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Shock at the Front 
 
I 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 By 
 William Townsend Porter 
 
 The Atlantic Monthly Press 
 Boston 
 
Jl 640 
 
 Copyright, 1918, by 
 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS, INC. 
 
 FEB -7 1918 
 ©CLA481652 7^-^ 
 
To 
 A. S. P. 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 [After graduating from The Medical School 
 of Washington University at St. Louis, 
 William Townsend Porter took post-graduate 
 courses at the Universities of Kiel, Breslau, 
 and Berlin. He has been a teacher of physi- 
 ology at St. Louis Medical College and at the 
 Harvard Medical School, and has given much 
 time and thought to the development of edu- 
 cational apparatus designed to individualize 
 the work of students, and render them less 
 dependent upon the formal instruction of the 
 lecture-room. Recognized as an authority on 
 blood pressure, and as a man of ingenuity and 
 shrewdness of mind, he was selected by the 
 Rockefeller Institution to undertake the in- 
 vestigations which he so interestingly de- 
 scribes in the pages which follow.] 
 
SHOCK AT THE FRONT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 In an upper room of a marble palace 
 inscribed to the memory of Junius Spencer 
 Morgan, 'a merchant of Boston,' a dog 
 lay dying of pneumonia. Without, the 
 first glow of a July dawn faintly touched 
 the great court of the Medical School. 
 Within, the lights still burned, marking 
 the shadows beneath the eyes of three 
 men, sleepless for forty hours. They had 
 kept their watch by day and night, from 
 the moment at which the terrible Fried- 
 lander bacillus had entered the bronchial 
 tubes, until this present hour, the hour of 
 death. They had seen the fever rise point 
 by point, until the impersonal column 
 touched io6°. They had seen these fires 
 maintained and then, the toxines finally 
 triumphant, the sudden wonderful fall to 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 below normal, — the fatal descensus Averni, 
 — and now the coma, image and precursor 
 of eternal sleep. 
 
 Tired were these men, but happy. A 
 smile was on their lips, in their eyes a rev- 
 erent joy. For they saw before them a new 
 Truth, shining, resplendent, born with the 
 day, unknown since the beginning of time. 
 
 In this dog, whose sacrifice had been so 
 fruitful, the vagus nerves, the great 
 strands that connect the lungs with the 
 brain, had been painlessly severed before 
 the disease began. There had never been 
 a pneumonia like his. The furious respira- 
 tion, — sixty, seventy, even eighty to the 
 minute, — painful and exhausting, was ab- 
 sent. In spite of the mortal inflammation 
 of the lungs, the breathing of this poor 
 vagrant had been from beginning to end 
 as calm, as peaceful, as that of a dog 
 lying on a rug before the fire. It was, 
 then, through the vagus nerves, the nor- 
 mal controllers of breathing, that the res- 
 piratory storm of pneumonia was let loose. 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 This was a truth which threw a new light 
 on the mechanism of the disease, enlarged 
 our knowledge of normal respiration, and 
 gave a lead for methods of relief hitherto 
 unimagined. 
 
 How far that seemed from the trenches ! 
 But trust in the improbable underlies all 
 creative effort. Hope, in this life the cap- 
 ital of the poor and the medicine of the 
 sad, rests on the unexpected. And most 
 unexpected was the coming of a letter 
 from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical 
 Research, asking if I would consent to go 
 to France to search for the cause of 'shock' 
 and for a remedy. In half an hour I wired 
 consent. After thirty months of thinking, 
 controlled by rigid experimentation, on 
 the one subject of pneumonia, the spring 
 fret was strong in my blood, and the great 
 game of war had a deep appeal. 
 
 The disorder against which I was to 
 take the field was not the mental derange- 
 ment known as 'shell shock/ which comes 
 typically without a wound, and is the 
 3 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 result of an overwhelming jarring of the 
 nervous system. My research would have 
 to do with ' traumatic ' shock, a condition 
 seen only after certain injuries, the acci- 
 dents of peace as well as of war. 
 
 Shell shock is marked by strange paraly- 
 ses, by protean negations of our ordinary 
 powers. Some patients cannot speak. 
 Others tremble at a touch or a sound, 
 however gentle, as the leaves of the quiv- 
 ering aspen tremble in the soothing airs 
 of spring. Fabulous contractures appear 
 — strong youths are bent into distorted 
 figures like a rheumatic Nibelung. The 
 human nerves cannot always withstand 
 the vandal touch of war. The slow in- 
 struction of uncounted ages is forgotten; 
 the measured harmony of functions is 
 destroyed ; the bonds of the physical body 
 politic are broken — confusion reigns, and 
 groups of muscles, mere hewers of wood, 
 freed from the long control of the intelli- 
 gent brain, show forth unbridled strength 
 in powerful but uncouth forms. 
 
 4 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 Compared with this swash-buckling 
 malady, traumatic shock is a sober, seri- 
 ous disease. In traumatic shock, the pa- 
 tient is utterly relaxed, pale as the dead, 
 with eyes like those of a dead fish; he is 
 apparently, but not really, unconscious; 
 his breathing is shallow and frequent, his 
 heart-beat rapid and feeble, and his 
 pulse scarcely to be felt at the wrist. 
 Much of the blood has collected in the 
 great veins, the heart is poorly filled, the 
 driving pressure of the blood in the arte- 
 ries is less than half the normal — too low 
 for the maintenance of a proper circula- 
 tion of blood to the brain ; the brain-cells 
 suffer for lack of food. 
 
 Men rarely die of shell shock. The 
 methods of cure are sometimes as inter- 
 esting as the disease itself. In the summer 
 of 1 91 6, there was a spirited discussion 
 among the French as to the right of a 
 soldier to refuse treatment for shell shock. 
 The treatment in question was directed 
 against the deformities resulting from the 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 continued contraction of certain groups 
 of muscles. A soldier, bent like a rag- 
 picker searching in the dust of Mont- 
 martre, was grasped under each arm by a 
 stout assistant surgeon. To the muscles 
 opposing the contracted group, the chief 
 surgeon then applied a strong electric cur- 
 rent in such a way that the resultant con- 
 traction would inevitably cause the pa- 
 tient to straighten up. The instant this 
 occurred, the assistants walked off with 
 the astonished patient, now in the erect 
 position. The malign spell was broken. 
 The patient saw that he could stand erect, 
 and the battle was won. 
 
 The electric current used was irritating 
 and certainly surprising, but it was not 
 dangerous, or even very painful. Cures 
 were many, and the method got into the 
 newspapers. There it was called 'torpe- 
 doing.' Phrases may be more harmful 
 than artillery fire. They should rightly 
 be detained until their virus is measured. 
 This phrase worked mischief. 
 6 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 One day there came a soldier who re- 
 fused to be torpedoed. The chief surgeon 
 insisted. The patient struck out wildly. 
 From words they came, alas, to blows! 
 The surgeon was an educated man; he 
 had defended a Thesis; he knew la boxe; 
 he was versed in what Littr6 terms the 
 pugilat anglais. And, since knowledge is 
 power, he prevailed — without electricity. 
 The result was a resounding scandal, and 
 the complete cure of the patient. The 
 affair came at length before the Academy. 
 It was decided that a soldier should suffer 
 the surgeon, as a patriotic duty. 
 
 Men rarely die of shell shock, but trau- 
 matic shock is usually fatal when skilled 
 assistance is not at hand. Not less than 
 twenty thousand men are dying each year 
 of traumatic shock in the English and 
 French armies. 
 
 Surgeons had long recognized this ca- 
 lamitous condition as a formidable ad- 
 versary. The cause of the disease was 
 unknown. There had been many hypoth- 
 7 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 eses ; the two most important survived i.or 
 more than a generation. One of these 
 hypotheses declared that shock was due 
 to the exhaustion of the brain-cells which 
 regulate the blood-flow by controlling the 
 bore of the small arteries; the other dis- 
 covered the cause of shock in the irritation 
 of the sensory nerves. Both these hypoth- 
 eses I had overthrown by experiments in 
 the laboratories of the Harvard Medical 
 School. It was these investigations which 
 procured for me the opportunity to study 
 shock at the front in this war. 
 
 The remedies for shock left much to be 
 desired. It was the hope of those who 
 sent me, that some new remedy might be 
 found. 
 
 My adventures in the search for the 
 cause of shock and for a remedy are set 
 forth in these pages. 
 
 Candid friends will urge that the book 
 must have at least one merit: it has set 
 bounds to the growth of a traveler's tale 
 — a virtue of the printed page not sufn- 
 
 8 
 
£ h ock at the Front 
 
 ciefitly celebrated. In my case, let me 
 hasten to declare, the implied suspicion 
 is unfounded. The picture is painted 
 as the author saw it. More than thirty 
 years of experimentation have taught me 
 to love the sweet security of facts. Sweet 
 they undoubtedly are to the friend of 
 measured relationships — their security is 
 another matter. The world is after all 
 nur Schein und Vorstellung—the half- 
 lit shadow of the mind. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 We were off the coast of France. It 
 was a caressing day. The sun sank into 
 the western wave with a splendid compe- 
 tence, the result of long practice. Our last 
 sunset, perhaps. The ports were sealed. 
 No lights were shown. The boats were 
 swung out — their covers off, the davits 
 greased, food and the precious water-keg 
 in place. The gun crew stood to quar- 
 ters. Full speed ahead. 
 
 I decided to stay on deck until we 
 reached the mouth of the Gironde. Many 
 of the passengers were of the same mind. 
 My cabin was in the lowest tier, and if we 
 should hit a mine, minutes might count. 
 At 4 a.m., we picked up a magnificent 
 revolving light; before long, two other 
 first-class lights, turning on the horizon 
 from the top of ghostly towers. Pres- 
 
 10 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 ently, we saw a powerful beam searching 
 the waves. Its dazzling glare rested on 
 the ship, moving with us. For many 
 minutes we endured an almost shameful 
 publicity. 
 
 The East was now lighted for the com- 
 ing of the day. Anchored vessels bor- 
 dered the fairway. Their hulls were black 
 against a tone of silver gray; admirable 
 motive for the etched plate. So lay the 
 black ships of the Greeks, on another sea, 
 in those Trojan days when the causes of 
 war were easier to understand. 
 
 The approach to the river is very fine: 
 the Gironde is handsomely dressed for her 
 bridal with the sea. At 7 a.m. we were 
 gliding along the narrow stream through 
 fields green with the promised harvest. 
 
 It was time for the dreaded inquisition. 
 Were our papers correct? Would we be 
 allowed to land? The passengers were 
 much disturbed. We were packed, some 
 hundred of us, in the vestibule leading to 
 the dining-saloon. There we stood, the 
 11 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 strong and the infirm, for two long hours. 
 I was jammed against two young girls who 
 were going out for the Red Cross. Con- 
 versation began, due to the strong play of 
 natural forces. You remember my Uncle 
 Toby. My Uncle Toby found the Widow 
 Wadman's eye very compelling. But 
 Laurence Sterne was a clergyman. Had 
 he been a scientist, he would have ob- 
 served that the power of the Widow Wad- 
 man's eye was inversely as the distance. 
 Now, the distance of these ladies from my 
 ear was the same as the distance of the 
 Widow Wadman's eye from my Uncle 
 Toby — about five inches. The power 
 exerted was therefore twenty times as 
 great as if the social insulation had been 
 the usual hundred inches. There can be 
 no doubt that distance, mathematically 
 speaking, is a 'function' of behavior. 
 
 But this verges dangerously on reflec- 
 tion ; to mix thinking with conversation is 
 to spoil two very good things. Well, 
 nature could not be denied; the ladies 
 12 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 began to talk. At a range of five inches, 
 the execution was considerable. They 
 told me, in these two hours, their opinion 
 of Shelley and much of their past history; 
 though, to be sure, when a woman talks of 
 her past, she hasn't any. It was a curious 
 friendship: it began, it ran its intimate, 
 almost clandestine, course, and was fin- 
 ished, within a radius of fifteen inches. 
 
 From time to time, while these measure- 
 ments were being collected, the door into 
 the dining-saloon opened a crack and a 
 wilted suspect was dragged in to confront 
 five officials who spoke torrential French 
 and dribbling English. By that hour, 
 the more feebly engined passengers were 
 suffering from what at the front would 
 have been called shell shock. One man, 
 born in Smyrna, a Greek by nationality, 
 said he was a manufacturer in America. 
 'What do you make?' he was asked. 'I 
 make sickles.' — 'Sickles! Qu'est-ce que 
 c'est que ga? Can you show us one? — 
 'But certainly,' replied the flustered pas- 
 13 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 senger. Whereupon he reaches into his 
 pocket and fetches out — not a sickle, 
 but a pack of playing cards, which it is 
 forbidden to bring into France. Behold 
 a Greek in a cold sweat ! The bystanders 
 grin largely, and even the officials relax 
 their severe gloom. 
 
 After the good-natured ineptitude of the 
 custom-house, I took a cab. The cab was 
 ancient and groaned appealingly, but I 
 presently found that the carnivora were 
 modern. They had the unfailing mark of 
 high efficiency; they had eliminated all 
 lost motion. 
 
 At the Hotel Bayonne, I got a large 
 clean room, admirable cooking, and the 
 true wine of Bordeaux. The bed seemed 
 insecure; it was soft; it gave somewhat 
 when my weight rested upon it; whereas 
 my bed on the Rochambeau had been 
 apparently founded on a rock. 
 
 In spite of these suspicions, I had a 
 pleasant walk in the town. The builders 
 of the cathedral, with tender regard for 
 14 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 the amateur of architecture, have com- 
 bined an exquisite Gothic choir with a fine 
 Romanesque nave. 
 
 The statues in Bordeaux were not al- 
 ways appealing, as works of art. But 
 public monuments should be distinguished 
 from works of art. The distinction is 
 usually easy. Public monuments should 
 be raised only to men who create in the 
 mind an immense historic vibration, an 
 emotion too profound to admit so small 
 a matter as the ability of the relatively 
 obscure artist. In such cases, it is a 
 positive disadvantage to have the artistic 
 question obtrusive. iEsthetically, it is a 
 fault to have two points of supreme inter- 
 est in the same composition. It is fitting 
 that the statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni 
 should be a great work of art ; but when I 
 looked upon the statue of Vercingetorix, 
 in Bordeaux, I saw the rush of the Arverni 
 and heard the clash of Roman swords. 
 Again high patriotism and dauntless cour- 
 age went down before a deadly dull tech- 
 15 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 nique. Caesar, when he murdered Ver- 
 cingetorix, gave him deathless fame. To 
 summon the dead is accounted a miracle, 
 but to keep a dead Gaul alive for twenty 
 centuries with a page or so of easy prose, is 
 great indeed. 
 
 I stood reverently at the tomb of 
 Michael, Seigneur of Montaigne, where he 
 lies in marble mail. He sleeps in an 
 Academy — in the hall of entrance, a 
 place of dignity. Life passes in review 
 before him. As I watched, youths and 
 maidens entered from the unknown, 
 moved across the scene, now smiling, now 
 anxious, and vanished on the farther side. 
 They went to judgment, to account for 
 the use of their talents. Their footsteps 
 died away. I knew them no more. 
 
 Epitome of our existence. We pass 
 hurriedly from void to void, while the 
 patient hills slowly wonder at our fever- 
 ish inconstancy. 
 
 Not so Montaigne. Deathless, incor- 
 ruptible, he rests unchanged, while gen- 
 
 16 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 erations break like waves against his 
 pedestal. 
 
 Were I a practicing physician, this 
 appreciation of Montaigne would be mag- 
 nanimous. He did not love practitioners. 
 He quotes with approval Nicocles' ' Phy- 
 sitians have this happe, that the sunne 
 doth manifest their successe, and the 
 earth doth cover their fault.' 
 
 Therapeutics in Montaigne's time did 
 not lack imagination. 'The very choyce 
 of most of their drugges is somewhat 
 mysterious and divine. The left foote of a 
 tortoyze, the stale of a lizard, the dongue 
 of an elephant, the liver of a mole, 
 blood drawne from under the right wing 
 of a white pigeon, some rattes pounded 
 to small powder, and such other foolish 
 trash, which rather seeme to be magike 
 spells or charmes than effects of any 
 solide science.' 
 
 As I wandered in Bordeaux, I came 
 upon a street named for Paul Bert. Paul 
 Bert was a physiologist. On entering his 
 17 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 street, there sprang into my mind the 
 experiment devised by him to answer the 
 important question whether a nerve will 
 carry a message in a direction opposite to 
 that ordinarily taken. In other words, 
 will a nerve that usually carries impulses 
 from the brain to the hand, carry them 
 also from the hand to the brain? 
 
 Paul Bert's method was ingenious. He 
 made a small incision in the back of a rat. 
 He then freshened the tip of the rat's tail 
 and sewed the tip into the wound in the 
 back. In a few days the tip had grown 
 fast to the back and the wound was 
 healed — the tail was attached at both 
 ends. This accomplished, Bert severed 
 the base of the admirable organ. In the 
 third state of the tail, that which had been 
 the tip was become the root; the tail 
 was reversed; the erstwhile tip could no 
 longer delicately explore its environment. 
 
 What would happen? Would the for- 
 mer base, now moving in a giddy and 
 unaccustomed element, receive and trans- 
 
 18 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 mit the throng of new sensations? It was 
 an absorbing question. Absolutely with- 
 out precedent. Our rat had never seen 
 or even heard the like. Female relatives 
 could not advise him by pointing out 
 what father had done under similar cir- 
 cumstances. 
 
 Nor could aid be derived from his ex- 
 tensive knowledge of the lower animals; 
 unless, possibly, from the elephant, whose 
 tail was so amusingly placed in front — no 
 doubt, a temporary arrangement — while 
 its true place was kept for it by an oth- 
 erwise useless appendage. The elephant 
 perhaps had been changed in his sleep, 
 like our rat, who had sniffed a sweetish 
 odor and had straightway fallen to dream- 
 ing, from which dream he had waked to 
 find his tail fast at a point he could 
 neither see nor touch. He had had one 
 recurrence of this attack. He dreaded 
 another. His tail might be moving to a 
 position on his nose. It would never do to 
 look like an elephant — quite humiliating. 
 19 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 The rat knew of course that the world 
 was made for rats; every young rat com- 
 mitted that to memory in his Sunday 
 school. The other animals were inferior 
 and for his use and pleasure. Each was 
 of value according to its kind. Even 
 man, one of the slowest and clumsiest of 
 creatures, cruelly handicapped by the ab- 
 sence of a tail, — a beast whose whiskers, 
 scarcely sentient, obviously dying, were 
 proof of rapidly approaching extinction, 
 — even man had one delightful quality. 
 As the source of a delicacy indispensable 
 to gourmets, some means must be found 
 of preventing his further decline. The 
 sole producer of garbage could not be 
 suffered to die out. 
 
