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 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 M. EYDOUX-DEMIANS 
 
 | TRANSLATED BY BETTY Y E O M A N S | 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSER 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
IN A 
 
 FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 Notes of a Nurse 
 
 BY 
 
 M. EYDOUX-DÈMIANS 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 BETTY YEOMANS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 
 1915 
 
2 
 
 6** 
 
 Copyright, 1915, by Plon-Nourrit & Company 
 Copyright, 1915, by Duffield & Company 
 
 AW rights reserved 
 
 Press of J. J. Little & Ives Co., New York 
 
 ©CI.A406815 
 JUL 23 1915 
 
X 
 
 TO 
 MY FIVE BROTHERS 
 
 WOUNDED IN THE SERVICE OF 
 FRANCE 
 
NOTE 
 
 The only merit of these notes is their profound sin- 
 cerity. They give only impressions of things actually 
 seen and heard, reveal only the wonderful courage and 
 devotion that exist to-day in a French provincial hos- 
 pital. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Our Patients i 
 
 Sister Gabrielle 8 
 
 One Night 15 
 
 From One to Another 20 
 
 Our Orderlies 25 
 
 When They Talk 30 
 
 How They Love in War Time .... 36 
 
 Their Pride 38 
 
 The Death of a Soldier 40 
 
 The Funeral 46 
 
 A Just Reflection 49 
 
 A Simple Story 51 
 
 Comrades 53 
 
 Engaged 60 
 
 Seen at the Railway Station 67 
 
 A First Communion 71 
 
 Conversation As It Is To,-day .... 74 
 
 A Soldier's Compliment and Song ... 78 
 
 Always Suffering 83 
 
 Young Recruits and Territorials ... 84 
 ix 
 
X CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Under Martial Law 87 
 
 Our Priests 88 
 
 The Little Frenchmen 91 
 
 What We Receive from the Front . . 92 
 
 Correspondence in War Time .... 93 
 
 A Little Refugee 101 
 
 A Modest Little Soldier 106 
 
 Officers and Men 109 
 
 Sister Gabrielle's Office 112 
 
 The Company of the Audacious . . .114 
 
 Memories 118 
 
 News from the Mèchins 139 
 
 A Lament 142 
 
 Some Letters 143 
 
 Sister Gabrielle's Christmas Tree . . .159 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 OUR PATIENTS 
 
 On October sixth, last, I received a mes- 
 sage from the directress of the Hospital of 
 Saint Dominic, reading as follows: 
 
 "A large number of wounded have just 
 arrived. We can't take care of any more 
 ourselves, and the moment has come to call 
 for volunteers. I shall expect your help." 
 
 One hour later, as you can easily imagine, 
 I was at Saint Dominic. This specially 
 privileged hospital is under the gentle man- 
 agement of the Sisters of St. Vincent de 
 Paul. Several years ago some of its de- 
 voted trustees made one effort after another 
 on its behalf in Paris, and, after overcoming 
 many difficulties, reestablished the Sisters of 
 Charity amongst us once again. They had 
 not a doubt even then that they were work- 
 
2 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 ing in the interests of France's soldiers, those 
 same soldiers whose faces light up now with 
 such a special joy when they lie on their 
 painful stretchers, and catch sight, near the 
 large entrance porch, of the good white cor- 
 nettes of the Sisters waiting for them. 
 
 With my heart beating fast I entered the 
 room to which I had been assigned. There 
 they all were before me, these lads that had 
 undergone that terrible and fierce adventur- 
 ing into war. I remember how they went 
 away in our wonderful mobilisation trains, 
 those make-shift, flower-bedecked trains that 
 sped all of them to the same destination, the 
 same region of glory and bloodshed. One 
 long war cry seemed to rise up from them 
 over all our land. Our young soldiers who 
 went away in them had acquired an en- 
 tirely new way of shouting "Vive la 
 France." It was no longer as if they were 
 on parade, notwithstanding all the flowers 
 that people tossed to them: it was already 
 the cry of men who were to lead in war's 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 3 
 
 assaults, and make the supreme sacrifice of 
 their lives. I remember one little infantry- 
 man of twenty years, standing erect with 
 folded arms in the back of his compartment, 
 his eyes flashing, and all the muscles of his 
 pale face taut. He kept repeating threat- 
 eningly, "Vive la France — vive la France," 
 without a look toward any one; saying it just 
 to himself and for his country. And I felt 
 that it was as if he said: "We shall get 
 them : we must get them, no matter what it 
 costs. As for me, well, you see, to begin 
 with, my life doesn't count any more." 
 This very fellow is the one, perhaps, who 
 has come back now and sleeps here in this 
 first cot, where a face both energetic and in- 
 fantile shows in the midst of the blood- 
 stained linen. 
 
 Sister Gabrielle made a tour with me of 
 all the patients. The memory of certain of 
 them particularly is fixed in my mind. 
 There is number 3, here, who got a bullet 
 wound in the region of the liver, and has 
 
4 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 to lie absolutely still, lest an internal hemor- 
 rhage may occur at any moment. A war- 
 rior of twenty-three he is, with cheeks as 
 rosy as a girl's, and clear blue eyes. He 
 fought like a lion, they say, but here noth- 
 ing could be gentler. His appreciation for 
 the least thing that is done for him is touch- 
 ing. Number 8, little eight, as they call 
 him, a volunteer, who seems about fifteen, 
 and who has to live week after week propped 
 on his right side, on a hard hospital bed, on 
 account of an abscess following his wound. 
 Number 12, an infantryman, who got a bul- 
 let in the left temple; it was extracted from 
 his right maxillary, and in passing cut his 
 tongue in two. "Everything has been put 
 back," said the Sister, "but he can't talk 
 yet, and he'll have to learn to talk all over 
 again, like a little child. In taking care of 
 him you must come every once in a while 
 and see if you can guess what he wants." 
 Number 17, a brave among the braves, who, 
 under the enemy's fire, crawled ten kilo- 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 5 
 
 metres on his hands and knees, dragging his 
 twice wounded foot behind him, to deliver 
 an order that he had been charged with. His 
 wounds cause him cruel suffering, and yet 
 he seems illuminated as with some strange 
 inward joy. Number 24, nicknamed the 
 little sieve, because of his fifteen wounds. 
 Number 32, who suffers like a real martyr. 
 His leg was literally shattered by the frag- 
 ments of a shell. It was a question whether 
 it could be saved at all, but following the 
 directions of the war surgeon, we are keep- 
 ing up the attempt. Antiseptic injections 
 are made twice a day as deep as the bone. 
 Number 30, who has lost an eye and has 
 two open fractures in his right arm. When 
 I said to him : "You have given a good deal 
 for France," he answered, "It's the least I 
 could do." And he added, laughing, "I was 
 so clumsy with my hands. This will teach 
 me to be clever even with my left one." 
 
 Eloquent pens write every day of the hero- 
 ism shown by our wounded soldiers, but 
 
6 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 shall we ever grow tired of hearing this 
 ever recurring leit motif, which in everything 
 that touches on the tragic developments of 
 1914, sounds its incomparable song in praise 
 of the moral qualities of France? One can- 
 not repeat too often or too admiringly, "Our 
 wounded." Our wounded, that is to say, 
 those men who have come back from that 
 hell, "whose horrors," they say themselves, 
 "are indescribable" ; those who have marched 
 beneath "that terrible, moving curtain of 
 iron," to which an officer compared the mass 
 of balls and shells in battle, a mass so com- 
 pact that it obscured the very daylight on 
 the firing line. Our wounded! Those, in 
 a word, who have brought back in their very 
 flesh the frightful scars of the enemy's iron, 
 those who have cemented with their own 
 blood the human wall that is now our 
 frontier. They have come back, not with 
 their courage drained, broken down, horror- 
 stricken, stunned — not at all. They forget 
 themselves to talk smilingly of the great 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL , fj 
 
 hope in which we all share. They are 
 touched, deeply touched, by the few hours 
 of fatigue we undergo for them each day — 
 for them who have given almost their lives. 
 
 My tasks were laid out for me, and I be- 
 gan work at once, thanked by the soldiers 
 almost in advance for my trouble. 
 
 "It's a bit too much to see you work like 
 this for us." 
 
 "All the same, no one has ever been served 
 like this." 
 
 They are not a bit difficult, but pleased 
 with everything, these men who suffer so 
 much, who have such a right to every care. 
 Alas, there are too many of them (this hos- 
 pital alone has as many as a thousand) to 
 permit of all the little comforting things that 
 we should like to do for them without stint. 
 The Sister who cooks is sorely driven, and 
 even the prescribed dishes that she sends up 
 for the sickest ones are often far from appe- 
 tising. For instance, I have just taken Num- 
 ber 13, who is consumed by a lingering 
 
8 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 fever (a bullet passed through his lung), a 
 milk soup that smelt badly burned, and in 
 which pieces of half-cooked rice floated 
 round. I sighed a little about it as I put 
 the napkin on the bed. Did he understand 
 what worried me? In any case, he shows no 
 distaste, and a quarter of an hour later, when 
 I pass by him, he motions to me, and says 
 gently, "It was delicious, madame." 
 
 That's the way they all are — all of them. 
 
 SISTER GABRIELLE 
 
 I study with emotion the admirable vi- 
 sion of the human soul which the Sister of 
 Charity and the wounded soldier set before 
 me. It is a vision which has intervened al- 
 ways, as with an element of the supernatural, 
 in our war-time pictures, and, behold, now 
 we find it again, almost miraculously, in the 
 supreme struggle of 1914. 
 
 Sister Gabrielle, who has charge of my 
 room, her identity quite hidden as it is by 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 9 
 
 her archangel's name, is the daughter of a 
 general, as I know. She has three brothers 
 that have served beneath the colours. The 
 oldest, a quite young captain, has just met 
 his death on the field of honour. I happen 
 to have learned the circumstances : how, cov- 
 ered with blood already flowing from three 
 different wounds, Captain X nevertheless 
 struggled on bravely at the head of his men, 
 and after several hours of conflict was struck 
 by a bullet full in the breast. He fell, cry- 
 ing: "Don't fall back! That's my last 
 order !" 
 
 Sister Gabrielle was told only last week 
 of the glorious grief that had been thrust 
 upon her, but no one around her would have 
 guessed her sorrow. Possibly her smile for 
 the patients that day was a little more com- 
 passionate and tender than usual, when she 
 thought of her brother enduring his moment 
 of supreme agony alone down there in the 
 forests of the Vosges. But no matter how 
 compassionate Sister Gabrielle may be, she 
 
ÎO ' IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 never carries it to the point of feebleness or 
 softness. Her bearing with the soldiers is 
 an indefinable mingling of something an- 
 gelic, maternal and virile, all at once. These 
 men brought in from all points of the im- 
 mense and terrible battlefield become at once 
 her children (and never was a mother more 
 watchfully solicitous and devoted), but 
 never does she forget their sacred title of 
 soldier. She must not stir up their feelings, 
 she knows. She sets herself, on the con- 
 trary, the essential, secret task of keeping up 
 their moral strength, of helping them, after 
 the enemy's fire, to meet the ordeal of the 
 operating room, the wearing suffering, per- 
 haps at last even death; for death is always 
 watching for its prey in this room of the 
 twenty-four beds reserved for the most se- 
 verely wounded. 
 
 Sister Gabrielle would like to save them 
 all. What a task! What a struggle! She 
 is on her feet night and day. The orderlies 
 are told to call her at the least disturbing 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 11 
 
 symptom, and when they do, with true 
 motherly enthusiasm, she who is always 
 helping others to bear their heavy burdens, 
 herself awakens, tireless, to her own sad 
 duties. In the semi-darkness of the room 
 she prepares hastily the serum that may pro- 
 long a life; she utters the sweet words that 
 are dear to souls who suffer thus at 
 night. It may be one o'clock, two o'clock 
 in the morning, but when four o'clock sounds 
 her night is over. Lost in the long line of 
 white cornettes, she takes her way to the 
 chapel, and there stores up for another twen- 
 ty-four hours the strength to go on with this 
 superhuman mode of living. Behold in her 
 "a soul that is truly the mistress of the body 
 which it animates." 
 
 She is thin and frail — mortally ill herself, 
 they say; she was quite ill one month ago. 
 But if you speak to her of her health she 
 interrupts you a little impatiently: 
 
 "We have given ourselves, body and soul, 
 according to our vows. To last a little 
 
12 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 longer or a little less doesn't matter. The 
 main thing is to fulfil our tasks. Besides," 
 she adds, indicating her patients, "they have 
 given their lives for France. It is quite 
 right, if it must be so, that our lives be sacri- 
 ficed to save them." 
 
 And, in truth, from living in this atmos- 
 phere one comes to think this mutual hero- 
 ism the natural thing. These two kinds of 
 heroes, the French soldier and the Sister of 
 Charity, need make no explanations, coin no 
 phrases to understand each other. There 
 really exists between them, over and above 
 the differences in class and lives, a real and 
 touching intimacy of the soul. When Sister 
 Gabrielle goes quietly and rapidly past the 
 long rows of beds where they suffer so un- 
 complainingly, they know perfectly well 
 that she hasn't time to stop before each one 
 of them. She has not time to say the words 
 which suffering seems so easily to call forth, 
 but which may make it worse and cause it 
 to be less nobly borne. They know, too, 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 13 
 
 that she will be there if her presence is nec- 
 essary, and that if, in secret, her woman's 
 heart weeps over them, weeps incessantly, in 
 their presence her French woman's heart 
 beats with pride. 
 
