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Unfortunately there is in London to-day a very large company of young women to whom war was little more than a new sensation. They are not old enough to understand or young enough to be restrained. In normal times they must be "in the movement," however foolish that movement may be, and a war that staggers the old world and the new leaves them very much where they were before. Under the rose they have not diminished their aforetime gaiety, dances and dinner-parties have been the order of the hour. They have not been trumpeted by the section of the Press that delights in recording vain things, but those who view the currents of London's social life know that I am writing the simple truth. There is nothing to be said; let those laugh who may and can at such a season, their laughter proclaims them what they are.

Unfortunately the people I have in mind have not been content to devote themselves to brainless frivolity because they must sample every sensation that the seasons provide, they invaded the sanctuary of the hospital nurse. Scores found their way to the great London hospitals in town to face what they were pleased to regard as training; I have known some who have danced till 3 a.m. and have presented themselves at the hospital at 8 o'clock! Everybody knows that the training of a real hospital nurse is a very serious matter, that it makes full demand upon physical and mental capacity, and that a long period is required to bring the seed of efficiency to flower or fruit. The social butterflies made no such sacrifices; they acquired a trifling and superficial knowledge of a nurse's work, and then set their social influence to work in order to reach some one of the base hospitals where they might sample fresh experience. If they were really useful there it would be unkind to offer a protest, but the general opinion is that they did more harm than good. They subverted discipline, they were a law to themselves, they were too highly placed or protected to be called to order promptly, they showed neither the inclination nor the capacity for sustained usefulness. To sit at the end of a bed and smoke cigarettes with a wounded officer does not develop the efficiency of a hospital.