re-formed she was promoted corporal, sergeant, and lieutenant, and went through every engagement with her regiment till she was wounded ; she returned again to the front and was not demobilized till 1919. Whilst on active service, in cooperation with Mrs. Haverfield, she organized a Comforts Fund for the Serbian soldiers in the trenches, and raised money for the Sandes- Haverfield can- teens, which worked directly under the Serbian army.
Work for the Russian Army. In Sept. 1915 a British Committee, with Lady Muriel Paget as hon. sec., raised funds to equip an Anglo- ' Russian hospital for work under the Russian Red Cross Society. The hospital of 200 beds was formally opened in the palace of the Grand Duke Dmitri at Petrograd in Feb. 1916 in the presence of the Empress and a brilliant company. At the beginning of May, during the offensive^of Gen. Brussilov a field hospital of 100 beds was attached to the Russian Guards, with a motor ambulance column of 22 ambulances: the Anglo-Russian hospital also took charge of 120 beds in a Russian hospital at Lutsk, providing the nurses and doctors. Over 100,000 was raised. Mrs. Wynne, an original mem- ber of the Hector Munro Ambulance Corps in Belgium, took a unit of motor ambulances to Russia in 1915, and was attached to the First Caucasian ambulance unit on the Persian front. The conditions proving too rough for her 50 H. P. cars, she transferred them to the column of the Anglo-Russian hospital. The Revolution put an end to the work, and Lady Muriel Paget and her staff had to travel home via Siberia and Japan, taking a month to cross Siberia in a third-class carriage.
The N.U.W.S.S. raised the Millicent Garrett Fawcett Maternity unit for work among the Russian refugees at a cost of over 12,000, and the Great Britain to Poland Fund, and the Polish War Victims Relief Committee worked as long as political circumstances per- mitted for the Polish refugees.
Work for the Italian Army. Soon after Italy joined the Allies in May 1915, the British Committee in aid of the Italian wounded raised funds to finance the first unit of the British Red Cross Society in Italy, which arrived on the Isonzo front in Sept. 1915. A field hospital at Villa Trento, staffed by British sisters and V.A.D.s under the Joint War Committee, broke down the Italian rule against em- ploying women nurses at the front.
In Dec. 1915 Lady Helena Gleichen and Mrs. Hollings, who had been trained as X-ray operators and had raised private funds to purchase motor-cars fitted with X-ray apparatus, were attached as a radiographic unit to the 6th Army Corps of the 3rd Army. The British Red Cross Society provided additional staff and cars. After six months they were attached to the headquarters staff of the 2nd Army and were present at both battles of Gorizia. Between Dec. 1915 and Oct. 1917, 12,600 X-ray examinations were made.
Mrs. Watkins, who raised her own funds for two years, and was helped by the British Red Cross Society, went to Italy in Sept. 1915 with a staff to set up station canteens for the hospital trains at Cervignano and San Giovanni Manzano, the railroads on the Isonzo front. In July 1917 she undertook the feeding of the wounded in the clearing station of Dolegna, and during Aug. an average of 1,600 wounded were dealt with in 24 hours. It was due to her initiative that the first recreation hut for soldiers of the 2nd and 3rd armies was opened by the Italian army in the spring of 1916. Mrs. Watkins and her helpers undertook the organization of 14 others, which proved so successful that the Supreme Command took up the idea and were building 100 huts just before the retreat of Oct. 1917. Mrs. Wynne, on her return from Russia, worked with her motor am- bulances for the Italian Red Cross.
V. Voluntary E/ort in Supplies, Etc. The outbreak of war found voluntary effort for the fighting forces entirely unorganized, apart from the Regimental Associations in connexion with the regular battalions of the regiments comprising the pre-war army. The British Red Cross Society and Order of St. John were the only organizations that supplied hospital requisites for the sick and wounded. These could obviously not expand sufficiently fast to meet the new needs, and Queen Mary's Needlework Guild, with Lady Lawley as hon. sec., came into being on Aug. 10 1914, with the more general object of "organizing a collection of garments for those who will suffer on account of the war." The King and Queen and Princess Mary gave the lead in promoting funds to send a present for Christmas 1914 to every person wearing the King's uniform and to every nurse at the front, and Queen Alexandra presented each nurse in the regular army nursing services in France with a fur-lined cape, hood and muff.
It is estimated that the value of goods in kind presented to soldiers and sailors by voluntary effort in the first year of the war was 5,000,- boo, and funds were formed to collect in bulk such articles as air pillows, Christmas puddings, gloves, handkerchiefs, hot-water bottles, Bovril, letter cases, razors, respirators, " tubs for Tommies," periscopes, field glasses, wire cutters, sandbags, matches, cigarettes, tobacco, mouth organs, hospital bags, walking sticks and eggs. Sxime of these funds continued till the end of the war. The National Egg Society provided over 44,000,000 eggs for hospitals in four years.