 To us, when they can't hear, she talks 
 about "her children" freely, quite full of 
 admiration and pity for them: 
 
 "Ah, if you knew how full of courage 
 they are," she says. "You must be with 
 them night and day, like me, to do them 
 justice; to see them coming into the operat- 
 ing room so bravely, a smile on their lips, as 
 they lie on their stretchers. You must see 
 them die, too." 
 
 Sister Gabrielle's eyes filled with tears at 
 the thought of so many young lives that 
 have gone out — of so many yet to pass out, 
 in her arms. This woman, young and frail 
 as she is, truly must have some supernatural 
 source of energy in herself, thus to bear up 
 and never falter under the terrible weight of 
 suffering that crushes her silent heart, this 
 
14 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 suffering that tortures her soldiers in the 
 flesh incessantly all about her. 
 
 The wounded soldiers are not clever at 
 expressing their appreciation. But they 
 know quite well that Sister Gabrielle can 
 guess what they feel for her, just from the 
 timid way in which they say, "Thank you," 
 so many times, or the confiding way in which 
 they give her their letters, or tell the news 
 they've had from their families, or from the 
 fervour with which they try to do a thousand 
 little services for her as soon as they begin 
 to get better; and especially from the respect, 
 a very touching kind of respect, surprisingly 
 full of delicacy, which they invariably show 
 for her, even in the midst of their cruellest 
 suffering. 
 
 In speaking to Sister Gabrielle they never 
 use the trite phrases that they use to the 
 other nurses, such as, "You'll tire yourself 
 out; you're doing too much." 
 
 No, Sister Gabrielle is an immaterial 
 being, to whom they don't dare attribute the 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 1$ 
 
 common feebleness of humanity. But 
 watching her passing by, her clear eyes 
 deeply ringed with fatigue, her step tired, 
 but her bearing invariably gentle, I often 
 hear them murmur, "She deserves a decora- 
 tion." 
 
 ONE NIGHT 
 
 Better than all the newspapers and of- 
 ficial communications on the war, the hos- 
 pital keeps one in touch with matters at the 
 front. In the lot of wounded that were sent 
 in yesterday, forty came to Sister Gabrielle 
 directly from the Aisne. They arrived to- 
 ward the close of the day, and I shall never 
 forget the spectacle of that room. One 
 stretcher succeeded another, all borne slowly 
 by the litter-men and set down near the hast- 
 ily prepared beds. Here and there you 
 caught a cry of pain that could not be kept 
 in, though there were no complaints, no con- 
 tinued groanings. Yet now, when you lean 
 over those glorious and lamentable blue bon- 
 
l6 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 nets, cut as they are by bullets and stained 
 with the mud of the trenches, when you take 
 off the caps that have grown stiff with the 
 dampness of the long rains, you perceive 
 their suffering by the glittering look in their 
 fevered eyes, their poor, worn faces and 
 ravaged features, sunken and hollow with 
 suffering. Then, all at once, at the least 
 word, the old gallantry that we know so well 
 reasserts itself. For example, they ask the 
 most touching and childish favours of us. 
 Thus if a limb that hurts too much must be 
 lifted, or a piece of clothing that binds a 
 wound eased up, they all ask : 
 
 "Not the orderly, not the orderly, please; 
 the Sister or the lady." 
 
 One must have given in little enough to 
 suffering, have treated oneself rather roughly, 
 after all, not to deserve now the gentle min- 
 istrations of women's hands. And certainly 
 it is the least of our duties to be here and 
 ready with this gentleness, as long as there 
 is one wounded soldier left to look after, the 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 17 
 
 least of our duties to serve them till the 
 final hush of victory descends at last on 
 our terrible battlefields. 
 
 The first words that the newcomers ex- 
 change with their cot neighbours are not 
 about their own hardships; they speak first, 
 and before anything else, of France. 
 
 "How are things going down there?" 
 
 "All right. We'll get them." 
 
 Then the newcomers, worn out as they are, 
 sink into feverish sleep, struggling some- 
 times for days between realities and the per- 
 sistent nightmare of the visions that pursue 
 them. That night in the room that was al- 
 ways so still, but that now seemed more 
 feverish than usual, I heard a sound of 
 smothered sobs. It was Number 25, a big, 
 good-looking soldier, whom each day I had 
 seen having his wound dressed, a real torture, 
 without a word, and who was sobbing now 
 with his head in his pillow, ashamed of his 
 tears, but powerless to keep them back. I 
 went to him and tried to question him, but 
 
l8 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 the soldiers don't readily speak to you of 
 the sorrows that touch their hearts the deep- 
 est and most nearly. 
 
 "Thank you, lady; don't bother yourself 
 about me. I don't need anything." 
 
 "Is your pain worse, maybe 1 ?" 
 
 "I'm in pain, yes, terribly, but it isn't 
 that." 
 
 "What is it, then? Won't you tell me?" 
 
 He denied me still, then, all at once, un- 
 der the pressure of his grief, he said: 
 
 "Oh, yes, I do feel like confiding in you. 
 I'll tell you what it is. The comrade who 
 was waiting next to me till his bed was 
 ready brought me news of the death of my 
 best friend. He was in his regiment and 
 was killed by his side. Oh, madame, he was 
 such a fine fellow, so devoted and full of 
 courage. We were brought up together. He 
 was more than my chum; he was my friend." 
 
 He cried and cried. He had borne every- 
 thing without giving way — the continual 
 nearness of death, the so hard life in the 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 1Ç 
 
 trenches, the incessant physical suffering; 
 but the death of his friend crushed him and 
 brought him down to earth. And while I 
 murmured words that, alas, were futile for 
 any change they made in his sorrow, but 
 which did some good, just the same, I heard 
 him sobbing in his pillow : 
 
 "My friend was killed. My friend was 
 killed." 
 
 His friend — when one knows what the 
 word comrade means to them, one divines all 
 that word friend may mean, too. 
 
 Sister Gabrielle, whose infallible instinct 
 brings her alway to the cots where the sickest 
 of her children are, passed near Number 25 
 and stopped a moment. She did not ask him 
 anything. She just put her hand caressingly 
 on his brown head, so young and virile, and 
 said in her firm, sweet voice : 
 
 "All right, my boy, all right. Courage. 
 Remember all this is for France." 
 
 Then turning to me, she said : 
 
 "Before night-time wouldn't you like to 
 
20 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 play a game of dominoes with this good boy ? 
 He'll represent the French forces, and in the 
 morning he must be able to tell me that he 
 has won." 
 
 In the midst of his tears the young sol- 
 dier, his heart swelling in his distress, smiled 
 at finding himself thus treated like a child. 
 They have such need of it, the soldiers, after 
 having done so valiantly the work of men! 
 
 FROM ONE TO ANOTHER 
 
 It is comforting to hear them talk about 
 their superior officers, as a soldier of the 
 149th Infantry has just talked to me about 
 his captain. 
 
 "Oh, I can tell you, my captain had plenty 
 of good blood in his veins. There was noth- 
 ing suspicious about him. I saw him stand- 
 ing straight up among the whistling bullets, 
 giving his orders without flinching, without 
 recoiling one inch, as if he were sitting at his 
 desk and only flies were buzzing round his 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 21 
 
 head. And so gentle, too. Good to the men 
 and always jolly. We were in luck to have 
 him over us." 
 
 I asked him questions about his campaign, 
 and he talked freely, having only good things 
 to tell. The taciturn ones are those who 
 have sad memories to conceal. 
 
 "We were the ones told off to take the vil- 
 lage of S ," he said, "where the enemy 
 
 was. My captain, who acted as chief of 
 battalion, got us all together, and said to 
 us: 
 
 " 'There seem to be two or three Boches 
 down there. We must get them out, eh'?' 
 
 "Everybody knew very well what that 
 meant, but we laughed and went to it in 
 good part. What fights those were! Two 
 days of bloody battles in the streets. Fin- 
 ally the village was ours. We had one 
 night's rest in a farmhouse, three-quarters of 
 which had been destroyed. When we got 
 there we spied an unfortunate porker in a 
 corner. He had taken refuge there, fright- 
 
22 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 ened by the firing. He came in very handy, 
 I can tell you, for our stomachs were 
 hollow. 
 
 " 'Charge again on that Boche, there,' said 
 the Captain. When we had eaten and slept 
 and assembled again next day, he said: 
 
 " 'Well, well, my lads, we're in danger of 
 getting too soft here. Suppose we go on a 
 little further and see what's happening.' 
 
 "We marched on further, but the enemy, 
 who were in force, began to shoot at us all 
 at once from below. My Captain didn't ex- 
 pose us needlessly. He made us lie down 
 in the deserted trenches. There were corpses 
 there and dead horses, and water, water 
 everywhere. It rained without stopping. 
 We spent the night up to our waists in 
 water. It was enough to make one laugh." 
 
 To laugh — this word turns up all the time 
 in their recitals, and in the most unexpected 
 manner. Oh, this French courage, which 
 faces not only the bitter struggle with dan- 
 ger, but disdains and mocks it, too; that ele- 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 23 
 
 gant courage of our fathers that has been 
 born again amongst us. 
 
 My foot-soldier, Number 149, was seized 
 with quite a touching emotion when I told 
 him that I knew his Captain's lady. 
 
 "Tell her she may be proud," he said, 
 "and that I'd willingly go back down there; 
 for my country's sake, of course, but also 
 and a good deal, on my Captain's account." 
 
 Then I let him know something that I'd 
 kept till the end of our interview, that his 
 Captain, young as he was, had just been pro- 
 moted to the rank of battalion chief; that 
 the Cross of the Legion of Honour had been 
 given him, and that, thanks to him, no doubt, 
 the entire regiment had been mentioned in 
 the order of the day. I won't attempt to 
 picture the little soldier's moving and disin- 
 terested joy. 
 
 Near Number 3' s bed I caught sight of a 
 peasant woman from the Cher, in a white 
 headdress, and an old man, who wore a me- 
 dallion of 1870 on his breast. 
 
24 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 "They are his parents," Sister Gabrielle 
 explained to me. "I had word sent to them. 
 The poor lad is in grave danger. Luckily 
 I've got the management's permission to let 
 the mother pass the nights here." 
 
 In this way I became acquainted with the 
 Mèchins, French peasants of the old order, 
 unalterably attached to the soil. They hope, 
 nay, they are sure, that their son is going to 
 get well. The sick man says nothing. 
 They're all like that, our soldiers — no fool- 
 ish tenderness, no pain given to their par- 
 ents. Who knows, besides, how much their 
 desire to live may have dwindled down after 
 their tragic voyages to the frontier*? The 
 soul must possess new powers of detachment 
 when it has risen to the heights of absolute 
 self-sacrifice. The little soldier does not de- 
 ceive himself, Sister Gabrielle has told me, 
 and when I expressed my admiration for the 
 strange moral force that he gave proof of, 
 she answered me proudly : 
 
 "But they are all like that." ...... .., 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 2$ 
 
 Just as I was going to leave the room the 
 sick man summoned me with his eyes. I 
 went up to him and bent over him. 
 
 "Do you want anything 1 ?" I asked. 
 
 He made a sign of No, and with a great 
 effort raised his hand outside the bed 
 and reached it toward me, murmuring: 
 "Thanks." 
 
 I understood. It was his good-bye. He 
 thought that he should perhaps not be there 
 in the morning when I came back. 
 
 OUR ORDERLIES 
 
 The corps of orderlies is not always sym- 
 pathetic. I must say, however, that in the 
 room where I am employed, each one does 
 his duty, thanks, no doubt, to the active su- 
 pervision of the Sister, thanks also perhaps 
 to three singularly moving personalities 
 among the orderlies themselves. 
 
 To begin with, there is Nicolas Indjema- 
 toured, twenty-two, a Greek, and a subject 
 of the Ottoman empire. He held a highly 
 
20 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 lucrative position, of which he was very 
 proud, in a bank at Constantinople, but when 
 the war broke out, he could not bear the 
 thought of being drawn into service with the 
 Germans against France, and did not hesi- 
 tate to give up his job. He would not even 
 see his old mother again, but made a will 
 providing for her with all his small store 
 of property, and sailed away as a stowaway 
 on a steamer which landed him at Marseilles. 
 He enlisted as a volunteer in the Legion and 
 was ordered here, where, however, soon after 
 his arrival, he received a serious finger 
 wound, and was sent to St. Dominic to be 
 cured. He explained his state of mind to 
 me with simplicity and emotion : 
 
 "You can understand, madame, how 
 ashamed I am, among all these brave men, 
 not to have done anything yet for France. 
 Luckily I can help Sister in serving them. 
 It's a great honour for me." 
 
 In the hospital room they all call him 
 "the little Greek." Night and day he holds 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 27 
 
 himself in readiness to do things for the in- 
 valids, whom he treats with touching con- 
 sideration, refusing doggedly to accept the 
 least remuneration from the management. 
 
