London, Dec. 18.
It in previous letters written in the clatter of Christmas I have waxed lyrical over the London shopgirl, please forgive me for doing so again. Chance has given me experience of shopping in other lands, and I would not seem to disparage the foreign attendants. But the London shopgirl simply leaves them panting. I spent yesterday afternoon in one of the big Kensington stores, though in fact you might try any shop big or little with the same results, and for pleasantness, patience and general helpfulness, among crowds of often fussy and troublesome customers, those girls deserve extra large haloes and white wings. Remember too that they are on their feet all day (so that the wings would be specially acceptable) and are working in the week before Christmas up till 10 and 11 at night making up their order books and tidying up for next day. So though they will never see it, let my word of gratitude be said.
One curious item of the season's interests—no, I am not generally writing of what will be dead before this reaches you—is that well-berried holly is extremely scarce this year, just the reverse of last year. We live in a great holly growing district near London, and trees which were ablaze last year have hardly a berry on them now. It is the same everywhere, and the prices of. well berne holly at Covent Garden are fi times those of last year.
But this runs counter to the general tradition that a hard winter is too. There is something to be said for a celibate clergy.
After being left to fend for themselves for generations nurses are in danger of being killed with too much kindness. I wrote. recently of the Commission which the Government had set up to inquire into the conditions of their work. But the Trade Union Congress, at their annual conference decided that nurses must be unionized, and the idea was so eagerly taken up that there are now 10 different organizations offering to take nurses as members and guaranteeing to see that they get their rights.
To simplify matters the T.U.C. is forming a Federation of Health Services which will cover most branches of the nursing profession. Among the reforms desired are that probationers' training should begin at 17 (with preliminary training from 15); that the minimum pay of a staff nurse should be £75 a year instead of £40-65, and of a sister £95 to £120 instead of £70 to £85; and that maximum amount of work must not exceed 48 hours a week or 96 hours a fortnight. Actually in rather more than a quarter of our hospitals the nurses work 10-11 hours daily and at very much' lower pay than the scales suggested. Meanwhile nothing presumably will be done until the Government Commission gels through its inquiry. It is impossible to imagine hospital nurses
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.