# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Women's War-Work

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​WOMEN'S WAR-WORK. It would be impossible here to attempt to describe the special war- work done by women of all the belligerent countries in 1914-8; and this article is confined to an outline of women's war-work as organized in the United Kingdom and the United States, beginning with the former.
UNITED KINGDOM
The general dislocation which ensued in industry threw num- bers of women workers in the United Kingdom out of employ- ment. At the same time women of independent means, moved by patriotism, came forward in large numbers with offers of volun- tary service. It soon became apparent, that the well-meant ac- tion of the non-professional women was likely to press heavily on the position of the unemployed wage-earners; and accordingly on Aug. 20 Queen Mary inaugurated the " Queen's Work for Wo- men Fund," technically a branch of the National Relief Fund, to provide employment for as many as possible of the women thrown out of work by the war. The Queen's collecting com- mittee, with Lady Roxburgh as hon. sec., raised the money, but the administration of the fund was in the hands of the Central Committee on Women's Employment, a Government Committee under the chairmanship of the Marchioness of Crewe, with Mary Macarthur (d. 1921) as hon. secretary. The problem of the Com- mittee was to help to adjust the dislocation of industry, so that unemployed firms and workers in a slack trade might ease the overpressure in other trades. Firms unused to Government work were assisted to undertake War Office contracts, and orders were placed with small establishments employing women, who would otherwise have had to relinquish their businesses. Over 70 special relief workrooms, through which about 9,000 women passed before Feb. 1915, were managed by women's employment sub-committees of the local representative committees set up by the Government Committee on the Prevention and Relief of Distress. Articles made in them were not offered for sale, and were supposed to be educative to the worker. New branches of the toy-making industry, in which there was a possibility of cap- turing German trade, were started in various private relief work- rooms, and became paying business concerns.
The distress among the professional classes caused by the dis- location of work was very great, and the Professional Classes War Relief Council, consisting of representatives from the chief professional institutions and the principal societies organizing relief work, was formed to cope with the trouble in Oct. 1914. The Council dealt chiefly with education, maternity assistance, training, and the organization of concerts for the employment of musicians, who, as a class, were particularly hard hit. The So- ciety for Promoting the Employment of Women opened an edu- cated women's war emergency training fund for a year, which trained out-of-work governesses and journalists to take posts in banks; and hostels were opened by various private committees for ladies in distress owing to the war.
On Aug. 3, before the official declaration of war, the executive committee of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies under its president, Mrs. Fawcett, decided to suspend political action (see WOMAN SUFFRAGE) and devote the organizing capacity of the Union to meet the changed conditions. Within a week the London branch, with Miss Philippa Strachey as. secretary, had started a free bureau under the name of " Women's Service " to direct the efforts of the thousands of non-professional women eagerly desirous of finding useful work. Over 1,300 volunteers were placed before the end of 1914. Many young women began at once to prepare themselves for nursing, joined Voluntary Aid Detachments, and worked in auxiliary hospitals. The raising of funds and making of comforts for the units of the original Expedi- tionary Force absorbed others, and the arrival of the Belgian refugees in England before the end of Aug. caused the formation of 2,500 local Belgian relief committees, of whom the members were mostly women. Clubs 'to help the wives of soldiers and
sailors were started by the Tipperary League under Mrs. Juson Kerr, the British Women's Patriotic League, and others. The Women's United Services League under Lady French and Lady Jellicoe coordinated and registered the work done by war clubs throughout the kingdom. A large number of women devoted themselves at once to the work of the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families Associations, and to the work of the Officers' Families Fund founded by the Marchioness of Lansdowne in 1914.
Already in the early months of the war it became evident that the abnormal conditions arising from the quartering of large num- bers of soldiers in barracks and camps, and of convalescents in hospitals, would give rise to social dangers, and that steps should be taken to deal with the situation. A militant suffrage society, the Women's Freedom League, formed the Women's Police Volunteers, under Miss Nina Boyle, in Sept. 1914. This Corps was reorganized shortly after as the Women Police Service under Miss Damer Dawson (d. 1920), and Miss Allen. To cope with the same evil the National Union of Women Workers called an emergency meeting of their rescue and preventive sub- committee in Sept. 1914. As a result a corps of " Women Patrols" was formed to work under the official sanction of the Commis- sioner of Police in the metropolitan district, and of the Chief Constables in the provinces (see WOMEN POLICE).
I. Voluntary Organizations and Corps. The first of the new corps of women called into existence to meet war conditions was the Women's Emergency Corps, originated by Miss Decima Moore, and launched Aug. 6 1914 in cooperation with Miss Lena Ashwell, the Hon. Evelina Haverficld, Miss Eva Moore and Mrs. Kingsley Tarpey. In addition to relief workrooms, and the regis- tration of the innumerable voluntary offers of service character- istic of the first months of the war, schemes were started under its auspices which developed independently, after the parent corps had met the " emergency " conditions of dislocation of la- bour and refugee reUef . The collection of surplus food from the I London markets for the unemployed and for Belgian refugees de- 1 veloped into the National Food Fund, which raised 163,615 in gifts of food and money before the end of the war. The Women's Volunteer Reserve, founded in 1914 as a branch of the Women's! Emergency Corps by the Hon. Evelina Haverfield, with the; Marchioness of Londonderry as hon. colonel-in-chief, " to pro-! vide a trained and disciplined body of women ready to assist the State in any capacity," did military drill, wore khaki uniform and, saluted their officers. The founders' idea that, as signalers, des-i patch riders, telegraphists and motorists, they might set men free for the firing line, was premature in 1914, but anticipated the need! actually met later by the women of the Army Service Corps and Q.M.A.A.C. In practice the Reserve consisted of working girls who gave their leisure time to organized voluntary work in can- teens, hospitals, workrooms and clubs. After Mrs. Haverfield had left the W.V.R. to work in Serbia with the Scottish Women's, Hospitals, Mrs. Beatty and Mrs. Kilroy Kenyon formed the: Women's Reserve Ambulance (Green Cross Corps) in June 1015, a fresh organization on somewhat similar lines to the W.V.R., but confining its activities mainly to London, whereas the most successful branches of the W.V.R. worked in the provinces till the end of the war. Other somewhat similar corps for the organi- zation of part-time workers were the Women's Auxiliary Force,|j founded in 1915 by Miss Walthall and Miss Sparshatt, and the Liverpool Home Service Corps. The latter was started in May 1915 by Miss Phyllis Lovell and had branches throughout Lancashire. In Aug. 1915 it formed a Police Aid Detachment which worked in conjunction with the Lancashire police.
Public opinion with regard to the " khaki " women was reflected in a " Punch " cartoon for Dec. 15 1915, showing a gallant Highlander curtseying to take a lady officer's salute. They outlived this ridicule, and in 1918 the salute was officially adopted by the women of the Auxiliary Army Services. Nevertheless by the sprint; of 1915, when the country began to feel the drain of its man-power, the Marchionegs of Londonderry realized that a less military corps of women would attract many of those anxious to come forward to carry on the work of the country. In July she founded the Women's Legion, which from the first was intended to be a corps of paid women replacing paid men. A khaki uniform was worn and the women were subject to regulations and discipline. Ultimately over 40,000 were ​enrolled. This corps was the link between the independent voluntary associations of women, such as the Emergency Corps, formed on the outbreak of war, and the official women's services, two of which (described below) were sections of the Women's Legion.
Throughout 1915 and 1916 efforts were made by voluntary organizations such as the Women's Legion and the Women's Defence Relief Corps, under Mrs. Dawson Scott, as well as by the Govern- ment, through the War Agricultural Committees of the Board of Trade, of which 63 had been set up before July 1916, to induce women to offer their services on the land and to persuade farmers to accept them. The Women's Farm and Garden Union was the most important of the bodies which had dealt with women's work on the land before the war, and, realizing that each individual woman was an object lesson for good or ill to the farmers whose favour had to be won, the Union started a system of training farms in the autumn of 1915. Early in 1916 the Government provided a grant, and the Women's National Land Service Corps under Mrs. iRoland Wilkins was launched as a war off-shoot of the Farm and Garden Union, to deal with emergencywar-work on the land. By the end of the year the demand for women had become greater than could be met by a small voluntary association, and, as the result of a deputation from the Corps to the Minister of Agriculture, the Women's Land Army was instituted early in 1917 as a Women's Branch of the Board of Agriculture. The Corps continued to act as the agent of the Land Army for organizing the supply of educated women as seasonal workers. In all 9,022 workers were sent out, and in 1918 the flax harvest was saved by 3,835 holiday workers from the Corps.
By the spring of 1915 shell-work for women was beginning; in March women tram conductors started work at Glasgow, and girls were employed as telegraph operators in Liverpool. But women were impatient at the slowness of the progress of industrial substitution and at the uselessness of the Women's War Service Register com- piled by the Board of Trade in March 1915. The suffrage societies urged the Government to face the need for the recognition of the claim of women to be employed on war production, and in July 1915 a procession and deputation to Mr. Lloyd George was organized by Mrs. Pankhurst to assert this claim. In connexion with the demand for skilled workers, the London Society for Women's Suffrage, which promoted the introduction of women into occupations hitherto reserved for men, started a Munitions and Aircraft Department in July 1915, and arranged the first training classes in oxy-acetylene welding. The pupils were the first women welders to enter the engineering trade, and after two years the Ministry of Munitions assumed financial responsibility for the school.
Messrs. Bcardmore in Glasgow and Messrs. Vickers at Barrow-in- Furness and at Erith employed women on shell-making in the spring of 1915. In order to ease the strain due to Sunday work, a band of Women Relief Munition Workers, educated women of the leisured class, were organized by Lady Cowan and Lady Moir and trained in the rough turning and boring of 4-5 shells and l8-lb. shrap- nel at Erith; they bound themselves after training to undertake week-end shifts for six months.
In 1915 and 1916 work in canteens, hostels and clubs, formed by voluntary agency in connexion with the welfare of munition workers, absorbed a large number of voluntary women workers. Lady Lawrence obtained permission to enter the almost sacred precincts of Woolwich Arsenal in May 1915 and organized the Munition Workers Canteen Committee, which provided light refreshments at many munition factories and had 1,250 workers. The movement for establishing munition and dock workers canteens, essential for the health of the worker and the consequent output of munitions, dates from this initial effort. About 500 canteens for munition and dock workers were started by 12 voluntary societies: the Muni- tions Auxiliary Committee of the Y.M.C.A.; the Y.W.C.A. ; the Church Army; the Salvation Army; the Church of England Temperance Society; the National Peoples' Palaces Association; the Y.M.C.A., Scotland; the British Women's Temperance Asso- ciation, Scotland; the Glasgow Union of Women Workers; the Women's Volunteer Reserve; and the Women's Legion. The latter employed 2,000 paid whole-time canteen workers, but it is estimated that over 10,000 voluntary part-time workers were in attendance at less than 130 out of the 500 canteens.
The Munitions Auxiliary Committee of the Y.M.C.A. under the presidency of Princess Helena Victoria opened 183 of these 500 canteensand had over 10,000 women workers. In all, between 35,000 and 40,000 women gave their services to the Y.M.C.A. in England during the war. The canteen work was undertaken to meet an emer- gency and to set the canteens going more quickly than would have been possible under any other system. But it was wasteful of volun- tary labour, and in 1916 the Central Control Board became the responsible authority for the organization of industrial canteens in munition works throughout the country, and encouraged the em- ployment of paid workers.