 Boisset, a stubby little orderly of some 
 sixty years, is an old employee of the hos- 
 pital. An ex-pastry cook with no family, 
 he was operated on and cared for at the 
 hospital ten years ago. His case is one of 
 those mysterious stories of conversion that 
 work themselves out in secret near this cross- 
 shaped chapel, with its four great doors wide 
 open on the wards of suffering. 
 
 Boisset, once cured, begged permission not 
 to leave the hospital, "hoping," as he said, 
 "to consecrate my life to God in the service 
 of the poor wounded." 
 
 Do not his words recall those of the broth- 
 ers of St. Francis? Like them, Boisset has 
 summed up his whole life in these two words : 
 simplicity and heroism. He is at others' 
 service night and day, just as he desired to 
 be. The Sister calls him "her right arm," 
 
28 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 something at which he only half shows his 
 pride. He is the one that's called upon, with 
 never any fear of putting him out, if there's 
 anything to be done in the way of lifting 
 some fellow on whom a specially delicate 
 operation has been performed, or doing some 
 other difficult bit of duty. "Boisset, Bois- 
 set!" You get accustomed to hearing his 
 name called out each moment. And Boisset, 
 untiring, runs from one bed to the other, 
 with his mincing, weary step, incessantly. 
 In his moments of leisure he harks back to his 
 old trade, begging from the kitchen some 
 left-over bits of milk and whites of eggs, 
 with which he cooks up some sweet dishes 
 for his beloved patients, by whom they are 
 much appreciated. What strikes me espe- 
 cially in Boisset is his joyful spirit. This 
 man, who deliberately leads the hardest kind 
 of life, has a smile always on his lips, and 
 cheerfulness always in his heart. In the 
 little recess where he does the patients' dishes 
 you can hear him humming the canticles, es- 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 2Ç 
 
 pecially the magnificat, of which he is very 
 fond, as he confided to me, because it's the 
 song of joy. When I find myself with Bois- 
 set I always want to talk to him about 
 "Dame Poverty" and "Charity, her hand- 
 maiden." 
 
 Our third orderly, the Marquess of X, be- 
 longs to one of the greatest Italian families. 
 His mother was a French woman, and from 
 the very beginning of hostilities, "he felt," 
 as he put it, "the French blood boiling in his 
 veins." 
 
 He found a simple and admirable way of 
 doing something for his mother's country ac- 
 cordingly, by coming and putting himself at 
 the services of the wounded. He wanted "to 
 perform the humblest duties," he particu- 
 larly specified. He did each day, from 
 morning till night, very humble and some- 
 times repulsive duties, without apparently 
 recoiling from them. He is but one in the 
 nameless crowd of orderlies, yet the patients 
 very easily distinguish him from the others, 
 
30 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 and the consolation and care that he gives 
 them are specially sweet to them, because it 
 includes the admiration of a noble soul and 
 of a whole race for the French soldier. 
 
 The day he arrived, the. Marquess of X, 
 after making a tour of the wounded, came 
 up to me with tears in his eyes. 
 
 "What extraordinary reserves of energy 
 and heroism the French still have," he re- 
 marked to me, much moved. "To hear these 
 young fellows tell of the dangers they've 
 gone through, talking about sufferings, not 
 only without complaining of them, but 
 laughing about them, is 'the -finest part of it 
 all: " 
 
 WHEN THEY TALK 
 
 Sister Gabrielle accosted me this morn- 
 ing with a luminous smile: 
 
 "We shall certainly save Number 32's 
 leg. The work of disinfection is finished. 
 The flesh begins to form again over the 
 wound." 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 31 
 
 She is radiant. Such are her joys, the 
 only ones she asks of life. Nothing else ex- 
 ists, or ever will exist for her, and yet her 
 face is still young. Let us incline our heads 
 before such lives as hers! In a flash I un- 
 derstand whence comes the deep-seated af- 
 finity of soul that rules between Sister Ga- 
 brielle and our soldiers ; she has given as they 
 have given, everything, even themselves. 
 Only in her case, it is for always and under 
 all circumstances. I ask her what she thinks 
 of Number 3, who seems to me to be picking 
 up a bit. She shakes her head sadly. 
 
 "His parents are full of illusions about 
 him, but we can only prolong things for him, 
 with all our care." 
 
 Sad, oh, how sad! A little later Mother 
 Mèchin comes and talks to me in a low 
 voice about her son. 
 
 "Such a good boy, madame! He never 
 gave us one hour of trouble. He fought so 
 well, they say, and at home he was as gentle 
 as a girl. And he didn't drink or waste his 
 
32 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 money. Just imagine, he has saved up a 
 thousand francs, in little pieces, since he was 
 a child. We didn't want him to cut into 
 this money to go to the wars. We preferred 
 to go without things ourselves to fit him out, 
 and let him keep his little savings. He will 
 be very glad of it when he gets married." 
 Married ! Alas, poor boy ! A terrible spouse 
 is waiting for him, one who will not give 
 him up. But already he has marched before 
 her with as much courage as now perhaps he 
 guesses at her coming near. He is very 
 feeble, but he makes a sign that he would 
 like to speak to me. I bend over his bed, 
 and he whispers in my ear : 
 
 "I took communion this morning: I am 
 very glad." 
 
 I had just brought him a medal of the 
 Holy Virgin. He smiled with pleasure, and 
 I am moved to the bottom of my soul, see- 
 ing him kiss the medal and then place it on 
 his heart. 
 
 All this time we are making the acquaint- 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 33 
 
 ance of newer patients, as they are always 
 coming into this ward, which is reserved for 
 those that have undergone the most serious 
 operations. "One never has the consolation 
 of seeing them completely cured," Sister 
 Gabrielle warned me with a sigh. I stop a 
 moment before a little Turco, who took part 
 in the battle of the Aisne. Both his legs are 
 broken. His face stiffens with pain, and 
 now and then a groan escapes him, though it 
 is at once suppressed. He scolds himself 
 about it, and warns himself, or calls me to 
 witness, I am not sure which, when I hear 
 him murmuring: 
 
 "Just look! When you think of the ones 
 who stayed down there, ought you ever to 
 groan? We are happier here. It isn't 
 right." 
 
 Those who stayed down there! The im- 
 agination recoils before the picture evoked 
 by those simple words; those who stay be- 
 hind down there in the cold and the night, 
 under constant menace by the barbarian 
 
34 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 enemy, who stay to suffer agonies alone, to 
 die; to see their blood, without the help even 
 of a single bandage, flow from their broken 
 flesh and fall to the last drop upon the soil 
 of France. I remember the words of an- 
 other wounded soldier: 
 
 "After the battle, that day, you couldn't 
 hear yourselves talk any more in the trenches 
 for the cries of the wounded. It was like 
 one great uninterrupted wail. You could 
 make out appeals, prayers, calls for help, 
 women's names. Then, little by little, si- 
 lence came again, as a good many of them 
 died. What we heard sound longest on the 
 battlefield, from one end to the other, was 
 the word 'Mother!' It is always those who 
 are dying who call like that; we know that 
 well now." 
 
 Alas ! What do we not know now of the 
 many-sided anguish and horror of death! 
 We must certainly begin, like the little 
 Turco, to qualify as lucky the fellows whom 
 destiny delivers up to the hospital. And yet 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 35 
 
 how they suffer, even these. To physical tor- 
 ture is added too often the worst tortures of 
 the spirit. 
 
 "In the two months I've been away, not 
 one bit of news of my family has reached 
 me," a soldier told me, "except a despatch 
 announcing my father's death." 
 
 Another had lost a fifteen-year-old son, 
 whom he adored, two hours before his de- 
 parture. 
 
 "His body was still warm : my wife was as 
 if mad with sorrow." 
 
 They tell you these things without com- 
 plaint. France called them: it was quite 
 natural to answer her, to go to her out of 
 the midst of the greatest sorrows, the deepest 
 affections, the keenest happiness; sometimes, 
 like that young engineer there of twenty, 
 married eleven months ago to a girl of eigh- 
 teen, to tear yourself away from a whole ro- 
 mance! He had been rejected for defective 
 vision, but, and his wife agreed, he decided 
 this did not matter any more, now that 
 
36 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 mobilisation was under way, and that he 
 must go. Two days after the birth of a fine 
 boy — a future soldier, the mother said — he 
 left his life of ease and tenderness and re- 
 ported at the barracks as a simple soldier; 
 and he had been encouraged to do so by that 
 little Parisienne whom we should have 
 thought absorbed in nothing but society and 
 dress. 
 
 HOW THEY LOVE IN WAR TIME 
 
 You curse this frightful war with all the 
 instincts of your humanity, and yet, ten 
 times a day, nay, twenty, you cannot help 
 admiring the marvellous moral effects it pro- 
 duces. 
 
 "War is the scourge of God," the Scrip- 
 ture tells us. Indeed the scourge must come 
 even from God, its sufferings raise men's 
 souls to such heights, souls that otherwise 
 would have vegetated always in the 
 mediocrity of their personal interests and 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 37 
 
 narrow points of view or vulgar pas- 
 sions. It is the moral level of the whole na- 
 tion which rises, and has risen steadily, for 
 three months. 
 
 This morning I heard a soldier of twenty- 
 five, both his arms broken, ask an orderly 
 to whom he might dictate some letters. 
 
 "To the lady who comes each evening and 
 makes the rounds for the letter writers. My 
 poor old fellow, you'll have to send yours 
 that way, too." 
 
 "Very good, what difference does that 
 make to me 1 ?" 
 
 "Well, well," says the orderly with a sly 
 look, "that depends on whom you're writing 
 to." 
 
 The other shrugged his shoulders with a 
 movement of supreme disdain: 
 
 "Any other time I wouldn't say anything, 
 but at present, you see, it's different. In 
 times of war, one thinks of one's mother, and 
 that's all." 
 
 Oh, dolorous but holy times of war, which 
 
38 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 purify our youth, which summon up again 
 -all our effective faculties, passing them 
 through a new crucible, from which they 
 come out purified and nobly set ! Each one 
 of us, it seems to me, could enumerate a 
 certain number of acts and preoccupations in 
 his secret life that "don't exist any more in 
 times of war," if only, at the very least, be- 
 cause they were tinctured with futility or 
 unconscious egotism. 
 
 THEIR PRIDE 
 
 One doesn't enough realise how little our 
 soldiers ask for, and what pride they have. 
 I have learned it through my own experience. 
 At my first appearance some of them gave 
 me little commissions to do for them. 
 "Would you bring me a package of tobacco, 
 a tablet of chocolate?" Quickly they 
 searched for their purses under their pillows ; 
 but I naturally refused to take the money 
 — refused also to let them pay me back. 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 39 
 
 When this way of doing things became 
 known in the room the remedy was very 
 simple. They didn't ask me any more for 
 things. In vain I offered my services. I 
 succeeded only in getting refusals. 
 
 "Thank you very much, madame," they 
 would say; "we don't need anything." And 
 I used to see them, when they thought I 
 wasn't looking, giving their orders to those 
 male nurses who were the least under sus- 
 picion of generosity. I had to mend my 
 ways and promise to let myself be reim- 
 bursed henceforth, even though I made a few 
 little presents on my own account. 
 
 The wounded who had been stripped by 
 the Prussians on the battlefield and had 
 nothing left — nothing, not even a handker- 
 chief, not even two sous to buy a cigar with 
 — went without everything, stoically, rather 
 than express the least desire. They know 
 perfectly well that their requests would be 
 attended to in a hurry, but they know, too, 
 that people's needs are immense, and they 
 
4-0 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 think of others: always this school of war! 
 I saw one of them once who started to get 
 up and then sat there for hours without 
 budging, his feet kept stubbornly under the 
 bed. I learned finally from his neighbour 
 that he would willingly have walked off, but 
 that he hadn't any slippers, and didn't want 
 to go about in his bare feet, because people 
 would have given him a pair at once. 
 
 "Well, why didn't you say so*?" I asked 
 him, as I brought him some slippers. 
 
 "Oh, well, madame, we know there are 
 so many other comrades who need them, 
 too." 
 
 They want to have things given to all or 
 none. We have only to obey them and 
 work, work for France. 
 
 THE DEATH OF A SOLDIER 
 
 The little soldier Mèchin had a serious 
 hemorrhage in the night; he was in the op- 
 erating room when I arrived at the hospital 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 41 
 
 this morning. The Sister had sent his par- 
 ents to pray in the chapel, they explained to 
 me. The work of attending to the sick went 
 on as usual ; nothing must be allowed to stop 
 the movement of the wheels. Toward ten 
 o'clock I saw the litter coming back, borne 
 slowly and with infinite precautions. Sister 
 Gabrielle walked quite near it, and never 
 stopped repeating: "Gently, more gently 
 still." 
 
 The little soldier's face was as pale as a 
 corpse; his eyes, which seemed to have sunk 
 back in their orbits, were closed. When he 
 was lifted up to put him on the bed, the 
 shock, light as it was, brought on the su- 
 preme crisis. His breath, slow and scarcely 
 perceptible, quickened strangely. His can- 
 did blue eyes opened, dilated, immense, as if 
 looking for some one. 
 
 "He wants his parents," the Sister said to 
 me in a low voice. "Go and find them 
 quickly. It's the end." 
 
