At the Knightsbridge Exhibition in November 1915, one of the most interesting exhibits was that representing the Anglo-Russian hospital which, with its eight surgeons and thirty nurses, and complete unit of bedding and outfit, was sent as a gift to Petrograd; and several delightful articles have been written about the beautiful old Cistercian Abbey in Northern France which was turned into a hospital and staffed entirely by women for the necessities of the war. Of these institutions there has been an ever-increasing number both at home and abroad; one of the Suffrage societies has to its credit the financing and equipment of eight hospital units in France and Serbia. But all this is still the acknowledged sphere of women. As nurses and even doctors they are accepted as a matter of course by a generation which has scarcely heard of the criticisms once thrown at Florence Nightingale. It is in the other departments of social service that they are challenging the public estimates of their capacity, and here the facts must speak for themselves. Some of the factories have published statistics regarding their output of work; and the following comparisons were made in one of the engineers’ shops of the Midland Railway Company. Average percentage earned by men on Group No. 17 by the week, 42·5. Average percentage earned by women on Group No. 17 by the week, 49·6. The two hundred women thus employed had only lately displaced the male workers, and Sir Guy Granet, manager of the Midland Railway, remarked that ‘the efficiency of women in certain directions had been a revelation to him.’ Something must be added for the absence of any organised ‘restrictions of outputs,’ but in fact there has been a reiterated note of surprise in most of the testimonials to the women workers’ capacity, as though we were being faced with a new phenomenon, uncaused and spontaneous, instead of the outcome of underlying forces in the vanished world before the war. ‘I am not sure,’ wrote Mr. A. G. Gardiner in the _Daily News_, ‘that the future will not find in the _arrival_ of women the biggest social and economic result of the war.... Woman has won her place in the ranks beyond challenge.’ In Manchester, last June, one of the great attractions was the ploughing demonstration made by women ‘on the land.’ Lancashire criticism was sparing of words, but here again it was appreciative. ‘Ay, they frame well,’ said the men. The same results are recorded from clerks’ offices, from the tramcars, from motor driving, and, perhaps most unexpectedly, from the factories where women are in charge of delicate and intricate machinery. In all these branches of manual and intellectual labour, the women workers have risen to their opportunities and have made good. The comment by _Punch_ gave to the general view its own characteristic expression.