Page:Women Wanted.djvu/107

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HER COUNTRY'S CALL
97

like this are among the eight hundred hospitals in France which are being operated under the direction of one woman's organisation alone, the Société de Secours aux Blessés Militaires.

Here in London, in Piccadilly, at Devonshire House, desks and filing cabinets fill the rooms once gay with social functions. And hospital messengers go and come up and down the marvellous gold and crystal staircase. The Duchess of Devonshire has turned over the great mansion as the official headquarters for the Red Cross. Nearby, in Mayfair, Madame Moravieff, whose husband is connected with the Russian diplomatic service, is serving as commandant for the hospital she has opened for English soldiers. Lady Londonderry's house in Park Lane is a hospital. By the end of the first year of war, like this, no less than 850 private residences in England had been transformed into Voluntary Aid Detachment Red Cross Hospitals.

In hospital financiering the American woman in Europe has led all the rest. Margaret Cox Benet, the wife of Lawrence V. Benet in Paris, braved the perils of the Atlantic crossing to appeal to America for contributions to the American Ambulance Hospital at Neuilly. It is equalled by only one other war hospital in Europe, the splendidly equipped hospital of the American women at Paignton, England, initiated by Lady Arthur Paget, formerly Mary Paran Stevens of New York. Lady Paget, who is president of the American Women's War Relief Fund, has just rounded out the first million