 But the world, so blessed with intoxi- 
 cating odors, was difficult for cripples. 
 What a reversed tail would do was a prob- 
 lem especially serious to an animal whose 
 love of privacy led him to prefer narrow 
 passages beneath the earth. With his 
 starboard whiskers touching one wall and 
 
Shock at t he Front 
 
 his port whiskers touching the other, he 
 could navigate a forward course with ease. 
 If, by chance, he met an older and more 
 distinguished rat, he could back to the 
 next cross-passage, guided by his percep- 
 tive tail. But now! Who could say? If he 
 met a lady rat, and tried to back, without 
 the aid of a tail, he would probably tear 
 his skin. To lose his integument in the 
 presence of a lady would be embarrassing. 
 
 These painful apprehensions were sud- 
 denly set at rest by Paul Bert, who sharply 
 pinched the free end of the tail, once the 
 base, now the tip. The rat cried out. 
 The observation was made. Nerves would 
 transmit impulses in both directions. 
 
 The rat cried out, but not from pain; 
 nor from the rage which, as a gentleman, 
 he naturally felt at such a liberty. No. 
 He cried out for joy. 'Glorious!' he 
 exclaimed; 'I have recovered 180 of my 
 sensory horizon. "There's a Divinity that 
 shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we 
 will." ' 
 
 21 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 Cheered by these reflections, I sought 
 my inn, well satisfied with a town which 
 drives a roaring trade, drinks largely of a 
 famous wine, and keeps in pious memory 
 Vercingetorix, Montaigne, and Paul Bert. 
 
 After a good night's sleep, I arrive 
 at the station for Paris. The first-class 
 ticket office is not open. Meanwhile, the 
 train is filling. I buy a ticket at the mili- 
 tary window. On the perron, the guard 
 is surrounded by a clamorous crowd. 
 He says that all the first-class compart- 
 ments are reserved. I give him a franc. 
 He finds that this monsieur has reserved 
 a good place. I take it. The corridor 
 fills with people who have paid first-class 
 fares and have no seats. Alarums and 
 excursions ! The spectacle of this misery 
 imparts a special flavor to the fruit of 
 corruption. I must overhaul my morals 
 — when I get to Paris. The train leaves 
 twenty-five minutes after the schedule. 
 
 At ten o'clock, a dining-car is put on. 
 The waiter says there are no seats, except 
 
 22 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 at II. 15 and 2.30, too early and too late. 
 The solution is simple. I shall go with- 
 out my lunch ; I shall draw on my reserve 
 calories. To my French companions I 
 explain biologically about the camel and 
 his useful stores. There is some laughter. 
 I am informed that the camel has no so- 
 cial status in France. Poor camel ! These 
 cruel distinctions are repellent to a phys- 
 iologist — almost impious. To be sure, the 
 camel has a hump. Some camels have 
 two. It is unfortunate. One hump is par- 
 donable. It is, so to say, the animal's first 
 offense. About the camel with two humps 
 I am not sure. 
 
 Opposite me is a man evidently in poor 
 health — an intelligent kindly face, lined 
 by premature old age. He has two col- 
 lapsed air-cushions, but breath only for 
 one. I blow up the second cushion. We 
 fraternize. 
 
 'You must know,' says he, 'that I am 
 a Frenchman living in Canada. I have 
 come over to be ready for my call. They 
 23 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 have called the class of forty-seven. My 
 age is fifty. Soon they will need me. Of 
 course,' he adds, carefully adjusting the 
 air-cushions to support his ailing back, ' of 
 course, I cannot hope for the first line, but 
 perhaps I can slip in just behind.' It is 
 the celebrated French esprit. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 We reach Paris at dusk. I go in a taxi 
 to the Hotel des Saints Peres. I find 
 this refuge of the Holy Fathers strategi- 
 cally situated on the left bank, in the 
 Quartier Latin, a neighborhood in which 
 religious devotion is not always a work- 
 ing hypothesis. The hotel is closed for 
 the summer. Cest la guerre. What to 
 do? I appealed to the cocker. I remem- 
 bered a young English friend, also a physi- 
 ologist, who believed himself defrauded by 
 a Paris cab-driver. My colleague prided 
 himself on his ability to swear in French. 
 On this occasion, he displayed his full 
 powers. When he paused, from exhaus- 
 tion, the cocker made him a low bow and 
 said, 'Monsieur, you speak French like 
 an Academician.' 
 
 Perchance my driver also was a gentle- 
 25 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 man and a scholar. In the event, he 
 showed the sound common sense of his 
 race. 'Go for the night, monsieur, to the 
 Continental.' Now the Hotel Continen- 
 tal is Chicago at its best, set down on the 
 corner of rue Rivoli and rue Castiglione. 
 There I went, but it was awkward, for 
 Dr. Carrel, the representative of the 
 Rockefeller Institute, was to have met 
 me at the H6tel des Saints Peres, and he 
 being at Compiegne, in 'the zone,' no pri- 
 vate telegram would be accepted and a 
 letter would be delayed by the censor. 
 In fact, it was several days before I saw 
 him. 
 
 Having settled my quarters, I went over 
 the Seine to the ' left bank ' to dine in the 
 Latin Quarter. My dinner consisted of 
 bouillon, a membre of chicken, haricots 
 verts, Romaine salad, camembert, coffee, 
 and a pint of Barsac — at a total cost of 
 seven francs. 
 
 It was the usual French scene of the 
 rive gauche. A room crowded with small 
 26 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 tables, at most of which sat bourgeois 
 families. Here and there an officer, in 
 most cases with ladies. At a table quite 
 alone, a demure cocotte. Her eyes gleam 
 at the sight of my French gold, which 
 the war has made a rarity. 
 
 In Paris, even the homely midday meal 
 is touched with art. Once, at the lunch 
 hour, I found myself in rue Cambon. An 
 elaborate commissionnaire stood before 
 a small restaurant. Curtains of some 
 thin stuff guarded the rites within from 
 the sacrilegious glance. I entered. The 
 proprietor, with effusive dignity, bowed 
 and shook my hand. I was in a room 
 perhaps twenty feet square. There were 
 six small tables and five elderly waiters. 
 Several apoplectic old gentlemen, with 
 the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor, 
 were slowly gorging. From a raised dais, 
 defended by a desk, two formidable old 
 women surveyed the scene. When one 
 of the old gentlemen had finished his pou- 
 let roti, these secretaries recorded the fact 
 27 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 upon their tablets, with frequent consult- 
 ation, that no important detail might be 
 omitted. Evidently I had unwittingly 
 broken into a temple de gourmets. 
 
 One of the attendant priests presented a 
 paper on which were written a few hints 
 as to the mysteries, without mention of 
 the pecuniary consequences. 'What does 
 Monsieur desire?' Monsieur desires a 
 plain omelette. Consternation, with a 
 camouflage of grief! Monsieur is encore 
 jeune, yet so depraved? There is hot- 
 house melon, thin soup, of an excellence, 
 and old, but very old, wine. 
 
 Monsieur will not relent. A long and 
 ghastly pause, while the pariah sips from 
 a glass of water, forgetful that in such 
 places water is a symbol and not a bev- 
 erage. At length the omelette arrives, 
 assisted by three grieving men. It is 
 shrunken and plaintive. It is furtively 
 and hastily swallowed. The old women 
 note the fact in their smallest hand. Five 
 francs. Monsieur dies game, with a hand- 
 28 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 some tip to Alphonse. Alphonse weeps 
 for monsieur, and prays that light shall 
 break on this misguided man. 
 
 The day after this strategic defeat I 
 went to the Ministry of War. It would 
 be interesting to see whether a stranger 
 could get permission to enter the Zone, 
 that land of blood, bright with lightnings 
 and vibrant with thunderous sound. 
 There, the King's writ did not run. In 
 the haste to kill — the sharp insistence 
 upon murder — the casual foreigner had 
 short shrift. No doubt mistakes were 
 made. The innumerable saucisses, hang- 
 ing like carrion-birds above the lines from 
 Switzerland to the sea, sometimes looked 
 down on innocent men blindfolded against 
 a wall. The percentage of error was 
 larger than in trial by jury. But then, 
 under the circumstances, — the obvious 
 necessity for haste, — even the innocent 
 victims would readily excuse an occasional 
 inaccuracy. The Ministry of War, with 
 an infallible system of documents, were 
 29 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 certain of this. Their files were clear. 
 No victim had ever complained. Still, 
 it would be well to have my papers in 
 order. 
 
 On entering the great portal of the 
 building on Boulevard Saint-Germain, I 
 was shown into a large waiting-room 
 filled with people. It was a cross-section 
 of the French nation — a mixed but grave 
 assembly. Upon the table were blanks 
 on which one wrote his business. The 
 statement was then given to a subaltern 
 behind a wicket in the corner. From 
 time to time, names were called and per- 
 mits of entry were handed out. After 
 waiting forty minutes, I received a 
 printed slip directing me to the office of 
 the Under Secretary of State. As there 
 were no signs or other guides, I presently 
 fetched up in a hospital ward. The at- 
 tendants disentangled me, and I at length 
 found the right corridor. A smart young 
 attach^ comes out, debonair, polite, pro- 
 fuse. Monsieur will no doubt get papers, 
 30 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 but in three clays. Desolated to keep me 
 waiting. He will try to hurry them. 
 He hopes that Monsieur will be patient. 
 
 Three days pass, silent as the grave. I 
 try the American Ambassador; surely he 
 can help. The Embassy is well managed. 
 In two minutes I am received by Mr. 
 
 F , a secretary. In five minutes, I 
 
 depart with a letter of recommendation 
 from the ambassador to a high official in 
 the Ministry of War. I go at once to his 
 office. Nobody there. All at lunch from 
 eleven-thirty till two. Promptly at two 
 o'clock, I am again in the anteroom. My 
 card and the ambassadorial letter are 
 taken in. I wait one hour. Then I 
 write on another card. It is swallowed 
 up, like the first. But shortly there is a 
 
 reply. Mr. L is not in. He has not 
 
 been here this day; he will not return 
 until to-morrow. Another day lost. 
 
 On the following morning, while I sat 
 in the court of the H6tel Continental, 
 there entered with a quick nervous step 
 31 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 a compact and energetic figure about the 
 size of Napoleon. It was Carrel. In a few 
 moments, we were standing by the fine 
 military car in which he had come down 
 from Compiegne. I was greatly struck 
 by two soldiers who acted as chauffeur 
 and orderly. Both were unusual. One 
 of them was remarkable — tall, handsome, 
 intelligent. 
 
 'Where in the world, Carrel, did you get 
 anything as beautiful as that?' I asked. 
 
 'That man!' he replied, 'he is one of 
 the first five comedians in France. ' 
 
 And so he was. Then I remembered 
 that men of every intellectual and social 
 degree serve side by side in the French 
 ranks. 
 
 I go in this car once more to the office 
 
 of Mr. L . Another courteous and 
 
 charming young officer receives me. He 
 regrets that his office cannot hurry the 
 permit. They can act only on advices 
 received from the Service de Sante, to 
 which my application will have been re- 
 32 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 ferred by the Secretary of State. He 
 will telephone. He returns to say that 
 the Service de Sante has never heard of my 
 application. Very queer. Is Monsieur 
 sure that he made one? Yes, quite sure. 
 Then Monsieur had better go to the Bu- 
 reau Piessac. 
 
 After a prolonged search, I discover the 
 Bureau Piessac in another wing. Now 
 somewhat dazed, I seem to see a great 
 functionary with a red beard, which in 
 my disordered state looks like a crumpled 
 ring of Saturn. This portentous organism 
 is apparently of the variety known to 
 naturalists as 'sessile,' that is, adhering 
 by a broad base to its environment. I 
 was afterwards to find this apparition a 
 simple and pleasant gentleman, from 
 whom I was to receive much friendly 
 assistance. 
 
 Carrel came in. I was presented to 
 Monsieur M , who spoke English per- 
 fectly and was kindness personified. To 
 him I related my interview with the 
 33 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 courteous assistant of the Secretary of 
 State. 
 
 'TiensV said M . 'In France, when 
 
 they are as polite as that, nothing is ever 
 done. Do you think we could find the 
 office of the polite young man?' 
 
 I replied that we could try, though 
 there had been no number or other dis- 
 tinguishing mark upon the door. So we 
 set out and after ten minutes of corridors, 
 
 Monsieur M left me in a room in 
 
 which four elderly scriveners were shep- 
 herding large flocks of papers. They also 
 were polite. It appeared that my young 
 man might perhaps return in half an hour. 
 
 I sat in a corner and listened to the 
 rodent pens as they tried to gnaw through 
 the net of red tape in which the official 
 lion was enmeshed. 
 
 Suddenly one of the ancient men said, 
 'Are you not the Professor Tonson Por- 
 taire?' 
 
 'Yes,' I replied. 
 
 l Tr$s bien! Here is something for you.' 
 
 34 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 And he handed me a letter that had by 
 chance turned up in the crowd on his 
 desk. 'The Secretary of State presents 
 his compliments and regrets infinitely that 
 Grand General Headquarters, greatly to 
 its disappointment, is unable to extend 
 to Professor Porter the permission to go 
 to Compiegne.' 
 
 This letter I took to M , who said, 
 
 'What did I tell you? When they are so 
 polite as that, nothing is ever done. We 
 must begin again. I will get you a carnet 
 d'etranger, but it will take at least five 
 days. It must go through two bureaux 
 besides Grand General Headquarters.' 
 
 The carnet d'etranger is the celebrated 
 Red Book which enables the foreigner to 
 enter the Zone. 
 
 A delay of five days was sufficiently 
 painful, but it would give time for French 
 conversation. I could read French, of 
 course, and I possessed a large vocabu- 
 lary almost useless for everyday talk. It 
 was years since I had lived with Mon- 
 
 35 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 sieur and Madame Jacques on the Lake 
 of Geneva. 
 
 Monsieur Jacques was the pastor of 
 Villeneuve and the official chaplain at the 
 Castle of Chillon, then in use as a prison. 
 Monsieur and Madame dwelt in a wide 
 old house set in a large garden fronting 
 the lake. Madame being childless, alas! 
 had adopted seven cats. The ugliest, 
 possibly distinguished by a graceful mind, 
 was called La Fleur de la Famille. 
 
 In the garden was a large tree which 
 bore sickel pears, small, round, and sweet. 
 Beneath its grateful shade we spread our 
 frugal board. Two wires led overhead 
 from a branch of the tree to the kitch- 
 en window. Grace being said, Monsieur 
 Jacques would call, 'Hola!' in his deep 
 voice. There would be a rattle of dishes, 
 and a little wooden car laden with cor- 
 poreal cheer would slide down the wires 
 to sustain the pastor and his guest. It 
 was in late August. The declining sun, 
 seeking his couch beyond the Jura, painted 
 36 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 the lake with purple and gold. Warm 
 odors rose from the flowers about us, and 
 the sickel pears, dead ripe, fell in a slow 
 and gentle rain. 
 
 Those were far-off days. My memory 
 held the virtues of the excellent Baucis 
 and Philemon still undimmed, but their 
 French was as the sound of a distant bell. 
 
 In my present poverty I sought alms. 
 I went to the efficient Director of the 
 American Relief Clearing-House. 'Mr. 
 
 B ,' I said, 'my French is feeble, to a 
 
 degree. Behold me presently with French 
 officers who have no English. The suc- 
 cess of my mission rests on you. I must 
 speak the language in five days. Find 
 me a gifted and patriotic French family 
 who will give up all their engagements for 
 this period and cause this barren ground 
 to bloom like the gardens of Babylon.' 
 
 Mr. B was a real executive. He 
 
 did not turn a hair. , 'Come back to- 
 morrow morning at nine o'clock,' he said. 
 
 On the morrow, at the appointed hour, 
 
 37 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 he produced the family, per specifications. 
 I bear this public witness to their devo- 
 tion. He told them that I was a great 
 savant ; a lie for which I shall always love 
 him. I joined them every morning at ten 
 o'clock and rarely left before midnight. 
 Then, on reaching my bed, I fell into it 
 more dead than alive. But I learned 
 more French in five days than one would 
 learn ordinarily in five months. 
 
 My rapid progress was due in part to a 
 simplification that I earnestly recommend 
 to other ardent spirits. I made all the 
 verbs regular and of the first conjugation, 
 and I confined my remarks entirely to the 
 historical present. The astonishing suc- 
 cess of this procedure is another proof 
 that the French are a gifted nation. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 At length Compiegne, historic, beauti- 
 ful. I walked in the wonderful beechen 
 forest. I stood upon the terrace of the 
 Chateau, where Napoleon's Austrian bride 
 had looked amazed along the entrancing 
 vista cut in one night through miles of bil- 
 lowing green by her all-powerful spouse. 
 Compiegne fell to the Huns when the wave 
 of invasion rolled over northern France. 
 But they did not harm the place. It was 
 the Kaiser's plan, it is believed, to receive 
 on the celebrated terrace the submission 
 of the dignitaries of France. Instead, one 
 fateful day, during the battle of the Marne, 
 there came over the wire words pregnant 
 with the fate of civilization: 'Foch has 
 pierced our centre. Fall back at once.' 
 
 The Carrel Hospital — Vhopital tempo- 
 raire 21 — was in what had been the princi- 
 
 39 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 pal hotel of Compiegne, at the edge of the 
 forest. The hospital was specialized for 
 the study of infection. The worst cases 
 from the trenches for miles around were 
 collected there. Yet there was no infec- 
 tion. In the morning, at the dressing hour, 
 when the bandages were removed, and the 
 ghastly wounds exposed, the eye was 
 struck by the great display of stripped 
 muscle, as fresh and wholesome as the 
 meat in a shop. 
 
 Some months later, I found myself in a 
 large hospital in Amiens, where there lay 
 in splints, in one room, more than fifty 
 men with fractured thighs torn asunder 
 by exploding shells. Not a man but was 
 the color of dirty parchment, dull-eyed, 
 listless, with foul tongue, and a low con- 
 tinuous fever, the mark of a relentless sup- 
 puration. At Compiegne every eye was 
 bright, every cheek was clear, and the 
 temperature charts were as level as the 
 Elysian Fields. Happy the patient who 
 has no history! 
 
 40 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 All this came from the application of ex- 
 act measurements to the problem of sup- 
 puration. Carrel, himself a scientist of a 
 high order, had organized his hospital on 
 an original idea. He began by attaching 
 to his staff a great chemist and a mathe- 
 matician. The chemist, Doctor Dakin, 
 discovered that the hypochlorite of soda, 
 prepared without free alkali and used in a 
 special way found out by Carrel and his 
 surgeons, had an almost miraculous effect 
 on the foulest wound. The mathemati- 
 cian, the Comte du Nouy, worked out the 
 rate of cicatrization. He measured day 
 by day the lessening surface of the wounds 
 and plotted his measurements in the form 
 of a mathematical curve. Such a curve 
 serves for prediction. If, in a man of 
 known age, the area of a wound is fifty 
 square centimetres on the first day of the 
 month, it will be ten square centimetres 
 at a date which can be read on the curve. 
 If the observed rate of healing does not 
 follow the theoretical curve, it is because 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 the nurse has failed to keep the Dakin 
 solution in contact with all parts of the 
 healing surface. 
 
 I saw recently 1 in New York a man who 
 had had for twenty-five years a large 
 ulcer on the leg. He entered the War 
 hospital of the Rockfeller Institute July 
 first. His wound was measured and the 
 theoretical curve was drawn. It was 
 seen that the curve would strike the nor- 
 mal at August 6. 'On August 6,' the man 
 was told, 'You will be healed'; and on 
 the promised day, the last square centi- 
 metre closed. 
 
 In Compiegne we lunched and dined — 
 the Carrels, the surgeons, and the guests, 
 for the hospital was a place of pilgrimage 
 — in the garden of a villa commandeered 
 for that purpose. There was good talk 
 there, and a gayety protective against the 
 strain of the wards. When any one 
 cracked a joke, there was a moment's still- 
 ness, then each of us grasped his knife and 
 
 September 1917. 
 
 42 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 in concert we gravely beat upon the table 
 the refrain of a merry French song. 
 
 We were never free from the sound of 
 cannon. All day long and often half the 
 night they thundered from the trenches 
 six kilometres away. But Compiegne, un- 
 scarred, slept in the milky sunshine, be- 
 decked with flowers. There was a tennis- 
 court, green-walled with flowering shrubs. 
 We played each day at half-past four; 
 light laughter and pleasant voices floated 
 into the soft sky to meet the satanic over- 
 tones of war. To a green bank at the side, 
 men would crawl from their beds to watch 
 the game. There they sat, a smiling, man- 
 gled row. One day I found a pipe. It ap- 
 peared that it belonged to a mass of ban- 
 dages, a mere remnant of a man, armless, 
 blind. We stop the game, we fill the pipe, 
 light it, and place the stem in the groping 
 mouth. The man laughs, his comrades 
 laugh, everyone laughs — such fun! Xo 
 man talks of his wounds — his pride and 
 his secret grief. 
 
 43 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 The surgeons at Compiegne had no- 
 ticed that shock came on chiefly after 
 wounds of the great bones, such as the 
 thigh-bone, and after multiple wounds 
 through the skin and subcutaneous fat, as 
 from a shower of shell-fragments. These 
 facts seemed very significant, although I 
 little knew at the time that they would at 
 length lead me to the discovery of the 
 cause of shock. 
 
 A question of urgent importance seemed 
 to press for immediate reply: does the life 
 in the trenches, under fire, predispose to 
 shock? The bombardments in this war 
 were of a new and strange intensity. It 
 might be that certain men were sensitized 
 by this highly abnormal environment. In 
 that case a wound not historically grave 
 might bring on shock. If the low blood- 
 pressure and other symptoms of shock ap- 
 peared immediately after the wound, a 
 preexisting sensitization was probable. 
 Remedies should then be employed before 
 the wound was dressed. If, on the con- 
 
 44 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 trary, there was a significant interval be- 
 tween the wound and the onset of shock, 
 sensitization was not the explanation, and 
 shock must be the result of forces set free 
 by the wound itself. On the length of this 
 interval would depend the character of 
 the treatment and the moment at which 
 it could be most profitably applied. On 
 the length of this interval rested the seri- 
 ous practical question whether treatment 
 must be given in the dressing-station or 
 in the nearest field hospital. 
 
 It was therefore my first duty to meas- 
 ure the blood-pressure immediately after 
 the wound. The wounded at Compiegne 
 arrived too long after their injury. Be- 
 sides, the hospital was too small. To 
 solve my problem without undue loss of 
 time, it was necessary for me to place my- 
 self in a stream of wounded, for shock at- 
 tacks only one or two men in every hun- 
 dred casualties. I accordingly applied for 
 permission to go to La Panne. 
 
 Getting to La Panne was not so easy as 
 
 45 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 it had seemed. The Bureau Piessac in the 
 Ministry of War at Paris addressed the 
 Belgian authorities. The famous head of 
 the great hospital at La Panne, high in the 
 favor of the King, made formal request 
 that I should be appointed as physiologist 
 to the hospital. The clumsy wheels of the 
 administrative machine began protest- 
 ingly to grind. Day after day went by, 
 each day marked by deaths from shock, 
 deaths possibly to be prevented by just 
 such a research as we had planned, while 
 the Belgian police, thick with dull suspi- 
 cion, were goaded into action. The papers 
 at length arrived. I went to the station to 
 buy my ticket. The window was guarded 
 by two gendarmes. 'A spy,' their fixed 
 glare seemed to say. Science, humiliated, 
 passed beneath the military yoke, and 
 found a temporary refuge in the long and 
 crowded train for Calais. 
 
 As we approached the coast, the signs of 
 war were multiplied. Immense camps 
 stretched on either side: thousands and 
 4 6 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 thousands of conical tents upon clean, 
 sandy soil, faintly spotted with countless 
 men in khaki. 
 
 In Calais I stayed the night at a hotel 
 called Grand. The next morning I was 
 taken to see the hospitals. There was one 
 youth of twenty-two whose right arm 
 hung like a flail, quite healed, but useless. 
 He had lost three inches of the humerus, 
 the bone in the upper arm. If, at the 
 first operation, the two separated ends 
 had been joined by plates of steel, the 
 limb would have been restored. 
 
 'Don't you "plate" these cases?' I in- 
 quired. 
 
 'Oh, no,' replied the surgeon; 'we are 
 afraid of suppuration.' 
 
 'But the Carrel-Dakin method would 
 prevent suppuration,' I ventured. 
 
 'We do not use that here.' 
 
 At four o'clock arrived the military car 
 
 which was to take me to La Panne. Two 
 
 friendly officers strapped my bags to the 
 
 running-board. We waited at the railway 
 
 47 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 station for a lady expected on the Paris 
 train. A lonely English Tommy, bored 
 almost to tears, gratefully returned my 
 smile. He was a chauffeur of the Red 
 Cross and had been on the job since the 
 beginning of the war. His pent-up talk 
 burst forth like oil from a tapped 'gusher.' 
 
 'The Huns, sir, are careless-like about 
 their little friends. When we took X, they 
 left their pets shut up in the houses. I 
 found two thirsty canaries, and Miss 
 Coxe, — you know Miss Coxe, sir? she had 
 two hens. Miss Coxe, she says to me, 
 "We had better divide. Give me a cock 
 and I'll give you a hen." So we did. 
 They sing beautiful, those two cocks. The 
 women chauffeurs drive too slow, sir. 
 They let the auto bump on one side of the 
 rut and then on the other. Of course I'm 
 a male chauffeur, but it does seem to me 
 it would be easier on the engine — and on 
 the wounded — if they drove a little faster.' 
 
 At this moment, Madame, the expected, 
 emerged from the station, red in the face 
 4 8 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 and as indignant as such a small lady 
 could well be. She is Belgian. Her hus- 
 band is an officer. Her permis was correct, 
 but the station guards would not let her 
 through. They wanted to take away her 
 papers. Women are not allowed to visit 
 their husbands, if it can be prevented. 
 Naturally, a woman is furious when de- 
 prived of her lawful prey. 
 
 Finally, we are off. Our way lies 
 through farms and villages. The fields are 
 covered with standing crops ready for har- 
 vest. We go through Gravelines, where 
 we meet a convoy of fresh Boches, gath- 
 ered in a few days ago. The road is a typi- 
 cal Belgian highway, smooth, dusty, tree- 
 lined. The trees on the west side are all 
 bent by the ocean wind. The car is quiet 
 and very fast. We fly across the great flat 
 meadows. It is cool. Madame shivers, 
 even under my blanket on top of her own. 
 My military overcoat keeps me warm. 
 Near Dunkirk, the dunes appear — white 
 sand, green trees, low steep-pitched roofs 
 
 49 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 of red tile. We stop for purchases in front 
 of buildings wrecked by Zeppelins. Again 
 the motor purrs. Again we wind the miles 
 upon our reel. We reach the outskirts 
 of La Panne. A last inquisition by the 
 guards — the seventh since we started. 
 Like all half-educated persons, they do not 
 see the danger of generalizations. It is 
 true that all men are liars. But it is not 
 true that all the people lie all the time. 
 
 I went to sleep in a room on the top 
 floor of a villa directly fronting the North 
 Sea. Several hundred mosquitoes shared 
 the room with me. They did not sleep. 
 They tasted a new flavor — exotic, but dis- 
 tinctly pleasing. Presently, what physi- 
 ologists call the summation of stimuli pro- 
 duced its inevitable result. The threshold 
 value was crossed and I awoke. I left the 
 murdered Sleep upon her desecrated couch 
 and watched the sea. 
 
 A broad beach, furrowed by artillery 
 wheels and pitted by the galloping cavalry. 
 The busy waters, lighted by a phosphores- 
 50 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 cent surf, strove to efface these marks of 
 the struggle for existence, der Kampf um 
 Dasein. Softly they murmured at their 
 priest-like task. The mooring posts, far 
 out, were black against the wave. Black 
 fishing-boats slept on the beach, like cat- 
 tle in a field. A moon, largely decayed, 
 touched with silver gleams the bayonets of 
 the patrol. Three lines of barbed wire 
 snarled along the tide-mark. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 La Panne is the extreme left of the Al- 
 lied line. It is the seat of a hospital of 
 eight hundred beds, ably directed by the 
 celebrated surgeon, Doctor de Page. I 
 was stationed in the salle de reception, the 
 receiving ward to which the ambulances 
 bring their loads directly from the firing- 
 line. 
 
 There comes a rumble on the stone- 
 paved street, an ambulance drives up, 
 the word blesse passes down the corridor, 
 and the brancardiers appear with the 
 long staves. A group of dark forms 
 gathers about the motor-car in the star- 
 light, the curtain is unbuttoned, the 
 loaded ambulance stretcher is pulled out, 
 an empty exchange stretcher is shoved 
 in, and the ambulance departs for the 
 trenches. 
 
 52 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 The mass of dirty cloth and bloody 
 bandages is carried into the ward. A 
 surgeon comes, rubbing his eyes. The 
 wounded man is radiographed. This 
 done, the radiographer places his hand 
 over the supposed site of the fragment. 
 A great magnet is let down upon the 
 hand. If the embedded steel is not more 
 than seven centimetres deep, the metal 
 object is shaken by the magnetic waves 
 and its vibration can be felt. The radiog- 
 rapher writes for the surgeons a report, 
 giving the location and depth of the frag- 
 ment. 
 
 Meanwhile a nurse shakes my bed, 
 where I lie fully dressed, sound asleep, 
 tired with fourteen days and nights of 
 continuous service. I open sleepy eyes. 
 1 A bad blesse. You are asked to take the 
 pressure.' 
 
 I find the patient in the operating 
 theatre. An intense light floods the trim 
 surgical nurses, the bloodstained band- 
 ages, the patient half-naked on the table, 
 
 53 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 — the leg and foot so oddly at variance 
 with the broken thigh, — the three sur- 
 geons, in white, their shoes in white sterile 
 wrappers. They wait silently while I put 
 the hollow cuff on the upper arm and the 
 ausculting tambour at the fold of the el- 
 bow. The air is pumped into the cuff; 
 the artery is stopped; I slowly diminish 
 the air-pressure; a faint sound in the 
 stethoscope, like a far-off cry for help. 
 I read the gauge — 140 millimetres, the 
 maximum blood-pressure. The air es- 
 capes again; slowly the recording needle 
 passes along the dial; the sound of rush- 
 ing blood increases for the moment; as 
 the artery takes its full size, the sound 
 fades away — 92 millimetres, the minimum 
 blood-pressure. The normal is 97 ; there 
 is no shock yet. 
 
 The patient is turned and a hollow 
 needle is passed into the vertebral canal. 
 Cerebro-spinal fluid is sucked into a 
 syringe containing the anaesthetic novo- 
 caine; and slowly the mixture is driven 
 
 54 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 back into the canal. The tourniquet 
 above the wound is tight; but little 
 blood escapes from the torn vessels. The 
 wound is opened freely. Bruised flesh, 
 fragments of dirt, pieces of cloth, and 
 splinters of bone are scraped out. The 
 bleeding points are ligated. The Carrel 
 tubes are placed for the Dakin solution. 
 
 I am at the pulse. Suddenly it fails. 
 He is pulseless. His abdominal arteries 
 have dilated. Through the open gates 
 the arterial blood is rushing into the veins. 
 The man is bleeding to death in his own 
 veins. He becomes deathly pale; the 
 whites of the eyes show; he is scarcely 
 conscious. The nurse hurries the band- 
 age about the padded splint. He is 
 borne to his bed, wrapped in blankets, 
 surrounded with hot bottles. The foot 
 of the bed is placed on two chairs, so that 
 the blood may drain by gravity from the 
 congested abdominal veins back to the 
 heart. The vein at the elbow is pre- 
 pared. He gets a few drops of adrenalin. 
 55 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 solution: the pulse comes back, color 
 floods the face; the eyes become natural, 
 they open; he speaks — he is saved. 
 
 But no — he is pale again, he vomits, 
 the pulse is irregular. The adrenalin is 
 attacking the heart. Will he die? Shall 
 we have failed him? I pray silently. 
 The ward is hushed. Two, three minutes 
 pass, dragging like hours. The pulse 
 strengthens. The heart is again regular. 
 Youth has its day. He lives. Now, to 
 make sure. Warm serum 1 is passed into 
 a vein. The blood-pressure rises. The 
 arm is bound up. The electric reflector 
 is brought by two men, and placed astride 
 the bed, covered with blankets. Miss 
 
 T , a Scotch angel of uncertain age 
 
 and unfailing devotion, stands by. I 
 wait at the wrist. A single shaded light 
 burns in the great ward; the screens 
 round my bed rise ghostly in the gloom. 
 
 1 A solution of common salt and some other sub- 
 stances in the proportion in which they normally 
 occur in the blood. 
 
 56 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 We watch, while beat by beat the ebbing 
 flood returns. The clammy hands and 
 feet feel again the warm and healing 
 tide. He lies like a cocoon in his warm 
 blankets. His face is calm. He has 
 cheated the grave. He tells us of his two 
 children. The mother is dead ; the waifs 
 are in an orphan home ; one is eight years 
 old, the other six; he has not seen them 
 for two years — not since the war began. 
 
 Trembling, I go out on the beach and 
 watch the sea — that northern sea which 
 has looked unvexed on so many foolish 
 wars. The tide is low. The wide sands 
 are smooth and firm. Two officers are out 
 for a morning gallop. In the distance 
 a battery is drilling. The horses are of 
 heroic size in the early mists. I hear the 
 faint thud of hoofs on the hard beach. 
 Above, a solitary aeroplane swoops low, 
 while the observer searches the depths 
 for a lurking submarine. 
 
 So the days and the dreadful nights 
 went by, with their unceasing stream of 
 
 57 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 broken men. Often I lay sleepless through 
 the dark hours, while next me howled a 
 blesse mad with subconscious agony and 
 the last wild ether dream. But there 
 were compensations. One gave and gave 
 and gave — a blessed thought. 
 
 And there were spectacles of poignant 
 interest. Late one afternoon a nurse 
 came running to tell me that there was 
 an English monitor off the beach. We 
 hurried out, full of the charitable hope 
 that she would shell Ostend. The sun 
 was setting. A golden light touched 
 soothingly a half-tamed sea, still sulkily 
 mumbling. A ship of no great size lay a 
 mile from shore, circled by two torpedo- 
 boats. They kept untiringly a ceaseless 
 round. We strained our eyes. Suddenly 
 there burst from her side a flame as 
 big as a house, followed by an immense 
 cloud of black smoke. We held our 
 breath. In a few seconds there was a 
 sound that was more than a sound. It was 
 a commotion in all that part of Belgium. 
 58 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 And then, a moment later, a faint boom, 
 fifteen miles away, where twelve hundred 
 pounds of trinitrotoluol wrought ruin in 
 Ostend, the resort of tourists. 
 
 Presently there was another dim sound, 
 like the low curse of a malevolent fairy, — 
 
 Strange terrors seize thee 
 And pangs unfelt before, — 
 
 and down from the sky fell a great shell. 
 A huge column of broken water towered 
 above the waves, and all was once more 
 peace. 
 
 The spotless nurses walked upon the 
 beach, and we heard the maids laying the 
 table for our evening meal. Again the 
 monitor shook heaven and earth, and 
 again there came the great reply, more 
 threatening than before. 
 
 It was enough. A German plane hov- 
 ered far in the blue and guided with a 
 gesture these mighty thunderbolts. The 
 monitor ceased firing, turned her prow, 
 and made for England, still circled by her 
 tireless guard. 
 