 In the quiet chapel that opened from the 
 
42 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 big wards, the poor Mèchins wept and 
 prayed. I called them. The mother clasped 
 her hands together, turning to me: 
 
 "The operation was successful, wasn't it, 
 madame ?" 
 
 Alas! I don't know, I fear not; but they 
 must come quickly. Their tears blind them ; 
 she can't see her steps; she stumbles, and I 
 have to give her my arm for support. 
 
 The moment she approaches her son she 
 recognises the shadow of death on his dear 
 face, and would have given a cry of sorrow, 
 but that Sister Gabrielle stops her, putting 
 a finger on her lips. Soldiers who die must 
 be surrounded by so great a peace. 
 
 "Here is your mother, here quite near to 
 you," says the calm voice of the Sister in 
 the ear of the dying man. "She embraces 
 you. Your father is here, too. And here is 
 the crucified One, Our Lord, here on your 
 
 Hps." y g i 
 
 The little soldier kisses the cross and 
 smiles at his mother; then his eyes, wide 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 43 
 
 open, and as if drawn by some invincible at- 
 traction, turn and fix themselves on the open 
 window opposite the bed, through which can 
 be seen the infinite depths of the sky. Noth- 
 ing again, till his last breath was drawn, 
 could make his gaze turn elsewhere. Where 
 have I already beheld a scene like this? I 
 remember — it was in Greece, at Athens, last 
 year. In the room of the tombs, a simple 
 and admirable funeral monument represents 
 death. A fine young man of twenty is stand- 
 ing ready to depart. His parents, their faces 
 torn with sorrow, stretch out their arms to 
 him, calling him, but he, so calm in the 
 purity of the white marble, his eyes as if 
 fascinated, looks fixedly, with all his 
 thought, into the distance, one knows not 
 where. As we passed this masterpiece, the 
 young Greek who was with me whispered to 
 me: 
 
 "Look at that boy there. He sees some- 
 thing else" 
 
 Our little soldier, too, seemed to see some- 
 
44 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 thing else. The chaplain gave him the 
 last blessings. The mysterious shore drew 
 nearer moment by moment. A deep silence, 
 solemnly calm and very moving, fell sud- 
 denly on the great room into which the ter- 
 rible visitor was so soon to penetrate; truly 
 he must die well, surrounded thus by his 
 comrades, upheld until the end by a Sister 
 of Charity. The wings of her white cornette 
 tremble above the young face in its last 
 agony. The Sister's voice, already a super- 
 natural one, is the last of this world's voices 
 that Private Mèchin is to hear. She says, 
 and he repeats slowly, the supreme invoca- 
 tion: "O God, receive me into Thy Para- 
 dise. Jesus, have mercy on me. Holy 
 Mother of God, pray for us in the hour of 
 our death." 
 
 It is over . . . the last breath exhales 
 gently. The young soldier's gaze is fixed 
 forever on the great light of God. Sister 
 Gabrielle gently closes his eyelids and places 
 the crucifix on the boy's heart. All is so 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 45 
 
 calm, so evangelical, that the parents them- 
 selves dare not weep. Ah, how truly he 
 spoke, the chaplain who wrote from the 
 front: "The soldiers of France die without 
 pain, like angels." 
 
 When the parents were led away for a 
 while Sister Gabrielle piously replaced the 
 sheet on the dead face, and said to me : 
 
 "This is the time for the patients' dinners. 
 If you will, we'll go and serve them, and 
 then we'll come back and lay out the body 
 of this poor lad here." 
 
 I look at her wonderingly; she is very 
 pale, and her eyes are full of unshed tears. 
 She busies herself with the necessities of 
 them all, with her usual clear-headedness. 
 Have they already broken with everything 
 of earth, these Sisters, lifted themselves for 
 good above the most pardonable frailty? 
 
46 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 THE FUNERAL 
 
 This morning the burial of Private 
 Mèchin took place. The modest procession 
 assembled in the temporary burial court, a 
 solitary enclosure planted with solemn 
 pines, not lacking in poetry in spite of its 
 tragic name. The body lay in the white 
 chapel quite hidden beneath the trees. At 
 the moment of raising the coffin, the com- 
 mand, "Present arms!" sounded outside. 
 The remains passed through the midst of 
 comrades, their guns in their arms, who sa- 
 luted before escorting them as far as the 
 cemetery, the muzzles lowered in sign of 
 mourning. The words, "Heroism" and 
 "Our Country" showed in white letters on 
 the black pall, whereon our three colours had 
 been thrown. 
 
 "It's a soldier! It's a soldier!" 
 The further the procession passed the 
 greater grew the crowd of strangers, who fol- 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 47 
 
 lowed weeping. A soldier! That touched 
 every one. Everybody asked himself, 
 "Where is my own now?" For our army, 
 that serene and magnificent army, is built 
 chiefly on the wreck of the most intimate 
 happinesses, the profoundest feelings of ten- 
 derness in those that are left behind. And 
 yet to-day this reaction upon oneself, con- 
 trary to the usual course of things, only 
 begets a more vivid compassion toward these 
 poor parents. They have taken each other's 
 arms, according to their native habit. The 
 mother has covered her white headdress with 
 crepe. The crowd keeps at a respectful dis- 
 tance from them, and they show out in full 
 view, bent by age and sorrow, lamentable, 
 leaning on each other, as they follow the 
 body of their child, so young a body to go 
 to its last resting place, surrounded by the 
 military and blooming with flags. On Fa- 
 ther Mèchin's account they have called out 
 the veterans of '70, and the oldest of them 
 pronounced a simple and earnest discourse 
 
48 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 over the lad's grave, "which his comrades 
 shall avenge," he says. A tri-coloured rib- 
 bon is tied to the wooden cross that marks 
 the new grave; other ribbons like it are at- 
 tached to the other crosses roundabout. 
 
 When they leave the cemetery the par- 
 ents are led away by people they don't even 
 know, who want to save them from the 
 dreariness of an inn at such a time. 
 
 "Let us do it for you. Do!" they say; 
 "our boys, too, are down there; we can guess 
 what it must mean to you." 
 
 Father Mèchin's sorrow is momentarily 
 alleviated by so much honour and sympathy. 
 He weeps, but also he goes over his old cam- 
 paign with these new friends, while the 
 mother follows mechanically, seeing and un- 
 derstanding nothing. Her head is bent, and 
 she can talk only of her son, in a kind of 
 dolorous soliloquy. I hear her murmur: 
 
 "My dear little well-beloved son. I 
 shan't leave you so far away from us. 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 49 
 
 When the war is over I'll come back and find 
 you again; I'll keep your money and have a 
 pretty little monument made for you, and 
 when I have time I'll come and find you. I 
 shall always be with you, always. ..." 
 
 She disappears, and I think of so many 
 other mothers in the cities and villages of 
 France suffering this same martyrdom each 
 day. But our young soldiers' graves are 
 sepulchres that teem with life: France will 
 come forth from them, stronger and greater, 
 fecundated by so much blood and tears. 
 
 A JUST REFLECTION 
 
 When the work in the room by any 
 chance leaves a few moments' leisure, we 
 naturally chat a little with the soldiers. M. 
 de Man found comfort in their talks that he 
 could not find anywhere else, he wrote. 
 What a school, indeed! Their simple re- 
 citals, quite impregnated with heroism and 
 
50- IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 sorrow, follow one another from bed to bed 
 with an admirable monotony, in the tenor 
 of which France may well glory. 
 
 One of our young wounded talked to me 
 about the bearing of the Germans under 
 fire: 
 
 "They stand up well under the grape- 
 shot," explained this veteran of twenty, who 
 had sacrificed an arm for France. "They 
 know besides that if they fall back they will 
 be shot, even more surely than if they go 
 forward. But in separate engagements, in 
 hand-to-hand fighting, or when they are 
 taken by surprise and have no officers over 
 them, they surrender immediately." 
 
 And with a perfectly incommunicable tone 
 of disdain, he concluded : 
 
 "You see, it's not the way it is with us; 
 they're fellows who don't know how to get 
 killed for nothing." 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 51 
 
 A SIMPLE STORY 
 
 I set down here, just as I heard it, with- 
 out running the risk of spoiling it by per- 
 sonal reflections, the admirable story of the 
 little Turco with the broken legs, whom I 
 questioned about his adventures. 
 
 "In war one naturally mustn't expect to 
 get too much to eat; but I'm certain we've 
 had our full share of suffering on that score. 
 The worst time was in the Argonne once. 
 For three days and a half we hadn't touched 
 a thing: you really began to feel yourself 
 disappear. My lieutenant, whom we liked, 
 a fellow who knew how to march, I can tell 
 you, got us together and asked : 
 
 " 'Who has any rations in reserve 1 ?' 
 
 "No one answered, because to tell the 
 truth, if we had any, it was a temptation to 
 save it for yourself. Finally I made up my 
 mind. I said, 'I've a can of "monkey- 
 meat," lieutenant. Here it is.' 
 
$2 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 "Three others, too, after me, gave up their 
 tins. 
 
 " 'I've got one, too,' said the lieutenant. 
 Til give it to you, as well as this bread that 
 I've saved. There are twenty of you: you 
 will divide each tin in four parts and eat it, 
 with a little piece of bread for each. It isn't 
 much, but it will sustain you a while longer.' 
 
 "While the men were doing as he said and 
 making the division, the lieutenant went off 
 a little way and sat down by himself. He 
 even put his head in his hands, and I real- 
 ised that it was so he shouldn't see us eat. 
 He was pale as pale; I went and stood be- 
 fore him and presented arms. 
 
 " 'Well, what more do you want?' he 
 asked impatiently. 
 
 " 'Excuse me, lieutenant, but you counted 
 up all wrong; we're not twenty.' 
 
 " 'How do you mean — not twenty?' 
 
 " 'No, lieutenant, we're twenty-one, and 
 I'll not touch this portion unless you'll take 
 half.' 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 53 
 
 "The officers have lots of feeling some- 
 times; it's extraordinary. I saw large tears 
 on my lieutenant's face, yet he wouldn't ac- 
 cept it from me. That was a little too much 
 for me, I can tell you. But when he saw 
 that he was making me furious, and that in 
 truth, as I had told him (for I am pig- 
 headed) I would not eat anything, he 
 changed his mind abruptly, and said to me : 
 
 "'Sit down there. Thanks. We'll eat 
 together.' 
 
 "Imagine if I was not proud to sit there 
 at mess with my lieutenant !" 
 
 COMRADES 
 
 I stop before Number 67, a vigorous co- 
 lonial, who took part in an heroic charge. 
 He received four balls in the legs and was 
 left on the battlefield, when two Prussians 
 came and robbed him, saying cynically: 
 "We won't kill you if you'll let us take 
 everything and not cry out." 
 
54 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 Your money or your life — "highway rob- 
 bers" — one title more to give those who al- 
 ready are called assassins of priests and 
 women and children, burners of churches. 
 After these cowardly thieves had gone, the 
 French soldier worked himself by his elbows 
 as far as a rather isolated cabin, where he 
 found five other comrades still more gravely 
 wounded than himself. They lived there 
 four days, weak from loss of blood, trem- 
 bling with fever. Each evening, under cover 
 of the darkness, the colonial left the house, 
 crawling. He used to go and shake the ap- 
 ple trees in the garden and bring back to his 
 comrades any apples that he had succeeded 
 in shaking down. They had only rain water 
 to drink. Finally, when two of the wounded 
 seemed like to die, the soldier I speak of 
 took upon himself the task of going out in 
 search of help. 
 
 "I said to the others," he told me, " Tf 
 no one comes, my friends, you'll know that 
 I've got my reckoning.' Then I slipped out 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL $$ 
 
 in the wood. I met two Prussian sentinels, 
 and I stayed two hours stock still, waiting 
 until they should be asleep or go away a lit- 
 tle distance; then I went on again. I must 
 have made six kilometres before I found a 
 French soldier again, and how many times 
 I felt as if I could not go another inch ! My 
 arms stuck in the mud, or caught themselves 
 in the brambles. I'd hardly strength left 
 to work them free. Oh, it's not so easy to 
 manage without legs Î And then I must say 
 really, for four days, I'd had nothing but 
 green apples and water in my stomach. But 
 at last they succeeded in saving my com- 
 rades; that was the main thing." 
 
 He laughed several times quite carelessly 
 in telling me this tragic story; but his face 
 was serious and moved when he mentioned 
 "the comrades." One cannot help seeing 
 how much this word means to them. 
 
 "I must say that we were happy every- 
 where with the comrades," concluded 
 Number 10 in finishing the story of priva- 
 
56 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 tions and hardship that he had endured. 
 
 Another time I was passing some fruit to 
 one of them, who reached out to take it 
 eagerly — for they were not spoiled in the 
 matter of desserts — then stopped himself 
 suddenly : "It would be better if you passed 
 it round first among the comrades, madame," 
 he said. "There might be some of them 
 sicker than I am. I'll take some if there's 
 any left." 
 
