CHAPTER VII
Taking Title in the Professions
They are the grimmest outposts of all that mark the winning of the woman's cause. But they star the map of Europe to-day—the Women's War Hospitals.
Out of the night darkness that envelops a war ridden land, a bell sounds a faint alarm. From bed to bed down the white wards there passes the word in a hoarse whisper: "The convoy, the convoy again." Instantly the whole vast house of pain is at taut attention. Boyish women surgeons, throwing aside the cigarettes with which they have been relaxing overstrained nerves, hastily don white tunics and take their place by the operating tables. Women physicians hurry from the laboratories with the anesthetics that will be needed. Girl orderlies, lounging at leisure in the corridors, remove their hands from their pockets to seize the stretchers and rush to their line-up in the courtyard. The gate keeper turns a heavy iron key. From out the darkness beyond, the convoy of grey ambulances reaching in a continuous line from the railway station begins to roll in.
On and on they come in great waves of agony
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