The steady withdrawal of men from civilian to military life led in 1916 and 1917 to a remarkable expansion in the scope and volume of women's work (see WOMEN'S EMPLOYMENT). The growth of the Women's Services, and the demand for women as substitutes for men in industrial occupations and in the Civil Service, caused a consequent diminution in the number of voluntary workers and in the relative importance of the voluntary corps.
II. The Women's Services. The Women's Services were of two types. First came those composed of "enrolled" women in the legal sense, who were in the direct employment of the War De- partments, and whose contracts brought them within the regula- tions of the Defence of the Realm Act. The women could be enrolled as " mobile " workers for home service only, or for ser- vice at home and abroad; or as " immobile " workers, recruited for local employment, who could not be required to move away from the district. Secondly came those composed of " non- enrolled " women in the legal sense, who did not render them- selves liable to penalties under the Defence of the Realm Act and might be engaged on an annual or weekly contract. Some ser- vices enrolled their women for a year only and others for the duration of the war.
(A.) ENROLLED WOMEN
The Army Nursing Services. Before the war the only women's auxiliary army services in existence were Queen Alexandra's Im- perial Military Nursing Service and Reserve, and the Territorial Force Nursing Service. The V.A.D.s, founded in 1909 under the British Red Cross Society and Order of St. John of Jerusalem, de- veloped a section of 12,000 V.A.D. nursing members, enrolled under the War Office in 1915 for service in military hospitals, and a section of 6,000 General Service members, enrolled for general service in connexion with military hospitals in 1917.
The Q.A.I. M.N.S. expanded from a corps of 800 trained nurses to 10,304; and theT.F.N.S. from 2,738 nurses ready to serve when war broke out to 8,140 (see NURSING).
The Military Massage Service. The Military Massage Service started its career in Aug. 1914 under the name of the Almeric Paget Massage Corps. It was maintained by Mr. Almeric Paget (after- ward Lord Queenborough) and Mrs. Almeric Paget (d. 1916), and consisted of 50 fully-trained masseuses who, early in Sept. 1914, were distributed among the principal military hospitals in the United Kingdom, this number being shortly increased to loo. Lady Essex French was hon. secretary.
The next development of the work of the Corps was in Nov. 1914, when a massage and electrical out-patient clinic was opened in Lon- don for the treatment of wounded officers and men, financed till Dec. 1920 by Mr. and Mrs. Paget. During the war over 200 patients were treated in the clinic daily. It was inspected by the Director- General Army Medical Service in March 1915 and subsequently became the model for the massage and electrical departments in the convalescent hospitals and command depots throughout the United Kingdom. Early in 1915 the War Office officially recognized the Corps by making it the body to which all masseuses and masseurs engaged for service in military hospitals must belong. An advisory committee was instituted by the War Office, which laid down the standard of training and qualifications required and formed sub- committees to select the candidates. Thus the admission of untrained or partially trained personnel was prevented, and the interests of the patients and of the massage profession were safeguarded.
In Dec. 1916 the word " Military " was added to the title of the Corps, and in Jan. 1919 it became known as the Military Massage Service by Army Council Instruction.
It was not until Jan. 1917 that military masseuses were required for service overseas, but from that date up to six months after the signing of the Armistice 56 masseuses served in France and Italy; 3,388 masseuses and masseurs had been enrolled in the service and there were over 2,000 actually at work on the day the Armistice was signed. (The Regulations for the Corps are set out in A.C.I. 779, 1,262 and 1,146 of 1917, and 65,308 and 489 of 1919.)
The Women's Legion, Cooks and Motor-drivers. In July 1915, a scheme was originated by the Marchioness of Londonderry, founder and president of the Women's Legion, which was approved by the Q.M.G., and put into operation at Dartford Camp convalescent hospital, for taking over the whole of the kitchens and installing women cooks. The objects were to release men for the work which women could do; to improve the cooking and cleaning of the camps and to introduce economies and variety in the feeding of the troops. The experiment proved a success; other camps were taken over, and an A.C.I. of Feb. 1916 defined the position of the cooks. The first Commandant was Miss Lilian Barker who, when she became welfare superintendent at Woolwich Arsenal, was succeeded by Dame Flor- ence Leach. Mrs. Long, who lost her life in the torpedoing of the " Warilda," was hon. secretary. Ultimately 4,000 women cooks and waitresses replaced men in camps and convalescent hospitals in Great Britain; they signed a contract for a year, but were not enrolled until the organization became part of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps in Sept. 1917. Those who transferred retained the right to wear the Women's Legion badge.
Women motor drivers, mechanics and storekeepers were first employed as substitutes for men of the R.A.S.C. in April 1916, and of the R.F.C. in the following September. The women were re- cruited and put into uniform by the Women's Legion under Miss Christobel Ellis, and were paid by the army. There was no enrol- ment until the Section was taken over by the W.A.A.C. in 1917. ​This arrangement lasted only a few months, and in Nov., at the instigation of Lady Londonderry, the army abandoned the scheme for centralizing the administration of women working in the army in one corps, and it was decided that overseas drivers should enrol in the W.A.A.C., but that drivers for home service should again belong to the Motor Transport Section of the Women's Legion. They were enrolled for a year only, instead of for the duration of the war, as in the W.A.A.C., and came under the Q.M.G.'s Depart- ment; 647 Flying Corps drivers were transferred to the W.R.A.F. in 1918. Ultimately about 2,000 women were attached to areas and battalions throughout Great Britain, and after the Armistice several hundred drivers were sent to France to replace the demobilized mechanical transport men.
Women's Forage Corps, R.A.S.C. In July 1915, women super- visors were enrolled under the War Office for the duration of the war to arrange for the transit of hay from the farm to the station and to forward it to its ultimate destination. The urgent need for in- creased substitution caused a special women's branch of the Forage Department, known as the Women's Forage Corps, to be inaugu- rated in March 1917 under Brig.-Gen. Morgan. Mrs. Athole Stewart was appointed superintendent and 4,200 women were en- rolled as 1st. and snd.-grade officers and industrial members, for a year or the duration of the war. They were distributed throughout Great Britain and Ireland and wore khaki uniform. The industrial members took the place of privates in the R.A.S.C. and worked as hay balers, sack makers and menders, sheet repairers, thatchers, chaffing hands, transport drivers and clerks. The substitution of women did not depreciate the quality of the work.
Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps. In Dec. 1916 the War Office ordered Gen. Lawson to enquire into the number and physical categories of men employed out of the fighting area in France. On Jan. 1 6 he reported that in his opinion 12,100 men might be re- placed by women to begin with. He added: " In the last year or more in England the employment of women has developed to an immense extent through lack of men, and has been attended with remarkable success. Women have taken up various forms of male employment, which, by many, had been deemed impossible for the sex. They have found their way into work in all branches of life and have proved their capacity for it. In the army at home the success has been conspicuous and women are to be found working in numerous offices and cooking in many of the home military estab- lishments. Results have shown that the sex difficulty has not been anything like what some have predicted. The women have been hard at work and felt they were out for the job and the men have respected them, and their experience at home has been, I under- stand, almost unanimous in this respect."
On Jan. 24 1917 the suggestion was put forward by Sir Nevil Macready, adjutant-general, that women employed in the army should be part of the army, entirely distinct from any outside or- ganization and established in the War Office under his Department. This scheme materialized under the name of the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, known popularly as "W.A.A.C.'s." Mrs. Chalmers Watson took up her duties as Chief Controller at Headquarters on Feb. 18 and Dame Helen Gwynne Vaughan as Chief Controller in France. Below the Chief Controllers were a staff of controllers and administrators, all women. A special branch of the War Office, known as A.G. II, was formed to assist in getting the Corps into working order so that it could fit into the army machinery. A Wom- en's Auxiliary Corps of the R.A.M.C. organized the medical boards in England and France, of which Dr. Jane Turnbull was president at home, and Dr. Laura Sandeman in France. At the end of a year Mrs. Chalmers Watson resigned for urgent family reasons, having accomplished the pioneer work of the Corps and won a recognized position in the army for her women in the face of many difficulties. She was succeeded by Dame Florence Leach, then known as " Controller in Chief." When Dame Helen Gwynne Vaughan was made Commandant of the W.R.A.F. in Sept. 1918, Miss L. Davy became Chief Controller in France. The full charter for the organization of the Corps was finally completed at the end of June 1917.
The women were enrolled as mobiles for home service only, or for home or foreign service, and for the duration of the war; they received a special rate of pay, not civilian or military, and were not enlisted under the Army Act. At first substitution overseas only had been contemplated:, but by March the number of women recruited by the Department of National Service was so great that Home Commands were included in the scheme. Recruiting was afterwards carried on through the Employment Department of the Ministry of Labour. In Dec. 1917, owing to the shrinkage of avail- able woman-power, an immobile branch was formed. Women em- ployed in the Ordnance Army Pay Department and Record offices at home were not made to join the Corps. A khaki uniform with distinguishing badges was worn. In all there were 1,200 officials and 56,000 women, of whom 9,500 were the outside number employed in France at any one time. This figure was made up of women work- ing in the Calais, Boulogne, Etaples, St. Omer, Abbeville, Dieppe, Rouen and Havre areas and on the lines of communication, chiefly at army schools, and in certain offices at G.H.Q. A number were em- ployed with the Expeditionary Force canteens, mostly at officers' clubs. They were drafted to every type of office and domestic employment, and to bakeries, ordnance and motor transport depots. In the spring of 1918, when the R.A.F. was formed, 7,000 women, including nearly the whole of the immobile branch of 1800 transferred to the W.R.A.F.
When the American Expeditionary Force arrived in France and was prevented by shortage of transport from bringing over American women clerks, 500 members of the Corps under a Chief Controller, Miss Horniblow, who was succeeded by Miss Gordon and finally by Mrs. Vernon Lloyd as Deputy Controller, were transferred to the American camps at Bourges and Tours. Mrs. Vernon Lloyd was subsequently made Deputy Controller in Cologne, where over 100 Q.M.A.A.C. officials were employed with the army of the Rhine in the Censor's Department, under the provost marshal, and in ordnance. A small contingent was attached to the British military mission in Berlin for over a year. Queen Mary assumed the title of Commandant-in-Chief of the Corps in the spring of 1918.
A Q.M.A.A.C. unit attached to the Director-General of Graves Registration at St. Pol was in being in 1921.
Women's Royal Naval Service. The W.R.N.S. was instituted as part of the navy at the end of Nov. 1917 when Sir Eric Geddes, the First Lord of the Admiralty, outlined what was required. The Director, Dame Katharine Furse, was asked to put up a scheme for the organization of the service, which was accepted with small amendments giving her more powers than she had set out. She had the opportunity of starting with a staff of women of considerable experience in organization and asked for Miss Edith Crowdy to be appointed as her deputy. The Director was the executive head, responsible only to the Second Sea Lord. No naval officer was available to assist her, and from the first the navy encouraged the greatest possible independence in the organization of the service. The formation of another service of women under the Air Board was already in contemplation, so that the W.R.N.S. (or Wrens) was from the first organized with a view to handing over all the members working in Royal Naval Air stations; 2,033 ratings were transferred to the administration of the W.R.A.F.