 A young soldier told me the story of the 
 
 retreat, alas, from D : "We had to run 
 
 steadily for four days and five nights, never 
 stopping more than five minutes at a time. 
 The Germans were so near us that we could 
 not hear our commands for the whistling of 
 their bullets, and our officers had to give 
 their orders by motions. I was as well off 
 as any one could be, for I can run fast. All 
 of a sudden the man next me got wounded 
 in the foot, and fell, crying out 'Help !' Of 
 course I couldn't leave him there to be taken 
 by the Boches. Two of us grabbed him 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 57 
 
 by the shoulders and dragged him along with 
 us. But from that moment it was much 
 more difficult for us to get ahead. To tell 
 the truth, some spirit must have been watch- 
 ing over us, or we never should have gotten 
 out at all." 
 
 Some spirit watching over them! Does 
 not the victorious, invisible shadow of the 
 warrior saint escort our armies? "Sword 
 in hand, eyes alight, France in their hearts" 
 — always as it used to be. 
 
 One needs no excuse to congratulate our 
 soldiers on their devotion to their "chums." 
 It's quite natural that they should help each 
 other, isn't it— under the fire of the Ger- 
 mans, as much as in their villages— more, 
 much more than in the villages;— for under 
 the fire of the Germans, the egotism of every 
 day, the absorbing preoccupations and self- 
 interests of daily life, disappear, and nothing 
 is left to them but the noblest traits of the 
 French character. That character is capable 
 of running the supremest risks for the sake 
 
58 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 of comradeship that may have seemed a lit- 
 tle vulgar before, but which is now saintly 
 and heroic. 
 
 Perhaps the most elevated phase of this 
 character, and at the same time the most pro- 
 foundly human one, shows in this other story 
 by the same soldier: 
 
 "One day the Boches were in flight," he 
 said. "We were pursuing them with the 
 bayonet in some woods. I had my eyes on 
 one of them particularly. He was fat and 
 heavy and was getting tangled up all the 
 time, while as for me, I jumped easily over 
 obstacles. (Do you see this image of the 
 two races'?) I caught him up at last, and 
 with one lunge buried my bayonet in his 
 back. It pierced him clear through. Oh, I 
 felt badly: it was the first — the first man 
 ever, I hope you believe me, that I had killed 
 with my own hand. I was looking round 
 for a second when I heard something stirring 
 in a thicket. I threw myself at it, my bayo- 
 net fixed; but a dying, wailing voice cried at 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 59 
 
 me: 'Comrade! Comrade of France." 
 Now this is a word, as we know perfectly- 
 well, that is often used as a trick; but what 
 can you do? When they call you comrade 
 like that, it's impossible, you can't make up 
 your mind to kill them. This time I did 
 right. It was really a dying man, dying in 
 agony even, I'm quite sure. He held out his 
 hands to me and they were already cold. I 
 shook them and called him too, 'Comrade.' 
 Then I yelled to a quarter-master sergeant 
 to give him a drink. Myself I preferred to 
 go on and not wait. France comes first — 
 doesn't it?" 
 
 What moves you most when you hear 
 such stories, what forces the tears into your 
 eyes, is the touching lack of self -conscious- 
 ness in these lads. They were so far from 
 thoughts of war three months ago, yet now 
 to-day they speak quite naturally the lan- 
 guage of epic poetry. France is forever the 
 land of miracles. . . . 
 
ÔO IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 ENGAGED 
 
 I know now whence comes that expres- 
 sion of secret joy, that reflection of inner 
 light that glows on the face of Number 17, 
 even when his suffering is the most cruel. I 
 ought not perhaps to say it, for it's a sweet 
 secret that has been confided to me, but Num- 
 ber 17's engaged. Oh, how this Marie of 
 his, this rustic inhabitant of our mountains, 
 is beloved ! I think few women can ever have 
 received letters more touching, or more filled 
 with deep and delicate tenderness than hers. 
 These letters indeed are Pierre's main occu- 
 pation now. He takes advantage of his pos- 
 tal frank and writes two of them each day. 
 He really has to make up for lost time, hasn't 
 he? The soldiers knew how to deny them- 
 selves the thoughts — such tender thoughts 
 — of their Maries during their hard cam- 
 paigning, and this fiancé, too, though his 
 heart was full of love, became in duty bound 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 6l 
 
 a terrible warrior, a dealer of death. But, 
 at present, on his hospital bed, where there 
 is nothing to do but suffer, let the dear 
 thought of her, full as it is of sweetness and 
 promise, come back to him. Let it come 
 back! Every thought is for her, and he in- 
 deed is veritably hers. For him Marie's 
 shadow is always there; she is part of the 
 least scene, the greyest hours of this hos- 
 pital life. He declared to me — in a low 
 voice, as always when he speaks of her — 
 that he never gets tired of her. "Even when 
 I don't write to her I think of her." For 
 he can't be distracted from her a single min- 
 ute; in one way or another he must occupy 
 himself with the thought of her always. 
 Truly a rare sentiment blossoms in this hon- 
 est and simple heart that has given itself 
 so profoundly. Many fine ladies perhaps 
 might envy Marie, and Marie, later, if she 
 can understand, will thank the terrible war 
 that has made her cry so hard. She will not 
 marry a simple peasant now, but a hero, one 
 
62 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 of those, to be sure, who were "French by 
 first choice," to use the fine expression of 
 Mr. Barres. Despite the obscure way of life 
 to which this young man will go back, it 
 will always be true that his actions, at a 
 given moment, might have inspired Virgil 
 or Homer. In all ranks of society the sad 
 betrothed women of to-day will be very 
 proud on the day the soldiers shall come 
 home. I know some of them already who, 
 though living yet in this uncertain, menac- 
 ing hour of peril, bring a valiant coquetry 
 into play. It's very touching to see the 
 youth of France, at an age when happiness 
 is their right, rise so easily to such heights 
 of sacrifice. But patience! They will be 
 paid back too in happiness. The day of 
 home-coming will strike deep into their in- 
 most hearts. Separated by death's danger, 
 their beings will stir anew for one an- 
 other with never-to-be-forgotten sentiments. 
 Their affections, steeped in this fortifying 
 bath of heroism and renunciation, will 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 63 
 
 spring up again enriched with devotion and 
 deeper tenderness. Number 17 feels this, 
 when he writes to his dear Marie: "You 
 see, Marie, I loved you a great deal; but I 
 think that I should not have known, except 
 for the war, how to love you the way I do 
 now." There is never a questionable ex- 
 pression or gross allusion in these soldier's 
 letters written by a farmer's son. Each one 
 repeats the same rather naïve expressions of 
 tenderness. He puts them in every time 
 without ever varying them. It is true in 
 this way monotony becomes a quality. You 
 feel the extreme pleasure that Pierre under- 
 goes in writing his sweetheart's name as 
 often as possible: "My dear love, I re- 
 ceived your letter yesterday with such great 
 pleasure. I believed you had forgotten 
 me. And then I said to myself, Or she is 
 sick, or she has had too much to do for the 
 wounded. Dear Marie, you tell me you'd 
 like to be near me so as to take care of me. 
 Oh, how glad I should be if you could come ; 
 
64 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 if I could see you there near my bed, like 
 the Sister. And we'd talk of the old times." 
 (He is twenty- three and she twenty-one: it's 
 true they've been engaged five years.) 
 "Thank you for the photograph; your sister 
 is carrying out her promise very well. You'd 
 think it was one of the pictures you see in 
 the illustrated magazines. You must ex- 
 cuse me, please, if my letters are badly writ- 
 ten — in bed, you know, it isn't so easy to 
 write. You, oh, indeed, you write very 
 well! It's a pleasure to read your letters. 
 Follow your own ideas about the muffler; 
 what you like will always please me. 
 Marie, I long to hear more news still from 
 you. It seems to me I can read your next 
 letter already. Make it a very long one, so 
 I have to take two hours to read it. And 
 that piece of a rose from your house that 
 you sent me! Marie! 
 
 "My dear beloved one, I should like to 
 write you long, interesting letters, the way 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 65 
 
 you write me, but I see nothing here in bed. 
 My foot continues to enjoy good health, 
 better and better all the time. You think I 
 suffered, but that's nothing, as long as I 
 can walk, and haven't got to tell you, 'Marie, 
 I'm infirm; I can't support a wife; we can't 
 think of getting married any more.' Oh, if 
 I'd had to talk to you like that — think a bit, 
 Marie ! I can assure you that I never cried 
 down there, but that I've cried more than 
 once in my bed thinking of that. However, 
 I'd have said it to you just the same, for I 
 should not have wanted you to live in pov- 
 erty on my account. 
 
 "When I received your letter yesterday at 
 four o'clock, Sister Gabrielle was near my 
 bed, and so I showed it to her, and she said 
 to me, 'You must be very happy; she's writ- 
 ten you a long one.' I answered her : 'She 
 always writes me like that !' She told me to 
 send you her kind regards, and to say that 
 you are very good. You write me that you 
 
66 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 are well again; I hope it's really true. Take 
 care now. It's very cold. Above all things, 
 you mustn't be sick. 
 
 "You ask me how many there are in my 
 room? Sixty-five and the oldest of them is 
 twenty-nine. Don't distress yourself. I'll 
 get well, and in a little while we shall be 
 together again. What a happy day that will 
 be for us, Marie! I can't believe it. At 
 night, when I can't sleep, I say to myself 
 quite low: 
 
 " 'I shall see her soon, I shall see her soon !' 
 And sometimes I am sorry to see the daylight 
 come, because then it isn't so quiet, and I 
 am less at peace to think of you. When we 
 two are alone I'll tell you what I suffered, 
 and you'll tell me it's impossible. Never- 
 theless it's true; but it isn't worth while 
 talking about it yet. You ask if I had for- 
 gotten you; you know well I hadn't, only 
 duty must be done. Even if I wanted to 
 forget you, Marie, my heart couldn't do it, 
 because I love you. 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 67 
 
 "You tell me it gives you pleasure to 
 write me long letters, to keep me happy; 
 and I, oh, I'm so happy when I read them. 
 I see you always have things to tell me. 
 That shows me that you think with me^ and 
 I can say, too, that I always think with you. 
 You tell me that you dreamed about me. I, 
 — well, five nights ago I dreamed about you, 
 and I didn't dare write you about it. I see 
 that you tell me and so I'll tell you, too. 
 Marie, you know what dreams mean? Do 
 you want me to tell you*? Each day I read 
 your letters two and three times; that way I 
 know them almost by heart, for the night, 
 when there isn't enough light to read by. 
 Soon there will come the happiness of seeing 
 each other again, dear well-beloved. Still 
 another time, I love you, Marie." 
 
 SEEN AT THE RAILWAY STATION 
 
 During the mobilisation the railway sta- 
 tion at X was the scene of many laud- 
 
68 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 able and quite special instances of devotion. 
 People sat up there day and night to wait 
 for the trains of soldiers and revictual 
 them. Orders came in every minute, by 
 telephone, by telegraph, brief orders such as 
 these: "Coffee for five hundred soldiers in 
 two hours; sixty dinners for this evening; 
 new dressings for a sanitary train," etc., etc. 
 A society woman, serving as improvised cook 
 and hospital nurse, executed most of these 
 curt and various directions, and never even 
 thought of being tired. Her devoted spirit 
 found a way to cope with all the miscel- 
 laneous tasks that the exigencies of the sta- 
 tion gave rise to. Like a true general of 
 France, she cleverly made the most of the 
 zeal with which those about her stood ready 
 to see her orders carried out. What curious 
 things passed on all around her! What in- 
 teresting personages filed through the little 
 room — infirmary and kitchen in one — which 
 was now her realm ! They presented to me 
 there one day, a good-looking young dragoon 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 69 
 
 who was on his way back to the front for 
 the third time. Each time he came back he 
 took every precaution, before he was fairly 
 cured even, to see that he should be sent out 
 again. His seventeenth scar was just heal- 
 ing. When he gave out this figure some 
 one cried: "But he's not a man; he's a 
 skimmer." He joined in the other's amuse- 
 ment with his clear French laugh, but said: 
 
 "Just the same, how would you like to 
 get seventeen holes shot in you like this and 
 then be treated like a skimmer 1 ?" 
 
 One of the most interesting moments at 
 the station was that in which the following 
 episode took place. A sanitary train filled 
 with wounded arrived unexpectedly. They 
 were severe cases all, two hundred of them 
 unable to sit up. They needed re victualing, 
 but at the preceding station only bread and 
 cheese had been given them — an extraordi- 
 nary diet for people with fever, on the point 
 of undergoing operations! But there was 
 nothing else to give and they had accepted it, 
 
70 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 in the best spirit. Diplomacy had to be used 
 indeed to get these dangerous provisions away 
 from them. They all protested — which was 
 natural, for they had had nothing for many 
 hours. They asked for milk and it was 
 promised to them — most imprudently. The 
 station master, who was undergoing days of 
 real distress, had, as a matter of fact, only 
 one jug of milk. One jug for five hundred 
 invalids, and the train stopping for only half 
 an hour! It was actually a physical impos- 
 sibility to go to town and back in the half 
 hour's time. What was to be done? People 
 got together. People discussed the situation. 
 Now it happened that opposite the convoy 
 of wounded, a cattle train was stationed, due 
 to start in a moment in the opposite direc- 
 tion. There was one car full of cows, their 
 good old heads looking so peaceful in these 
 warlike times as they kept clumsily trying to 
 thrust themselves through the openings, but 
 never quite succeeded in doing so. The good 
 herdsman, a native of our mountain heights, 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 71 
 
 blue-bloused, a big stick in his hand, came 
 up and bowed awkwardly. 
 
