To suffer is to understand,

To understand is to love

A CHARMING portrait of Her Majesty the Queen Alexandra and our Empress Marie Feodorovna is to be found in a book just published in London the two august sisters holding each other by the hand. The signature is no less delightful than the picture—Les Deux Soeurs et les Deux Pays Ums—and it is most gratifying to think that this beautiful union manifests itself in many ways.

Day by day our two peoples seem to understand and appreciate each other more closely and the bonds of friendship that unite them are constantly being strengthened, both by circumstances and by tireless well wishers and workers in the good cause. Among the latter, a high place must be accorded to Monsieur and Madame de Mouravieff Apostol, who have just presented to the English military authorities a magnificently equipped hospital in London to be called St Mary’s Russian Hospital for British Officers. The hospital is under the immediate patronage of HIM the Empress Marie Fedorovna in whose honour it is named. It will accommodate fifty wounded officers, and both work and money have been lavishly spent to surround them with every care. There are five resident professional sisters, and twenty voluntary nurses, who, as is customary in English war hospitals, will, under the direction of a comandante, take charge of the entire work of the establishment—ie., nursing as well as housework. Women of the working classes being mostly at present employed in munition factories and in other occupations that men have left vacant on being sent to the front, domestic servants are scarce and unsatisfactory. Ladies of the upper classes, therefore have cheerfully and competently taken their places in all the private, and many of the public, military hospitals.

The Russian hospital was most auspiciously opened a few days ago by the Prime Minister in the presence of the Grand Duke Michael, the Russian Ambassador Count Beckendorff, and an elegant and representative Anglo-Russian assemblage.

An altar had been temporarily arranged on the spacious first-floor landing of the splendid London mansion lent for the period of the war by Sir Berkeley and Lady Sheffield and here a religious service was held by the Russian Embassy Chaplain. The guests had assembled on the landing, and all the nurses grouped upwards on the broad staircase, formed a picturesque background as of white veiled nuns with red crosses.

After the service Mr Asquith made an interesting speech, thanking Monsieur and Madame Mouravieff Apostol heartily for their generous gift and expressing the conviction that the links of friendship now binding our two nations together will forge themselves into a chain that will be lasting and indestructible.

The speech was enthusiastically received by all present after which the hospital was inspected, and then tea was served smilingly and gaily by the voluntary nurses.

The wards and all the arrangements are in every way the last word as to comfort and luxury. Everywhere is a sense of light and brightness and space. White enamelled beds, screens and coverlets of a charming cornflower blue fires burning gaily in the huge grates, everything spotless and sparkling, and everywhere masses of flowers. There is a splendidly fitted operating theatre, an X-ray installation, numberless bath-rooms, the most elegant and comfortable of recreation rooms for the convalescent, in fact nothing seems to have been left undone. The staff and doctors are all English, with the exception of three Russian voluntary nurses. Dr Gould May, the doctor in charge, worked for some time in the Anglo Russian hospital in Petrograd.

It is indeed most sincerely that one can say God speed to this new enterprise and more especially as English doctors and nurses have, since the outbreak of the war done such splendid work in Russia it is certain that all Russian hearts will go out in sympathy and good-will to our compatriots Monsieur and Madame Mouravieff Apostol, who have had the generous and charming idea of founding a Russian hospital in London. After the war, by the way they have decided to remove the hospital to permanent quarters and thus to endow, in remembrance of the great struggle we fought out side by side a lasting gift of friendship to the English people.

There is a very touching feature about the hospital wards three of these are called respectively after three great Russian saints— Faith, Hope, and Love.

To me there was a very pathetic side in this notable and touching gathering. There stood before me the two representatives of two great powers—the Russian Ambassador and the Prime Minister of England. These two were united by the same terrible sorrow. Each of them has lost a beloved son in the war. Another Russian ambassador, now in Rome, Monsieur de Giers had the same misfortune in the Japanese War, and how many more such cases could one quote! I could not help thinking of this when I remembered that some people are inclined to think that our representative classes are not eager to make great personal sacrifices for the defence of their countries.

No, the grandeur of this war is that the countries are not united only by political and commercial ties. The real link is their voluntary sacrifices, their sorrows and devotion to their duty.

I wonder whether such ties are not the noblest and strongest we can have? Sacrifices are needed and are made, but all the classes, the wealthiest and the poorest, the highest and the humblest, actually represent the real Christian brotherhood.

It may be added that this hospital has been graciously honoured by a long visit from the King, the Queen, Queen Alexandra, and Princess Victoria who showed great interest in this work and allowed a group to be taken in commemoration of the visit.