For the purpose of calculating allowances the following relative ranks were agreed to :
There were 12 Divisions: Devonport, Portsmouth, The Nore, Harwich, London, Humber, Tyneside, Scotland, Ireland, Liverpool, Cardiff and the Mediterranean. After the Armistice, stations were set up at Ostend and Zeebrugge under the Nore Division.
The ratings were enrolled for the duration of the war and paid on a civilian basis. Cooperation with the Employment Department of the Ministry of Labour on similar lines to that already set up in connexion with the Q.M.A.A.C. was arranged for the purpose of recruitment. As it is estimated that at the time when the W.R.N.S. was being formed over a million and a half additional women had already been drawn into industrial and commercial occupations, as munition workers and substitutes for men in the Forces, the recruiting up to the high standard required was made more difficult; but in spite of this excellent results were obtained. The service consisted of women living in hostels (mobiles) and of women living in their own homes (immobiles) in almost equal proportions. The women were largely recruited from naval families, and this contributed to the keen service spirit shown.
A total of 608 officers were appointed; 6,880 women were enrolled and 785 absorbed from women already employed in naval establishments, before the formation of the Wrens. On Nov. 21 1918, the date of maximum strength, there were 6,392 ranks and ratings.
The officers, other than those engaged in the organization, welfare and discipline of the women, replaced naval officers for the following work: coding and decoding, intelligence work, confidential books, secretaries, telephone exchange, paymasters, accountants, gas mask work, and observation station. The ratings were employed as ledger clerks, clerks, shorthand typists, victualling store assistants, telephone operators, postal sorters, stewards, cooks, general domestic workers, orderlies and messengers, porters and storewomen, bakers, tailoresses, gas mask workers, gardeners, fitters, turners, boiler cleaners, boot cleaners and painters, wiring hands, net mine workers, ​depth charge workers, armourers, sailmakers, tracers and draughts- women, photographic workers, technical storekeepers, valve testers and wireless telegraph operators.
Blue uniform with distinguishing badges was worn by all ranks and ratings. The service was demobilized in Dec. 1919.
The Women's Royal Air Force. On April I 1918 the R.A.F. was formed by the amalgamation of the R.F.C. and the R.N.A.S. Seven thousand women in Q.M.A.A.C. and 2,033 ln the W.R.N.S. had been attached to R.F.C. units and to R.M.A.S. stations before the amalgamation. These were transferred to the W.R.A.F. and formed the nucleus of the service. The chief superintendent was Lady Gertrude Crawford, who was succeeded in May 1918 by Miss Violet Douglas Pennant as Commandant. Dame Helen Gwynne Vaughan, hitherto Chief Controller Q.M.A.A.C., France, was appointed Commandant in Sept. 1918. Mrs. Pratt Barlow was Deputy Com- mandant, and Miss K. Curlett Assistant Commandant over-seas.
Five hundred and sixty-six officers and 51,764 other ranks passed through the Service, the strength at the time of the Armistice being rather over 25,000. (The constitution and regulations were similar in outline to those of the Q.M.A.A.C. and the W.R.N.S.) The Ser- vice consisted of mobiles and immobiles in approximately equal proportions. In addition to the administrative, clerical and domestic work common to all the Services, the women were employed on meteorological work and as despatch riders, dopers, painters, acetylene welders, carpenters, magneto repairers, photographers and drivers. Fabric workers did duties of all kinds from the covering of aeroplane wings to the mending of the finest balloon silk. The uniform was first khaki, then blue, with the badges of the R.A.F.
The corresponding rank of officers and other ranks is shown below :
The medical arrangements for the W.R.A.F. were in the hands of Director of Medical Services R.A.F. under whom Dr. Laetitia Fair- field served as Woman Medical Director. A woman medical officer was on the medical staff of each of the R.A.F. Areas, and a medical woman was detailed for duty at each of the W.R.A.F. depots and larger camps. They had hon. rank corresponding to that of the R.A.F. medical officers and by means of regular inspections and efficient care, preserved a high standard of health.
In March 1919 the first overseas draft embarked for service in France and 500 officers and other ranks formed part of the Air Force of Occupation on the Rhine. Demobilization took place
I March 31 1920.
In relation to the W.R.A.F. the experiment was tried of running
I a women's service as nearly as possible (having regard to the fact that the women were enrolled and not enlisted) as a part of the force to which it was attached. Thus correspondence was carried out through the usual Air Force channels; officers and other ranks of the W.R.A.F. were under the orders of senior R.A.F. officers; women officers were attached to the staff of the Air Officers commanding areas and were allowed to sign for them letters dealing with the W.R.A.F. ; the officer in charge of W.R.A.F. inspection was a member of the staff of the Inspector General R.A.F. and the Commandant was stated in Air Ministry weekly orders to be on the staff of the Master General of Personnel and instructed to sign letters dealing with W.R.A.F. in the same way as directors and heads of independ- ent branches; so that her correspondence, like theirs, carried the authority of the Air Council. The same principles were followed in the medical arrangements. By these means the need of a special section of R.A.F. officers dealing with the W.R.A.F. was obviated; economy was effected, and the administration of the W.R.A.F. was carried out on Air Force lines. The result was indicated by the terms of Air Ministry Weekly Order No. 1110 (promulgated Oct. 7 1920) : " In issuing orders for the final disbandment of the W.R.A.F. the Air Council desire at the same time to express their appreciation of the good work done by the Force both during and after the period of
, hostilities. In spite of much difficulty and in the face of hostile and unjust criticism, the W.R.A.F. has left a record of which it can well feel proud. During hostilities the good work it accomplished went far towards enabling the R.A.F. to reach that dominating position in the air which had such a direct influence in the achievement of the final Victory. Subsequent to the Armistice, when it was nec- essary to disperse a large number of airmen to civil life, it was the W.R.A.F. which made it possible for the R.A.F. to meet the de- mands made upon it, and maintained the services at the Aerodromes until new male personnel could be enrolled. The necessity for the demobilization of the W.R.A.F. is now imperative, but in returning xxxii. 34
to civil life, Commandant Dame Helen Gwynne Vaughan, D.B.E., Officers and Members may feel assured that they carry with them a debt of gratitude from the Nation."
(B.) NON-ENROLLED WOMEN
Anti-Gas Department. On April 22 1915, at the battle of Ypres, the Germans first made use of poison-gas, and within 36 hours some sort of improvised mouth pad had been issued to every man in the line. Anti-gas work was begun at once, and men worked night and day to devise a really sound method of protection. Early in June 1915 Miss Beaver was appointed superintendent of the Camden Laundry Smoke Helmet Impregnating Station, where the work of drying and packing gas helmets had been largely carried on by members of the Women's Emergency Corps. When it was decided that gas helmets could be repaired for re-issue after use at the front, Miss Beaver and Miss Carey Morgan were sent out by the War Office to organize depots for repair work with French labour at Abbeville and Calais. They were at once given the status of officers of the Army Ordnance Department, but were not actually gazetted till June 1916. They wore a nigger brown uniform with the badges and buttons of officers of the Army Ordnance Department. Six V.A.D.s were attached to the Abbeville depot and four to Calais; they afterwards transferred to the W. A.A.C. as Administrators. The French depots closed down when the " box respirators " had super- seded the helmet types and the repair as well as the manufacture was carried out in England.
Practically the whole of the work on gas-mask manufacture was performed by women. There were 34 factories employing 12,000 under the immediate control of the Anti-Gas Department and 160 contractors employed a further 90,000 on work for the Department. In Aug. 1917 a number of educated women were trained for in- spection work on the mask of the respirator and drafted out to the factories. They wore an indoor uniform of scarlet and were called " red-coats." Ultimately 800 to 1,000 of these were appointed, and 100 were promoted to the duties of check inspecting, formerly per- formed by sergeants of the Anti-Gas Department. They were known as sergeants also, and were interchangeable with the men. A few lady superintendents were appointed over " sergeants " and " red- coats," and Miss Carey Morgan was made officer in charge of the principal repair factory. In all about 50,000 respirators were issued.
Army Pay Corps. The Army Pay Department was one of the earliest in the army to substitute female clerks. In July 1915, 479 were working and by Jan. I 1916 there were 4,556 female clerks and 13 lady superintendents. The engagement was a weekly one and there was no form of contract till Aug. 1917- By that time the de- mands made for women by the W.A.A.C. and other organizations were so insistent that a form of agreement to serve for the duration of the war and three months afterwards was signed by the super- intendents and a portion of thenvomen doing skilled and semi-skilled work. These wore a badge but no uniform, and by March 1918 there were 5,171 of them out of a total of 17,500. Miss Constance Holmes, lady inspector, was responsible for the welfare of the women under Sir J. T. Carter, " Accounts 2 " War Office, who was " at a loss to find words to adequately express his appreciation of the valuable work performed by the Women Clerks for the Army Pay Depart- ment during the war."
Army Remount Department. Owing to the withdrawal of male personnel from Remount Depots, women accustomed to hunting and to the superintendence of considerable stables of horses, were employed on remount work early in 1915. The first women's estab- lishments were organized near Pangbourne by Mr. Cecil Alden, who worked on a contract basis for the War Office, employing what labour he chose. In 1915 he had 10 depots for the stabling of 520 convalescent horses from veterinary hospitals in the vicinity of Aldershot, and half the depots were staffed by women. They did the entire work from beginning to end, and horses were issued fit to units direct from their stables.
The next women's depot was organized near Chester by Mrs. Rigby, and from these beginnings the employment of women spread until nearly 200 were working as grooms in 15 depots directly under the Remount Department. The Charger dep6t at Russley Park under Lady Birkbeck was the largest staffed entirely by women, and at Dr. Rimington's depot near Chester women schooled horses rejected by their units as incurably vicious.
Navy and Army Canteen Board. When the Navy and Army Canteen Board (then called the " Army Canteen Committee ") started operations in April 1916, only 20 women clerks were em- ployed. During 1917 the Board's activities, were enormously ex- panded to include catering for the Imperial Overseas Forces and for the American and Allied Troops. It was decided in March 1917 to institute a N.A.C.B. Women's Corps in mobile and immobile sec- tions, and by the date of the Armistice the women employed in connexion with canteen organization in the mobile corps numbered 10,000 and the clerical staff in the immobile corps 2,000. After the Armistice 500 members of the Q.M.A.A.C. and 8 officers were transferred to the N.A.C.B. Women s Corps to carry on the work in France during the dispersal of British troops, and 120 went with the army of occupation to Cologne. Although the women wore uni- form and were under the orders of the chief superintendent working under the Department of the Controller of the N.A.C.B., they were ​not enrolled. The written agreement signed had no binding force and they could leave when they liked.
In addition to these groups of non-enrolled women in the direct employ of the War Departments, there were at the time of the Armistice 5,000 civil service clerks working on Army Records, 10,000 clerks employed by the War Office, and 17,500 miscellaneous in- dustrial workers belonging to the Hospital Labour Staff, and the A.S.C.
