the militant suffragette leader, small but very definite and forceful. Dṛ Anderson won our admiration for having undergone a hunger strike but I am afraid that both she and Dṛ Murray regarded us Australians as rather luke-warm in the suffrage cause. They would say, "But you have had the vote for 15 years!" with the implication, "What on earth have you accomplished by it in all that time?" On our part we found it hard to swallow the doctrine that everything that was wrong, including set-backs at the front, were due to the fact that we live in a man-made world. When the order came out that prohibited women from travelling overseas from Australia, that was regarded as another injustice and insult to women, whereas really it was out of consideration for the crews, who would risk their valuable lives to save the women if the ship were torpedoed.
The Hospital Librarian was Miss Beatrice Harraden, the famous authoress of "Ships that pass in the Night", and no one could have been better. She was a short woman with bobbed iron-gray hair, very quiet and retiring and intensely sensitive and sympathetic. She went to endless trouble to find out the sort of reading matter the men preferred, to advise and encourage those whose reading had been neglected and to provide the books which had been selected requested.
TheHosts of good friends gave their services voluntarily in various ways. For instance, through their good offices a very liberal diet was provided, for which the hospital earned much popularity with the Tommies. Various forms of handwork were taught to the patients and entertainments in the wards, or in summer in the central courtyard, relieved the tedium of hospital life, while those who were able to enjoy them were taken for drives into the country or for visits to the theatre.
Royalty honoured the hospital by visiting it on several occasions. Queen Alexandra came more than once; she was very warm-hearted and much affected by the men's sufferings and on one occasion she left with a patient a handkerchief embroidered with her crowned initial and bedewed with her tears; the proud recipient almost speechless with embarrassment, was hardly able to express his thanks.