 59 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 The receiving ward was staffed with 
 four day and three night nurses. They 
 were socially of the class called ladies. 
 The two chiefs, one for the day and one for 
 the night, were professionals; the others 
 had volunteered for the war. As I was 
 on duty continuously for more than a 
 fortnight, I became well acquainted with 
 them all, especially the four who served 
 by day. One of these was a very intel- 
 ligent Scotchwoman who had studied at 
 the University of London. A second was 
 a shy comely creature from the north of 
 Ireland, with the loveliest red-gold hair 
 ever seen. The third assistant looked 
 as if she had just stepped out of a Delft 
 plaque. She was a rosy young Belgian, 
 daughter to a successful physician in 
 Ghent. This girl spoke four languages with 
 almost faultless ease. Scrupulously neat, 
 her pride was in her immaculate hands. 
 Often, on mere suspicion, as it seemed to 
 my coarser perceptions, she would say: 
 1 It is time for me to wash my pows.' 
 60 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 One morning, I found Miss B , the 
 
 chief of the day squad, very sad. Weep- 
 ing, she told me that it was the anni- 
 versary of her brother's death, — shot 
 through the abdomen, — a gallant youth. 
 The afternoon of our sad talk, there came 
 to us another youth, of her brother's age, 
 mortally wounded. When she undid the 
 emergency dressing, the intestines were 
 found outside the body. He died within 
 an hour. Screens were placed about his 
 bed and I heard the four nurses in earnest 
 conversation. I came nearer. 'We can- 
 not send him to his grave like this. ' It 
 
 was Miss B 's voice, rich with unshed 
 
 tears. They brought me needles and 
 forceps. After a hard struggle, the pro- 
 truding bowel, swollen with post-mortem 
 gases, was put within, and the gaping 
 wound sewed up. Nobly, gratefully, the 
 stricken woman dressed the poor clay for 
 the last sleep. After a long, long year 
 her chance had come, to lay vicariously 
 her hero in the tomb. 
 
 61 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 One of the assistant night nurses used 
 to say ' But, sister, ' in a tone exactly like 
 the bleating 'ma-aster' of Pascalon in 
 Tartarin de Tarascon. Doubtless, a bad 
 accent is sometimes mortal, and at first 
 this good soul markedly lowered my 
 vitality. The more so that for a time she 
 thought me cruel. It is extremely im- 
 portant in shock that the patient should 
 rest in the inclined position, with the body 
 higher than the head. When this kindly 
 but uninstructed girl would approach 
 with the three fatal pillows, I would shoo 
 her away. Finally, she helped me ease a 
 soldier with a broken leg. Quite without 
 cause, she was suddenly converted. 'You 
 are so gentle, ' she said. Her heart being 
 gained, what she would have termed her 
 reason was open to attack. She con- 
 sented to listen to the indictment of the 
 three pillows. The human understand- 
 ing behaves exactly like the oyster. Al- 
 most immovably attached to the rock of 
 prejudice, its shell is firmly closed at the 
 62 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 approach of a new idea, — strange, and 
 therefore suspicious, — possibly foreign. 
 
 Last night, August 30, 191 6, was my 
 first quiet night since I began to sleep 
 with the wounded, more than two weeks 
 ago. I slept from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. and 
 am much refreshed. The night before 
 was really terrible. A man shot through 
 both lungs, half-crazed, shouting and 
 groaning, with bubbling sounds inexpres- 
 sibly ghastly. I can sleep now in the 
 strangest turmoil, but this was too much. 
 I went for a walk, but it was a mistake. 
 When I came back, a breathless nurse told 
 me that she had looked everywhere for 
 me — there was a fresh blesse, very bad^- 
 please hurry. It was Sergeant Edouard 
 
 G , about twenty years old, — the thigh 
 
 crushed by a shell. 
 
 This morning I have been engaged in 
 two cognate pursuits, visiting the police 
 and hunting the 'chamois.' A plague 
 on both their houses! The Belgian po- 
 lice are — But I will tell this another time, 
 63 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 if holding in is not fatal. As for the 
 chamois, the pleasant land of counter- 
 pane, in the receiving ward, is naturally 
 thick with them. Myself, I am not skill- 
 ful at catching them. When they are 
 very full, I can sometimes seize one by the 
 horns, but usually they escape, leaving 
 an equator of low eminences. This dif- 
 fers from the other equator in two re- 
 spects: first, it is not an imaginary line; 
 second, I do not speak disrespectfully of 
 it. 
 
 The most affecting spot in La Panne 
 was the room where the maimed were 
 fitted with artificial legs. Any morning, 
 one might find sitting there several men, 
 who waited patiently their turn, with their 
 naked stumps sticking straight out before 
 them. A little English boy, nineteen 
 years old, but looking scarcely fourteen so 
 worn and frail was he, had lost his leg 
 above the knee by a shell that had struck 
 in the heavy artillery post. 'You know, 
 sir, I wasn't looking for anything like 
 6 4 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 this. ' Inconsequent human nature ! How 
 should a little English boy divert the in- 
 exorable course of the great law of cause 
 and effect ! 
 
 The outcome of the work at La Panne 
 was an organization for the systematic 
 treatment of shock, employing all the 
 remedies then known, basing them on re- 
 peated measurements of the minimum 
 blood-pressure. These special measures 
 saved two thirds of the cases, but the 
 questions with which I had come to La 
 Panne were still unanswered. The dif- 
 ficulty was again the interval between the 
 wound and the arrival in the hospital. It 
 was obviously necessary to be actually on 
 the firing-line. Doctor de Page accord- 
 ingly arranged that I should meet General 
 
 P , then colonel commanding the 58th 
 
 French brigade, in the sector which in- 
 cluded Nieuport. 
 
 This distinguished officer was a vete- 
 ran of the Moroccan campaigns. He was 
 brave, gay, and highly intelligent. Like 
 65 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 so many of the French, he had an appreci- 
 ation of physiological science unusual in 
 less favored nations. Claude Bernard 
 had not lived in vain. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 One happy day the general arrived in 
 his gray limousine and took me to brig- 
 ade headquarters. It was in a villa which 
 had belonged to a Belgian of some taste. 
 There was a large living-room, some good 
 prints on the walls, and at one end a 
 billiard-table, now used for military maps. 
 At the other end was the table at which 
 we dined. By this time our friendship 
 had made great strides. The general was 
 enchanted to find that I smoked a pipe. 
 Himself, he adored la pipe. His tobacco 
 left something to be desired : it was a spe- 
 cies of Algerian hay. I gave him of my 
 choice Virginia leaf. We were brothers. 
 He would visit me in Boston when the 
 war was over. 
 
 The dinner was superlatively good. I 
 asked him how he managed. 'Oh,' he 
 67 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 replied, 'my chef before the war was the 
 chef of a great New York hotel. But this 
 is easy,' he continued; 'you should have 
 seen him at Verdun. Eight of us and the 
 chef in a hole thirty feet under ground. 
 He had for his art a space only two feet 
 square,' — and the general marked such a 
 space on the tablecloth, — 'but we lived 
 just the same.' 
 
 He led me to the maps. ' You will like 
 to see what we are doing to-day. Observe 
 this salient. We make a curtain of fire 
 behind it, so that the Boches can neither 
 get in nor get out. Then our shells destroy 
 their defenses. Every hour an aeroplane 
 makes a photograph. Here are the photo- 
 graphs. You see they are quite large and 
 very clear. Even the posts of the barbed 
 wire show. We do not send our men for- 
 ward until we see that all the wire is 
 down.' 
 
 A dozen steel helmets were brought. 
 The general and his staff helped me to 
 find one that would fit. Then we set out 
 
 68 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 for Nieuport. There I was consigned to 
 
 Colonel D , of the 3d French Line, 
 
 another veteran of the Moroccan wars. 
 Eight delightful days I lived with this 
 dear man beneath the shells. 
 
 Nieuport lies upon the Yser, the tidal 
 stream that stopped the German rush for 
 Calais. That June before the world went 
 mad, the peaceful town drowsed in the 
 sun — the pearly Belgian sun that painters 
 love. The men went down to the sea in 
 their fishing boats, or worked their fields ; 
 old women, their lace upon their knees, 
 sat in a patch of shade before the door and 
 plied their bobbins; children, with shrill 
 sweet voices, darted about like birds; the 
 creaking wain went to and fro piled high 
 with harvest. Four thousand simple folk ! 
 Not one remains. Their houses too are 
 gone. Their ancient church, their historic 
 tower, are mounds of ruin. And still the 
 hissing shells, hour by hour, day by day, 
 tear down the crumbling walls, adding 
 fresh ruin to a scene most desolate. The 
 69 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 people of the sun are gone. Another race 
 inhabits there. They live in holes be- 
 neath the ground. They come not forth 
 except to kill. 
 
 I too lived in a hole beneath the ground. 
 I came not forth except to save. At least 
 that would have been the wiser part, but 
 the life was so interesting that in truth I 
 roamed about like a boy at the fair. By 
 day the soldiers lay perdu. The streets 
 were empty. It was incredible that the 
 blast of a trumpet would raise two thou- 
 sand men. With the night they swarmed. 
 The place was full of horses and carts, 
 bearing water-casks, sand-bags, gabions, 
 beams, chloride of lime, barbed wire, am- 
 munition — a hundred articles needed in 
 the trenches. There was no light except 
 the moon. Strange shadows crept along 
 the roads. 
 
 One morning I walked with Lieutenant 
 
 N . 'Suppose we ask Captain B 
 
 to show us a seventy- five,' he said. 
 
 We found Captain B in a dugout 
 
 70 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 lined with beautiful maps. He led us to 
 a passage that dipped beneath the ruins. 
 It was perhaps twenty-five feet long and 
 eight feet wide. At the lower end was the 
 celebrated soixante-quinze, poking its shin- 
 ing nose out of a hole in the wall. I sat in 
 the gunner's seat and trained the cross 
 wires on a distant object, opened and 
 closed the breech, and examined the re- 
 coil. 
 
 My pleasure was so evident that kind 
 
 Captain B was touched. 'Perhaps 
 
 you would like to see some practice on the 
 Bodies?' 
 
 'I most certainly should,' I answered, 
 much gratified. 
 
 So the gun crew took their positions, we 
 stuffed our ears with wads of cotton, and 
 
 Captain B went to his post, a short 
 
 distance away. There he called up an 
 observation tower. The observing officer 
 gave him the number of a square in the 
 German lines, where a few shells might 
 have a salutary effect. The captain called 
 71 
 
 J 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 to us the number and the range, 4350 
 metres. A soldier opened a cupboard in 
 the wall, seized one of the shining brass 
 shells, placed it nose down in a fuse-ad- 
 juster, and turned a handle round a grad- 
 uated scale until he reached 4350. By 
 this operation, the fuse was set to explode 
 the shell at the given range. In an instant 
 the shell was in the piece, the breech-block 
 swung shut, there was an ear-splitting 
 crash, and away flew our compliments to 
 the Boches. The barrel slid swiftly back, 
 spat out the shell-case at our feet, and 
 returned to its position, passing on the 
 way over a cushion of grease. The ob- 
 server telephoned the result, the range 
 was corrected slightly, and off went an- 
 other shell. After twelve shots were fired, 
 
 Captain B returned with a pleasant 
 
 smile to receive our thanks for his cour- 
 tesy. 
 
 This battery was so skillfully masked 
 that I never saw it again, though it was 
 not more than three hundred yards from 
 72 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 the cellar where I lived. No wonder the 
 Huns could not find it. There was a 
 ruined garden, with pear trees, in front of 
 my quarters. I used to read in the garden 
 while the enemy tried to silence these guns. 
 Five or six times a minute the familiar 
 curving hiss would rush toward the sus- 
 pected spot ; there would be a loud explo- 
 sion and a cloud of black smoke. But the 
 seventy-fives were never struck. Some- 
 times the great shells from our heavy ar- 
 tillery would pass high above me, seeking 
 some distant objective. They gave a new 
 flavor to Daudet. Imagine: three pear 
 trees and an optimist — above, filling all 
 the upper air, the vast soft weary groan- 
 ing of an eleven-inch shell. This was not 
 bravado — far from it. To stay all day in 
 a damp black cellar was insupportable; 
 outside, one place was as safe as another. 
 In fine weather we ate our meals — the 
 colonel, three officers, and myself — in one 
 corner of a half-destroyed court. Punc- 
 tually to the minute, brushed and combed, 
 
 73 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 we arrived at the small round table. 
 Through the centre of the table rose the 
 trunk of a tree, the branches of which 
 were trimmed flat about ten feet from the 
 ground, to make a canopy. We sat our- 
 selves gravely down. The good colonel 
 would fumble in the pocket of his tunic 
 until he fetched out his great horn specta- 
 cles. He would place them carefully upon 
 his martial nose. Then he would pro- 
 claim, 'Ordre,' in a deep, serious voice, 
 and reaching forward would take up a 
 glass holder containing the menu. This 
 he would read to us slowly, from hors 
 d'ceuvres down through cheese and coffee. 
 It was a way of giving thanks for the food 
 that was set before us. After this cere- 
 mony, he would nod to the orderly, whose 
 white coat and brass buttons illuminated 
 the middle distance. The hors d'ceuvres 
 would advance. It was the signal for con- 
 versation. 
 
 Meanwhile, the shells went over, singly 
 or in flocks. I sat on the colonel's right, 
 74 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 about eighteen inches from him. He had 
 two voices — one for giving commands to 
 his twenty-five hundred men, the other 
 for ordinary talk. He always addressed 
 me, as a foreigner, in the tone in which he 
 commanded the regiment. The dinner 
 proceeded sedately through seven excel- 
 lent courses, undisturbed by the artillery. 
 
 During my stay at Nieuport two shells 
 fell in that court; one slightly wounded 
 our valuable pump, the other just missed 
 our treasure of a cook. The stove was at 
 the other end of the court, in a recess. 
 The shell exploded outside this retreat. 
 In that neighborhood not a square foot 
 but got its piece of steel. The hurtling 
 storm swept by the culinary shrine. For- 
 tunately, the chef was at the stove, his 
 post of duty; his deserts were great and 
 he escaped unharmed. 
 
 On stormy days we dined in the colonel's 
 cave. It was a tight fit. Through an open 
 door we saw our commander's bed, along- 
 side a stove in which the fire never was 
 75 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 allowed to go out. Even with this, the 
 walls were always damp. 
 
 One evening the soup had just been 
 served when the telephone rang. Lieu- 
 tenant C , who was acting adjutant 
 
 that day, saluted the colonel and reported 
 that a party of Boches were cutting grass 
 behind their third line. 
 
 'Tell Captain F ,' said the colonel, 
 
 between two spoonfuls. 
 
 Captain F was of the artillery. 
 
 Before the soup was taken away, we heard 
 the seventy-fives at work on the Boches. 
 This speed and accuracy were due to the 
 ever-watchful observers. I loved to go to 
 the observation towers, especially at night. 
 They were usually at the top of some 
 ruined building. One stumbled up two or 
 three ladders and at length entered a little 
 wooden cage which held two men, elabo- 
 rate telephones, and several powerful tele- 
 scopes. With these you could have seen 
 the buttons on a man's waistcoat miles 
 away. The enemy was, however, rarely 
 76 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 visible; he stuck closely to his communi- 
 cation trenches. When darkness fell, the 
 flares began. The French flare had a 
 parachute, and for several minutes lighted 
 up hundreds of yards as bright as day. 
 As far as the eye could see, up and down 
 the lines, these witchfires burned. 
 
 The aeroplanes liked to fly near sunset, 
 when the air was quiet. Then we would 
 hear our pompoms, fifteen staccato barks, 
 and a pause. I would rush up the cellar- 
 steps and search the sky. There, a mile 
 aloft, would be a German plane. Off 
 would go a pompom, fifteen rounds. A 
 moment later, fifteen soft white fleecy 
 little clouds of shrapnel, like puffs of 
 thistle-down, would break out one after 
 the other, about the flying plane. The 
 planes were often hit, but seldom in a 
 vital place. 
 
 The officers' caves were alike in one 
 respect : they all contained mirrors in im- 
 mense gilt frames. These mirrors had 
 been found in the deserted houses. The 
 77 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 major's cave was rather a show place. It 
 consisted of two tiny rooms, dressed with 
 flowers, and very neatly kept. On a table 
 in the 'salon' was a marble bust, a derelict. 
 
 'You must not miss my garden,' said 
 the major, swelling with pride. 
 
 I looked for the garden; it was not in 
 the room. 
 
 'No,' said my friend, with an indulgent 
 smile at my little irony, ' it is not in here. 
 It is outside. You can see it through the 
 window.' 
 
 Now, the window was a cellar-window 
 and opened into a little 'area,' where for 
 the light the earth had been dug away in 
 a space twenty-four inches by twelve. 
 Here, indeed, was the garden. 
 
 'Of course,' continued the major, 'with 
 the ground at my disposal, you would 
 not expect me to go in for shrubs. I have 
 had to content myself with a lawn.' 
 
 A perfect lawn it was — not a weed — a 
 battalion of tiny bright green grass-blades ; 
 very refreshing. 
 
 78 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 I went into the trenches to measure the 
 blood-pressure. The trenches lay on the 
 other side of the Yser. We crossed a pon- 
 toon bridge. Spare pontoons were an- 
 chored in the river, in case the bridge 
 should be struck by a shell. We entered 
 a communication trench. Here and there 
 were signs, where men had been killed 
 often enough to show that a German 
 sniper had marked that particular spot: 
 'Obligatory'; 'Forbidden'; 'In view of the 
 enemy'; 'To grand redan.' 
 
 Our trench is narrow and it is deep 
 enough to protect the head. It winds 
 through fields covered with grass and pop- 
 pies. These overhang the edge and brush 
 our faces. The bottom of the trench is 
 covered with a slatted walk about eighteen 
 inches wide. We meet great pots of hot 
 food, borne on a pole hung between two 
 men. Happily, we are not fat; we slide 
 by without being burned. 
 
