VOLUNTEER SISTERS

New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 9093, 12 July 1915, Page 8

VOLUNTEER SISTERS

WHAT THEY WILL DO A SPECIAL APPEAL TO WOMEN OF WELLINGTON. (Contributed by the Secretary.) All this week Wellington women will have an opportunity of offering their services as volunteer sisters to tend the sick and wounded soldiers at home and abroad. The sisterhood was first suggested in Christchurch, and from that town already twenty-two women have been sent to Trentham hospital in charge of Nurse Roche. Nurse Roche is a trained registered nurse, who has given the sisterhood two weeks’ service free. From Wellington the secretary hopes to send two contingents of ten women next week.

All Wellington applicants must pass Dr Mason (lion, medical adviser) as being sound and fit in every way, and the secretary suggests they should make their own arrangements with him as early as possible and report to her in wilting that they have done so. All letters are to be addressed to “Miss E. A. Rout, secretary. Volunteer Sisters, c/o Health Department, Wellington.” Proper arrangements will be made by the sisterhood for all its members. We shall ask the Government Insurance Department to take out policies covering all our members immediately. We shall ask the Health Department to enrol us all as ‘‘hospital probationers,” and let our military nursing service count towards attaining the status of the trained registered nurse in the future, when our present work ceases, as the nations lay down their arms. Tlie sisterhood proposed to raise £1 per week maintenance money for each member, to preclude ail chance of official refusal of services. Dr Valintine, Chief Health Officer, and Director of Military Hospitals, has waived that immediately. That means £23 per week now taken off our shoulders for the Christchurch women alone. It is agreed that we furnish all'other expenses for a month, but that period is merely named to give the department time to make . proper plans. What wo shall ask the department next week is to take over the whole financial responsibility of the scheme and leave us to attend to the human responsibilities of selecting fit and proper women for this work. The sisterhood has no desire whatever to waste Lime and energy tilting at official personages, but let no man, officially or unofficially, dare to come between us and our hereditary duty of tending the sick and wounded. Don’t let any woman apply unlcs' <*ie is sure she wishes to conform tthe sisters’ pledge. This pledge states riitely ’he,* --erV may hr of au‘ nature. Now the Empire needs every man who feels able to respond to the call for active service. There arc men who have responded, and who are now being frittered away as telephone clerks, errand orderlies, and so forth. Such men should be on parade, in gymnasiums, in the field, being trained and coached as rapidly as possible for their special duties.

It is perfectly pfacricable for al’ clerical, culinary, laundry, and othe work to be men. The sisterhood wants to uic 1 them, ard fmaro.ntce to the Heap 1 Denartme T v 1 ' tbeir eo-t-.1-fy It must bo remembered there are six hundred 7-et- nr t’-P V ■ military hospitals—many of them seriously ill. The numbers may increase. We must attend to the needs of these men first in the quickest and most effective way. That wav is getting the women readily . available in the larg* centres.