Women's Land Army. In Jan. 1917, a Women's Branch of the Food Production Department of the Board of Agriculture was set up under Dame Meriel Talbot as Director and Mrs. Alfred (Dame Edith) Lyttelton as Deputy Director. Two appeals were issued for the Branch by the Women's Section of the Department of National Service in March 1917; the first appeal to women to join a mobile Land Army on a year's enrolment ultimately secured 45,000 recruits, of whom half had to be rejected on medical and other grounds; the second appeal to village women for their part-time services, under the organization of group leaders and forewomen in the Land Army, gradually trebled the number of part-time workers already on the land.
Arrangements for recruitment were subsequently revised, and a scheme of cooperation between the three Departments concerned (viz. Board of Agriculture, Women's Branch, Ministry of National Service and the Employment Department, Ministry of Labour) was adopted earlyin 1918. Under this scheme women were given a choice of enrolling for a year or for six months, and arrangements were made with the Women's Forage Corps, R.A.S.C. and the Forestry Corps, Timber Supply Department, Board of Trade, for their recruits to be dealt with by the same machinery. With regard to Scotland a Scottish Women's Land Army was formed on somewhat parallel lines in which 1,816 women were enrolled. In addition 6,860 unenrolled women were placed in agricultural work. The employ- ment of women as part-time workers was also stimulated and organized, and it is estimated that there were in Sept. 1918 300,000 women part-time workers and 16,000 whole-time workers actually engaged in agricultural work in England and Wales. This triumph, in the face of innumerable difficulties and at the cost of an elaborate and expensive organization, was due to the combined efforts of the Women's Branch at Headquarters, and the Women's War Agricul- tural Committees. These Committees set up in each county by the Board of Trade in 1915 and 1916 acted as its agents and conducted the local administration of the Land Army by means of the n.ooo women who served on them in a voluntary capacity. Between March 1917 and May 1919, 23,000 women passed through the training centres. Returns relating to 12,657 women made in Aug. 1918 show the distribution of the types of work done: 5,734 milkers, 293 trac- tor drivers, 3,971 field workers, 635 carters, 260 ploughmen, 84 thatchers, 21 shepherds.
The workmanlike and becoming uniform of overall, breeches and leggings contributed largely to the success of the Corps.
Special steps were taken to supply workers for seasonal work in connexion with the fruit crops, flax weeding and pulling and potato picking; cooperation was established by the Employment Depart- ment of the Ministry of Labour with the National Land Service Corps, who by arrangement with the Board of Agriculture undertook the supply of educated women for holiday work.
The work being done for food economy in the villages by the Women's Institutes (which had been founded in England in 1915 by the Agricultural Organization Society on the model of those in Canada) was so important that a special section of the Women's Branch of the Food Production Department was formed in 1917 to undertake their propaganda. These Institutes bid fair to become a permanent feature of country life, and owe much to the increased interest in rural matters due to the widespread employment of women on the land during the war.
Women's Forestry Service. The Women's Forestry Service under Miss Rosamond Crowdy was instituted under the Timber Supply Department of the Board of Trade in 1917. In 1916 a considerable number of women had been employed by contractors in the cutting and measuring of timber, but it was not till early in 1917 that the first two Government camps for training women in the felling and preparation of timber for sleepers and pitprops were opened by the Women's Section of the Department of National Service, acting as agents for the Timber Supply Department of the Board of Trade. The first Government training camp for timber measurers was started in Aug. 1917 at Wendover under Mrs. Donald, through which 370 educated women passed. They learned to measure and mark off where a tree should be sawn and find the cubic contents of the logs, and were afterwards put in charge of timber gangs consisting of 20 to 30 cutters. In some cases women had the entire charge of a saw-mill with men working under them. The two camps for cutters were given up, as it was found that training was unnecessary when the women were put out to work in gangs under skilled forewomen. Private employers were supplied with 144 such gangs for felling, cross cutting, marking and measuring of timber between 1917 and 1919. About 3,000 women were engaged on the work, and wore an appropriate uniform with distinctive badges.
The King's Thanks. On June 29 1918, an address of homage was presented to the King and Queen on the occasion of their silver wed- ding by the Chief Woman Inspector, Employment Department,
Ministry of Labour acting on behalf of the organizations of full-time women workers engaged on work of national importance under the control of state departments, and of whole-time women workers engaged in public utility services under local authorities. A pro- cession of 2,540 women in uniform led by the V.A.D.s as the senior service, formed into six companies, eight abreast, facing the dais in the quadrangle of Buckingham Palace. Princess Mary stood by the King and Queen wearing her y.A.D. uniform. The King's reply to the address of homage contained the following words:
" When the history of our Country's share in the war is written no chapter will be more remarkable than that relating to the range and extent of women's participation. This service has been rendered only at the cost of much self-sacrifice and endurance. Women have readily worked for long hours and under trying conditions in our factories and elsewhere, to produce the supplies of munitions which were urgently needed at the front and to maintain the essential services of the country. As nurses and V.A.D. workers they have laboured in hospital for the care of the sick and wounded with even more than the accustomed devotion which has characterized our Red Cross Service since the days of the Crimean War. They have often faced cheerfully and courageously great risks both at home and overseas in carrying on their work, and the Women's Army has its own Roll of Honour of those who have lost their lives in the service of their country. Some even have fallen under the fire of the enemy. Of all these we think to-day with reverent pride."
Only the women actually belonging to the Army, Navy and Air Force took part in the Peace Procession. The W.R.N.S. marched with the Navy and Q.M.A.A.C. with the Army. The Army Nursing Services, the V.A.D.s, the F.A.N.Y., and the Military Massage Service formed part of the R.A.M.C. contingent; the Women's Legion and the Forage Corps marched with the R.A.S.C.; and the W.K.A.F., incorporated with the R.A.F., brought up the rear.
III. Voluntary Organizations. When war broke out there was an eager desire on the part of professional and non-professional women to work in France and Belgium. The passport restrictions were less stringent at first than they afterwards became, but it was never easy for women to obtain permission to work in France in connexion with the British armies. The French and Belgians, who had fewer trained women workers of their own, and were in greater need of help at the beginning of the war, accepted offers from organizations which the British authorities had rejected. Thus the privilege of undertaking the considerable amount of work actually performed by women in connexion with the Brit- ish armies, even before the formation of the Q.M.A.A.C., had been won with difficulty and was highly valued.
In 1914 Rachel, Countess of Dudley (d. 1920), Lady Sarah Wilson, the Duchess of Westminster, Lady Norman and Lady Hadficld i established hospitals for the British at the bases in ranee in which every bed was of value in the early days of stress. After a few months I the army took over Lady Dudley's hospital as No. 32 Stationary; j the Duchess of Westminster's became No. I Red Cross and Lady I Hadfield's No. 5 Red Cross. In 1916, the units of Milliccnt Duchess j of Sutherland and of Lady Murray, which had previously been open i for the French, were accepted for the British as No. 9 Red Cross and No. IO Red Cross. These voluntary units were staffed with! Red Cross and St. John's nurses, who were encouraged to enrol in the Army Nursing Services when they had obtained a knowledge of active service conditions. Nursing V.A.D.s were employed from : the beginning in addition to hospital orderlies. Princess Louise's! convalescent home for nursing sisters was opened at Hardelot in I 1914 by Sophie Lady Gifford under the British Red Cross Society, j and transferred to Cannes in 1917 as a winter home for the sisters. *
On Aug. 12 1914 Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray offered the services of a hospital unit staffed by women doctors and i nurses to the French wounded. Within a week the offer was accepted, and within a month the unit, which was the first formation to be entirely officered by medical women, had collected sufficient funds | and started for Paris, under the name of the Women's Hospital Corps. Owing to the pressure of work in the north at the end of [ Oct. Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray decided to divide their staff and establish a branch of the unit at Wimereux. This ' new hospital was accepted by the British Army Medical Service. I In Feb. 1915 Sir Alfred Keogn offered the Women's Hospital Corps the charge of a military hospital in London which opened at Endell Street in May.
In 1916 85 women doctors were attached as civil military prac- titioners to the R.A.M.C. at Malta to help care for the 27,000 . wounded in the hospitals. As this experiment proved a great suc- cess, 39 others were sent with R.A.M.C. units to Salonika, and in Jan. 1918, the first medical women, of whom there were ultimately 36, went to Egypt. Four women doctors were attached to British military hospitals in France. They did not wear a distinctive uni- form, and none of the 331 medical women who served under the War Office at home and abroad held military rank.
Women belonging to the Red Cross organization worked at the British Red Cross Society headquarters in France, recruiting Red ' ​Cross nurses and tracing the wounded and missing. On Oct. 21 1914 the first V.A.D. unit, composed of 16 members and 2 trained nurses, under Dame Katharine Furse as officer in charge, arrived at Boulogne. On Oct. 26 they founded No. I V.A.D. rest station, Gare Centrale, Boulogne, in three French wagons and two passenger carriages and within 24 hours had given hot drinks to a thousand wounded from the first battle of Ypres. Under the Principal Com r mandant, Dame Rachel Crowdy, who succeeded Dame Katharine Furse in France, this work expanded in all directions until there were five rest stations for the feeding of patients on ambulance trains; two detention stations for the care of the personnel of veterinary hospitals and remount camps; six convalescent homes for nurses and W.A.A.C.s, and six motor convoys all run and staffed by V.A.D. s. In Holland and Switzerland they were able to work for prisoners of war. In Salonika, Malta, Egypt and Italy they started kitchens attached to hospitals for the supply of invalid diets, and organized and staffed canteens for ambulance trains and convalescent homes for army nurses. In Italy they staffed motor convoys. At the beginning of the Gallipoli campaign two military hospitals went to Egypt without female personnel, on the assumption that they were destined for the peninsula, and had to depend on voluntary women helpers of all nationalities till trained nurses and V.A.D.s. could arrive. Early in 1918 the British Section of the First Aid Nursing Yeo- manry affiliated to the British Red Cross Society. This earliest women's military corps had been founded in 1909, and reorganized by Mrs. McDougall, in 1910, to assist the R.A.M.C. in time of war by providing mounted detachments with horse ambulance wagons, to take over wounded at clearing stations and convey them to base hospitals. When war broke out the services of the corps were offered to the British authorities without success, but were accepted by the Belgian army in Oct. 1914. With the ideal of working for the ' British always before her, Mrs. McDougall asked the War Office j in July 1915 to reconsider the employment of women drivers of the I F. A. N.Y. for driving motor ambulances at any British base. Although | this was at first refused, renewed applications resulted in a I F.A.N.Y. motor convoy starting work at Calais under Miss Franklin I on Jan. I 1916, for the transport of all British sick and wounded in ! the district. The F.A.N.Y. drivers were voluntary workers and sup- plied their own uniforms and traveling expenses; the Army gave . rations; the British Red Cross Society kept up the ambulances, I and in Aug. undertook complete financial responsibility in connexion ' with the cars. As a result of the success of this experiment, V.A.D. motor convoys were instituted in six other bases, and on Jan. I 1918 the St. Omer convoy started work with 22 F.A.N.Y. drivers and 12 V.A.D. drivers under F.A.N.Y. officers. On May 18 1918 they worked through a particularly severe air raid and won 16 Military Medals in one night.
The great need for clubs where the army nurses and women workers could obtain rest and relaxation from hospital work was recognized by Princess Victoria early in 1.915, when she formed a committee in London to finance such clubs at all hospital centres. The first was opened at Wimereux in Feb. 1915, and 10 others fol- lowed at Etaples, Camiers, Rouen, Le Treport, Trouville, Calais, St. Omer, Abbeville and Paris. These clubs were a recognized unit under the administration of the Director-General Medical Services. In 1919 a club was also opened at Cologne. Lady Algernon Gordon- Lennox acted as Director in France and Germany.
