Dame Rachel Crowdy Is Happily Honoured

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6626, 12 August 1931, Page 11

Dame Rachel Crowdy Is Happily Honoured

AFTER YEARS OF SOCIAL SERVICE WORK. LONDON. Sixteen years ago the name of Rachel Crowdy first became prominent when she was made Dame Commander of the British Empire in appreciation for her war-time work. To-day this same name is being widely honoured here for the peacetime work she has since carried on in the social service soction of the League of Nations. Dame Rachel Crowdy began her public caroer some five years before the outbreak of tho World War when Queen Alexandra's interest in the stories of heroie deeds done by nurses in the Russo-Japanese War turned the attention of tho country to those exploits. , ~ . Miss Crowdy saw the necessity for an organised body of trained women volunteers who could be called upon for nursing and other duties at a time of national emergency. When the European war broke out, she already had a battalion of 60,000 at her command, known the Voluntary Aid Detachment. September, 1914, found her housed in Boulogne in command of all the “V.A.D." members who took their part in serving with the British forces in France and Belbilised. Three weeks later, she yielded to the persuasions of Sir Erie Drummond ahd, taking her departure for Geneva, began her work for the League. Her work involved the first attempt to put into moving order that section of the • League Covenant which hap since>been described as tho “charter for the poor, the diseased, the enslaved of the world. ” , In the past 12 years, Dame Rachel has given herself to this work, organising the efforts made to discover and cheek the trading routes of the white slave traffic and tho secrets of tho traffic in opium and other dangerous q rues.