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One heard repeatedly in the early months of the war that this girl or that had gone to the front, and one imagined devotion, self-sacrifice, self-restraint, and a dozen kindred virtues. Unfortunately it is chiefly in the realm of imagination that these virtues existed. For the rest the interlopers wanted limelight, and plenty of it, their pictures flooded the illustrated papers, and to read what was written of them the inexperienced person might imagine that they were bearing the heat and burden of the day, the solitude and anxiety of the night, while in very truth they did no more than search for fresh sensation in an area that should be sacred.

The type of mind that can seek refuge from self and boredom in such surroundings cannot be stricken into seriousness; tragedy cannot reach it. To do a very minimum of work, to attach themselves to the most "attractive" cases, to carry small talk, gabble and gossip into places where so many come to die, these were the main efforts of the young society nurses, and all these outrages were carried on for months on end. The real nurses and sisters were, I am told, bitterly indignant. They asked no more than to be left alone to do their best; but they knew how hard it is to make an effective protest, and they had little or no time to do so. They recognised by reason of their training, the full motive of the excursion into the region of suffering; that craving for excitement, or, in bad cases, erotomania was the motive power. They found their work impeded by the sisterhood of impostors that responds so readily to a fashion of its own making, and their chief hope was that this sensation might pass as so many others have passed, and that the brainless, chattering, thoughtless, empty company, tired of blood and wounds, would find some paramount attraction nearer home.