The British army in France employed French labour for necessary industrial work such as the making of camouflage, repair of gas- masks and the salvage of clothing and war material. But in Jan. 1917 Messrs. Tarrants, who had a contract for building army huts, were allowed to send 100 trained women carpenters to Calais, where in collaboration with French female labour they made 37,000 huts. The women lived in a camp for two years under quasi-military dis- cipline and were to a certain extent the prototype of the W.A.A.C. On Nov. 4 1914 Lady Angela Forbes, who had a house at Etaples, started a free buffet for the wounded in the waiting-room of the Gare Maritime, Boulogne; this was the earliest of all the voluntary canteens provided for the British troops in France. In the following month Lady Mabelle Egerton opened her " Coffee Shop" at Rouen Station. From these individual efforts huts and canteens, maintained by authorized organizations, spread to every British camp in France. As time went on the authorities compelled the few privately con- ducted enterprises to affiliate to larger organizations. Lady Angela Forbes' original buffet became an Expeditionary Force canteen and her hut at Etaples was taken over by the Salvation Army; the Rouen Coffee Shop was affiliated to the Church Army in 1917; and in March 1918, by order of the Adjutant-General, only 10 voluntary organizations were authorized to work in the zone of the armies. These were the British Red Cross Society, the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A., the Salvation Army, the Church Army, the Scottish Churches Huts, the United Army and Navy Board, the Soldiers' Christian Association, the British Soldiers' Institute and the Wes- leyan Soldiers' Institute. All these organizations had huts for men at the bases very largely staffed by women ; but these were few in number compared to the huts and tents close behind the firing-line to which women could not go.
In Dec. 1914 Princess Helena Victoria formed the Ladies Auxil- iary Committee of the Y.M.C.A., to assist in providing recreation huts and reading-rooms for the troops in France and to send out
concert parties. The Committee, under the chairmanship of Princess Helena Victoria, with the Countess of Bessborough (d. 1919) as hon. sec., selected the ladies to take charge of these huts, voluntary workers living at their own expense and signing on for four months' service. The work grew rapidly, until there were Y.M.C.A. huts, largely staffed by women, in all the bases in France, providing for the spiritual, material and educational needs of the men. Women workers were sent to Italy and Malta, and huts in Egypt and in . Palestine as far north as Aleppo were also partly staffed by women. In 1918 the War Office gave permission for Y.M.C.A. huts to be opened in Holland for interned officers and men, and these were entirely staffed by the female relatives of the prisoners of war, a special fund being raised by the Association to pay the expenses of those who could not afford to travel and live at their own cost. Sixteen hostels for relatives of wounded in France were also staffed by women workers, of whom more than 1,860 passed through the Committee's hands for service abroad as canteen helpers, secretaries, librarians, motor-drivers, storekeepers, lecturers and teachers. In 19189 a certain number had their expenses paid, and the secretaries and motor-drivers received salaries.
The provision of entertainments was under the direction of Miss Lena Ashwell, the first concert being given at Harfleur on Feb. 8 1915; at one time there were 25 parties in France, giving concerts at the rate of 14,000 a year. In addition permanent concert parties worked continuously at 12 bases, and 6 theatrical parties were stationed at Paris, Havre, Abbeville, Dieppe and Etaples. Two concert parties went to Malta and a third to Egypt. 108,000 was raised for the work.
Although the hardships of camp conditions were ameliorated as much as possible for the W.A.A.C., the unaccustomed military discipline in a foreign country was trying in many ways, and the women badly needed the friendly help of an outside organization. In May 1917 Miss Ethel Knight of the Y.W.C.A. went to France under the auspices of the Y.M.C.A. to establish huts for them on the same lines as those which had proved so great a boon to the men. By the middle of 1918 there were 23 Blue Triangle huts in all the chief Q.M.A.A.C. camps, where the women could behave as though they were at home, and forget the discipline of army and camp life. Adjoining each there was a chapel or quiet room, but in the hut itself everything possible was done for the entertainment and recreation of the girls. Central clubs were also established in seven towns, and there was a rest-house at Le Treport, a tea-garden at Havre and the Lady Carisbrooke marquee in the Q.M.A.A.C. rest camp.
Within 24 hours of the declaration of war Lady Bagot propounded her scheme that a hospital should be sent to the front manned and equipped by the Church Army. It was established at Caen under the French Red Cross. In Feb. 1915 the first of the Church Army recreation huts in France was opened at Rouen; these were staffed by voluntary workers, mostly women, who also paid their own expenses. About 500 altogether worked in Church Army huts in France and Germany.
A recreation hut for convalescent soldiers at the Colomn Camp, Boulogne, was opened by the Catholic Women's League under Mrs. Baynes in March 1915 and remained open until after the Armistice. Other huts in France followed. This was the only society which undertook concerted Catholic work on an organized plan during the war, though the Catholic Club, which had no organization or society behind it, maintained eight huts in the war zone staffed by 100 women and 18 men.
The Church of Scotland and the United Free Church of Scotland acted jointly, under the name of the Scottish Churches Huts, to carry on work similar to that of the Y.M.C.A. at the bases in France, up the line, in Malta and Egypt and in the Army of Occupation. The Salvation Army had a large organization to work among the troops, and women Salvationists laboured among Australian and American troops in huts in France, besides carrying on extensive hospital visitation and work amongst the homes of the bereaved in the United Kingdom.
The Women's Emergency Canteens, formed early in 1915 under Mrs. Wilkie with the idea of working for the French only, catered for the British also in the canteen opened at the Gare du Nord, Paris, in April 1915, which was a rendezvous for all Allied nationali- ties on leave. Early in 1917, when the Australians and Canadians visited Paris on leave in very large numbers, Miss Lily Butler opened a " Corner of Blighty," the pioneer leave club in Paris, to help them to spend their time as pleasantly and profitably as possible. Every- thing was given free of charge, and a staff of 45 voluntary women workers entertained 44,000 men in the first 10 months of the 2% years for which the club was open.
Six months later the British Army and Navy Leave Club was opened and was the pioneer residential club in Paris for soldiers and sailors on leave. Baron D'Erlanger lent the house, and Miss Decima Moore and the Rev. A. S. V. Blunt were hon. secretaries. In the two years that it was open 59,102 men were registered and 701,546 meals were served. A body of uniformed Women Guides looked after the comfort of the men, and free entertainments on a large scale were organized.
As a result of the success of this club, the British Empire Leave Club at Cologne was originated and organized on the same lines by Miss Decima Moore, Hon. Director-General, who raised the funds ​with a London Committee under Baron D'Erlanger as chairman. Each department was conducted by a voluntary woman worker drawn'from one of the proved women's war organizations, who wore the uniform of her society, and did her last piece of war-work for the British in an officially recognized institution opened at the invitation of the army.
IV. Voluntary Work For Allies. Scottish Women's Hospitals. On Aug. 12 1914 Dr. Elsie Inglis, president of the Scottish Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies, proposed that the Federation should equip a hospital " staffed entirely by women, if not required at home to be sent abroad." Within a week the War Office had declined the offer of a unit, and on Aug. 20 over- tures were made to the embassies of Belgium, France and Russia. Mrs. Fawcett agreed that the N.U.W.S.S. should join in the appeal for funds, and by the end of the war 449,000 had been collected. In all, 14 different hospitals staffed entirely by women were mo- bilized and worked for the Belgian, French, Serbian and Russian armies. The first opportunity of service came when typhoid broke out in the Belgian army; on Dec. 5 1914 Dr. Alice Hutch- ison and Dr. Phillips, with 10 trained nurses, were put in charge of the typhoid annexe of Dr. de Page's hospital at Calais, where they worked for three months, until the epidemic had been over- come. On the same day the first complete unit under Dr. Ivens, consisting of 3 surgeons, 2 physicians, a radiologist, 10 trained nurses and as many dressers and orderlies, arrived in Paris on their way to the Abbaye de Royaumont, which had been allotted them by the French Red Cross. In this ancient edifice, founded by St. Louis, French wounded were tended by the Scottish women till Feb. 1919. An offshoot of the hospital, established at Villers- Cottere'ts in huts in the spring of 1917, was evacuated before the German push on May 30 1918, being the last hospital in the district to remain at work. In both hospitals 10,861 patients were treated.
The Girton and Newnham unit worked uninterruptedly under the French War Office for four years. It went to Troyes in May 1915 with Dr. Louise Mcllroy as C.M.O. and with Mrs. Harley (d. 1917) as administrator. As the hospital was entirely under canvas, it was ordered to accompany the French Expeditionary Force to Salonika in Oct. 1915, and went for a short time to Ghev- geli. The unit then settled down in Salonika for three years and opened an orthopaedic department for disabled Serbian soldiers.
The remaining S.W.H. units worked for the Serbian army. The first went to Kragujevatz under Dr. Eleanor Soltau in Dec. 1914, and was the second British unit to arrive in Serbia in time for the typhus epidemic. With an equipment of 100 beds, Dr. Soltau had to take 250 patients immediately on arrival, and in March took charge of two fever hospitals as well. Three of the staff died of typhus. The next unit went out in May under Dr. Alice Hutchison to Valjevo, and was detained at Malta for a fortnight to look after British wounded from the Dardanelles, the one occasion on which a S.W.H. unit worked officially for the British army. By this time the typhus epidemic was over and a long peaceful summer intervened before the autumn invasion. The starts of the two fever hospitals formed a camp hospital at Mladanovatz under Dr. McGregor, and Dr. Hollway with some sisters took over a Serbian hospital of 200 beds at Lazorovatz. Both these were evacuated at once when the storm of invasion broke out in Nov.; Dr. McGregor's party joined the great retreat through Albania; and Dr. Hutchison's party, with Dr. Inglis, who had come out to Serbia in May, remained working for the Serbs at Krushevatz, as prisoners of the enemy, from Nov. to Feb. 1916. The Austrians then sent them home.
In Aug. 1915 a party of Scottish women under Dr. Mary Blair had been sent to Serbia to reinforce Dr. Alice Hutchison's unit at Valjevo. As the invasion was pending they went to Salonika in- stead, to wait for work, and when it was decided that the Serbian civilian refugees were to accept the hospitality of the French Govern- ment at Corsica, this unit was invited to be in charge of the medical affairs of the colony. The hospital remained open at Ajaccio till April 1919 and treated 1,704 in-patients and 15,515 out-patients.
Among these were many of the Serbian soldiers who had accom- plished the retreat through Albania, and after two months' rest were re-equipped to form a second Serbian army. A new S.W.H. unit, called the " America " unit, under Dr. Agnes Bennett, with a transport column under Mrs. Harley, was formed to accompany this army to Salonika. In Sept. 1916 they went to Ostrovo, to act as a casualty clearing station for the push to Monastir, and after the fall of the town a dressing station was opened at Dobreveni. The unit worked at Ostrovo till Nov. 1918, and then went to Vranja in Serbia, under Dr. Elmslie, till Oct. 1919, and coped with another typhus epidemic. Mrs. Harley, Gen. French's sister, left to do relief work in Jan. 1917, and was killed by a stray shell.