 Soon we are in the lines. Here are real 
 defensive works, heavily timbered, and 
 79 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 with space for many men. At frequent 
 intervals are the burrows in which the 
 men live. Telephone wires run near the 
 bottom of the trench, on the side next the 
 enemy ; they are fastened to the earth with 
 long wire staples. From time to time we 
 peep through an observation-hole, but we 
 do not stand more than two minutes in 
 any one spot ; always there are aeroplanes 
 and tower observers on watch, and we 
 may get a shell. The shells are now flying 
 over us, with a noise like the tearing of a 
 great sheet. Presently, we reach the point 
 nearest the enemy. It is near indeed; 
 about the length of a tennis-court. I 
 look through a periscope and there, as 
 clear as in a clean looking-glass, are long 
 mounds of earth and sand-bags — the 
 German 'trenches,' one hundred and 
 fifteen feet away. Apparently deserted, 
 absolutely silent, they lie heavily upon 
 the unkempt fields, mile upon mile. 
 Their sinister quiet speaks louder than 
 the screaming shells. 
 80 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 The poilus are delighted with the blood- 
 pressure apparatus. It is like a game. 
 Their faces are wreathed with smiles. 
 They take off their tunics, roll up their 
 sleeves, and are proud to be told they are 
 1 normal.' We keep our voices low and hug 
 the front wall of the trench, but other- 
 wise we might as well be in the Boulevard 
 des Italiens, although, now I think of it, 
 that also is a dangerous place. We are 
 about to return, when the surgeon is tele- 
 phoned that an officer is wounded. Bicy- 
 cles are ordered to meet us at the third 
 line, and we run back. The surgeon is 
 younger, but he is a trifle too plump. I 
 keep him in sight. As we approach the 
 machines, he calls over his shoulder, ' Can 
 you ride a bicycle?' 'Perfectly,' I reply. 
 I do not say that it is thirty years since 
 my last ride. We mount, and he hurries 
 off without looking behind. I follow. It 
 is a wild ride. The roads are filled with 
 debris — low heaps of brick and plaster 
 from the tumbling walls. When I go over 
 
 81 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 a heap, my helmet flies into the air; it 
 requires nice calculation to be under it 
 when it comes down. Clerk Maxwell 
 is right: science is indeed a matter of 
 grammes, centimetres, and seconds. 
 
 I had now based the treatment for shock 
 on exact measurements of the blood-pres- 
 sure, and I had determined that the habit- 
 ual bombardment does not predispose. 
 There remained the study of the blood- 
 pressure in the fury of an assault, the 
 question of the cause of shock, and the 
 hope of a new remedy. Nieuport was 
 exhausted. The war at Nieuport was all 
 in the day's work. After two years, the 
 daily round was the daily round, and it 
 was nothing more. My comrades told me 
 that, when they were at Verdun, there had 
 sometimes been emotions, if their memo- 
 ries were not at fault. So I went to 
 Verdun, that 'name of thunder.' 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 On the stroke of twelve, October 13, 
 191 6, I arrived at Bar-le-Duc, the base for 
 Verdun. A chill rain monotonously fell 
 upon slimy streets, innocent of cabs. I 
 hired a small boy to pilot me a mile through 
 the mud to the Lycee where Surgeon-Gen- 
 eral W had his headquarters. My 
 
 little guide was cold, wet, and hungry, 
 but his depression vanished when I ad- 
 dressed him as 'Sir,' and asked his opinion 
 of the war. To General W I pre- 
 sented a letter from Dr. Turner, consulting 
 surgeon to that Army, praying that I be 
 given every aid. 
 
 'But your pass is only to Bar-le-Duc, 
 sixty kilometres from the front!' — 
 
 'Please, then, telephone to General 
 Joffre's headquarters and ask for full 
 powers.' 
 
 83 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 After a gasp or two, the suggestion was 
 accepted. General W went to con- 
 sult the general commanding at Bar-le- 
 Duc. In half an hour, he told me that 
 the chief surgeon at Grand Headquarters 
 knew of the research and that there was 
 hope of a pass. ' Come back to-morrow 
 morning at nine o'clock.' 
 
 I departed for one of the loneliest days 
 and nights I have ever spent. The two 
 dens of chief repute in the town were 
 filled. I put up in a room beyond words. 
 Too ill to eat my dinner, I went to bed at 
 seven and shivered there until seven the 
 next morning. At nine o'clock I reported, 
 and to my surprise received a letter in- 
 structing officers of the Second Army to 
 give me all possible assistance. At once 
 I asked for a car. I got a magnificent 
 high-powered Sedan. My first care was 
 to be driven in state to the wretched hostel 
 where I had spent the night. My hope 
 was that all this splendor would teach 
 them a lesson. Perhaps next time they 
 84 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 would not ask an American officer to 
 bathe in a single pint of dirty warm water. 
 
 Soon I was flying along the great road 
 that leads to the front from Bar-le-Duc. 
 I was bound for the Mort Homme. 
 Along this road passed the greatest trans- 
 port the world had ever seen. Gangs of 
 German prisoners toiled constantly to 
 keep the road in repair. For more than 
 thirty miles there was at the side a con- 
 tinuous ridge of broken stone. The work- 
 ing gangs drew steadily from these stores 
 of road-metal and the losses were as 
 steadily supplied. It was a task for Sisy- 
 phus, the son of iEolus. On this work 
 hung the destiny of France. 
 
 The valley through which we ran is very 
 beautiful — hills everywhere, brooks, green 
 meadows, and cultivated fields. 
 
 We stopped some miles on this side of 
 the Mort Homme; the road beyond was 
 under fire, and by day it was too danger- 
 ous. I was given dinner in a kitchen 
 with several agreeable officers. As soon 
 85 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 as it was dark enough to make the road 
 safe, we left for Chateau Esne. After an 
 hour or more, in the dark, without lights, 
 in the rain, muddy beyond belief, we halt- 
 ed in a ruined village, and transferred to 
 the black depths of a big ambulance. On 
 we went, bumping over shell-holes. 
 
 The Chateau Esne is a poste de secours, 
 at the third line of trenches, in a cellar 
 of what once had been a glorified grange. 
 It was a miserable hole, where one could 
 stand upright only in the centre. The 
 cold mists of late October drove through 
 it, pursued by an eager, nipping wind. 
 My poiln, a tall bearded man plastered 
 with clay, showed me a sort of kennel set 
 off with rough boards picked up in the 
 fields. He brought a sack stuffed with 
 straw for me to lie on. It was dark choc- 
 olate color. He surveyed it doubtfully. 
 The honor of France demanded some- 
 thing more. He went to the case con- 
 taining surgical dressings and cut off 
 pieces of aseptic gauze, which he laid upon 
 
 86 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 the sack, overlapping them like shingles 
 on a roof. 
 
 I lay down, but not to sleep. At mid- 
 night I was routed out to see a man who 
 had been shot through the head. The bul- 
 let had drilled a neat hole through the back 
 of his steel helmet and through his skull. 
 
 When day broke, a cold rain was falling. 
 I looked out on the tragic slopes of Dead 
 Man Hill. Craters and graves — graves 
 and craters — in horrible confusion! Dur- 
 ing the Great Drive, twenty-five thousand 
 wounded men had passed through the 
 Chateau Esne, that wet dirty verminous 
 hole. They often lay in rows outside, 
 among the graves, waiting their turn. 
 
 But at the moment there was no great 
 battle here, and I went to the Somme, still 
 searching for emotions. 
 
 My way led through the base at Amiens. 
 The Hotel du Rhin was filled with Eng- 
 lish and French officers. I was placed at 
 lunch with an English captain, returning 
 from a furlough. We talked, of course. 
 87 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 He made me a map on the back of the 
 menu, so that I should be sure to find a 
 small oyster-house that he liked. Yester- 
 day he had bought two hundred oysters, 
 as a present to the mess. Since then news 
 had come that on that day the regiment 
 had gone 'over the top,' and all the offi- 
 cers but four had been killed. He said 
 that he was doing himself well, because he 
 did not expect to last long; this, by way of 
 apology for the Chateaubriand steak he 
 was eating. The Epicurean philosophy 
 fits well in this Roman war. 
 
 It appears that the Germans are at their 
 old game, pushing hard at the liaison of 
 the French and English lines — naturally 
 a weak spot. 
 
 I supped with Turner, who had just 
 come from Foch. The great strategist 
 had said that his chief trouble was not the 
 Boches — they were relatively easy; his 
 chief anxiety was to find water every day 
 for two hundred thousand horses and four 
 hundred thousand men. 
 
 88 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 The next day Tuffier took me to the 
 
 village of S . There I was in a rough 
 
 field hospital of twenty-five hundred beds. 
 They had had twenty-seven hundred fresh 
 cases in a single day. The courteous 
 medecin-chef directed an officer to show 
 me to my 'chamber.' I followed the of- 
 ficer. He led me to a low wooden build- 
 ing, somewhat worse than the rest. 
 Within were two rows of tiny cubicles, 
 with partitions of unplaned boards, and a 
 blanket that served for front wall and door 
 combined. Here the staff slept. Between 
 the rows of cubicles ran a dark passage 
 two feet wide. We reached my chamber. 
 
 'Be a little careful,' the officer re- 
 marked. 'Don't step in that hole in 
 front of your door. The Boches were here 
 last night. They dropped a bomb in 
 there and it hasn't yet gone off.' 
 
 It was interesting. The French had 
 sent a squadron to bomb a railway junc- 
 tion in Germany. The night was not 
 very clear, and in the excitement an un- 
 89 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 lucky bomb had fallen on a hospital. In 
 revenge the Germans had dropped twelve 
 bombs on the hospital at S . For- 
 tunately, nine fell in the open, and two 
 did not explode. Mine was one of these. 
 The twelfth bomb burst in a crowded 
 building, with very serious results. 
 
 Again I was disappointed. The same 
 old mill of death ground steadily, but 
 there was no great offensive. Winter was 
 at hand, and I perforce took ship for home. 
 It was the Espagne. Worn out, I went to 
 bed at eight o'clock the first night out, 
 although we were still in the submarine 
 zone. At once I fell sound asleep. At 
 ten minutes past eleven, I was roused by a 
 voice shouting down the corridor, ' Every 
 one on deck — the ship is sinking.' 
 
 I sprang from my bunk. Around me 
 all was silence. The others had already 
 gone. I reflected that no great ship ever 
 sank in less than twenty minutes. I 
 could dress in ten. It was a cold Novem- 
 ber night. In an open boat I should per- 
 90 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 ish without warm clothes. So I put on my 
 uniform and my thick military overcoat, 
 seized my life-belt, and rushed out. In the 
 corridor I ran against a bolted steel door. 
 Fortunately the bolts were on my side. I 
 hastily drew them, closed the door behind 
 me, and ran up the companionway. 
 
 Near the boat-deck I came upon the 
 passengers. I had read of people gray 
 with fear, but I had never seen them. 
 Here they were, — an admirable observa- 
 tion, — a hundred women and some men, 
 their faces the color of wet ashes. Seen in 
 the mass, the effect was remarkable. The 
 passengers behaved well. There was no 
 screaming. But I was almost the only 
 one dressed comme il faut. Most of the 
 women had simply thrown a wrapper over 
 their night-clothes. One man had on 
 nothing but a suit of red pajamas — solid 
 color. I went out on the boat-deck. The 
 boats were swung out; two were already 
 rilled; the deck was littered with coils of 
 rope, over which passengers were stum- 
 91 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 bling in the dark. A cold wind whipped a 
 rough sea. I drew alongside the engine- 
 room hatch. It was warm there, and one 
 could look over the combing of the hatch 
 and down into the bowels of the ship. A 
 glance showed me that the ship was not 
 taking water in that vital spot. 
 
 Before long, word was passed that we 
 had been in collision : another steamer had 
 struck us amidships, tearing a consider- 
 able hole just above the water-line. In 
 half an hour we were told that we could 
 go back to bed. I did so, and almost in- 
 stantly fell fast asleep again. At four 
 o'clock I suddenly waked. Something 
 was wrong: the ship had taken a big list; 
 the engines were stopped. I jumped up 
 and looked out. The water was only a 
 foot or two from my port. I dressed 
 again and went on deck. The ship had 
 been canted to keep the waves out of the 
 hole, while the carpenters patched it. 
 
 Three days later we had a tombola — a 
 sale for the Red Cross. The red pajamas 
 92 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 were put up at auction; they fetched six 
 hundred francs. 
 
 At length the voyage was over. I hur- 
 ried to my farm — sweet haven of rest. 
 I visited my Guernseys. Incredible! I 
 rubbed my eyes. The cows were quite 
 unchanged. Ten million men were fight- 
 ing for life and an ideal, but the herbiv- 
 orous poise was not shaken. 
 
 For me, the old world had gone. 
 
 I could not rest. I was still pursued by 
 the imperious fact that shock was most 
 frequent after fractures and after multiple 
 wounds through the subcutaneous fat. 
 I took refuge in my laboratory, in experi- 
 ment after experiment. The cause of 
 shock was found, and a new remedy. 
 
 Fortune passed on, her ivory wheel half 
 tarnished by the fumes of No Man's Land. 
 I followed her again to France, to test 
 this remedy, and to measure the blood- 
 pressure in a fierce battle, during a barrage 
 more violent than the worst in the great 
 drive on Verdun. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The mysteries of nature usually pre- 
 sent themselves as mass problems. In 
 this form they cannot be answered. They 
 must first be resolved into their elements. 
 But each mass problem can be so resolved 
 only by minds specially trained in the par- 
 ticular field in which that problem lies. 
 The layman cannot do this. It is for 
 this reason that even a great scientist can 
 rarely give a useful answer to a question 
 put to him by a layman. The layman 
 presents a dozen questions in one package. 
 It is as if one should ask, What is the 
 cause of the Great War? 
 
 What causes shock is also not a practi- 
 cal question. It is too vague. It is nec- 
 essary to extract from it a series of ques- 
 tions, and then to devise for each of these 
 a method by which it can be answered yes 
 94 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 or no. The observation that shock often 
 follows fracture of the thigh-bone is an 
 obvious point oVappui. The femur, or 
 thigh-bone, is the largest in the body. 
 When it is broken by a shell fragment, the 
 rich bone-marrow is exposed. Perhaps 
 some potent chemical substance is thereby 
 set free, to be absorbed into the blood- 
 vessels, through which it might reach the 
 brain and spinal cord, and by poisoning 
 the nerve-cells produce the phenomena of 
 shock. But my efforts to bring on shock 
 by the injection into the blood-vessels of 
 chemical substances known to exist in the 
 bone-marrow had no effect. It was nec- 
 essary to pose another question. 
 
 Since the fracture of the bone is ap- 
 parently a factor in shock, and since the 
 absorption of a chemical substance was 
 excluded, the mischief might be due to a 
 mechanical agent. Now, the bone-mar- 
 row is very rich in fat, and it has long been 
 known that after fractures of the femur 
 large numbers of fat-globules appear in 
 95 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 the blood, in which the globules circulate 
 until they enter the capillaries in the 
 brain and other organs. When a large 
 fat-globule enters one of these small, hair- 
 like vessels, it sticks fast, the blood can 
 no longer flow through that capillary, and 
 the cells supplied by that blood can no 
 longer get food and oxygen. 
 
 All this is well understood. For more 
 than two centuries observations have 
 been made by pathologists on changes in 
 the tissues, following the injection of fat 
 into the blood-vessels of animals. In- 
 deed, a condition suggesting shock has 
 incidentally been observed here and there 
 in the course of these studies, although 
 I did not know of these chance observa- 
 tions until long after my own experiments. 
 No one, however, had declared or at- 
 tempted to prove that the entrance of fat 
 into the blood-vessels was the cause of 
 shock as seen on the battlefield. The 
 pathologists were after other game. They 
 were interested in the anatomical changes 
 96 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 in the tissues following the blocking of 
 the capillaries. 
 
 Since a falling blood-pressure is the 
 outstanding symptom of shock, the proof 
 demanded (i) that fat-globules should be 
 injected into the vessels; (2) that the 
 blood-pressure should be measured; (3) 
 that the blood-pressure should fall gradu- 
 ally as it does in shock; (4) that the other 
 symptoms seen in wounded soldiers should 
 be accurately reproduced in the injected 
 animal. These other symptoms are a 
 feeble and rapid heart-beat, frequent and 
 shallow respiration, pallor, low tempera- 
 ture, diminished sensibility, and apparent 
 unconsciousness. 
 
 On February 2, 191 7, the crucial ex- 
 periment was made. An instrument for 
 recording the blood-pressure in the carotid 
 artery of an anaesthetized cat was arranged 
 to write its record on a moving surface of 
 smoked paper. When the normal pres- 
 sure was in record, a little less than a tea- 
 spoonful of olive oil was injected into the 
 97 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 jugular vein. Thereupon the blood-pres- 
 sure began to fall, and the animal soon 
 showed all the phenomena of shock ob- 
 served in the wounded soldier. 
 
 My attention was then directed to the 
 discovery of a new remedy. Following 
 the plugging of the capillaries by fat, the 
 arteries and the heart are partially emp- 
 tied, and the blood collects in the veins, 
 especially in the large and numerous ab- 
 dominal veins. In fact, the patient may 
 be said to bleed to death in his own veins, 
 since the quantity of blood left in the 
 arteries does not suffice for the nutrition 
 of the cells of the brain and other organs. 
 
 My first experiments were directed to 
 altering the physical condition of the 
 fat which had plugged the capillaries, so 
 that it might pass through these narrow 
 straits and thus free the channels for 
 the nourishing blood. These experiments 
 have not yet succeeded. Even if they had, 
 they might not have proved of value in 
 established shock. The plugging of the 
 98 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 blood-vessels undoubtedly sets in train 
 the falling blood-pressure and other phe- 
 nomena of shock. But the condition 
 once established, the patient cannot be 
 saved unless the excess of blood in the 
 veins is brought back into the arteries. 
 If that can be done, experience shows 
 that the patient will usually recover. 
 Either the stopped capillaries free them- 
 selves, or other capillaries take up the 
 duties of their injured neighbors. The 
 practical point is to draw the blood from 
 the engorged abdominal veins into the 
 chest, where it will fill the half-emptied 
 heart and permit that faithful organ to fill 
 the capillaries. To that end, I proposed 
 the respiratory pump. 
 
 The air is drawn into the chest chiefly 
 by the diaphragm, a large flat muscle 
 which separates the chest from the ab- 
 domen. When the diaphragm descends 
 in inspiration, the cavity of the chest is 
 enlarged. If a squeezed rubber ball is 
 allowed to expand under water, the sur- 
 99 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 rounding fluid enters the ball. So, when 
 the cavity of the chest is expanded, sur- 
 rounding fluids enter the chest: the air is 
 sucked in through the trachea, and blood 
 is sucked in through the veins. The blood 
 is sucked into the chest with considerable 
 force. If the normal quiet contraction of 
 the diaphragm so aids the entrance of 
 blood into the chest, its powerful contrac- 
 tion will aid still more. Powerful and 
 frequent contractions are within our com- 
 mand. We have but to increase the car- 
 bon dioxide in the inspired air to call 
 forth deep and rapid respiration. The 
 necessary amount of carbon dioxide is not 
 injurious. 
 