Lady Smith-Dorrien's Hospital Bag Fund distributed over 2,500,000 bags before Jan. I 1918; Lady Roberts' Field Glass Fund produced on an average 300 field glasses a month; Miss Gladys Storey's Bovril Fund sent Bovril to all the fronts throughout the war; the Glove Waistcoat Society made 55,000 windproof waistcoats out of old gloves, and John Penoyre collected over 100,000 sweaters. By the sale of worn-out silver thimbles and oddments of silver and gold, the Silver Thimble Fund under Miss Hope Clarke raised over 60,- ooo and provided 15 motor ambulances, 5 motor hospital launches 2 motor dental surgery cars, besides large donations to the Red Cross and other funds for soldiers and sailors. The Vegetable Products Committee for naval supply under E. Jerome Dyer despatched 50,000,000 Ib. of vegetables to the fleet, estimated in cash value at 1,250,000. Every town had its own fund to send par- cels to prisoners of war, and the packing was done by voluntary women workers.
Outstanding private comforts funds were those started by Lady French and Lady Jellicoe, which closed down at the end of the first winter campaign, when the needs of the army and navy were for the moment satisfied. The one comforts fund inherited from the Boer war was Queen Alexandra's Field Force Fund, which opened in Oct. 1914, with Mrs. William Sclater, who had organized it in S. Africa, as hon. secretary. Gifts were sent out in response to definite requests from commanding officers, and by the Armistice over 80,000 had been raised.
The universal desire to make something for the man on active service caused a multitude of uncorrelated work parties to spring up all over the country, and it was clear that before the second winter campaign some general scheme of coordination was essential if the best use was to be made of the energy and enthusiasm of a vast band of voluntary needle workers. In Sept. igijj the department of the Director-General of Voluntary Organizations, with Sir Edward Ward as Director General, was formed as a branch of the War Office, without funds, to establish county, city, borough, and district associations throughout Great Britain under which it was proposed to affiliate existing voluntary bodies. The organization dealt with supplies to combatants and to men in military hospitals. Regimental organizations were recommended to continue and extend their work, and the Joint War Committee and Queen Mary's Needlework Guild were recognized as separate and independent organizations.
From Aug. 10 1914 till Feb. 1919 St. James' Palace was the col- lecting centre for the 15,500,000 articles that were sent in by the members of Queen Mary's Needlework Guild all over the world. Six hundred and thirty branches with a membership of 1,078,839 persons were formed in Great Britain alone. The need for hospital dressings had been realized early and the first Surgical Branch Depdt was started by Miss McCaul in 1914, with Mrs. Gibson as general manager; this became the Central Surgical Depdt of the Guild, which sent 11,000,000 articles direct to Allied hospitals and hospital ships. The first orthopaedic branch was the Surgical Requisites Association started at Mulberry Walk, Chelsea, which became the central orthopaedic branch of Q.M.N.G. with 1,000 members and 44 branches. This depot was a centre of instruction for all the in- stitutions engaged in orthopaedic work, ovying to the inventions made by the workers. Elinor Halle first utilized papier-mache as a material for arm cradles, and then devised a light boot, with a papier- mache back, for drop foot, which was in. such great demand that centres were opened for making them throughout France and Italy as well as in Great Britain and India. A Papier-Mache Surgical Appliances Department at Simla had 1 1 branches.
A process of making the papier-mache waterproof for baths by using a cuprammonium solution of cotton wool instead of paste for the final layers of the papier-mache, was invented by Miss Acheson. This medium was adapted for splints, and permission was obtained for voluntary workers to visit the military hospitals and take plaster casts from the limbs of the patients, on to which the splints were moulded, so that the utmost amount of pressure could be brought to bear without causing pain. This method of making splints for special cases became generally adopted by other depdts. Many elaborations of the splints were invented by Mrs. Sanyer Adkin; in the words of Sir Robert Jones, the department was an " inspiration."
The Red Cross and St. John's working parties were recognized as a distinct body under the Joint War Committee. They continued as before primarily to supply the auxiliary and voluntary hospitals, and sent their surplus to the military hospitals when asked to do so by the D.G.V.O. During the war 2,823 workparties were registered at the Central Workrooms at Burlington House, which were established in Oct. 1915 to coordinate the work. Over 30,000,000 articles were produced by the branches; 540,000 gifts were contributed by the 1,617 registered home workers, and 800,000 things were made by the 1,202 members of the Central Workrooms. The independent bodies of workers not belonging to Queen Mary's Needlework Guild or to the Joint War Committee were dealt with by the D.G.V.O., who invited the workparties to assemble their workers into groups covering certain areas under the Army Council's scheme. The comforts were issued to combatants through a " Comforts Pool " in each theatre of war, and to military hospitals according to the demands of the officers commanding hospital units. A total of 88,000,000 articles of clothing and surgical comforts estimated at a
