ENGLAND AND RUSSIA.

PRACTICAL FRIENDSHIP.

QUEEN ALEXANDRA HOSPITAL.

From Our Special Correspondent. Petrograd. During the next few days the Queen Alexandra Hospital, which British effort has established in this city, will receive from the front its first hatch of patients. The solemn service, which is the invariable inauguration of rich undertakings in Russia, has been sung, in the presence of the Dowager Empress and other members of the Imperial family; the building has been blessed, and its walls sprinkled with holy water, and the staff is now impatiently waiting to begin its work of interpreting British sympathy and admiration to our plucky and patient Allies.

The Queen Alexandra Hospital is the most practical outcome of the wave of enthusiasm for Russia which swept over all British lands last summer, when our Allies were heroically sacrificing themselves to retard the progress of the great Austro-German advance. It was rightly felt that there should be something tangible to show our appreciation of our Allies’ steadfastness in that grim ordeal. The proposal that a British hospital should be sent to Russia was taken up by Lady Muriel Paget and others, and it met with an eager response. Large sums were contributed by the leading English towns, and shields, bearing their names and coats-of-arms will be hung above the beds which their offerings are maintaining. In this way it is hoped to quicken the interest of the Russian soldier in his country’s Ally, about whom he knows very little.

It was the idea of the promoters that for a gift of this kind only the best was good enough. The most effective way of convincing our Allies of the sincerity of the feelings which prompted the mission was, they urged, to bring the hospital as near as possible to perfection in both personal and material equipment. Lady Sybil Grey was delegated to represent the London Committee in Petrograd, and by her indefatigable labours and unflagging good nature she has done much to smooth the way for the technical staff. The general control was given to Dr. A. M. Fleming, Medical Director to the British South Africa Company; the services of Dr. Herbert Waterhouse, Senior Surgeon of Charing-Cross Hospital, were secured, and the eight other members of the medical staff are all carefully picked men, being in some cases specialists of repute.

The Committee think themselves very lucky in obtaining Miss Robertson as head of the nursing staff. This lady went through the last Balkan war, as well as this one, and has had an unusual experience in the nursing of wounded men. Under her are thirty nurses, half-a-dozen of whom have a good working knowledge of Russian. They will, however, be supplemented by a few Russians, so that the patients in the hospital may not feel quite cut off from their own people. The Russian soldier often has little ways and little needs of his own to which no mere knowledge of his language is equal.

A rigidly high standard was also applied to the apparatus, instruments, drugs, and stores. The collection of these got together was the best that money could buy. It was shipped in good time to reach Archangel before the floes came down from the Arctic, but, alas, here the serious troubles of the Queen Alexandra Hospital began. Before the steamer had gone very far it broke down and had to put back to port for repairs. Five precious weeks were lost in this way, and before the vessel could reach its destination the White Sea was blocked with ice. Its cargo is still unattainable.

Unless the whole scheme was to be imperilled duplicate equipment had to be procured somewhere. Diligent search on the spot, with cordial and energetic Russian assistance, was in the end successful. One or two pieces of elaborate apparatus, such as that for Röntgen photography, were lent by the Russian Red Cross. Everything else that was needed was obtained either hero or in Finland. Though the staff would naturally prefer its own original equipment, in the selection of which so much trouble was expended, it seems to have no serious fault to find with what it has actually got.

PALACE AS HOSPITAL.

Another difficulty was that of finding suitable premises. Practically the only Petrograd buildings in which there is at present a superfluity of room are palaces. From the various accommodation offered, the Hospital chose the town residence of the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch, the first cousin of the Tsar. It is the florid redbrick Renaissance building, ornamented with a profusion of stone facings, pillars, and caryatids, which looks across the Fontanka Canal to the Anitchkoff Palace. Perhaps it is not an advantage that the noisy streams of the Nevsky traffic flow along one side of it, but the wards are on the first floor, which is high above the street.

The 200 white bedsteads, each with a white commode and stool, and the indispensable Ikon hung above the pillow, are distributed among what were state apartments of the palace.

The Telegraph’s coverage of the First World War up to this point can be found at: telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive