Mistakes and
miscalculations may have marred those preparations: the fact remains
that, as far as the Territorial Medical Service was concerned, the
authorities had merely to press a button and hospitals came into
existence. Thus a number of institutions--mostly schools--found
themselves ejected from their own roof-trees: found, in short, (what
many other folk were to learn later) that the State is omnipotent in
war-time and that sectional interests fade into insignificance compared
with the interests of the safety of the commonwealth. Some conception of
the promptness with which this paper scheme of Sir Alfred Keogh's
materialised at the outbreak of war may be gathered from the simple
statement that the building of which I myself write was an Orphans' Home
on August 4th, 1914. At 6 a.m. on August 5th it was a military hospital.
I do not say that it was a military hospital in working order. But if,
by a miracle, wounded _had_ turned up then, there was at least a staff
of medical officers and orderlies on the premises to receive them. In
point of fact it was some weeks before the first patients arrived.
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