 These facts about the respiration and its 
 influence on the circulation were known to 
 every physiologist. My contribution con- 
 sisted in applying them to shock. My 
 remedy therefore was to increase greatly 
 the action of the respiratory pump by 
 having the patient breathe an atmosphere 
 rich in carbon dioxide. Meanwhile he 
 
 IOO 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 was to be placed in an inclined position, 
 with the abdominal vessels higher than 
 the heart, so as to favor by gravity the 
 flow of blood from the abdomen into the 
 chest. In my animals with shock, this 
 increased respiration raised the blood- 
 pressure sufficiently to warrant the hope 
 that valuable results would follow the 
 treatment when applied to wounded men. 
 Upon this hope the Rockefeller Institute 
 for Medical Research sent me again to 
 France. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 On the fifth of May, 191 7, I sailed again 
 for Bordeaux. The voyage was uneventful. 
 Again I journeyed through famous towns 
 and sunny fields in the pleasant land of 
 France. The poppies cried their flam- 
 ing message in the heart of the wheat — 
 Thou shalt not live by bread alone.' 
 
 I got to Paris at sunset. My wife and 
 daughter were at the Gare d'Orleans — a 
 joyful reunion. Along the quai d'Orsay, 
 under the plane trees beside the gleaming 
 Seine, we walked to our rooms on the 
 quai Voltaire. The river lay like a broad 
 band of pale-green watered silk between 
 the Louvre and the Quartier Latin. The 
 noble arches of the Pont Royal were mir- 
 rored in the mocking stream. Faintly 
 shot with gold and crimson, the evening 
 light faded to a luminous haze. The mar- 
 102 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 chands de livres locked their begging wares 
 in the little cases on the parapet. The 
 gardens of the Place du Carrousel breathed 
 like the sweet South upon the dying day. 
 
 Five days later I was walking with 
 
 Major C under fire over the gently 
 
 rising terrain leading to the Massif de 
 Moronvillers. It was my purpose to try 
 the new remedy, and to measure the 
 blood- pressure in normal and wounded 
 soldiers during a sharp offensive. 
 
 The meadow larks were singing. Even 
 the major sang. And the air above was 
 filled with the song of shells. The several 
 harmonies were stratified. From the lush 
 grass of early spring rose small chirpings 
 and hummings; then came the major, 
 having as it were a layer all to himself; 
 then the meadow larks, numerous and 
 undismayed; still higher were the hissing 
 three-inch shells; and far, far up in the 
 blue the mournful droning of the great 
 projectiles. 
 
 'If you search these fields,' remarked 
 103 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 the major, 'you will find in every square 
 metre at least one piece of shell.' 
 
 It was true. I looked through fifty 
 square yards or more, and in each was at 
 least one fragment of steel. 
 
 'It is forbidden to walk in these fields,' 
 said the major. 'Perhaps we had better 
 get into the trench.' 
 
 I took a last general view of our posi- 
 tion. Behind us, the German fire was 
 painting with dark smudges the village 
 through which we had just come. Far 
 across the plain — too far to see — lay 
 Chalons-sur-Marne. To the left, miles 
 away, was the Montagne de Rheims, 
 bearing on its fruitful slopes the cele- 
 brated vineyards of Champagne. In 
 front, rose the Massif de Moronvillers, 
 crowned with its hills of fame — Mont 
 Cornillet, Mont Blond, Mont Haut, the 
 Casque, and the Teton. Their decent gar- 
 ments of green were torn away. Naked 
 they lay. On their livid slopes the trenches 
 crawled like great white worms. Streaks 
 104 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 of flame and sudden bursts of black smoke 
 marked the constant fall of German shells. 
 Thrown high in the air, the pale chalk- 
 dust drifted with the acrid fumes among 
 the riven pines. 
 
 We entered the communication trench 
 — a deep and narrow passage writhing 
 through the chalk like a snake in pain. 
 When we came to the lines, the trench 
 sank into a gallery. Dug by the Boche, it 
 now served his enemy. The gallery was 
 seven feet wide. At the farther end were 
 four or five wooden bunks in which the 
 Staff slept. In the middle were two 
 tables. One supported a pair of type- 
 writers, industriously nibbling at a mound 
 of papers, under a small acetylene flare. 
 On the other table was a row of aluminium 
 porringers, salt, pepper, war-bread, and a 
 small bowl of sugar. 
 
 We lunched. The colonel was a smiling, 
 
 energetic veteran of forty-five, hard and 
 
 fit. His face glowed like a dull red coal in 
 
 the shadows of the cave. Six galons were 
 
 105 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 on his sleeve — one for each of his six 
 wounds. 
 
 The food was simple but sufficient. 
 The ritual of the dejeuner was scrupu- 
 lously observed. It was as if a gentle- 
 man handed a poor relation into a car- 
 riage. The colonel and I sat side by side. 
 Conversation flowed like milk in the Land 
 of Canaan. The subject indeed was cows. 
 It appeared that the regiment possessed 
 a cow. This was unusual. The Marseil- 
 laise, the Ten Commandments, and Our 
 Cow seemed to be on the same plane. As 
 a breeder of Guernseys, these discerning 
 people moved my heart. We were friends. 
 
 When night came, I took off my boots, 
 belt, and helmet, and slept on a stretcher. 
 At half-past three, an imperative hand 
 shook my shoulder. 'Gas! Be quick!' 
 
 I seized the mask, which changes the 
 man of peace into the ghoul of war. I 
 pulled on my boots and put on my helmet. 
 We ventured out. On the crest of the 
 Massif, the stars of God paled before the 
 1 06 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 star-shells of the Huns. It was the hour 
 before dawn. A lively bombardment was 
 in play. Cocks crew, still faithful to 
 their conviction that, but for them, the 
 sun would not rise. I reflected that, but 
 for us and our seven million comrades, the 
 sun might set never to rise again. We 
 sniffed the cool damp air for the odor of 
 chocolate which betrays the creeping 
 death. But the gas was not for us. 
 
 Far down on the horizon hung the 
 gibbous moon. Across her chill and dis- 
 approving face passed black slim shapes 
 incredibly swift — eight-inch shells plung- 
 ing to their rending crash. 
 
 Back in Division Headquarters, Gen- 
 eral F had at first suggested that I 
 
 should be stationed in the celebrated 
 tunnel on Mont Cornillet, taken from the 
 enemy four days before my arrival. The 
 tunnel was deep in the chalk. It was very 
 large — large enough to hold a dressing- 
 station and six hundred German reserves. 
 It had a big ventilating shaft. By a 
 107 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 strange chance, a sixteen-inch French 
 shell passed through this ventilating shaft 
 and exploded among the Boches. All 
 were instantly destroyed. Compara- 
 tively few showed a wound — they were 
 killed by the gas-pressure and the fumes. 
 
 The commotion made by an exploding 
 shell is extraordinary. I have often felt 
 the strong push of hot gas as if I had been 
 struck by a flying cushion. Among my 
 friends in Paris was a French aviator who 
 had begun the war as an infantryman. 
 His platoon held a first-line trench. A 
 Busy Bertha fell among them. Some were 
 killed by flying fragments, others by the 
 concussion. A comrade of my friend was 
 pushed by the blast against the hard clay 
 wall of the trench, with such force that 
 both the skull and the chest were crushed. 
 They were visibly flattened. 
 
 The incident of the tunnel was cer- 
 tainly remarkable. But a still stranger 
 accident had befallen the French a few 
 days before my arrival. The regiment 
 
 108 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 brigaded with the 365th had its head- 
 quarters in a gallery thirty feet below the 
 surface. It was apparently quite safe. 
 Two large shells fell on that spot. The 
 first made a crater fifteen feet deep di- 
 rectly over the gallery. The second fell 
 exactly in the bottom of this crater, broke 
 into the refuge, and killed the colonel and 
 the officers who were with him. 
 
 I now transcribe from my diary. 
 
 May 23. It was fortunate for me that 
 I was not put in the Mont Cornillet tun- 
 nel but in a cave on Mont Blond; had I 
 been in the tunnel, I should have missed a 
 wonderful experience — the battle on the 
 crest. I was conducted to my new home 
 the morning of the gas alarm. My cave 
 was on the slope of Mont Blond, a little 
 more than a thousand feet from the crest. 
 Perhaps three hundred feet below us the 
 slope ended in a path, and beyond rose 
 another low hill, near the top of which 
 was the regimental headquarters I had 
 109 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 just left. The cave had been dug by the 
 Germans. The roof was almost flush 
 with the surface. There was nothing to 
 mark the spot, except that the universal 
 wrack was there accentuated. 
 
 Battered tins, coils of barbed wire, 
 scraps of leather, a broken stove upside 
 down, rusted clips of cartridges, burlap 
 sacks mired with clay, decayed bandages, 
 a hopeless old rifle, intrenching tools, dis- 
 carded helmets punched with shell-holes 
 through which the owner's brains had prob- 
 ably oozed, old shoes, battered shell-cases, 
 and a trench torpedo lay about, half-bur- 
 ied in the dirt thrown out of the craters. 
 
 Five or six steps screened with dead 
 branches led into the cave. It was about 
 six feet deep. The roof was supported by 
 projecting beams. The sides were clum- 
 sily boarded. Here and there were open- 
 ings dug farther into the earth and pro- 
 vided with shelves which were covered 
 with accoutrements, flat circular wine- 
 flasks in canvas, tin cups, musettes lumpy 
 no 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 with a miscellaneous kit, packages of food, 
 bundles of dressings — all in great con- 
 fusion and all thickly smeared with dirt. 
 The furniture consisted of a couple of 
 benches and a greasy table. The table 
 stood against a wall. On one end were 
 the surgical tools, bandages, packets of 
 gauze, etc. On the other, three or four 
 small cooking utensils and an alcohol lamp. 
 
 The room was full of men: three sur- 
 geons and eight or nine brancardiers in a 
 space ten by twelve feet. A ladder led into 
 a lower cave, six by seven feet, the floor 
 of which was fifteen feet below the sur- 
 face. Here were bunks of unplaned 
 boards. Twenty feet away was another 
 shelter, an overflow, still more primitive. 
 
 In our own cave, dinner was being 
 prepared. Dinner was served here at 
 noon, for greater convenience. Outside, 
 the Boches were very active. The slope 
 was being searched with shells in the thor- 
 ough German way. The living heeded 
 this mortal rain no more than the stoic 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 dead, who lay about us, beneath their 
 crosses — two rough boards in the form 
 the Prince of Peace had sanctified. 
 
 Through the hot fire appeared the 
 major, very brisk, clean-shaven, immac- 
 ulately clothed, plump and smiling. Under 
 his arm was a long bottle, converted to 
 the ways of innocence. The major made 
 a gay salute. 'The colonel presents his 
 compliments and hopes you will accept a 
 litre of fresh milk.' Delightful colonel! 
 O gentle cow, all red and white! We 
 drank an English toast with gusto: 'To 
 hell with the Huns!' Everybody laughed. 
 The bearded poilu detailed as chef plunged 
 his great spoon into the tub of solid alco- 
 hol at his feet and fetched up a huge lump 
 to feed the flame under our crackling 
 meat, as who should say, 'This for the 
 Bodies!' 
 
 Dinner was served. The few who could 
 find a place sat down. The rest stood, 
 each with his porringer. We had hors 
 d'ceuvres, consisting of sardines and sliced 
 
 112 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 onion with bread and butter, omelette, 
 beef with sauce tartare, potato salad, 
 oranges, and cakes. Jokes flew about, 
 but they were harmless jokes. Neither 
 then nor at any other time did I hear from 
 French soldiers the coarse obscenity which 
 too often mars the fighting men of other 
 nations. 
 
 In the afternoon, I went with an officier 
 de sante into the advanced trenches. But 
 trenches is not the correct term. The 
 Germans had been forced back and off the 
 whole extent of the Massif de Moronvil- 
 lers, until they had lost all the crest but 
 the position immediately above our cave. 
 The French first line lay beyond the old 
 German trenches, in a series of shell-holes 
 connected by hasty ditches. It was very 
 warm here ; in some places were more dead 
 than living. The commandant of this sec- 
 tion complained to my officier de sante. The 
 dead were not removed quickly enough. 
 He could sentir them. They had begun 
 to rot. 
 
 113 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 We returned safely to the cave. As 
 we stood at the entrance, a German plane 
 passed high over us. We dived for shelter. 
 None too soon. A moment later three 
 shells fell, one after the other, close to our 
 post. These caves are not proof against 
 direct hits, though safe enough from 
 fragments. Two days after my departure, 
 a shell entered the poste de secours next to 
 ours, killing the two surgeons and five 
 brancardiers. 
 
 There are hours when the fire is light, 
 although it never ceases. Again, it will 
 swell almost to drum-fire. It is not safe 
 to go more than a few feet from the cave, 
 lest you be caught in one of these sudden 
 storms. When it is possible, I sit in the 
 mild May sunshine on a burlap at the top 
 of our steps. The probable course of a 
 shell can be told from the sound it makes. 
 When the hiss crescendo seems to be com- 
 ing straight for you, a swift plunge is in 
 order. A sharp watch for planes is neces- 
 sary. In my first summer, at Nieuport 
 114 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 and elsewhere, the planes did not usually 
 attack small groups of soldiers. But 
 here, at the Massif de Moronvillers, they 
 have a nasty habit of dropping suddenly 
 from the sky, spitting steel from their 
 mitrailleuses. 
 
 The gas-shells are very numerous and 
 very deadly. My colonel — the one who 
 sent the milk — was laid up three weeks 
 from gas which had crept through a very 
 small opening where, because of his high 
 cheek-bones, the edge of the mask failed 
 to press firmly against his face. Our 
 masks contain several layers of gauze 
 saturated with different chemicals to 
 neutralize the various fumes. 
 
 When darkness came we prepared for 
 bed. At half-past eight my orderly 
 saluted. He had been before the war a 
 teacher of Latin in the High School at 
 Lille. His wife and two children were 
 refugees. The wife had tuberculosis from 
 her hardships. He informed me in his 
 precise French that my couch was ready. 
 115 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 I climbed down the ladder to the lower 
 cave, backwards and bent double, since 
 the entrance was a low slanting shaft. 
 Gerard pulled off my great trench-boots, 
 hung up my belt and helmet, and folded 
 my raincoat for a pillow. I lay down on 
 the bare planks. He placed my heavy 
 overcoat over me and wished me pleasant 
 dreams. I told him that in my youth I 
 had often been put to sleep by a teacher 
 of Latin, but I had never before been put 
 to bed by one. 
 
 During the night, the Boches bom- 
 barded points below us with gas-shells. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 May 24. This afternoon, at three, the 
 French began to prepare for storming the 
 crest of Mont Blond. In the course of 
 an hour the Germans made up their mind 
 that an assault was intended. The artil- 
 lery fire, which had been continuous be- 
 fore, now swelled to a torrent. Each side 
 placed a barrage. The German barrage 
 covered our slope and the little valley 
 between us and the top of the next hill. 
 Between four o'clock and midnight, more 
 than 10,000 heavy shells fell within a 
 radius of a thousand feet from our cave. 
 I took the count from time to time with 
 my watch. 
 
 We were driven at once into our deeper 
 
 refuge. The little stuffy hole was packed 
 
 with men, knee to knee : stretcher-bearers, 
 
 surgeons, my orderly, and myself. The 
 
 117 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 three surgeons played baccarat. I sat on 
 the edge of a plank and watched the game. 
 We had an acetylene light. The shells 
 fell all around, shaking the place and 
 repeatedly putting out the light. The 
 noise was remarkable. The air was filled 
 with screams, hisses, and loud reports, 
 followed by the slide of masses of earth. 
 Many shells were so close that a strong 
 push of hot gas was felt. At six o'clock 
 the Moroccans took the ridge by storm. 
 At midnight the bombardment slackened 
 but did not cease. 
 
 With the dawn the wounded came in 
 a stream. They were laid in the upper 
 room. The wounds were of all sorts. 
 The worst was a completely crushed jaw, 
 in a man with a dozen slighter wounds. 
 One man had a hole through the temple 
 into the brain — a hole two inches long 
 and half an inch wide. Another had a 
 smashed leg, a bad head, and in the thigh 
 a wound the size of a small orange. 
 
 I watched the blood-pressure carefully. 
 
 118 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 Imagine a cellar with a plank floor covered 
 with clay an eighth of an inch deep. A 
 horrible tub filled with bloody dressings. 
 Two stretchers on the floor. Ten men in 
 a space ten by twelve feet, shoulder to 
 shoulder. Two candles. Sand-bag walls. 
 The roof so low that I am always hitting 
 my helmet against the beams. The air 
 thick with the smell of blood, sweat, 
 alcohol, iodine, vomit. Everywhere a 
 smear of clay — the chalky clay of Cham- 
 pagne. The continuous scream, roar, 
 crash of shells. A rain of small stones, 
 dirt, pieces of steel. Every few seconds 
 a profound trembling, as a shell strikes 
 closer. Four men passing bandages and 
 iodine in the half-light, over backs, under 
 arms. The cries of the wounded. The 
 litter of bloody garments. The fresh 
 cases, obliged to lie outside, under the 
 fire, until the room is cleared. The bran- 
 cardiers, bent under the load of the 
 stretcher, slouching off with the dressed 
 wounded. The dawn, the failing moon. 
 119 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 the thick vapors and acrid stench of the 
 barrage. The blasted hillsides smoking 
 under the continual rain of death. Count- 
 less fresh shell-holes all around us. The 
 graves reopened . They are bringing down 
 the dead. — They lie sprawling on the slope 
 just below us, half sewed up in burlap, like 
 pieces of spoiled meat. 
 
 Such was the battle for the crest — a 
 'minor operation' in this great war, but an 
 excellent example of the most violent ar- 
 tillery fire. The blood-pressure remained 
 normal, not only in the unwounded men, 
 but also in the wounded. As it happened, 
 there were among them no fractured thighs 
 and no case of multiple wounds through 
 the subcutaneous fat. 
 
 May 25. To-day two or three rather 
 elderly soldiers came in, with the plea that 
 they were sick. The doctor, who has a 
 soft full beard, large brown eyes, and a 
 very gentle manner, said, 'You are not 
 sick. You are only tired. But all the 
 world is tired here.' 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 During the evening, one of our own 
 shells fell short. It struck squarely in our 
 own trenches near the crest of Mont Haut. 
 Immediately went up two rockets, each 
 with three green flares, meaning 'Great 
 Jerusalem! Lift your nose.' Thus ad- 
 monished, the humiliated seventy-five 
 raised its muzzle and the next shell fell 
 over the ridge. 
 