On her return from Serbia in Feb. 1916 Dr. Inglis spent six months in England trying in vain to obtain authority to take a unit to Meso- potamia for the British. Then the Serbian Government asked her to equip and maintain a field hospital, with a motor transport column attached, for service with the newly formed Serbian division, consisting of ex-Austrian subjects, who had allowed themselves to be made prisoners by the Russians and were attached to their army. The unit started in Aug. 1916 in charge of Dr. Inglis herself, with Mrs. Haverfield commanding the transport column, and went to the Dobrudja. They only had 19 days of work for the Serbs before
becoming involved in the retreat of the Russian army, and while the Serb division was resting the unit worked for the Russian Red Cross. Once again they had to retire to Galatz, and then were helped by the British Armoured-Car Corps to get to Reni, where they were able to settle down for eight months and work for the Russians. An offshoot of the hospital under Dr. Chesney went to the Rumanian front. The Russian Revolution had meanwhile broken out, and the demoralization of the Russian army was so complete that Dr. Inglis was determined to prevent the Serb division from being sacri- ficed on that front in order to stiffen up the Russian moral. She sent two members of the unit to England to deliver a memorized message of 2,500 words to the Foreign Office, and, after pressure from the British Government, the Russians permitted the Serb division to go to Archangel, and the Admiralty sent transports to bring them to England. Although by that time Dr. Inglis was very ill, she insisted on waiting to return home with the Serb division, and as the first Admiralty transport was filled by the Russians with refugees, she had to wait for the second. They landed at Newcastle-on-Tyne on Sunday, and on Monday Nov. 27 1917 she died. The " Elsie Inglis " unit, equipped immediately after her death, left for Serbia in Feb. 1918, under Dr. Annette Benson, and worked at the first dressing station behind the lines during the Serbian offensive that
E receded the Armistice. The transport column followed on the eels of the victorious army into Serbia.
Work for French and Belgian Armies. At the beginning of the war the regulations affecting the entry of British subjects into France and Belgium were not strict, and as the British authorities dis- couraged voluntary offers, British organizations, individuals and groups of friends gave lavishly of funds, stores and the service of trained nurses to the French, Belgian and Serbian allies. Milliccnt Duchess of Sutherland had installed an ambulance of 8 trained nurses and a surgeon at Namur by Aug. 17, and by Aug. 24 they were all prisoners of the Germans. The British Red Cross Society sent out 12 parties of nurses to Belgium before the end of Sept., and 25 parties to different voluntary units in France before the end of the year, besides two parties to Serbia and one to Montenegro.
The second hospital unit to be officered by medical women only was organized by Mrs. St. Clair Stobart as administrator, under the name of the Women's Imperial Service Hospital, and left for Ant- werp to work under the Belgian Red Cross Sept. 20 1914. It con- sisted of 6 doctors, 10 nurses and 10 orderlies under Miss Sally McNaughtan (d. 1916), who described the 14-days' work in An Englishwoman's Diary of the War. The wounded were evacuated just before the entry of the Germans. Within three weeks of their return the unit was re-formed and worked at Cherbourg until March 1915 under the French Red Cross.
Miss Sally McNaughtan had stayed behind at Ostend and joined the Hector Munro Ambulance Corps, a mixed body to which Miss May Sinclair, Lady Dorothie Feilding (the first woman to win the Military Medal), Mrs. Knocker and Miss Chisholm belonged. Dur- ing this time of greatest hardship for the Belgian army the corps established a hospital at Furnes, to which ambulance drivers brought in wounded under fire. Early in 1915 Mrs. Knocker and Miss Chisholm left the corps and started a dressing station of their own at Pervyse, close to the Belgian lines, where they served the soldiers till both were badly gassed in their dug-out in April 1918. Miss Sally McNaughtan ran a portable soup kitchen for the Belgians in Furnes during the winter of 1914-5 and laid the seeds of the illness to which she succumbed in 1916. During this first winter of the war the Belgian army was in deplorable need of help, and Lady Bagot, who worked at Dunkirk in Nov. and Dec. 1914, dressing wounded at the station, raised funds to establish a transportable " Hospital of Friendship " at Adinkerke, which became the surgical section of the H&pital d'Evacuation for the Belgian army. It was too close to the front for nurses to be allowed to work there, but Lady Bagot herself remained there for two years, before handing it over to the Belgian authorities. To meet the dearth of hospital requisites and clothing, Mrs. Bernard Allen started fhe Belgian Hospital Fund in Jan. 1915, which collected 25,000 in money and 25,000 in kind and aided 137 Belgian military hospitals and convalescent dep6ts in France and Belgium, and 30 colonies for refugee children, besides providing a club for soldiers, a recreation hut for the front, a hospice for refugees and 450 surgical outfits for regimental doctors.
During the battle of the Yser in Oct. 1914 the Belgian wounded poured into Calais, and Mrs. McDougall, of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, who had offered the services of the corps to the Belgian army, was asked to take over two old schools full of wounded as a hospital. There was no equipment, and the unit worked incredibly hard to produce a good military hospital out of nothing. The workers, with the exception of the trained nurses, paid all their expenses and subscribed to the hospital as well. From Nov. to Jan. 1915 they established a regimental aid post for the Belgians at Oostkerk, and during the height of the typhoid epidemic ran a convalescent home as an offshoot of the Lamarck hospital. The convalescent soldiers were drafted off in large numbers to the Camp de Ruchard near Tours, and the're the F.A.N.Y. maintained a hut for them, with a canteen and cinema, and paid a trained nurse to look after the consumptives.
The motor-drivers originally belonging to the Lamarck hospital, who also conveyed the Belgian wounded from the clearing hospital ​to all the other hospitals in Calais, were officially attached to the Belgian Corps de Transport when the Lamarck hospital closed in Oct. 1916. This unit continued to drive for the Belgian army till after the Armistice and went with it to Bruges and Brussels. Belgian civilians who remained in the little strip of land not occupied by the enemy were in desperate plight too. King Albert's Civilian Hospital Fund was founded, by Mrs. Oliphant Murray and the Duchess of Buckingham and Chandos, to help Belgian state civilian hospitals abroad; the Belgian Canal Boat Fund, with Mrs. Agar Adamson as founder and Mrs. Innes Taylor as organizer in Belgium, fed and clothed 300 families in and about Furnes till June 1919; and the Belgian Front Relief Fund, under Miss Georgie Fyfe, evacuated 1,341 Belgian children from the war area into France and Switzer- land, and repatriated them all at the end of the war, besides main- taining a maternity hospital at Vinckem for four years.
The work for the French was more extensive still. There were three Red Cross societies in France; the Societe de Secours aux Blesses Militaires, the Association des Dames Francaises, and the Union des Femmes de France. As only the last named had a com- mittee in London, a British Committee of the French Red Cross was called into being by the French ambassador towards the end of 1914, in order to allocate the services offered by British volunteers to the best advantage of all three societies. At the end of 1917 the Anglo-French Committee of the Joint War Committee, which had been formed in Jan. 1915 tc sift the credentials of British applicants for Red Cross work with the French, united with the British Com- mittee. By this date 8,537 certificates had been granted to British volunteers for work in France. As the French army bore the brunt of the fighting for the first two years of the war their hospital problem was acute, especially as the nuns had left France before a sufficient number of nurses had been trained to replace them. To help fill the need, Miss Grace Ellison founded the French Flag Nursing Corps, which organized the supply of 250 British trained nurses, paid by the French Government, to help in the improvisation of the enormous number of French hospitals needed to cope with the rush of wounded. The Urgency Cases Hospital, a unit of first-class surgeons and 20 fully trained nurses, raised on the initiative of Miss Eden, hon. sec. of the National Union of Trained Nurses, went to Revigny in March 1915 to receive the worst cases on that section of the front. In July 1917 it was taken over by the British Committee of the French Red Cross. About 30 other units for the French were equipped by voluntary effort and staffed by British nurses and V.A.D.s, including Miss Bromley Martin's hospital at Arc-en-Barrois, the Johnston-Reckett unit at Ris-Orangis, Lady Sykes' hospital at Malo-les-Bains, the Michelham Foundation in Paris, the Ulster unit supported for two years by the Ulster Women's Unionist Council, the Martouret hospital and Ceret convalescent home of Mrs. Allhusen, the Sanatorium Beausoleil of Miss Lind-af-Hageby, Lady Eva Wemyss' hospital at Compiegne, Lady Guernsey's at Fecamp, Mrs. Symons' at Rimberlieu, Lady Tangye's at Pans Plage and others. In addition a large number of V.A.D.s worked in French hospitals and held positions of considerable responsibility.
The French Wounded Emergency Fund, which had branches throughout Great Britain for the making of comforts, was founded in Nov. 1914, with Miss Evelyn Wild as hon. sec., in order to give assistance to the French military and benevole hospitals, as distin- guished from the auxiliary hospitals run under the three French Red Cross societies. In May 1916, 2,755 French hospitals were classed as military, 1,552 as benevole and 1,225 as auxiliary. By March 1918 the Fund had helped military hospitals in 1,200 different French towns, and 163,000 had been raised in money, and 75,000 in kind. Canteens were also established in many of the military hospitals. The French authorities placed a devastated sector on the Somme under the care of the Fund, and after the Armistice much work was done in the devastated areas.
On the closing of the Lamarck hospital at Calais the F.A.N.Y. transferred their personnel to staff a hospital for the French at Port a Binson, Marne, which opened in Jan. 1917. In the summer of 1917 the Corps began supplying ambulance units for the French army. There were finally three: S.S.Y.2, S.S.Y.4, and S.S.Y.5. The F.A.N.Y. officer commanding each unit held official rank in the French army as an officer. After the Armistice the S.S.Y.2 drivers were the first women to go into Germany with their ambulances to bring back prisoners of war. The Hackett-Lowther ambulance unit of women drivers under Miss Toupie-Lowther was attached to the second Army Corps of the 3rd French army in 1918 as S.S.Y.3. This was the only women!s unit allowed to do front-line work ; the cars were sent to the advanced " postes de secours," and the entire section was mentioned in despatches, which carried with it the right to have the Croix de Guerre painted on their ambulances. During 19 19 the women's convoys did civilian relief work in the devastated areas.
The Women's Emergency Canteens, an independent Society under Mrs. Wilkie, and an offshoot of the Women's Emergency Corps, started a canteen at Compiegne in Feb. 1915 with a recreation room, which was the first of its kind. Another canteen was opened for four years at the Gare du Nord, Paris, with 60 beds attached, which was used by British and Allied soldiers, and all Belgians were fed free there for two years. Other smaller canteens were run for a time as offshoots of the one at Compiegne.
Canteen work under the " Oeuvre de la Goutte de Cafe " started
by M. Duquesnoy early in the war, absorbed a very large number of British women workers, who were selected and sent out to France by the British Committee of the French Red Cross. The canteens were of four types, those at railway stations; those at foyers de cantonnement or recreation rooms attached to rest camps; those for the provision of invalid diets at depots d'ecloppes. and those at depots d'isoles for men rejoining their regiments. The earliest railway canteen was opened at Hazebrouck in Feb. 1915, and moved to Doullens, where the work was very heavy during the Somme offensive; thousands of wounded from Gommecourt came through' in a few days, and the helpers were sometimes working for 19 hours at a stretch. Many of the canteen workers had narrow escapes during the German push of 1918, when they had to evacuate suddenly with the Germans on their heels. A large number of the helpers were elderly women who worked extraordinarily hard, paid all their own expenses and faced all the hazards of war.