 "They're French, you know," he said, 
 pointing to his beasts, "and they'll gladly 
 give up their milk for the wounded sol- 
 diers." 
 
 His suggestion was received with acclama- 
 tion. Everybody began to milk, and the 
 spectacle of these improvised milkmen and 
 milkmaids made our dear wounded men 
 laugh. Well, it was not without its pic- 
 turesqueness, after all. More than fifty jugs 
 of milk were distributed in this way. It was 
 really what one might call a providential 
 revictualling. 
 
 A FIRST COMMUNION 
 
 In Sister Gabrielle's room one of the pa- 
 tients was a kind of Apache, forty years old, 
 a fighter with a most suspicious past, suffer- 
 ing from a horrible wound in the right arm. 
 After the severe operation that he had had 
 
72 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 to submit to, we all saw him awaken out 
 of a veritable crisis of madness, due to a 
 state of habitual alcoholism. He was ap- 
 parently bent on strangling the unfortunate 
 interne who attended him, who would hardly 
 have gotten safely out of it all without a 
 bad wound, if the Sister had not thrown 
 herself between them just in time. I must 
 confess that the spectacle of this half-naked 
 man, his body tattooed all over with 
 women's pictures, drivelling, yelling and 
 threateningly waving his bloodstained arms, 
 was most impressive and repugnant. 
 
 "You, Sister, I don't wish you any harm," 
 he howled in his revolutionary way; "you 
 are a benefactress of humanity; but not to 
 be able to strangle this man, here, I who 
 have stabbed people in all the cross-roads of 
 Paris, who have killed policemen with my 
 hands," etc., etc. And the Sister answered 
 with her unvarying sweetness, "Your arm is 
 very bad, my boy. You must lie down and 
 keep quiet. I'm going to give you a drink, 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 73 
 
 and I shall stay now near by you. Come, 
 now, be good." 
 
 The Apache, who was so called even by 
 the comrades, remained for a time a truly 
 terrible patient. He never thanked anyone 
 for the care that was taken of him, and 
 never omitted to sneer at prayers. He called 
 us sometimes to his bedside from the most 
 pressing business, solely to say to us : 
 
 "You know I don't believe in your good 
 God." Orders were given by Sister Gabrielle 
 never to make any answer to him, and to be 
 just as scrupulously attentive to him as to 
 the other wounded. 
 
 Well, after a while our Apache, becom- 
 ing little by little quieter and more polite, 
 asked one day, in tears, if they wouldn't be 
 so kind as to give him a catechism and some 
 instruction in religion, that Catholic religion, 
 that he had always attacked without any 
 understanding of it. Last Sunday he made 
 his first communion with touching fervour. 
 So much for religious ceremonies in wartime. 
 
74 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 CONVERSATION AS IT IS TO-DAY 
 
 There's no useless visiting, no wasted 
 time now in France. When one steals an 
 hour from work to go and see one's friends 
 it's only to find that glory has just touched 
 them in some way^-joy or sorrow. Women 
 struck down by the most cruel grief — wives 
 whose homes and hearts are broken forever; 
 mothers who have felt their own blood flow 
 away in the veins of their sons, and some 
 part of their own lives extinguished in the 
 last breath of these so dear lives — even such 
 as these don't recognise the right to remain 
 long idle. They hide their tears beneath 
 their crepe and busy themselves doing things 
 for the comrades of those who will never 
 come back again. The thought of the war 
 follows them in all these glorious tasks. 
 Everything centres in "the front" hence- 
 forth : sadness, happiness, hope, courage ; and 
 all of our tenderness and compassion, all 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 75 
 
 our labours, go back there too. Our souls 
 yearn toward those moving frontiers, those 
 frontiers that are no longer composed of ma- 
 terial French earth only, but of living 
 Frenchmen, pressing forward, all the time. 
 One doesn't talk any longer except of these 
 big things. Last week at a big military clinic 
 I went to see a young officer who had come 
 back from the front for the second time, 
 afflicted with a new wound, as he called it, 
 and even with an old one yet, in spite of 
 which he was insisting on going back too 
 soon. There was quite a reunion there, and 
 quite a good deal of talk and chat. At an- 
 other time my arrival would have discon- 
 certed them, but now their conversation was 
 far removed from smoking room talk and 
 dubious subjects. Young men and old, 
 women and children, we could plainly read 
 the thought of France in one another's eyes. 
 Ah, beloved land, fated forever to unprece- 
 dented adventures in the realm of morals as 
 in that of glory, miraculous France of 1914, 
 
76 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 who smilingly, despite the blood and tears, 
 hears but a single rhythm beating in the re- 
 united hearts of all her children ! At certain 
 moments one feels such a glow of happiness 
 at having her for one's native land that one 
 simply must speak out about it. French, 
 French — one is no longer surfeited with this 
 word nowadays. That is certainly the view 
 of the young officers, with their silent en- 
 thusiasm. They were talking of "Her" 
 steadily, when I came in. One of them was 
 reading, from his war diary, a very interest- 
 ing account of the battle of the Marne, of 
 which I heard the following passage : 
 
 "When General M took command of 
 
 his troops he could see at once that their 
 morale had suffered severely in the successive 
 movements of retreat. The day when he 
 ordered the offensive, that had now to be 
 maintained at any price, the soldiers, down 
 in their trenches, without absolutely refusing 
 to obey him, couldn't make up their minds 
 to budge, but lay there murmuring sullenly : 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 77 
 
 'They whistle so, General, the bullets whis- 
 tle so.' With that General M began 
 
 to cast about him for some means, not to 
 terrify them in the German manner, but to 
 awaken the old careless French bravado in 
 their better selves. This was what he did: 
 he climbed up alone on the edge of the 
 trenches in the bottom of which the soldiers 
 lay. He stood there upright for ten minutes. 
 He was literally enveloped in a hurricane 
 of bullets and shrapnel, but God willed that 
 he should step down again safe and sound. 
 As he did so he remarked simply: 'They 
 whistle, boys, but, as you see, they don't hurt 
 you: they're harmless.' Since then orders 
 have been issued to our officers not to expose 
 themselves needlessly: their lives* are too 
 precious to us. But this act of sublime 
 French folly so electrified the men of this 
 regiment that it made them invincible." 
 
 The other day, in an admirably French 
 drawing-room, some one who knew this hero 
 himself, recalled a will written in one line 
 
78 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 and found by an unhappy father, Monsieur 
 I , on his son's body: "If we are vic- 
 torious, I beg my parents not to put on 
 mourning for me." To what heights of for- 
 getfulness of everything that is not "Hers" 
 can they not climb Ï Verily, verily, they love 
 her as one can only love at twenty years — 
 with no reserves — with all their youth. 
 
 A SOLDIER'S COMPLIMENT AND 
 SONG 
 
 r 
 
 I found myself once in a convalescent 
 home at the hour when the Prefect had come 
 to visit the wounded. After the customary 
 distribution of cigarettes, one soldier, with 
 his arm in a sling, rose, and amidst general 
 emotion delivered the following compli- 
 mentary speech: 
 
 "Madame, in the name of my comrades, 
 will you permit me to thank you for your 
 amiable visit, and the presents that you spoil 
 us with so? We are surrounded here with 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 79 
 
 such devoted care that our wounds heal as 
 if by magic. Will you kindly express to the 
 Prefect our patriotic sentiments, and tell him 
 how proud we are to have had the honour 
 of shedding our blood for France? Tell him 
 of our ardent desire to return soon and take 
 our places in the battle front among our com- 
 rades ; to chase these cursed, sanguinary, dev- 
 astating Teutons away forever from our 
 country's soil." 
 
 That's what our soldiers are. The mo- 
 ment they find themselves in the presence of 
 some one who stands a little for the authority 
 of France, they feel the need of putting into 
 words their eager desire for victory at all 
 costs, as if they talked to France herself, and 
 renewed to her the offer of their lives in 
 sacrifice. You ought really to see the ex- 
 pression of their faces, the tears of energy 
 and resolution that burn in their eyes, while 
 the most lettered of the band speaks up for 
 them. A moment later, as I looked at the 
 good stove which warmed the room, and 
 
80 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 round which they spent the pleasant hours of 
 their well-earned convalescence, some one re- 
 marked dreamily: 
 
 "You don't think of the trenches any 
 more here, do you*?" 
 
 An indignant protest rose on all sides: 
 "Don't think any more about the trenches'? 
 Why, that's as much as to say that's all you 
 do think of ! How could you forget the com- 
 rades, with their feet freezing down there, 
 while we warm ourselves here?" 
 
 The ward nurse told us there was a little 
 infantryman among the wounded here who 
 had a very pretty voice and knew a lot of 
 songs. Immediately he was asked to give us 
 one. The request made him very unhappy : 
 he was not afraid to sing at the front before 
 the Boches, but here really he did not dare. 
 One entreaty made to him gave good reasons 
 for our persistence. "Oh, please sing, we 
 beg you to sing. They'll always sound so 
 fine now — soldiers' songs." He sang, and his 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 8l 
 
 young male voice made our hearts quiver 
 with an emotion that no great artist could 
 ever have given us with a song profane. 
 For to him his song was a sacred thing. Just 
 imagine the scene for yourself. We are in 
 the year 1914, and he is a French soldier. 
 From outside gay trumpet calls come in, 
 those same calls perhaps that in certain places 
 at the front summon men forth to die. Imag- 
 ine that there is an audience of women, all 
 whose tender thoughts go down there, and 
 thirty wounded comrades who are getting 
 ready like him to return to the firing line. 
 Imagine this, and then think how his voice 
 must stir them with his soldier's song: 
 
 Soldiers brave, companions hardy, 
 Lo, the glorious day is here. 
 Hark ye now the clarion calling, 
 Presaging your victory near. 
 Fly, intrepid soldiers all! 
 France is up, and watching there. 
 When the sounds of combat call, 
 In the vanguard do and dare. 
 
82 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 REFRAIN 
 
 Forward, forward, brave battalions, 
 Jealous of our freedom be. 
 If the enemy comes near us, 
 Forward, forward and advance: 
 Death to the enemies of France. 
 
 When your rapid foot and true, 
 Skims the soil and scales the height, 
 One would think across the blue 
 Eagles from the peaks took flight. 
 In the vortex black you fly; 
 Sometimes, unseen hounds of war, 
 In the plough-share's path you lie, 
 Rising fiercer than before. 
 
 Heroes valiant and inspired, 
 All the world our fathers won; 
 And this world regenerate, 
 Fecund is with every son. 
 Noble grandsires, rest in peace; 
 Sleep within each august grave, 
 France can count upon us now, 
 Sons shall worthy prove and brave. 
 
 Caught and stricken to the heart, 
 Mortal wounds, O France, you feel. 
 On your bruised, blood-stained breast, 
 Stamps the conqueror's brutal heel. 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 83 
 
 France, O France, lift up your head, 
 From your face wash off the stain, 
 Soon the dead our tread shall waken, 
 Of Alsace and of Lorraine. 
 
 ALWAYS SUFFERING 
 
 Always and incessantly one returns to the 
 subject of their sufferings. What an accu- 
 mulation of sorrows, tragically varied, 
 weighs down our unfortunate land ! Into Sis- 
 ter Gabrielle's room to-day there came with 
 radiant faces, a father and mother who had 
 journeyed from the depths of the Corrèze — 
 more than four hundred kilometres — in the 
 sure belief that they should find with us their 
 only son, from whom they had had no news 
 for almost three months. By a cruel chance 
 his exact name and regiment were those of 
 another soldier, who was indeed here, and 
 figured in the lists published by St. Dominic's 
 Hospital. The unhappy parents, arriving 
 full of joy, were confronted with a stranger's 
 face. The group around his bed was heart- 
 
84 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 rending. The young soldier who was the 
 involuntary cause of this unutterable decep- 
 tion wept with the father and mother. 
 