 May 26. Just before daybreak there 
 was drum-fire — continuous roars from all 
 the batteries. This lasted two hours. I 
 got up and crawled into the upper cave, 
 but was at once driven down again. After 
 the fire slackened, I went out — about two 
 feet out — and Gerard prepared my toilet 
 — a shave and face- wash. I have not had 
 any of my clothes off during three days 
 and nights. After shaving, I went out to 
 brush my teeth. The air was clear and 
 brisk, the sun not yet fully risen. To stand 
 on the open slope of the hill, in the keen 
 wind of dawn, under fire, and use a tooth- 
 brush was really exhilarating. It was the 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 first time I have ever enjoyed brushing my 
 teeth. 
 
 At nine o'clock, we put a barrage on 
 Fritz. At this he quite lost his temper. 
 The noise was awful. Naturally, we 
 went 'down' again. But his rage lasted 
 only a short time. Then Gerard came to 
 tell me there would be a Mass in the lower 
 cave. 'Is there a priest among you?' I 
 asked. 'Yes,' replied G6rard, 'we have 
 two ones; the both very brave.' 
 
 The Mass was a touching ceremony. 
 The early Christians worshiped thus in 
 the catacombs of Rome. A very small 
 portable altar had been placed at the end 
 of the tiny passage. Two candles burned 
 upon the altar. The men stood elbow to 
 elbow or kneeled in the bunks — martyrs 
 not yet dead. The priest was a private 
 in the infantry. Over his dirty uniform 
 of horizon blue — the faded symbol of 
 worldly hope — he had drawn the vest- 
 ments of the Church that teaches Hope 
 eternal and unsoiled. His grave strong face 
 
 122 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 was lighted with sincerity and faith. The 
 clear word of promise and of consolation 
 mingled with the roar of German shells, 
 beasts seeking whom they might devour. 
 
 About ten o'clock, the major turned up 
 to fetch me to dinner, or dejeuner, at 
 Headquarters. It was to be my farewell 
 to Mont Blond. He had a great stereo- 
 scopic camera, with which he took my 
 picture standing at the mouth of the cave. 
 Then we went off, with Gerard and an- 
 other orderly to carry my things. The ma- 
 jor has a quick and almost jaunty walk. 
 In ten minutes we arrived at the poste. 
 
 An officer went with me up to the observ- 
 atory, a pit in the chalk on the top of the 
 hill. The breeze was fresh, the sunshine 
 delicious, and the view very extensive. 
 Behind us, the slopes of Mont Blond and 
 Mont Haut, smoking with shells, white 
 with craters, trenches, and dust. In front, 
 the plain of Chalons, green and smiling, 
 with the spire of a church, and the vil- 
 lages of Mourmelon-le-Petit and le Grand. 
 123 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 To the right, the Montagne de Rheims, 
 with Epernay and its vineyards. 
 
 After that diabolical cave all this was 
 very sweet to me. I dozed in the sun, 
 when suddenly a soldier, who was digging 
 near us, threw down his tool, and with a 
 warning cry rushed under cover. We 
 jumped for our lives. An aeroplane sailed 
 over us, half a mile up. 
 
 A hawk is hovering in the sky — 
 To stay at home is best. 
 
 After a delightful hour we returned to 
 the gallery for lunch. It was quite a 
 feast. There was one white plate, pro- 
 duced in my honor. The rest ate the 
 whole meal out of one aluminium por- 
 ringer apiece. It is useful to eat each 
 course clean, to scour the porringer with 
 bread, and then to eat the scourings. 
 
 After an excellent meal, I set out for 
 
 Mourmelon-le-Petit. Two officers went 
 
 a little way with me. It was hard to part 
 
 with such kind friends. For success with 
 
 124 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 these people there are three points to be 
 observed — to be perfectly brave, to be 
 always smiling and gay, and to be en- 
 chanted with your bed, your food, the dirt 
 — in short, with everything. Fortunately, 
 I do not mind shelling; few men do. 
 
 The walk across the plain to the Farm 
 of Constantine, where the motor-ambu- 
 lances wait, was not unpleasant, though 
 a battery of seventy-fives directly en face 
 made a deafening racket. The ambu- 
 lance driver, an Englishman, worn, pre- 
 maturely gray-haired, covered with dust, 
 had lived for years at Stockbridge, Massa- 
 chusetts, and knew my friends there well. 
 He was very cross about the gas-shells: 
 he could not see to drive with his mask on. 
 After a dazzling, dirty ride, we reached 
 the ambulance de triage at Mourmelon-le- 
 Petit. Here are brought all the wounded 
 from the postes de secours at our immedi- 
 ate front. It will be a good place to try 
 the respiration method for the treatment 
 of shock. 
 
 125 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 May 27. Mourmelon is a small village, 
 justly called ' le Petit.' Its glaring streets 
 are white with lime-dust, which indeed 
 lies everywhere. The dirt is inconceiv- 
 able. The ambulance consists of a num- 
 ber of old barracks in a walled compound. 
 On my arrival, the medecin chef gave me a 
 very kind welcome. He is a bacteriolo- 
 gist by profession, and before the war was 
 Assistant Director of the Pasteur Insti- 
 tute in China, where he had met my col- 
 league, Dr. Strong, during the pneumonic 
 plague. 
 
 I sleep alone in a small ward. My 
 ward has five beds, a wooden floor thick 
 with dirt of all descriptions, and painted 
 canvas walls. Naturally, the furniture 
 is crude. But what a delight to strip 
 once more and to bathe in clear cold 
 126 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 water — about one quart! Last night I 
 slept hard, but to-day I feel the strain 
 of the terrible scenes which I have been 
 through. 
 
 After supper, the medecin chef and I 
 took a long walk over the Field of Chalons. 
 It is a green almost level expanse, tra- 
 versed here and there by roads lined with 
 trees. The sun had set, the air was cool 
 and luminous. The cannonade seemed for 
 the first time without sinister meaning. 
 The plain was covered w T ith small shell- 
 holes. In the distance, on rising ground, 
 against the horizon, galloped a train of 
 limbers bearing ammunition for the in- 
 satiable cannon. 
 
 May 28. I am very tired. The glare, 
 the dust, the endless stream of broken 
 men, — ten thousand passed here in the 
 last six weeks; one hundred and sixty- 
 five last night between midnight and 6 
 a.m., — the necessarily great inadequacy 
 of treatment — all this, added to my reac- 
 tion from the sickening scenes on Mont 
 127 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 Blond, is sufficiently depressing. I have 
 had to think today. That was a bore. 
 
 The respiratory machine has under- 
 gone a transformation. It is now, in 
 fact, a tomato-can with a tube ending in 
 a rubber mouthpiece. It has been cut in 
 two and each half shoves over a collar of 
 tin, so that it may be drawn out like an 
 accordion. The patient is to breathe 
 in and out of this can, filling it with the 
 carbon dioxide he exhales. As the gas 
 increases, so will his respiration. To wash 
 the can with fresh air, the two halves are 
 pulled apart. Nothing could be simpler. 
 
 This hospital is a triage. It sorts the 
 wounded. Those who can be moved are 
 sent in suitable lots to Chalons and else- 
 where. One hospital specializes in ab- 
 dominal wounds, another in fractures, and 
 so on. Only the most mangled are oper- 
 ated here. The shock cases are among 
 them. 
 
 To-day I was presented to General 
 
 X , one of the high command here- 
 
 128 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 abouts. He is a man about five feet 
 seven, very slim, very fit, intelligent, 
 courteous, handsome uniform, great star 
 on his breast. He was pleased at my 
 having been in the barrage. He said it 
 had been a very severe action — acharne. 
 
 Our medecin chef is very kind — much 
 interested in my physiology — helps me 
 with everything himself — says he is at my 
 disposition day and night. But it is an 
 awful load; there are such numbers of 
 these battered fragments, and I know so 
 little. It wrings the soul. A fine young 
 officer came in to-day — shell in the abdo- 
 men. I wish I were at home, with you. 
 I shall never be able to get these sights 
 and sounds out of my mind, or the smell 
 of rotting flesh out of my nose. 
 
 May 29. To-day, the chief and I tried 
 an experiment on a blesse with multiple 
 shell-wounds and very low blood-pres- 
 sure. It was a failure. The respiration 
 was not increased, and the blood -pressure 
 was not raised. Neither was the chief's 
 
 129 
 10 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 opinion of the method, although he was 
 much too wise to be skeptical. My spirits 
 were not elevated by the occurrence. 
 Last night I was very tired. Indeed, I 
 am tired to-day also. My bed is next a 
 great ward filled with wounded, only a 
 canvas wall between. Promptly at day- 
 break one of these sufferers begins to call, 
 'Garcpn! GarconF The monotonous, 
 feeble, penetrating wail rises with clock- 
 like regularity every few moments until 
 broad daylight. There are no nurses here, 
 only ignorant poilus. 
 
 This afternoon I got a soldier as sub- 
 ject and tried the machine in the presence 
 of several deeply attentive officers. Noth- 
 ing doing. The breathing remained al- 
 most calm. Immense shrugs from all 
 beholders. I do not see why it should 
 work on animals and not on men. They 
 brought me another man, a finely built 
 youth, and intelligent. Another failure. 
 This time the shrugs were so exaltSs that 
 I thought the spectators would put out 
 130 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 their tongues at me. Then the soldier 
 said, 'But, monsieur le major, my nose is 
 still open.' 
 
 O clever youth! Inspired young man! 
 The officer whose duty it was to stand 
 guard at the nose had put the clip too 
 high up. Ten hands reach the recalci- 
 trant organ. I look to see the nose 
 pulled off. But no. It successfully resists. 
 This time it is stopped for sure. The 
 youth announces thickly that he can 
 breathe only through his mouth. 
 
 The instrument is now applied to the 
 mouth. Listening to the artery, I get 
 for a base measurement a clear bruit just 
 above the minimum normal blood-pres- 
 sure. { Commencezr I cry. Off we go. 
 In fifty seconds, he is pumping merrily. 
 The heart bounds. The blood-pressure 
 goes up. Three cheers for les Etats-Unis. 
 Bring back the first rebel. His nose is 
 closed this time. It is all but squashed 
 flat. Again a success. Voild! C'est fini. 
 Profuse thanks to the experimentSs. Con- 
 131 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 elusion : another triumphal demonstration 
 that men are like dogs. 
 
 May 30. It remains now only to get 
 a couple of smashed thighs with low 
 blood-pressure. It is practically certain 
 that we shall have a rise also with them. 
 They may come in any minute. It is 
 very calm to-day. No cannonade to speak 
 of. This morning the Boches dropped 
 three shells on the railway station about 
 two minutes from here. But their aim 
 was good ; they did not hit us. Just above 
 me is a hole in the roof through which a 
 shell fell a few weeks ago. A fragment 
 sailed out the front door, narrowly missing 
 the medecin chef. 
 
 This waiting is slow work. I am writ- 
 ing in the big pavilion de reception. It 
 was a soldiers' theatre. It is here that the 
 sorting takes place. On the dirt floor, 
 near my feet, lies a soldier on a stretcher. 
 He has had a heavy thump on the chest 
 and breathes with difficulty. Between us 
 is a great brazier, half-full of red-hot coke. 
 132 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 The air is keen to-day. Tea is to be served 
 for me at four o'clock. As I speak English, 
 they fear I should die without my tea. I 
 wave my hands, but it is no use. After 
 our dinner, we drink a hot decoction of 
 the blossoms of the lime tree. They firmly 
 believe that it helps the digestion. Who 
 can refute it! The connection between 
 faith and peristalsis is too strong to be 
 denied. 
 
 The chief regrets that there are no wo- 
 men here. He thinks they would help 
 the service. They would no doubt teach 
 these poilus how to wash. Such dirt! 
 The chief has lent me a clothes-brush. 
 'It is for the horse,' he explains, 'but I 
 believe the brush for the horse is better for 
 man than the brush of the shops.' Mon 
 avis: I shall need a currycomb soon. 
 
 May 31. To-day there were several 
 cases of shock. I tried the respiratory 
 machine. It did not work. All the 
 muscles of these poor creatures were re- 
 laxed. Their lips would not close on the 
 133 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 rubber mouthpiece. I am off for Paris 
 to-morrow, to have made a frame en- 
 closed in a kind of bag. The patient's 
 head will go inside and carbon-dioxide 
 gas will pass into the chamber from a pres- 
 sure cylinder. The bag will be tied round 
 the neck. The new device will have two 
 advantages. First, the patient will have 
 nothing to do but to breathe; he need not 
 close his lips on a respiration tube. Sec- 
 ond, the treatment need not be inter- 
 rupted to wash out the apparatus with 
 fresh air. There will be plenty of car- 
 bon dioxide and a hole can be left in the 
 chamber, through which the patient can 
 get all the oxygen he needs. But prob- 
 ably by the time this apparatus is made 
 and tested, the fighting in this region will 
 have quieted down. It would then be 
 necessary for me to go elsewhere. 
 
 My stay at the Massif de Moronvillers 
 has been very profitable. I have demon- 
 strated that the blood-pressure is not al- 
 tered by a barrage fire said to be as 
 134 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 violent as the worst in the great drive at 
 Verdun. Further, I have myself exam- 
 ined more than a thousand wounded. 
 Save a few wounds of the abdomen, in 
 which the blood-vessels or their nerves 
 in that great vascular region were prob- 
 ably directly injured, there has been no 
 case of shock except after shell-fractures 
 of the thigh and after multiple wounds 
 through the subcutaneous fat. In these, 
 closure of the capillaries by fat-globules 
 is known to take place. This is strong 
 support for my discovery that shock may 
 be produced in animals by injecting fat 
 into the veins. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 As might have been expected, the mak- 
 ing of the new apparatus in Paris in war- 
 time was a slow business. When it was 
 finished, I tested it at the College de 
 France in the laboratory of my kind friend, 
 Professor Gley. It worked very well. A 
 wire frame covered with a thin caout- 
 chouc bag enclosed the head. Carbon- 
 dioxide gas passed into this bag from a 
 pressure cylinder controlled by a regulat- 
 ing valve. On its way, the gas bubbled 
 through a flask half filled with water. 
 The rate of passage could be told by 
 counting the bubbles. When the inspired 
 air contained about three per cent of 
 carbon dioxide, the subject's respiration 
 was doubled and the blood-pressure was 
 plainly greater. Sufficient fresh air was 
 obtained through an opening in the bag. 
 136 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 By this time the fighting at the Massif 
 de Moronvillers had sunk to the habitual 
 offensive; there were no longer enough 
 wounded at Mourmelon-le-Petit. As only 
 one in a hundred casualties has shock, I 
 needed at least one hundred wounded a 
 day. Since the point at which attacks 
 might be made could not be foretold, it 
 was necessary to obtain carte blanche to 
 go anywhere on the French front. For 
 this I went to Grand General Headquar- 
 ters at Compiegne. 
 
 In my former days at Compiegne, the 
 great Chateau had been a sleepy place, 
 almost deserted. It was now the seat of 
 Grand General Headquarters. No doubt 
 it would be profoundly altered. There 
 would be many guards, a stream of 
 officers coming and going, a crowd of auto- 
 mobiles, a rush of aides bearing messages. 
 To my astonishment, it was scarcely 
 changed. This centre of perhaps the 
 greatest intellectual activity in the world 
 was as quiet almost as the grave. A 
 137 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 lonely sentinel guarded the iron gates. A 
 single limousine stood within the court; 
 the chauffeur dozed in the warm June 
 sun. 
 
 Madam C and I were admitted to a 
 
 tiny room, economically boarded off from 
 one of the salons. Presently a soldier led 
 us up the ancient stairway to the third 
 floor, where we traversed interminable cor- 
 ridors paved with brick. We passed door 
 after door, each of which bore a white 
 paper stating the name and business of 
 the inhabitant. We met not a soul. 
 
 Finally, we arrived at the door we 
 sought. We found within a pleasant of- 
 ficer at a large desk. He might have been 
 writing his memoirs, so easy and good- 
 natured was he. I stated my case, while 
 my benevolent companion made signs be- 
 hind my back that I was some kind of rare 
 bird. Even the good are full of guile. 
 The officer did not penetrate this aura. 
 Early the next day I received a magic 
 square of blue paper, giving me full powers 
 138 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 and requiring every French officer to 
 further my researches. 
 
 Returning to the Ministry of War, at 
 Paris, on the Boulevard Saint Germain, I 
 obtained an order of transport, providing 
 free passage and all civilities on the rail- 
 ways. A message was telephoned to the 
 front, ordering a limousine and an officer 
 to meet me at a certain station. The next 
 day I departed, in the company of an 
 enormous cylinder of carbon-dioxide gas. 
 I reached a station near Soissons and was 
 most politely conveyed to Division Head- 
 quarters. Here the general brought out 
 a map on which were marked the postes de 
 secours, the sorting hospitals, and other 
 administrative details. Soon I found my- 
 self just behind the Chemin des Dames, 
 welcomed by a friendly medecin chef, in 
 private life Professor of Surgery at the 
 University of Marseilles. 
 
 June 24. This is a hill country. The 
 road to the Ambulance crosses a fold in 
 one of these hills. On the left is a cliff, 
 139 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 separated from the road by a narrow strip 
 of ground holding a single line of low stone 
 houses. On the right, a few others cling 
 to the slope. It is Vauxtin. Below the 
 village is a little valley containing bar- 
 racks and stables. Beyond Vauxtin the 
 road rises to a rounded summit on which 
 are the great tents of the hospital. It is 
 almost a motor-ambulance. Electric-light 
 generators are mounted on an auto truck. 
 There is an automobile dovecote, with 
 homing pigeons. The tents have dirt 
 floors, except in the operating-rooms. 
 There is good air, much sunshine, a wide 
 view, a large and competent staff. The 
 surgical results are excellent. 
 