Work for the Serbian Army. The first British women who worked for Serbia during the war left London with Madame Grouitch, the American wife of the Serbian minister at Nish, on Aug. 12 1914, and went to the Serbian 1st reserve hospital at Kragujevatz; the hospital material was exhausted in a few months, and it was as a result of the pitiful stories that reached home from this band of women that the Serbian Relief Fund was formed. Miss Flora Sandes and Miss Emily Simmonds, who belonged to the original party, raised a private fund, took out 108 tons of hospital material to Valievp in Jan. 1915, and nursed typhus in a Serbian hospital, doing operations and dressings for 12 hours a day, till both caught the disease.
The plight of Serbia during the first winter of the war, harried first by the Austrian invasion and then by the typhus epidemic, was so terrible that hospital after hospital was sent out from Great Britain by the Serbian Relief Fund, the British Red Cross Society, the Wounded Allies Relief Committee and the Scottish Women's Hospitals. All these took out trained nurses and many had women doctors, but, with the exception of the Scottish Women's Hospitals, the only two units under women administrators were financed by the Serbian Relief Fund. The first Serbian Relief Fund surgical unit under Lady Paget, the wife of Sir Ralph Paget, who became the British Commissioner for Serbia in 1915, reached the country in Nov. 1914 before any of the others, and did heroic service at Skoplje under appalling conditions. From Nov. to Jan. there was an unend- ing stream of Austrian and Serbian wounded and in the second half of the month the typhus epidemic assumed serious proportions. Lady Paget, who had previously worked in Serbian hospitals in Belgrade during the Balkan wars of 1911 and 1912-3, organized a typhus colony in collaboration with the British Red Cross Society unit, for the isolation of. the cases, which opened on March I. Very few nurses could be spared from the surgical hospital, as over 90% of the staff were off duty for sickness between Nov. and February. Lady Paget herself, two sisters, two doctors, some Serbian voluntary assistants and Austrian prisoner orderlies coped with beds at the colony for 300 typhus patients. Between March 6 and 24 sixteen workers went down with the disease, including Lady Paget, and for a week one sister remained in charge of 300 patients. Then she was relieved by four nurses from the second Serbian Relief Fund unit (Lady Wimborne's). By May the epidemic was overcome and not a case left in the town.
Plenty of hospitals had arrived in the country by this time and, as there had been no fighting since Dec., the surgical units found themselves with little to do. Mrs. St. Clair Stobart, who com- manded thegrd Serbian Relief Fund unit, which was entirely staffed by women, landed in Serbia in April 1915, and at once began to utilize her medical personnel for the far greater needs of the civil population. She put up a wayside dispensary by the hospital camp, where 12,000 people were treated in a few weeks, and established six, others in country districts during the summer. At the end of Sept.' the Austrians, Germans and Bulgarians began massing on the frontiers and Mrs. Stobart was invited to accompany the Serbian' army to the front with a part of her unit as a flying field hospital., They moved forward for a few days, but on Oct. 17 the great retreat of the Serbian nation began, and thousands of people trekked for 1 three months over the Albanian mountains down to the sea at Scutari. Mrs. Stobart rode at the head of her column all the way< for 800 m., and brought it through intact.
Lady Paget with all her staff decided to remain with the hospital at Skoplje and allow themselves to be taken prisoners by the Bul- garians, in order to continue to care for the Serbian wounded of their own hospital and of the other hospitals abandoned by their staffs. She was allowed by the Bulgarians to distribute the hospital stores of food and clothing to all destitute refugees irrespective of na- tionality. Early in Dec. the Germans arrived, and in Feb. permission was given for the unit to leave the country. Lady Paget had accom- : plished the purpose for which she had stayed, having been able to superintend the distribution of all the stores and money.
Miss Flora Sandes, who was in England when the Bulgarians de- clared war, went back at once, and was officially attached to the ambulance of the 2nd Infantry Regiment. When the retreat began, the Commandant of the Division told her that her presence would encourage the soldiers; so, as the ambulance could not travel, she enlisted in the 2nd Infantry Regiment as a private and retreated through Albania with the Serbian army. When the army was ​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 ​value of 5,000,000 were supplied to combatants, patients in military hospitals, allies and prisoners of war, by the 267 recognized head associations, composed of approximately 400,000 workers, grouped into 2,983 branches, all financially independent. These ranged from bodies of village women and shop girls to factories like the Bel- gravia War Hospital Supply Depot and the Kensington War Hos- pital Supply Depot ; the latter with an average daily attendance of 1,200 workers turned out 6,000,000 articles, making a speciality of elaborate orthopaedic appliances. A number of men did valuable work in the woodwork annexes of the depots.
In addition to comforts made by hand the D.G.V.O. sent out 232,599,191 cigarettes, 256,487 Ib. of tobacco and 62,193 games. The supply of books to the troops was in the hands of Dame Eva Anstruther, who had established the Camps Library in Oct. 1914 (afterwards affiliated to the D.G.V.O.) and despatched 16,000,000 books and magazines to fighting men. The War Library, run by Mrs. Gaskell and Dr. Hagbert Wright under the British Red Cross Society, furnished 6,000,000 books to the hospitals.
The provision of artificial teeth and dental treatment for soldiers and sailors was undertaken by the Soldiers and Sailors Dental Aid fund under Miss Banister Fletcher. When it was founded in Dec. 1914 there was no arrangement for the supply of dentures to soldiers ; but from March 1915 onwards the War Office gave a grant to meet the cost of treatment for their own men, and in Nov. took over the work. The Fund was reconstituted later under the name of the Ivory Cross, to provide treatment for discharged service men, for Home Army men and for the mercantile marine.
Ten thousand people, mostly women, worked in 1918 for the welfare of soldiers on leave in the London area alone, under the control of the General Officer Commanding the London District. In that year 3,068,135 men, 232,495 officers and 28,450 cadets were accommodated in rest houses in London. The Maple Leaf Club, the Victoria League Club and Peel House (started by Mrs. Moncrieffe and Mrs. Graham Murray) had been opened as residential clubs for the Overseas forces in the autumn of 1915, on the same lines as .the Union Jack Club, founded as a memorial to the men who had lost their lives in the Boer War. Motor volunteer corps, such as the Motor Transport Volunteers, the Y.M.C.A. Baltic Night Transport, and the Women's Reserve Ambulance (Green Cross Corps) drove nearly a million men from station to station in 1918, and 8,000,000 men were fed at the free buffets at Victoria, Paddington, London Bridge, Liverpool Street, Euston, Waterloo and Charing Cross the same year. These buffets were maintained and staffed in night and 'day shifts entirely by women voluntary workers, and 12,000,000 men were fed during the war at Victoria station at a cost of 60,000. .Similar buffets were organized at the big junctions in the provinces, such as Preston. It is impossible to estimate the additional number of women who worked throughout the country in canteens for soldiers in training and on home service.
Parallel with the supply of tangible comforts such as food and clothing went the provision of entertainment for men in camp and patients in hospital. The " Music in War Time " committees, sub- sidized in part as relief work for musicians by the Professional Classes War Relief Council, gave 15,000 concerts in hospitals and camps at home, 2,000,000 wounded soldiers being entertained in the Manchester area alone. Individuals and organizations such as the Y.M.C.A. at home, the Lena Ashwell concert parties at the front, 'the Three Arts Club and the Soldiers Entertainment Fund, did the same work.
The labour of the nursing staff in hospitals was lessened by the organizations which provided drives for the wounded, free bus rides and river trips, and arranged for the visitation of patients and the teaching of handicrafts. The friendships formed in hospital led to voluntary after-care work for the disabled. (For a list of funds, associations and societies for the assistance of service and ex-service officers, men, women, and their dependents, see H4/Gen. No. 6198, compiled by the secretary C-3 department, War Office.)
The Auctioneers and Estate Agents Institute of the United King- dom bought the Star and Garter Hotel, Richmond Hill, as a home for the totally disabled in 1915 and presented it to Queen Mary; a sum of 224,000 for the building was raised by the British Women's Hospitaltommittee under the chairmanship of Dame May Whitty as a tribute from the women of the Empire.
VI. Work for Belgian Refugees in Great Britain. In Aug. 1914 the gaze of the Allies was focussed upon Belgium, where one of the greatest tragedies of history was being enacted. After the first accounts of the German atrocities perpetrated at Vise and Liege, but before the extent of the German invasion of Belgium was fore- seen, it occurred to Lady Lugard that a large number of Belgian women and children might be brought to the protection of English hospitality, by means of the organization recently improvised in Ulster for the removal of Irish women and children from the area which in July 1914 threatened to become a theatre of war. Prepara- tions on these lines proceeded, with the cooperation of Ulster, the Catholic Church, the Foreign Office, the Local Government Board and the Belgian Government. Meanwhile the situation in Belgium was becoming more acute, and on Aug. 22 an official of the Exhibi- tions Branch of the Board of Trade, who was in Belgium on business, announced to Lady Lugard that he hoped to arrive from Ostend on the 24th with a transport carrying from 100 to 1,000 Belgians.
Within two days the War Refugees Committee was formed to pro- vide for them, mainly by the exertions of Lady Lugard and Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton. Lord Hugh Cecil became chairman and Viscount Gladstone treasurer. The response of the first appeal in the press brought offers of private hospitality for 100,000 persons, and hot one of the refugees who poured into the country in an increasing stream was left without food, lodging and a warm welcome from the 500 volunteers who at first did the work. But the Committee was not rich in funds. A large proportion of the money, subscribed in England for the Belgians, went to the Belgian minister's fund for Belgian relief, which was earmarked to be spent upon the Con-; tinent. 106,500 was subscribed to the War Refugees Committee, and this had to be conserved for the expenses of organization, and for emergency relief. It. was soon obvious that a national exodus could not be dealt with by private effort alone. In the House of Commons, on Sept. 9, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Herbert Samuel, then President of the Local XSovernment Board, offered the hospitality of the British nation to Belgium, and from that day a department of the Local Government Board, under Sir Frederick Willis, worked in close relation with the War Refugees Committee. At f\rst the Belgians had been received in refuges improvised by the War Refugees Com- mittee; but it was then arranged that the Local Government Board should provide accommodation for the refugees in London and should superintend their reception at the ports and bear the cost of their transport. The War Refugees Committee was to allocate the refu- gees to private hospitality and organize the transport.
The Women's Emergency Corps had provided a body of inter- preters to meet trains early in Aug. and did valuable work for the Belgians of the middle and upper classes who were able to pay their way temporarily. The greatest rush occurred during the week after the fall of Antwerp, when 26,000 refugees arrived at Folkestone and were welcomed by the local committee; 2,000 a day were dealt with in London by the allocation department of the War Refugees Committee under Dame Victoria Samuel (Mrs. Gilbert Samuel), and 6,opo a day by the transport department under Mr. H. Camp- bell. The occupation of Ostend by the Germans on Oct. 17 closed the Belgian coast, and all refugees arriving in England after that date came by way of Holland, and in far smaller numbers.
