'Only a short time ago, sitting in the elegant offices of the British Red Cross Society in Grosvenor Crescent, I read in the official "Report by the Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross Society and Order of St. John" the following words - a little pompous, perhaps, like the report itself, but doubtless written with the laudable intention of reassuring the anxious nursing profession: "The V.A.D. members were not ... trained nurses; nor were they entrusted with trained nurses' work except on occasions when the emergency was so great that no other course was open."'