Over in France a great Recreation and Rest Hut for the soldiers has been supplied by the Guides with funds earned through their work. It is managed by Guide officers, or ex-Guides. Among the older Guides there are many who have done noble work as assistants to the ward-maids, cooks, and laundry women. In the Government offices, such as the War Office, the Admiralty, and other great departments of the State, they have acted as orderlies and messengers. They have taken up work in factories, or as motor-drivers or on farms, in order to release men to go to the front.
At home and in their club-rooms they have made bandages for the wounded, and warm clothing for the men at the Front and in the Fleet.
At home in many of the great cities the Guides have turned their Headquarters' Club-Rooms into "Hostels." That is, they have made them into small hospitals ready for taking in people injured in air-raids by the enemy.
So altogether the Guides have shown themselves to be a pretty useful lot in many different kinds of work during the war, and, mind you, they are only girls between the ages of 11 and 18. But they have done their bit in the Great War as far as they were able, and have done it well.
There are 100,000 of them, and they are very smart, and ready for any job that may be demanded of them.
They were not raised for this special work during the war for they began some years before it, but their motto is "Be Prepared," and it was their business to train themselves to be ready for anything that might happen, even the most unlikely thing.
So even when war came they were "all there" and ready for it.
It is not only in Great Britain that they have been doing this, but all over our great Empire—in Canada and Australia, West, East and South Africa, New Zealand, the Falkland Islands, West Indies, and India. The Guides are a vast sisterhood of girls, ready to do anything they can for their country and Empire.
Long before there was any idea of the war the Guides had been taught to think out and to practise what they should do supposing such a thing as war happened in their own country, or that people should get injured by bombs or by accidents in their neighborhood. Thousands of women have done splendid work in this war, but thousands more would have been able to do good work also had they only Been Prepared for it beforehand by learning a few things that are useful to them outside their mere school work or work in their own home. And that is what the Guides are learning in all their games and camp work: they mean to be useful in other ways besides what they are taught in school.