An Honour Deserved

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume IV, Issue 3, 1 July 1911, Page 131

An Honour Deserved

The Society of Women Journalists, at their sixteenth annual meeting m November, elected Mr?. Bedford Fen wick President. This is a great and well-deserved honour for the editor of " The British Journal of Nursing'" It is a significant fact, and quite m keeping with the utilitarian spirit of the age, that the President of this Society should be the editor not of a magazine of "polite letters" for literature's sake, but of a professional journal, and that not of a " learned profession," but only the handmaid of one of them. Mrs. Fen wick said that the election was a surprise to her, as she had not taken up journalism as a profession because of any special fitness for that sort of work, but only as a means to an end. She had become a journalist because she desired to see the profession of her choice — .scientific nursing — elevated and legally constituted by Act of

Parliament, and without a voice m the press the views and aspirations of trained nurses could not find expression. English nurses are indeed fortunate m having such a voice to express their desires as Mrs. Fenwick. And not only this, but this election is an honour to the whole nursing profession, which we should appreciate, and guard by seeking to have everything that is published m any country by nurses or about nurses only such a thing as is m keeping with high ideals of womanliness and service. We congratulate Mrs. Bedford Fenwick most heartily on her election and British nurses on having one of their number who is able to fill such a position with honour. Coming as it does at the end of a year of sorrowful loss of leading workers m England, Canada, the United States, and India, this signal honour seems an omen of happier days m the new year. — ■ Nursing Journal of India.