THE ANGLO SERBIAN CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL.

Otago Witness, Issue 3594, 30 January 1923, Page 62

THE ANGLO SERBIAN CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL.

By

Jessie Mackay.

A little pamphlet lies before me —the report of the Anglo-Serbian Children’s Hospital, Belgrade. It recalls a bright May afternoon in London, when it was the writer’s good fortune to fall in with a small band of heroines who had loved and served Serbia well in her long desolation. New Zealand was represented that afternoon by Sister Kerr, one of the two volunteer sisters who left Egypt to reinforce the Scottish University Women’s Medical Staff in Serbia. It will be remembered that Dir Agnes Bennett and Dr Jessie Scott -of New Zealand were with the earlier units in Serbia and saw long, hard service there. Sister Atkinson oi New Zealand was attached to the Serbian Relief Fund, not the Scottish Women. It is a little hard to follow the sweep of retrospect, embracing both the operations in Serbia and the long marking of time at Salonika, as one cheery reminiscence after another flies back and forth across the cosy, shaded tea-table, while Piccadilly surges by outside. Gallant, sprightly recollections they are, in which hardships and tragedy are softened into a misty haze of the high adventure an<l happy damsel-errantry on behalf of a brave people, loved and trusted in their day of tribulation. Sister Kerr’s friends add the flavour of variety to that picturesque symposium of the Eastern Theatre, with all its heartbreak of waiting. Names are fitted to faces alight with the pleasure of renewed communion; Miss Picton, Miss Steer, Miss Isabel / MacPhail—all have their diverse charges in harmonious memory to-day. One did relief work among the' women and children of the stricken Kingdom; one had been attached to transport work; another to canteen work, and had fared forth as a mere’ thing of the day’s dutv to market in Constantinople; one had spent long months in a mountain pass of most majestic beauty with a small American unit, and Miss MacPhail herself took a sister’s part in directing the seaside overflow of the hospital m temporary premises at Ragusa. This touched a common bond of sympathy. All know Dr Katherine MacPhail of the Scottish L T niversity Women’s Association. All eyes here are anxiously turned towards Belgrade, where she still holds her official appointment as head of the only children’s hospital in the town, but now with searching of heart, for the much tried Serbian Government has little to bestow on their benefactors but grateful recognition. It was only in December, 1918 that some abandoned Austrian barracks, dropped to becoming a stable, were obtained for a start, and fitted up in a hole and corner fashion mainly with the help of Allied soldiers. With two English sisters, the indomitable little Scottish doctor renewed her labours, not now for Serbian soldiers, but for homeless, starved, tuberculous Serbian children. In the three years following February, 1919 she had restored many of these pathetic wrecks to health and strength. But now the testing time had come. Would the parting benefactors of the Scottish Women, on winding up their war activities, together with the shrunken Serbian grant and doles from Protestant Missions in Belgrade be supplemented by outside generosity—till the country could get on its feet? This was a problem for all who visualised Serbia, shattered then, and threatened now by the spectre of Kemalism. The pity of it were Dr MacPhail’s work to cease for lack of funds! So much money to spare for dreadnoughts, so little for wa-r-babes, cursed from their birth!

“Can these emaciated monkey beings with their stick-like limbs and shrivelled old men’s faces be human?’ wrote one who had loved and cared for this woeful flotsam of war and famine. The Serbian Government, throught its newly created Child Welfare Department, had made a grant towards the hospital, but this had to be reduced when the struggling department had flung on its hands a number of institutions financed during the war by foreign missions, now winding up their organisation in the country. That the hospital, equipped and housed at last in decent quarters,, in 1919 could not be guaranteed fully out of the depleted Treasury of Belgrade, was not the fault of the Government, as showers of grateful official testimonials showed, and the friends of Serbia abroad cannot but wonder anew how Dr Katherine MacPhail fares, now that this fresh cloud has arisen in the East. Those who can will do more than wonder,-they will help. Tnis anxiety is the shadow at the feast: otherwise the bright young faces are alight with recollections of strange and perilous adventure past and moving philoSerbian memories. Not of the picture that day, but melting into it through after associations, is the personality of Miss E. M. Chadwick, presswoman and traveller first, and relief worker as occasion urged after. She gives the literary zest, being now committed to a fascinating study of old Dalmatia when Adria loomed large in the feudal ages, and Ragusa was a centre of European culture. How near in time, how far as the waves of destiny have borne us, are the names and stories of great women who loved and succoured Serbia! One says: “I went out with Mrs St. Claire Stobart’s unit, the first to go from England.” Another went soon after with Mrs Harley, the heroic sister of Mrs Despard am* Lord French, who was killed by a stray shell in the middle years of the war. Some had personal memories of the wonderful woman who breathed life first v into the Scottish University Women’s movement with all its marvellous achievement to come. Dr Elsie Inglis is already a legend over half a continent, but it was Serbia drew her first to that supreme work for dying Europe. Some had seen the gentle Mabel Dreamer, worn already in brain and body from her labours m London slums, and the writing of children’s drama, who did little more than reach Serbia to die. All had known the fenial, dashing, Irish Britomarte, Flora andes,' who joined the Serbian Army in the war of 1912-13, and rose to be secondlieutenant in the Great War, still living and still a Serbian officer. Others saw Serbia rough, primitive, barbarous; these saw the heart of it open in gratitude to their healers and helpers, keyed to a mighty fortitude and a deathless patriotism. "They had nothing but good to say of King Peter and the soldierly young Prince, his son, who almost that week was the centre of all eyes as the romantic bridegroom of the lovely Princess Elizabeth of Rumania. What is going to be the future of Jugoslavia, and the picturesque people who still wear the brilliant robes, the product of their own dyes, their own looms, and their own skilled needlewomen? To finger these alien braveries in the heart of work-a-day London is to leap back into the Middle Ages, when dress was poetry and art was worship. How soon can Serbia heal her wounded and modernise self? And what of that gallant little Scottish woman doctor, holding out at Belgrade, the last war link between Serbia and the splendid womanhood of Western Europe?