VOLUNTEER SISTERHOOD

New Zealand Times, Volume XL, Issue 9096, 15 July 1915, Page 5

VOLUNTEER SISTERHOOD

(Contributed by the Secretary.) This scheme was first suggested in Christchurch on July 3rd. The details given then were merely preliminary, and ‘ covered a suggestion that Canterbury, and possibly other parts of New Zealand, should send a picked team of sensible, serviceable women, preferably of middle ago, . to help nurse the sick and wounded at Home and abroad. Now chat the scheme has been properly explained it is being taken up with the greatest enthusiasm by the registered trained nurses. Several of these have already applied in Wellington,. and applications aro promised from other parts of New Zealand. The trained registered nurses are welcoming the opportunity the Volunteer Sisterhood otters of signifying their willingness to do all necessary work in this crisis of the -nation’s history, without regard to professional status or financial emoluments. What the sisterhood suggests is that all its members, in addition to signing the' pledge already published, and furnishing references as to mental and moral stability and character, should be given at least one month’s trial in the New Zealand military camps, and that only those women who have distinguished themselves in such work should be chosen to go abroad. Even then there is not, and there never has been, any intention to send untrained women abroad. . The women who are enrolling with us may not all be registered nurses, but they are all women who have had some nursing experience, or who are generally so eminently suitable mentally and physically to stand the strain of hard and often menial work that to exclude them would' bo monstrously unjust. ' What the sisterhood suggests is to put one trained nurse in charge of a group of ten picked members of the sisterhood, but such ten will include mental hospital nurses, registered maternity nurses, uncertificated general nurses of perhaps fifteen years’ experience, and in addition strong serviceable women willing to do all sorts of trashing, charifig, cooking, sewing, and anything else required. The women who are offering to do this work are some of the best and finest specimens of womanhood the world has ever seen. These women are earnestly and honestly longing to fulfil their duty to their race, and they can be absolutely relied on to beat down all unreasonable official opposition and all petty-mind-ed editorial captiousness. Practically the only journalistic opposition has been from one South Island paper, which made a belated attempt to throw cold water on the scheme. The secretary replied to this editor that his article was obviously founded on a hereditary desire to obstruct public opinion, combined with a constitutional capacty for missing the ’bus. Late yesterday afternoon, the secretary made inquiries, as to the general opinion of the volunteers’ work at the Trentham hospital. Nothing hut the highest approval was expressed on all sides. The volunteers have revolutionised the general __ appearance of some parts of the hospital. Willing hands have cleared and cleaned until almost every portion of the hospital now has an air of considerable comfort. The volunteers have enabled the services of the trained nurses and staff sisters to be used to the highest advantage. Tho work required from the members of the Volunteer Sisterhood is intrinsically what is regarded as menial. It includes, for example, a great deal of linen sorting. When women voluntarily give up the comforts of ordinary domestic life for the purpose of sorting soldiers’ socks and shirts, hospital sheets and so on, hour ufter hour every day, it is Quite obvious, that they are inspired by something more than a passing desire for novelty and excitement. AH over the world _ volunteer women are making this kind of effort, with little rest and

no complaint. The response to the few newspaper notices inserted locally shows that colonial women will march forward in the band of, volunteer helpers, side by side with their sisters at Home and on the Continent.