The Sun.
London, England, 1870-08-30 00:00:00

COTTAGE HOSPITALS.

One of the most important sanitary movements
of the time is the establishment of what are now 'be-
coming known as cottage hospitals. The design of
these admirable little institutions is to extend to
every village in the country the advantages of careful
medical attendance, and trained and systematic nurs-
ing in cases of accident and disease. The hospitals
wherever started, it is hoped, will be sustained at
but little cost, but it is probable that the expenditure
might be much diminished if willing minds were -to
occasionally engage to help the practitioners and
regular nurses in the work of caring for and saving
endangered lives. A t each cottage hospital, for
instance, wily one regularly trained nurse might be
employed. Her assistants in such a case should be the
ladies of the village or locality in which the hospital
is situated. Of course, women's help could only
under certain circumstances be accepted, but there is
no doubt but that in women's and children's wards much
charitable good might be done, and much cost saved
to the carrying on of the philanthropic undertaking.
At a time when the call on women's work in life is
said to be small, -and shamefully out of proportio ton
the good deeds women . have it in their power to
accomplish, here 18 an' opportunity of extinguishing
the slander of the imputation, and of inaugurating a
blessed course of bettering humanity in a way that
would not be derogatory to womanly dignity or self-
respect. The labour of tending the sick is pecu-
liarly a woman's duty, and in no age has it been so
possible to claim that this duty may be rendered as i.

this one.

MR. EDMOND BEALES ON THE WAR.

Mr. Edmond Beales is anxious that some efforts
should be made to have the Franco-Prussian war
brought to a conclusion through the instrumentality
of arbitration. He has seen that the heroism dis-
played by both French and Germans in this terrible
struggle has been marvellous, and rarely equalled in
the history of the world; but he regrets that such
exertion, fortitude, and energy should be all employed
in working mutual destruction, instead of promoting
mutual prosperity and happiness. De Quincey argued
in an admirable essay that wars tended more than
anything else to bring about good feeling between
nations, to forward civilisation, and lastly, to render
the repetition of them less probable after each fresh
struggle. Mr. Beales, however, does not sympathise
with De Quincey's odd theories, and so he calls upon
Englishmen generally (the working men are about to
make an effort, but why should the task be left to them ?)
to seek to bring about amicable intervention and to
procure terms for arbitration. Mr. Beales has hopes
that ultimately wars will be rendered unnecessary
for the adjustment of international disputes, if
principles of arbitration are once fairly inaugurated
and rendered useful. He does not enter into any
consideration of the chances of efforts for peace in
this way, however gentle, being peremptorily declined
by Governments who have had, first, to consider
the lives of thousands of soldiers and the honour of
a cause. With his usual equanimity of disposition,
and allowances for the softer feelings of nature, Mr.
Beales thinks that armies, though even on the verge
of gaining all they desire in a war, will leave the
bowels of the enemy's land when once the banner o
the arbitration brotherhoods is unfurled.