In all these ways Miss Stoney has been able to bring her knowledge of physics to the service of the wounded. She has been a pioneer in her work in this physical department which she has originated and developed at Salonika. “It is easy to work X-rays,” she writes, “when someone else has installed them; but in a moving hospital, in difficult circumstances, physics is a help in getting the apparatus up and working well. We put in order the X-ray outfits of two British hospital ships calling at Salonika. The doctors and mechanics on board had not just the needed physics, but could work the apparatus perfectly well when it was installed.” The Serbian Government has decorated Miss Stoney with the Order of St. Sava in recognition of her services. But the reward of her fine work lies in the gratitude of the scores of her patients who owe their renewed health largely to her indomitable energy, and the wonderful ingenuity and resource with which in conditions of abnormal difficulty she has brought so many projects to a successful and practical issue. Writing of her work lately, Miss Stoney says: “There is always sadness, but there is endless variety and interest in the life, and one trusts that the great privilege of easing a drop in the vast ocean of pain, so bravely borne, may have been ours.” [Illustration: BARONESS DE T’SERCLAES AND MISS MAIRI CHISHOLM _Chandler_ _To face page 59_] XI THE BARONESS DE T’SERCLAES AND MISS MAIRI CHISHOLM Of all the splendid stories of the war there is none that catches the imagination more than that of the work of Baroness de T’Serclaes (Mrs. Knocker, as she was in the early days of the war) and Miss Mairi Chisholm. It is an unparalleled achievement that these two young women should have been living actually up in the firing line ever since the beginning of the war, tending and caring for the Belgian soldiers, dressing and nursing the wounded, and helping the men in the trenches by taking food and hot drinks to them day by day even at the very outposts. Mrs. Knocker and Miss Chisholm (who was then only eighteen) first went to Belgium in September, 1914, as members of Dr. Munro’s Ambulance Corps, and started ambulance work in Ghent and Furnes. From the first their skill and courage were put to the highest test, and it would be hard to imagine greater bravery and devotion than they showed, for instance, in the fierce fighting at Dixmude in October, 1914. Mrs. Knocker, who is an expert motor-driver, drove an ambulance car to and fro on the road between Dixmude and Furnes under such heavy shell fire that men broke down and were unable to continue driving under the strain of the terrible ordeal. On one occasion the ambulance was required to take some German prisoners as passengers, and, with no other guard but Miss Chisholm, Mrs. Knocker drove her convoy along the shell-torn road. “I think it was the proudest moment of my life,” she wrote in her diary.