work were openly envying the fortunate ones
who had been given those bare but efficient and compactly-planned sheds.

Some years ago a number of public buildings were earmarked for hospital
use in case of war. It may surprise the indignant patriots to learn that
any preparations whatever were made prior to the outbreak in 1914.
Nevertheless all kinds of preparations actually were made. Mistakes and
miscalculations may have marred those preparations: the fact remains
that, as far as the Territorial Medical Service was concerned, the
authorities had merely to press a button and hospitals came into
existence. Thus a number of institutions--mostly schools--found
themselves ejected from their own roof-trees: found, in short, (what
many other folk were to learn later) that the State is omnipotent in
war-time and that sectional interests fade into insignificance compared
with the interests of the safety of the commonwe