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 directness and a mastery of detail with which some Yankee forefather in Boston might have managed his business affairs. With a comprehensive glance she seemed to see the equipment that would be needed. Here in the red drawing-room she sat, with long foolscap sheets before her on the antique carved writing desk. She listed the requirements, item by item, a staff of so many surgeons, so many physicians, so many nurses. Then she estimated the supplies, so many surgeon's knives, so many bottles of quinine, everything from bandages and sheets down to the last box of pins. And she planned to a pound the quantity of rice and tapioca. Her hospital ultimately did have jam and tea when all the others were scouring Serbia in a frantic search to supplement diminishing supplies. Without any excitement, with an utter absence of hysteria as a woman ordering gowns for a gay season in Mayfair, Leila Paget gave her instructions and assembled her equipment. It was, you see, her hour.

She arrived at Uskub in October, 1914, with the first English hospital on the scene to stem the tide of the frightful conditions that prevailed toward the end of 1914. After the retreat of the Austrians, Serbia had been left a charnel house of the dead and dying. Every large building of any kind—schools, inns, stables—was filled with the wounded, among whom now raged also typhus, typhoid, and smallpox. There were few doctors and no nurses, only orderlies who were Austrian prisoners. At one huge barracks fifteen hundred cases lay on the cots and