 YOUNG RECRUITS AND TERRI- 
 TORIALS 
 
 At the beginning of the war one saw going 
 out as our defenders, and coming back 
 wounded, only the "little young ones" among 
 our soldiers. Oh, these little young, how 
 sympathetic and winning they were, with 
 their irresistible gaiety in the face of every- 
 thing, their bravado, their fine carelessness 
 of life. By their side now a graver sacrifice 
 is being made, one that is sadder and more 
 conscious of itself, namely, that of the men 
 no longer young, who have had to leave a 
 wife and children, a home of which they 
 were the support. Such as these lived tran- 
 quilly, far from the movement of troops ; less 
 than any one did they dream of war ; and in 
 truth one must needs admire them the more 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 85 
 
 for rising to such heights of sacrifice. In 
 several places at the front people said their 
 service had insured success. At the hospital 
 I saw them suffer, die, alas, as veritable 
 heroes of France, and I lost that slight ten- 
 dency to irony with which one too readily 
 looked upon them at their setting out. These 
 men fulfilled their hard duties in the most 
 unselfish and humble conditions possible : in 
 one day their whole existence was upheaved, 
 their laboriously acquired small property re- 
 nounced, all their customary ways broken 
 with ; and at a certain age this perhaps repre- 
 sents the most painful phase of duty. They 
 marched to death, in a word, who had had 
 time to grow fixed in life. They had spread 
 out the roots of their lives, and now they 
 found themselves dependent on younger men, 
 under the sway of younger men's careless 
 enthusiasm and quite fresh physical forces, 
 thanks to this new experience of war by 
 which the younger are put first. But, for 
 the rest, everything arranges itself quite mar- 
 
86 
 
 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 vellously, and nothing is more touching than 
 the social comradeship that was established 
 forthwith between grey moustache and 
 beardless chin. The young soldiers treat 
 their elders fraternally in a way, but always 
 with a shade of respect, too. Tact is a French 
 quality, and the younger men know quite 
 well the meaning of such words as husband 
 and father of a family ; know how significant 
 they are of responsibilities and pain and care, 
 of tears shed on their departure. The brave 
 territorials, on the other hand, look admir- 
 ingly on the feats of their young brothers in 
 arms. The other day a group of grizzled 
 soldiers was going through its manoeuvres 
 with great application under the direction of 
 a little twenty-year-old corporal, who had a 
 chubby face like a pink-and-white baby, 
 adorned, however, by some glorious scars. 
 An old campaigner, passing by, called out: 
 "Well, well! Look at the company baby 
 they sent down there to learn things so he 
 could teach the territorials." 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 87 
 
 UNDER MARTIAL LAW 
 
 Declarations of war sometimes have un- 
 expected consequences. A poor woman, very 
 unhappy at home, was crying yesterday, and 
 kept repeating: "If only soldiers were the 
 police. Oh, if soldiers were the police!" 
 When she was asked the meaning of this ex- 
 clamation she replied: "Well, you see, dur- 
 ing the mobilisation, one evening my hus- 
 band was beating me in the street, as he 
 often does, and a patrol of/Turcos passed 
 that way. 
 
 " 'What are you doing there 1 ?' they asked 
 my husband. 
 
 "He answered them: 'Leave me alone. 
 She's my wife. It's nothing to you.' 
 
 " 'Indeed it is something to us. When 
 soldiers are police, people don't beat their 
 wives any more, and to prove it you're going 
 to come along with us to the station.' 
 
 "And as they were leading him away, they 
 said to me : 
 
88 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 " 'That never happens where we come 
 from.' " 
 
 The Turcos make some rather hardy state- 
 ments. But in the presence of the enemy 
 they have shown so well their ability to 
 defend our rights that we mustn't question 
 too curiously whether they apply them 
 strictly in their own homes. 
 
 OUR PRIESTS 
 
 They are everywhere, but at the front 
 especially, and the most diverse opinions are 
 reconciled on the subject of what soldiers 
 our country has in them ! A higher will vic- 
 toriously pursued its ends in bringing to- 
 gether again, in the closest and most unex- 
 pected brotherhood, across what a chaos of 
 tragic developments, the Catholic priest and 
 the French soul. 
 
 "I will punish thee because thou hast for- 
 gotten my name," said the Lord in other 
 times, in vengeance against his chosen peo- 
 ple. Alas, dear France, wast thou not the 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 89 
 
 eldest of his daughters, and hadst thou not 
 forgotten and denied his name, that terrible, 
 protecting name which comes back so natu- 
 rally to thy lips to-day"? Not on the battle- 
 field do we women see our priests in their 
 activities, but at the hospital, at the bedside 
 of those who surfer and die for France, every- 
 where, every day. The ones who have not 
 gone to the front devote all their time, wholly 
 and unreservedly, to the soldiers, especially 
 to the wounded soldiers. The personal 
 measures to which the administration is not 
 equal, overwhelmed as it is by its duties, have 
 been taken upon themselves by the priests; 
 if there are letters to write, sad news to be 
 related, confidences to be received, encour- 
 agement to be given, everything you can 
 think of — all are laid upon the priests. 
 
 The importance of their role touches the 
 very mysteries of the soul; no one has the 
 right to measure it. But who knows what 
 our priests will not do to maintain this 
 fire of self-sacrifice and enthusiasm in the 
 
CO IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 soldier's heart, this fire which must go on 
 burning to the end in France, in the least 
 ambulance, and for which those who work 
 and worry, far back from the common 
 field of danger, far from the captains and 
 the shouts of conflict, are more tried than by 
 the rude life of camps. The soldier divines 
 unerringly that with the priests succor of a 
 human kind and at the same time a superior 
 power are given him; and also he loves him 
 and wants him and relies on him for every- 
 thing. Recently I noticed a new orderly at 
 the hospital, and observed that he was par- 
 ticularly kind and thoughtful with the pa- 
 tients. A soldier saw that I was gazing at 
 this man, with a bit of astonishment, and 
 said to me, motioning toward him: "But, 
 madame, it's a priest !" His accent was un- 
 translatable. Verily no terrestrial power 
 could ever rob them of this mysterious influ- 
 ence, this "heavenly fire" that comes to them 
 from God himself. From their chief down 
 to the most humble among them, they are 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL Ql 
 
 indeed the successors of those to whom "all 
 power" was given, "in heaven as well as on 
 the earth." 
 
 THE LITTLE FRENCHMEN 
 
 One fighter who had "come back from 
 down there" told me it often happened, when 
 families moved away from the unhappy, 
 devastated regions, that boys from twelve to 
 fifteen refused to follow their parents in their 
 flight, thinking themselves big enough to get 
 a place among the soldiers. The troops give 
 a good welcome to these young Frenchmen. 
 They present them to their captain, and, 
 their identity once established, the boys have 
 the right to be named as of the regiment, and 
 share its destinies. They eat at the soldiers' 
 mess, and are not held to account for any- 
 thing, free to do as their fancy wills. But 
 this fancy never varies, they say; in the 
 wreckage of the battlefields they speedily 
 pick up arms for themselves, and shoot them 
 
92 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 incessantly, with an incredible boldness that 
 promptly wins the enthusiastic affection of 
 their elders. Oh, these little Frenchmen of 
 1914! There will be powder mixed with 
 blood in their veins. What generations they 
 are preparing for the future! 
 
 WHAT WE RECEIVE FROM THE 
 FRONT 
 
 Complaints about the bad weather, the 
 cold, the rations^ Not a bit of it! You 
 don't know the souls of our militants if you 
 suppose that. What we receive from the 
 front is either heroic stories, or programmes 
 of fêtes, such as this: 
 
 CONCERT GIVEN NOVEMBER 22, 1914 
 
 Behind the Trenches During Our Regiment's 
 Three Days' Rest 
 
 With the assistance of the soldiers whose names 
 follow: Tharaud of the Opéra-Comique; Kanony, 
 Nimes Theatre; Dupin, Municipal Theatre, 
 Nancy; Trantoul, Grand Theatre, Lyons; Barthe, 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 93 
 
 Brest Theatre; Escudié, Crystal Palace, Mar- 
 seilles; Josthan of the Kursaal, Reims; Gubrét, 
 prize man of the Paris Conservatory; Sizes, pro- 
 fessor of the violoncello, Limoges; Sergeant Du- 
 mail, character singer (amateur) ; Sergeant 
 Moucdoués, Lafayette Theatre. 
 
 Programme 
 
 1. What the Stones Say (Joubert). 2. The 
 Dream Passes (Krier). 3. Carmen, Air de la 
 Fleur (Bizet); The Masked Ball (Verdi), etc., 
 etc. 
 
 And so on for twelve numbers, ending up with 
 the soldiers' chorus from Faust. 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE IN WAR TIME 
 
 The subjects people write of, like the 
 things they talk about, have undergone a 
 transformation to-day. No, indeed, one 
 doesn't write banal letters any more, that tell 
 you nothing at all. The very existence of 
 the nation, the dearest lives, the secret hero- 
 ism of which they have been capable, re- 
 vealed magnificently in the face of death — 
 such are the subjects on which one exchanges 
 
94 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 one's hopes, one's feverish anxieties, one's 
 felicitations to-day. Energy, patience, daily 
 sacrifices, supreme resignation to our coun- 
 try's cause, such are the sentiments one cher- 
 ishes, on which one seeks to keep up courage. 
 Marvellous letters of war time! One can 
 cite from them anywhere; they will all give 
 the same sound. The country has only one 
 soul now. 
 
 There was a young widow, Mme. de 
 
 V , whose husband, an officer of great 
 
 valour, promoted with the most flattering 
 distinction, had expired in the hospital at 
 Epinal some hours before his wife's arrival. 
 "In these hours of distress, my thoughts go 
 often toward you," she wrote to a friend. 
 "What shall I say to you"? I am proud, with 
 a sorrowful pride, but crushed amid the ruins 
 of my happiness that was only yesterday so 
 complete. There are moments when I can- 
 not believe the terrible thing that has made 
 me surfer so is true. It is indeed true, never- 
 theless. God has caught me back, after let- 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 95 
 
 ting me enjoy for five years that rich intelli- 
 gence, that fine spirit from which I was so 
 proud to take my lessons. I find myself 
 alone again, facing emptiness. Pray that I 
 may have the strength to go on with the task 
 we two began, of bringing up, as his father 
 would have done, this son whom I should 
 like so much to be a soldier." 
 
 There was a little infantryman from 
 Africa, a volunteer, who wrote to his broth- 
 ers under arms: "You are fighting, you are 
 giving your blood, and I, here I am, doing 
 exercises, with nothing to be afraid of. Oh, 
 what jealousy I feel! Happily they are 
 putting our instruction through very rapidly. 
 I have hopes that we shall leave soon, be- 
 cause they're already choosing those of us 
 that are to serve as scouts. If only I 
 can be chosen! I put my name down at 
 once." 
 
 There were so many then, though one did 
 not know it, so many of the youth of France, 
 who dreamed of giving their lives for their 
 
96 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 country. In many other letters still I find 
 the proofs. Mlle, de F , true French- 
 woman of the French, told me thus of her 
 brother's death: 
 
 "Thank you for your compassionate pages; 
 it is a sweet comfort, in our great woe, to 
 find it so unanimously shared by all France, 
 where everyone may be prepared, alas, for 
 the same supreme sorrow. Our Robert that 
 we loved so well had the glorious death of 
 which he had always dreamed. He was lead- 
 ing his brave infantrymen for the third time 
 that day in a heroic bayonet charge, in a 
 forest in the Vosges, when he fell, struck by 
 two bullets full in front. His men saw him 
 stretched on the moss beneath a great pine 
 tree. They would have gone to fetch his 
 body, but a furious charge of the enemy 
 obliged them to retire. Seven officers, in- 
 timate friends of Robert, fell that day, with 
 the battalion chief. What will the bar- 
 barians do with his dear remains ? Shall we 
 never find his grave again? Our eyes at 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 97 
 
 least follow him in the skies, where his soul, 
 that was so ardent in its heroism, no doubt 
 has taken a place among the martyrs. My 
 poor friend, you divine how much we suffer, 
 and yet, we are happy and proud to have 
 given him to France. He made a victorious 
 campaign at the outset; we had enthusiastic 
 letters. Afterwards they had to fall back 
 and back, and he came to die near his dear 
 garrison at St. Die, in the forest of Ram- 
 bervilles, without having seen success. On 
 August twenty-fifth, the eve of his death, he 
 wrote us a letter full of courage, even of 
 absolute faith in victory. Our dragoon took 
 part in the grand battle of the Marne. Now 
 he is fighting in the Aisne night and day. 
 He has had two horses shot under him. May 
 God keep him for us! Hearty and tender 
 greetings to you, and confidence in victory 
 so dearly won." 
 
 Victory — they think of that always and 
 before everything. "I hope," a mother in 
 mourning had the courage to write, "I hope 
 
98 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 our dearly loved son, who has so often 
 dreamed of dying for France, with God's 
 will may win the final triumph, and help 
 protect those who struggle still. I read in 
 the paper the names of your five sons, all 
 wounded, and yet going back to the firing 
 line. You ought to be proud, and I share 
 your glory and anguish. May God spare 
 you the grief I suffer, and save your brave 
 sons for you, who will be so happy to bring 
 back their laurels to you." 
 
 When one begins to talk about the moth- 
 ers, the documents pile up — intimate docu- 
 ments, damp with tears, that pay for glory 
 without hunting for it. Thus Captain de 
 S wrote to one who had very spe- 
 cially and silently filled this heroic rôle of 
 mother : 
 
 "No monuments, you see, are built to mothers' 
 
 woes; 
 And if one tried, as by all rights one should, 
 To mark by bronze or marble what they suffer, 
 The passers-by could not endure to see their 
 
 tears." 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 99 
 
 Again this is what Mme. de C wrote 
 
 from a corner of France that was rich in 
 heroes : 
 
 "My grief is unutterable. My beloved son 
 was my pride, the greatest source of happi- 
 ness to me in this world. God has taken him 
 from me in the full bloom of his youthful 
 career and soldierly zeal, and the sacrifice 
 is so much beyond my mother's strength that 
 I can bear it only at the foot of the cross, 
 trying to imitate his courage. He was made 
 captain on the battlefield for deeds done un- 
 der arms and a mission valiantly carried out, 
 though he enjoyed his reward for it only a 
 little while; but what glory consoles a 
 mother in the loss of such a son? He fell 
 near Nancy and I was able to recover his 
 body, but while I was away my youngest 
 son, Louis, eighteen years old, who was en- 
 rolled at the beginning of the war, was called 
 out too. I did not see him again on my 
 return, and already he is fighting. Our 
 hearts, dear friend, are being put to the tor- 
 
lOO IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 ture. We must pray that our sufferings may- 
 purchase victory." 
 
