The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1917-06-11
HARD, UNPLEASANT WORK 10
THE LOT OF THE NURSES
AID IN MODERN WARFARE.
ONLY THE ABLE ARE WANTED
Hundreds Of Young American Women,
However. Probably Will Soon Be
Doing This Drudgery With Steady
Nerves and Brave Hearts.
BY EDWARD 3. CLARK.

next year PROBABLY nunureuS OF young
women will start for Europe as
nurses aids, kind of hospital assist
ants job which Is not as pleasant as
the mornings work Of shopping and
the afternoons work of sitting on the
veranda partaking of the savory tea
with slice of lemon In it, or per-
chance a modicum of cream.
Experience In the European war
has shown that young women who
want to go to France as nurses aids
should understand thoroughly what 1t
is that they viii have to do when they
get there. There is glamour about
war for the young woman as there is
for the young man. Some American
young women have gone to Europe
only to return because they found the
work was not to their liking.
Names must not be used, but there
were several young American women
whose fathers hold big official posi-
tons and, with their families, high So
cial positions in these United States,
who went to Europe to undertake the
assistant nurses work and who soon
reached the point of desiring nothing
better than a chance to get on home
bound steamer to seek once more the
routine of a girls everyday life in the
land of the free where there were no
hospital bandages to wash and no
floors to scrub.
Most of Them Stick.
It is to the credit of most Of the
American girls who went abroad, how
ever, that they stuck to their jobs,
no matter how hard or uncongenlal
they were, and did their service for
humanity in that devoted spirit which
Americans like to call American. The
fact that most stayed and few re-
turned, however, makes 1t none the
less imperative perhaps that all who
go In the future should know what
they must do when they undertake
their new work.
Perhaps when our fighting men 60
on the line, later many Of them to
be brought back wounded, no Ameri-
can girl will feel like leaving her
service to come back to the life Of a
country removed, so far as actual
fighting scenes are concerned, from
the line of conflict. Perhaps the fact
that they are working for American
soldiers will make them all steadfast
to duty.
Some one in recent magazine afti-
Gle said that the average woman who
is not trained nurse and who goes
to a fighting country to aid the wound
ed has picture before her eyes Of
sitting on the rim Of fire with the
head of fair-haired, blue-eyed,
wounded soldier in her lap, soldier
not too badly wounded to look I'M
speakable things into the eyes of the
ministering angel who gives him to
drink and wipes the dew of battle
from his brow.
This is all very well as a picture,
but it does not belong to the school Of
the realist. The trained nurse who
goes abroad will have a place back Of
the fighting lines and there she will
have hard work to do, tender work,
it is true, but no such work as that
visioned by the ardent one who has
read some Of the Civil war romances.
The nurses assistant will not even be
allowed to do nursing work when she
has progressed, after study and toll
through the lanes of experience, up
to the point where she can be
trusted.