The early refugees had borne the first onslaught of German fury, and families arrived separated from each other and with no material possessions whatsoever. British women, protected from the same fate by the sea, and with few opportunities at that time of helping actively with other war work, poured out money and sympathy lavishly on the Belgians. By Jan. 1915, it was estimated that private hosts had spent 2,000,000 on hospitality. The central register of refugees compiled under the Registrar General's Department showed that 265,000 refugees arrived in England; they cost the Government approximately 3,500,000; but the total spent on them by private hosts and local committees was estimated in 1917 as at least 6,000,000. Over 6,000 Jews were cared for at the cost of the Jewish community in London. 2,500 local Belgian relief committees, of which about 1,500 were really effective, were formed in Great Britain, to which the refugees, after spending a few days at the Government refuges, were allocated by the loo voluntary allocators of the War Refugees Committee; by the allocators at the office of the Belgian consulate, working in the same building; as well as by the Catholic Women's League and the Women's Emergency Corps. Four large refuges holding 8,oop persons, at Alexandra Palace, Earl's Court, Edmonton and Millfietd House, were managed for the Local Government Board by the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and during the period of the greatest rush several boards of guardians lent other buildings. Edmonton and Earl's Court through which 100,000 refugees passed, remained open till the end of the war.
When the local relief committees, originally organized by the Earl of Lytton, had received their refugees from headquarters, they worked in complete independence. The Glasgow Corporation Bel- gian Refugee Committee under Mr. Alexander Walker acted as a central authority for receiving and distributing refugees all over Scotland. The Scotch committees raised 360,000. Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Exeter, to mention only a few, looked after many thousands of refugees each. The university of Cambridge invited professors and students from the four Belgian universities to come into residence and organized lectures for them and hos- pitality for their families. The Chelsea Committee, with Mrs. Erskine Childcrs as hon. sec., started industries for the refugees on a large scale, and spent 72,000 of English and American money. The National Food Fund and the Belgian Refugee Food Fund, with the substantial assistance of the Smithfield Markets Belgian Relief Fund (which divided gifts of meat between the two funds), supplied an allowance of free food to hostels and Belgian households in London ; this made it possible for a large number to do without other financial assistance.
In Jan. 1915, owing to the natural drying up of the sources of private hospitality, the Government undertook to make grants in aid! to refugees when private offers were not available, and in this way wholly or partially maintained an average of 6,500 persons till May 1919. In Nov. 1915 it took over the cost of the staff of the War Refugees Committee. When this organization took definite shape, it consisted of a staff of 400 paid workers, who by degrees assumed the places of the original volunteers, though some of these ​continued to give their services till the end of the war. Lord Glad- stone was chairman of the managing committee and Mr. Algernon Maudsley, who had assisted the committee from the earliest days of the war, hon. secretary. The health department, which made pro- vision for chronic, maternity, convalescent and dental cases all over the country, was organized by the Countess of Sandwich in Oct. 1914 and afterwards by Dame Victoria Samuel. Viscountess Gladstone was at first in charge of the education department, and Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton of hostels and flats for the use of refugees passing through London. Mrs. Henn Collins and Mrs. A. S. Webbe looked after undesirables and organized rescue work.
In the first months of the war, owing to unemployment at home and to the feeling that the Belgians might soon be able to return to their own country, the refugees were discouraged from seeking paid work. But when this policy was reversed, it became the chief duty of the relief committees to help their guests to find employment. During 1915 factories for the manufacture of war material, estab- lished by the initiative of the Belgians themselves, were staffed with Belgian labour, and 65,000 refugees obtained work through the labour exchanges. Ultimately, nearly all the refugees, except those of the professional classes, were absorbed into the economic life of the country. This did not mean that they were all entirely self- supporting, owing to the high rent of furnished rooms and to the difficulties besetting exiles in a foreign country. Lady Lugard's hos- pitality committee and the Duchess of Somerset's housing committee established hostels for the propertied and professional classes, where the Government allowance was supplemented by a private fund. A scheme for assistance with the rent of furnished flats in London on a large scale, devised by Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, proved an immense boon to all classes of refugees.
In the first week of Oct. 1914, the Wounded Allies Relief Com- mittee organized the transportation of the first wounded soldiers from Belgian hospitals to England. Auxiliary V.A.D. hospitals, mobilized, but not at the time needed for the British, opened with enthusiasm to receive the Belgians. 40,000 wounded soldiers came to England, many to return shortly to the front. The first of the five King Albert military hospitals, established in England by the Belgian Government, opened at Highgate in Dec. 1914. By degrees the seriously wounded were concentrated in this hospital, which remained open till 1919, and the discharged drafted to a Belgian reeducation camp in France.
Owing to the large number of refugees in England, the Belgian soldier at the front had to be helped to spend his leave with his relatives. The Local Government Board, from Jan. 1916 onwards, bore the expenses of his journey; a special channel service transport- ing 300 men a day was organized ; the transport department of the War Refugees Committee under Mr. H. Campbell arranged the distribution of 185,000 men to their families, and the British Club for Belgian Soldiers was opened from voluntary sources as a residential club for men without friends or relatives.
Gradually much help was organized for their compatriots by the refugees themselves. A " Union de Comites " under M. Emile Vandervelde, Ministre de 1'Intendance de 1'Armee Beige, which had its headquarters in London, coordinated the work of approxi- mately 20 Belgian funds chiefly for Belgian soldiers. Mme. Edmond Carton de Wiart, Mme. Maton, wife of the Belgian military attache^ in London, and Mme. Pollet, wife of the consul-general for Belgium, took a prominent part in the charitable activities of the Belgian community.
During four and a half years of exile the Belgians grew to feel at home in a strange land, and when the time for repatriation came, many were loth to go. The expenses of repatriation were borne by the British Government at a cost of 243,000 and in Oct. 1920 a monument was erected on the Thames Embankment from a fund raised by the ex-refugees themselves, in memory of their exile in Great Britain during the war. (A. E. C.)
UNITED STATES
When the United States entered the World War in April 1917, but one organization depending mainly on the efforts of women was officially recognized by the Government: the Red Cross. On May 6 1917 the Red Cross had 562 chapters with a membership of 486,194. At the signing of the Armistice, it had more than 3,500 chapters and upwards of 8,000,000 regular volunteer women workers. These women produced in 20 months over 371,000,- ooo relief articles, including surgical dressings, garments for the wounded and the refugees, and a variety of comforts and con- veniences for soldiers and sailors. The value of their output was about $94,000,000. The Red Cross enrolled during the war 23,822 women as nurses. They served in the military and naval hospitals in the United States, Europe, and the Near East, as well as in convalescent homes for soldiers and sailors and in relief work for adults and children both in the United States and overseas. They worked in 700 Red Cross canteens in the United States and 130 in France, serving refreshments to moving troops,
giving them medical care, transferring them when sick, and in other ways aiding and cheering them.
When war was declared many targe national organizations of women applied to the Government for instructions. The Coun- cil of National Defense appointed at the end of April 1917 a com- mittee of nine women (afterwards increased to eleven) with Dr. Anna Howard Shaw as chairman, to form a plan by which the women of the country could be utilized. This committee selected a woman in each state as a temporary chairman, requesting her to call together the heads of all national organizations of women in her territory to elect permanent officers for a state division. This state division was in turn to organize county committees and each county was to form a division in each city and town. This work of organization was carried on so rapidly that by Dec. 1917 the county organization was complete in 23 states, and a year later there were county chairmen in more than 80% of all the counties in the country. Seventy-three different national organi- zations of women cooperated. Through these divisions it was possible to convey at once to practically all of the women of the nation the requests of the Government.
The plan of work which the women's committee laid out in- cluded the following departments: (i) registration for service, (2) food production and home economics, (3) food administration, (4) women in industry, (5) child welfare, (6) maintenance of exist- ing social service agencies, (7) health and recreation, (8) educa- tional propaganda, (9) Liberty Loan work, (10) home and foreign relief. The specific tasks for these departments originated either in requests or suggestions of the Government or in plans made by the committee itself and approved by the Government. Two months after the women's committee was created it was requested by the Government to enrol the women of the country in a league to support such plans for food conservation as the food administration might present. In a few weeks 5,223,850 pledge cards were signed. The signers were the nucleus of a women's food army which, throughout the war, responded to every re- quest for the conservation, substitution or production of foods made by the food administration. Throughout the war, the women's committee continued to serve the Government in simi- lar drives. For some months the committee gave active assistance to the national women's Liberty Loan Committee created by the Secretary of the Treasury, and in 1918, at the request of the agencies responsible for furnishing nurses to the army, including the Red Cross, and the surgeon-general's office undertook a campaign to enrol students for the U.S. student nurses' reserve. While 5,000 student nurses had been asked for, 13,880 were enrolled, and by the end of Dec. of that year 7,730 of these had been placed for training.
The National League for Women's Service, an organization formed after a study of the activities of Englishwomen, some weeks before the United States went into the war, developed an exten- sive motor corps, carried on a variety of services to soldiers and sailors, and effectively supported all drives. The Y.W.C.A. organized in June 1917 a war council, under which it developed a variety of service clubs, both in the United States and overseas, particularly France. The hostess houses of the association at the home camps of both white and coloured soldiers looked after women visitors, a service which proved of such value that the War Department at the close of the war took the work under its educational and recreational branch. Some 50 buildings were turned over to the Government by the war works council of the Y.W.C.A. Overseas the association conducted service clubs which served Red Cross nurses and other women workers. Both in France and in the United States this organization carried on industrial service clubs near large manufacturing centres.
The employment of women in war industries began in the United States in the winter of 1914-5 with the manufacture of supplies for the Allies. The percentage of women to men in the 19 leading war industries increased from 6-5 % in 1914 to 7-7 % in the latter part of 1916. In the next two years, to the close of 1918, the proportion rose in these industries to 13-9 per cent. A conservative estimate places the number of women employed in factories (food, textile and war supplies) by the end of 1918 at 2,139,100 an increase of be- tween five and six hundred thousand over the number employed in ​these industries in 1914, the date of the last official census. These women were trained to perform a variety of skilled and semi-skilled tasks in the metal trades, in electrical and chemical occupations, in the making of fine instruments, in wood, rubber and leather work, all trades which had been considered beyond their capacity. The substitution of women for men on street railways and subways, in railway yards, banks, offices, shops and hotels and in agricultural pursuits, increased steadily until the signing of the Armistice.
This invasion of industry and commerce by women was accompanied by an effort to preserve existing legal safeguards and to ensure suitable living and working conditions. In 1918 Congress established a women’s bureau in the Department of Labor, the aim of which was to develop the most effective use of women’s service in production for the war, and at the same time to prevent their employment under injurious conditions. The bureau adopted a set of standards governing women’s employment. Although created for the war emergency, the woman’s bureau in June 1920 was made a permanent section of the Department of Labor.
No official nation-wide registration of women for war service was ever made; plans for such registration were completed by the women’s committee of the Council of National Defense and approved by the Government, and it was left to each state to decide whether or not there was a need for registration in its territory. But it is a fact that practically all the women of the United States were doing volunteer war service at the time of the Armistice. They served in the food army, in the farm army, in- the chapters of the Red Cross, in the many drives for funds, and in many other less conspicuous but essential activities backed by the Government. (I. M. T.)