 The staff sleep in the village — in caves 
 dug in the cliff. I live in a house. It has 
 a small courtyard, shut from the road by a 
 wall. There is a wide gateway, closed by 
 iron doors. Upon this yard open sheds in 
 which are cows, swine, poultry, dogs, and 
 rabbits. In the centre is a dunghill, a pool 
 of liquid manure, and several indolent open 
 140 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 drains. My room has a dirty brick floor, 
 dirty walls with great cobwebs, and a dirty 
 duvet, of a color once red. The sheets are 
 coarse but clean. There is no soap-dish, 
 no towel, no anything but a small bat- 
 tered tin basin and a rusty tin water-can. 
 The door will not lock, or even latch. 
 Two dogs, three cats, and all the chickens, 
 wander at intervals through the manure 
 and into the chamber of the interesting 
 stranger. The cats find the duvet com- 
 forting. 
 
 I am writing on our mess-table in the 
 adjoining courtyard. We eat in the open, 
 protected from rain by some flimsy tarred 
 paper. Near my bench is a rabbit-hutch. 
 Two large and fluffy hens, each with many 
 chicks, are trying to teach me how to man- 
 age a family. I should be more interested 
 if they would show me how it is that my 
 family manages me. The proprietors of 
 this court are a wrinkled, leathery couple 
 who are evidently moved by the example 
 of the prudent Noah ; they seem to have 
 141 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 at least one pair of each species of animal 
 indigenous to these parts. Their owners 
 think that, pending the arrival of the 
 flood, it would be a waste of energy to 
 clean the court. Our supper consisted 
 of onion soup, omelette souffle, hash in 
 slabs, green peas, lettuce salad, confiture, 
 toasted war-bread, and coffee. 
 
 At ten o'clock, the apparatus was tried 
 on the medecin chef. If he does not com- 
 plain, the soldiers will not. The experi- 
 ment goes smoothly and the chief is en- 
 tirely^comfortable. 
 
 June 25. It is nine o'clock, and I am 
 sitting at the door of my shock tent, writ- 
 ing on my knee. I was called at 5.45 
 a.m. and worked without food till 1 p.m. 
 Then an hour for dinner, and after this, 
 more work till 8 p.m. Then supper and 
 a pipe, and here I am. 
 
 We have had five cases of shock. Three 
 
 recovered; one was hopeless from the 
 
 start ; and the fifth could not be treated — 
 
 constant vomiting and hemorrhage. A day 
 
 142 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 full of dreadful sights. The battles here 
 are fiercely fought; there are more than 
 ten German divisions on our immediate 
 front. The carbon-dioxide treatment is 
 undoubtedly an advantage. Probably it 
 is of considerable advantage. Just how 
 much, can be determined only after many 
 observations. But at least a forward step 
 has been taken. 
 
 Yesterday I went for a walk to the end 
 of our plateau, separated by a few miles 
 from the Chemin des Dames. It was 
 dusk. The flashes of the guns, the flares, 
 and the smoke-clouds were all visible. 
 Many years ago, the ladies of the French 
 court had villas there, and used to drive 
 along the Chemin des Dames to get the 
 view from the long, high ridge. 
 
 We had a grand lunch to-day. Tuffrer 
 and his aide were guests. The smoke 
 from the green wood of the cook's fire mer- 
 cifully deadened our capacity to smell his 
 stove five feet away and the manure-pool 
 ten feet away. After all, the rich agricul- 
 143 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 tural aroma of rabbit and cow is not so 
 bad. The wrinkled peasants, proprietors 
 of this demesne, enjoy these ancestral 
 odors. 
 
 Pomona loved the straw-built shed, 
 Warm with the breath of kine. 
 
 The old dame has stolen out to catch a 
 glimpse of the great surgeon. She stands 
 with bared head before a plastered wall, 
 on which a vine has drawn a pattern of 
 classic beauty. 
 
 The lunch is interesting. An officer 
 tells us his experience at Verdun. He 
 might be describing the barrage on Mont 
 Blond. I am comforted. He at least 
 will know that I have spoken truth. Our 
 feast has reached the cheese, eaten in the 
 hope that its sharp savor may correct our 
 earlier excesses, when the air fills with a 
 series of loud bangs mixed with the bark- 
 ing of pompoms. A Boche is trying to 
 hit the barracks and stables down the 
 slope of the hill. Last week sixteen 
 144 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 horses were killed by a single bomb. 
 This time the aviator is missing his mark. 
 His bombs are falling at the edge of the 
 low cliff above our heads. Our party 
 leaves more or less hastily for the shelters 
 under the cliff. The sensible ones run. 
 Turner and I walk. After a minute or 
 two we conclude that our German friend 
 has done, and we sit down again. Our 
 waiter fetches a jagged piece of steel that 
 had struck about four feet from the 
 plank on which rest my poor old bones at 
 meal-time. But don't be alarmed. This 
 is a quiet enough place. All the hills are 
 bearing haycocks. The fields are poorly 
 cared for, naturally, but there seems never- 
 theless much precious fodder. 
 
 Last night it rained, but to-day has been 
 fine and cool. I hated to spend the long, 
 sunny hours in an intolerably hot little 
 room over the remains of what was once a 
 whole man. The wounded are so patient, 
 poor dears. 
 
 June 27. After writing you yesterday, 
 145 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 I went almost at once to bed. It was still 
 light. The cows and the chickens were at 
 rest, but the peasants were cackling, and 
 soldiers and ambulances were constantly 
 passing my open window. This window 
 is three feet above an open drain at the 
 side of the road. Nevertheless, I was 
 soon asleep — fortunately, because at two 
 o'clock a hoarse voice and a rattle at the 
 shutter called me to a shock case. I 
 dressed hurriedly and stumbled up the 
 dark hill to the ambulance. I found the 
 surgeons just bandaging the stump of an 
 amputated thigh. The man was pulse- 
 less. The head surgeon turned him over 
 to me — they always do: the more desper- 
 ate the case, the more pleased they are to 
 bestow him on some one else. The man 
 was taken to my tent and all the surgeons 
 stood by to see what would happen. He 
 was placed head down on a sloping table. 
 Six large electric lights were arranged be- 
 tween him and his blanket. The mask 
 was put over his head and the carbon 
 146 
 
Shock at t he Front 
 
 dioxide turned on. In three minutes his 
 pulse reappeared. Every one was much 
 pleased. 
 
 I am anxious to get back to Paris to try 
 out a new idea, an electrical method for 
 raising the blood-pressure. 
 
 I had come down to the Chemin des 
 Dames by way of Berzy. At that time 
 Berzy was the railhead — passengers did 
 not go through to Soissons. My colleagues 
 at Vauxtin thought it unnecessary for me 
 to go back the way I had come. There 
 was a nearer station, the name of which 
 has escaped me. I departed for this sta- 
 tion, after the most friendly leave-taking. 
 The amenities have attained in France 
 a perfection that is the despair of other 
 nations. 
 
 After an hour's ride I was deposited on 
 the railway platform and the motor 
 darted away. I asked the chef de gare 
 if the train for Paris was on time. 
 
 'Train for Paris! What train? There 
 is no train until tomorrow.' 
 147 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 'Oh!' said I, 'that is most unfortunate. 
 My car has gone and I must be in Paris 
 this afternoon.' 
 
 'Then you must go to D.; a train 
 leaves there in about two hours. It is 
 twenty-five kilometres.' 
 
 There was no time to lose. I ran out 
 into the street. A lieutenant came along. 
 *I am in trouble,' I explained, 'my car is 
 gone. There is no train here. I must be 
 in Paris before night. There will be a 
 train at D. Won't you please send me 
 there without delay?' 
 
 At this he made large eyes. 'What, 
 Monsieur, you ask me to — to confiscate an 
 auto for you? I am desolated not to — ' 
 
 Here I cut in: 'But I have an order 
 from the Quartier General'; and I pro- 
 duced the Magic Square of Blue Paper. 
 
 At that instant, a handsome limousine 
 glided down the road, with two soldiers 
 on the front seat. My lieutenant waved 
 his hand. The car stopped. The sol- 
 diers saluted. 
 
 148 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 'Take this officer to Headquarters at 
 C Turning to me he said, 'It is ten 
 kilometres on your way. At Headquar- 
 ters you can get another car.' 
 
 In I jumped, with a word of thanks and 
 my very best smile, and we were off at 
 thirty-five miles an hour. In less than 
 fifteen minutes we were at Headquarters, 
 a handsome old house in a small village. 
 I was taken to a door, on which I knocked. 
 It opened and revealed two charming 
 gentlemen. 
 
 'I am Professor Porter,' I said. 
 
 'Ah,' they replied, with the pleased and 
 deferential air of a naturalist confronted 
 with a new species. 
 
 1 1 must be in Paris this evening. There 
 is a train leaving shortly, fifteen kilo- 
 metres from here.' 
 
 1 Monsieur is well informed.' 
 
 A pause, with rather cryptic smiles. 
 
 1 Pardon, messieurs, you have no autos?' 
 
 1 But yes ; we have. Only — Monsieur will 
 excuse — our autos are not for the public' 
 149 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 'Perfectly,' I rejoin, 'but, chers mes- 
 sieurs, I am not the public. I have an 
 order from the Grand Quartier General.' 
 
 The officers wasted no time. One 
 handed me a chair; the other seized the 
 telephone. In two minutes I was flying 
 over the road in a powerful racing car. 
 
 In the zone, a magic square of blue 
 paper is better than much gold. 
 
 It is not my present purpose to give an 
 account of the busy weeks that followed 
 my return to Paris, or to describe in these 
 pages the long series of experiments in the 
 College de France. I found an electrical 
 method useful against shock in animals, 
 but I have not yet succeeded in adapting 
 this method for use upon man. 
 
 In August, 191 7, I sailed for my own 
 country, bearing with me the certainty 
 that fat embolism is a frequent, if not the 
 most frequent, cause of shock as seen on 
 the battlefield; and the further certainty 
 150 
 
Shock at the Front 
 
 that the carbon-dioxide respiration treat- 
 ment is of advantage. 
 
 Continued investigation is a sharp and 
 pressing need. These monstrous mala- 
 dies devour our sons. Unchecked, they 
 drag the stricken hero 
 
 Through caverns measureless to man, 
 Down to a sunless sea, — 
 
 a sea of sorrow — sad extinction of the 
 tremulous hopes with which we crown our 
 dear and precious youths. Pierced by the 
 iron shards of a perverted science, they 
 can be rescued only by science undenled. 
 
 Our people drowse. They sleep, like 
 fallen angels, on the marl that hides con- 
 suming fires. Awake! Arise! Multiply 
 research ! Forge the weapons which alone 
 shall save the lives of those who fight our 
 battles! 
 
 Our hearts are in their keeping. 
 
 The End 
 
OTHER VOLUMES IN THE SERIES OF 
 ATLANTIC PAPERS 
 
HEADQUARTERS NIGHTS 
 
 By Vernon Kellogg 
 
 When the World War broke out, Vernon Kellogg was 
 Professor of Biology at Leland Stanford University. As 
 a man of science, he was accustomed to weigh facts 
 calmly and dispassionately. He was an admirer of 
 Germany, a neutral, and a pacifist. With the hope of 
 relieving human suffering, he went to Europe and 
 became special envoy of the Committee for the Relief 
 of Belgium at German General Headquarters and at 
 the headquarters of General Von Bissing in Brussels. 
 
 For many months, Professor Kellogg lived with Ger- 
 many's military leaders in the West, worked with them, 
 argued with them, learned from their own lips their 
 aims and principles of life. He saw the workings of 
 German autocracy among the people it had crushed, 
 heard German methods defended by some of the ablest 
 men in the Kaiser's empire, tried in vain to understand 
 the German point of view. 
 
 "Quite four nights of each seven in the week," he 
 says, "there were other staff officers in to dinner, and 
 we debated such trifles as German Militarismus, the 
 hate of the world for Germany, American munitions 
 for the Allies, submarining and Zeppelining, the Kaiser, 
 the German people." 
 
 These "headquarters nights," and the days he spent 
 trying to assuage the misery caused by the German 
 military system, brought about "the conversion of a 
 pacifist to an ardent supporter, not of War, but of this 
 war; of fighting this war to a definitive end — that end 
 to be Germany's conversion to be a good Germany or 
 not much of any Germany at all." 
 
 One of the most graphic pictures of the German attitude, the 
 attitude which rendered this war inevitable, is contained in Vernon 
 Kellogg's Headquarters Nights. It is a convincing, and an 
 evidently truthful, exposition of the shocking, the unspeakably 
 dreadful, moral and intellectual perversion of character which 
 makes Germany at present a menace to the whole civilized world. 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt. 
 
 Headquarters Nights is attractively printed and 
 bound in cloth. Its price is one dollar postpaid. 
 
 The Atlantic Monthly Press 
 
 Three Park Street, Boston, Ma3b. 
 
THE WAR AND THE SPIRIT OF YOUTH 
 
 This book is a spiritual interpretation of the suffering 
 and sacrifice of the World War, expressed in a group of 
 three papers of kindred significance, yet written from 
 three different points of view by a Frenchman, an 
 Englishman, and an American. The volume includes: 
 
 Young Soldiers of France, By Maurice Barres. 
 Juventus Christi, By Anne C. E. Allinson. 
 The Soul's Experience, By Sir Francis Young- 
 husband. 
 
 Each writer is seeking in the dreadful welter of war 
 some common revelation of spiritual comfort and ad- 
 vance. Is the agony of these years meaningless and 
 wanton? Is the heartsickening struggle brutal and 
 brutalizing, and nothing more? Each, in his or her 
 own way, finds an answer. 
 
 One, a questioner by temperament, has come to see 
 the regeneration of human life in the miracle which 
 the war has worked in the younger generation. An- 
 other, by profession a soldier, found a new and vivid 
 faith born of physical impotence and pain. The third, 
 an American woman, has come to her new belief from 
 far distant fields of the imagination. All three unite in 
 confidence that the generation now culminating in man- 
 hood is passing through blackness into light brighter 
 than any dawn the world has known. 
 
 The spirit of the volume is the spirit of youth, learn- 
 ing in the Book of Life, trusting that the best is yet to 
 be, and reading with shining eyes to the end. It is the 
 spirit of Leo Latil, a young soldier of France, who, 
 shortly before his death on the edge of a German 
 trench, wrote to his family, — 
 
 Our sacrifices will be sweet if we win a great and glorious victory, 
 — if there shall be more light for the souls of men; if truth 6hall come 
 forth more radiant, more beloved. 
 
 The War and the Spirit of Youth is an inspiring, 
 heartening little volume. It is well printed, hand- 
 somely bound, and sells postpaid for one dollar. 
 
 The Atlantic Monthly Press 
 
 Three Park Street, Boston, Mass. 
 
THE ASSAULT ON HUMANISM 
 By Paul Shorey 
 
 The Battle of the Books is as keen today as it was in 
 the time of the Renaissance. Within the last decade, 
 especially, the forces of the ' old ' and the ' new ' learning 
 have been at full tilt. Under the leadership of Dr. 
 Abraham Flexner, President Eliot, and other distin- 
 guished members of the ' new school, ' practical educa- 
 tion has gained an apparent ascendancy, and the 
 champions of classical culture have been put on the 
 defensive. 
 
 Yet the classicists are not vanquished — not by any 
 means; and it is not likely that they ever will be, so 
 long as they have such leaders as Professor Shorey. 
 
 The Assault on Humanism is a brilliant offensive- 
 defensive on the study of the classics in American 
 schools and colleges. So ably does the author marshal 
 his forces against the 'Modernists,' so effectively does 
 he use his sarcastic wit and his vast fund of learning, 
 that his writing in itself is an argument of the first 
 order for retaining the study of cultural subjects. 
 
 "We are again grateful to Dr. Flexner. If it had not been for 
 his attack upon classical and humanistic culture, Professor Shorey 
 might never have written this delightful and inspiring little volume, 
 and the world would have been so much — and it would indeed 
 have been much — poorer." New York Tribune. 
 
 "Professor Shorey upholds the standard of sound learning and 
 literary culture — qualities which are in need of defenders in a land 
 where the half-educated are at present more aggressive than the 
 educated. Professor Shorey says to his antagonists: 'You must 
 not argue that Latin is useless, without discriminating the various 
 meanings of utility. You must not tell the public that the science 
 of psychology has disproved mental discipline in general, or the 
 specific value of the discipline of analytic language study in par- 
 ticular. For, if you are a competent psychologist, you know that 
 it is false.' " Springfield Republican. 
 
 "If Professor Shorey's literary style, the wealth of information 
 which his article shows, the clearness of his analysis, the richness 
 and the aptness of his illustrations, are any indication of the results 
 produced by the study of the humanities, he has in this article gone 
 far to prove the desirability of a system of education in which these 
 humanities have a prominent part." The American School. 
 
 The Assault on Humanism is a charming example 
 of bookmaking. It sells postpaid for 60 cents. 
 
 The Atlanitc Monthly Press 
 Three Park Street, Boston, Mass. 
 
PAN-GERMANY: THE DISEASE AND CURE 
 
 By Andre Cheradame 
 
 No student outside of Germany itself has studied the 
 Pan-German scheme in all its details more thoroughly 
 than the distinguished French publicist who is the 
 author of this book. For more than twenty years M. 
 Cheradame has devoted his energies and resources, 
 physical and intellectual alike, to a vigorous and 
 exhaustive investigation of the origin and progress of 
 the monstrous conspiracy which threatens to over- 
 whelm the liberties of the world. His books, long 
 unheeded, now read like prophecies. 
 
 The papers reprinted in this volume originally ap- 
 peared in The Atlantic Monthly under the titles, "The 
 United States and Pan-Germanism," "The Fallacy of 
 a German Peace," and "How to Destroy Pan-Ger- 
 many." There they attracted so much attention that 
 it was decided to republish them together in inexpen- 
 sive book form, so that every American who desires a 
 clear understanding of the meaning of the World War 
 may have an opportunity to read them. 
 
 M. Cheradame cuts to the heart of the Pan-German 
 plot for conquest, lays bare its true significance, and 
 prescribes the remedy. He shows that Germany, after 
 three and a half years of war, has gained almost all 
 that she hoped for, and far more than she expected, 
 and that a German peace means almost endless wars 
 ahead or else the universal destruction of democracy 
 and freedom as we know them. His book should be 
 read and pondered by every thinking citizen. 
 
 Pan-Germany is bound in heavy paper and sells at 
 25 cents, postpaid. Special rates will be given on 
 quantities for patriotic distribution. 
 
 The Atlantic Monthly Press 
 
 Three Park Street, Boston, Mass. 
 
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