 To acquire this so much desired victory 
 few women would have given ten fighters, 
 like Mme. de L . 
 
 "My J has just fallen for his coun- 
 try," she wrote last month. "I offer up my 
 great grief and all my tears to God and 
 France. You knew my son; you know 
 what I have lost. The only thought that 
 can lighten this terrible blow is the knowl- 
 edge that my boy had realised his dearest 
 dream: he had always yearned ardently for 
 this heroic death. He wrote to me the day 
 of the mobilisation: 'If it were not for the 
 memory of your face, this would be the hap- 
 piest day of my life.' I was told that he 
 said to one of his comrades, half an hour 
 before he was struck full in the breast by a 
 bursting shell: 'I have just made my act of 
 contrition, my preparation for death, as I do 
 each day. Out here you must always re- 
 member that the next moment may be your 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 101 
 
 last.' He was the first of my ten sons to 
 fall. How many more will France ask of 
 me*? I gave them to her with all my heart 
 when they went off, but my soul is torn." 
 
 A LITTLE REFUGEE 
 
 As I was going one day to visit one of our 
 patients who had had to be moved into the 
 contagious ward, I was rather surprised to 
 perceive in the middle of the long range of 
 white beds a little childish face that con- 
 trasted strangely with the military visages 
 all about it. It was that of a delicious child 
 of seven years, with big eyes full of intelli- 
 gence and candour. He himself gave me his 
 name and qualifications — not without a 
 shade of disdain of me as a provincial. 
 
 "I am a refugee from Paris, madame; 
 and who are you*?" 
 
 I introduced myself in turn, and we chat- 
 ted together. My little interlocutor soon 
 gave me his confidence. He told me, smil- 
 
102 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 ing, as if he were telling the happiest of 
 stories, a childish, lamentable history of neg- 
 lect and abandonment. 
 
 "I was almost always alone at Paris," he 
 told me; "mamma worked out somewhere. 
 As for me, I was the cook; I polished the 
 furniture; indeed, I did as well as I could, 
 for I was beaten when it wasn't done right." 
 
 "And how did you happen to go away 
 alone?' 
 
 "Oh, well, a woman who lived near us 
 came back from the station, and was telling 
 about a train of emigrants that was going 
 off that evening. Then mamma said: 'All 
 right, here's a good way to send the boy on 
 a journey that may be a long one.' 
 
 "It made her laugh, but I cried and wept. 
 I wanted to stay in Paris; I was so happy 
 thinking the Prussians were coming there, 
 and that I could fight them. I've got a gun, 
 you know, and I've been at the garrison and 
 seen the soldiers exercising. For a month 
 I did it on the pavement by our house when- 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL IO3 
 
 ever I had a spare moment. Fortunately 
 the neighbour woman promised me that the 
 Boches would come as far as this; but you 
 don't see them often." 
 
 "And didn't your mamma go away with 
 you?' 
 
 "No, indeed she didn't. She had her eat- 
 ing good and sure in Paris; so she stayed 
 there. You can't blame her." 
 
 All this he said in his little clear voice, 
 his eyes looking straight at me full of inno- 
 cence. 
 
 "And you are happy here*?" 
 
 "Oh, very happy, very. I had grand luck 
 to catch diphtheria and come here. I don't 
 really like to ask the Sister to find me a pic- 
 ture-book, she's so busy, I can see that quite 
 well; but we talk about the war all the time 
 with the comrades. They are very nice. 
 They give me some of the chocolate they 
 have, and play with me. When I can get 
 up perhaps they'll let me drill." 
 
 This last word was uttered with quite a 
 
104 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 thrill in his voice : it meant his greatest wish 
 and hope. 
 
 How relative a thing is happiness! This 
 poor child, sick in a hospital, a waif among 
 a lot of soldiers, deserted even by his mother, 
 only a tragic problem for his future, counts 
 himself one of the happy ones of this earth, 
 and from now on belongs to them. For an 
 instant I remained mute, heart-broken by 
 this tale of unutterable misery told in this 
 cheerful voice, while the small boy's eyes, 
 ever restless, roamed furtively round the 
 great room. Suddenly, pointing with his 
 finger at the crucifix hanging on the wall, he 
 asked me: "Who is that there*?" Poor little 
 Frenchman of Catholic France! Could he 
 have been led hither to St. Dominic's in the 
 tragic whirlpool of events only to find him- 
 self opposite this cross, and ask that ques- 
 tion"? Man proposes: God disposes. One 
 might say in these days, the world proposes. 
 — I talk to my little refugee of his Father 
 in Heaven and of Him who on earth loved 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 105 
 
 to surround Himself with children pure in 
 heart. He literally drank in my words. 
 One is very seldom listened to like this in 
 ordinary catechism lessons. Truly, one 
 would say that a mysterious and puissant 
 hand works in these days of travail on the 
 newest hearts, hearts that might otherwise 
 have escaped the clutch of circumstance. 
 
 "Now, just think," concluded this child, 
 with his amazingly mannish airs, "they've 
 never talked to me about these things you've 
 just told me. And yet I'm seven years old, 
 and since I was two — anyway — I've under- 
 stood things very well. When I was seven 
 years — two years — at five they could have 
 explained everything to me. It's all the 
 same. I might never have known! You'll 
 come back, won't you, madame ?" 
 
 Yes, surely, I will come back. Others, 
 too, will look out for him, and soon I hope 
 this little refugee, brought thus to us by 
 the designs of Providence, will have just 
 reason to call himself a happy child. 
 
ÎOÔ IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 A MODEST LITTLE SOLDIER 
 
 Here is the letter of a father to his son, 
 a silent, modest little soldier in one of our 
 temporary hospitals, whose name his com- 
 rades read with surprise in the papers as 
 mentioned in the order of the day of our 
 army. Then only was he willing to tell his 
 story, the heroic story of a soldier of France 
 and one that we can never forget. 
 
 Livrot was ordered to deliver an impor- 
 tant order and, although he was severely 
 wounded while on the way, he did not feel 
 that he had the right to go to the rear. He 
 disregarded a terrible wound which needed 
 immediate care and faced death which he 
 felt close and threatening. 
 
 "I went on just the same," he said simply 
 and shyly at this point in the story, "but 
 when at last I reached my Captain, I was 
 all in; I fainted at his feet." 
 
 He apologised for this unexpected weak- 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL IO7 
 
 ness and was half ashamed of his own cour- 
 age, but at my request he was quite willing 
 to show me — with permission to use as I 
 chose — a letter from his father of which one 
 of the other men had told me. 
 
 This letter is so full of sober courage, so 
 sincere and vibrant with the noblest affec- 
 tion that can exist between father and son, 
 that I should lessen its beauty if I did not 
 transcribe it exactly, just as it was written 
 by that fine and 'simple soul. 
 
 Montargis, Nov. 11, 1914. 
 Dear Son: 
 
 We were not at all surprised to see your name 
 in the Gatinais paper, which said that Livrot was 
 mentioned in the order of the day. We felt great 
 joy. It is an honour. We thank you and we hope 
 that your wound will heal as rapidly as possible. 
 If you have the happiness to recover, we will go 
 together and balance our account with the Boches. 
 That is what I would like to do. In spite of what 
 you have said, am I not right? Those who are 
 fighting suffer — I agree so far — but those who are 
 not fighting also suffer in knowing all that is be- 
 ing done in Germany to conquer us. You know 
 me; together we could strike a good blow. They 
 
io8 
 
 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 talk much about you in Montargis. We are proud 
 of it. Many of your comrades come to see us 
 and congratulate you, they even say that you have 
 not had all the reward that you deserve. We 
 thank you for your sense of your duty. Our 
 health is good and I hope yours is the same. Your 
 mother and your father and many of the neigh- 
 bours send you good wishes and honour you for 
 your courage. 
 
 Livrot, 
 Highway Inspector. 
 
 This is what the Head Surgeon of the 
 military hospital wrote to this father when 
 he read his letter : 
 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 We are proud and happy to have among our 
 wounded a soldier who is so courageous and at 
 the same time so modest. This morning, on learn- 
 ing that your son was mentioned for his gallant 
 conduct in the order of the day of our army, I 
 allowed myself to replace you and embraced him 
 warmly. As soon as his health is re-established 
 I intend to present him to his comrades and, in 
 spite of his modesty, commend his devotion to duty 
 and his brave heart. You may be proud of your 
 son, my dear sir, for you have given him the best 
 of yourself and of the noble thoughts which I feel 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 1CX) 
 
 are in you. Your son showed me your letter, 
 which moved me deeply. If you are proud of 
 having such a son, we also are proud of having 
 fathers capable of such sentiments. Our young 
 patient's wound is doing as well as possible. . . . 
 
 OFFICERS AND MEN 
 
 I told you a few days ago with what en- 
 thusiasm a certain infantryman spoke of his 
 
 young officer, M. X , who was promoted 
 
 to captain only eleven months ago, and who 
 is to-day, because of his courage and mili- 
 tary ability, Major and Chevalier of the 
 Legion of Honour. Here are the words in 
 
 which Major X himself sends back 
 
 from the front his thanks for all the well- 
 earned congratulations on his honours: 
 
 "You may truly say that I owe everything 
 to the heroism of my men; the splendid and 
 disinterested courage of these men who work 
 modestly at gigantic tasks, in the accom- 
 plishment of which we, the officers, are no 
 more than spectators. It is they that you 
 
HO IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 reward through us, and to them that your 
 congratulations should go." 
 
 France knows well what heroic makers of 
 victory she possesses in these officers who 
 so modestly declare themselves the spectators 
 of their men, and one of the things which 
 stirs us most is the mutual admiration of the 
 soldier for the officer and of the officer for 
 his men. It is a feeling which will bear 
 fruit, a promise of success for France, and it 
 must increase in both that capacity for en- 
 durance and that devotion to duty that this 
 strange and terrible struggle demands. It 
 must relieve also that anguish of soul which 
 comes to men far from home, by making a 
 veritable family out of a regiment. And 
 where in family life could one find greater 
 devotion than that of the Captain of the 
 General Staff who, without a thought of his 
 shoulder straps, picked up on the battlefield 
 one of his men who was badly hurt and car- 
 ried him two miles on his back to the hos- 
 pital. It was one of Sister Gabrielle's pa- 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 111 
 
 tients who was saved in this way and he 
 said as he told his story: 
 
 "A thing like that will never happen to a 
 Boche." 
 
 A few months ago it was rare and un- 
 usual for a man to owe his life to another. 
 Now it is part of our everyday life. I knew 
 of two brothers who fought side by side, 
 and when one of them, who had risked his 
 life to save one of our 75's, fell badly 
 wounded, the other threw himself out of the 
 trench — without even thinking, as he said 
 afterwards, of the terrible danger which 
 threatened him on every side — gathered up 
 his brother under a hail of bullets, making 
 himself a target for the German fire, and 
 carried him to a stretcher. He was wounded 
 in the eye by a bit of shell and covered with 
 blood, but still he slipped off his overcoat in 
 the rain of a Northern night to cover the 
 shivering body of his younger brother. Such 
 are the families of to-day. No more selfish- 
 ness, even for the preservation of one's own 
 
112 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 life; all affection growing closer and finer. 
 Never perhaps in France have people loved 
 each other as they do in 1914, because never 
 have they sacrificed so much to duty. Who 
 wrote the verse: 
 
 "There is no great love, except in the shadow of 
 a great dream." 
 
 SISTER GABRIELLE'S OFFICE 
 
 In the middle of the ward, behind the 
 long row of cots on the right, a low door 
 opens into the Sister's office. This office is 
 a sort of hall, long and narrow with no 
 window but a skylight, looking out only on 
 heaven like Sister Gabrielle's own life. On 
 a wooden table the big registry book lies 
 open with lists of all the wounded received 
 and discharged. A crucifix hangs on the 
 white wall, and a shelf with a few books 
 carefully re-covered with black cloth. The 
 clothes hanger shows the only thought of 
 herself which has place in Sister Gabrielle's 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 113 
 
 mind, a spotless white blouse which she slips 
 hastily over her blue Sister of Charity uni- 
 form for the operating room. Far at the 
 end of the room stands a chest with drawers 
 marked — "supply of chocolate biscuits for 
 the sick," "stockings and underclothes to give 
 out" — and on the floor, almost everywhere, 
 cavalry pouches, red trousers, tunics to be 
 mended, and men's heavy shoes smelling 
 strongly of leather. In the midst of all these 
 things Sister Gabrielle's young face — be- 
 tween the wings of her white headdress — is 
 like an angelic vision, ready to return again 
 to heaven. It is in this room that she stops 
 to take breath, at the foot of her crucifix, 
 when the days are too hard, and there I 
 found her weeping after the death of her 
 brother. But from this room she goes back 
 to her sick more serene than ever, and more 
 tenderly maternal. 
 
114 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 THE COMPANY OF THE 
 AUDACIOUS 
 
 I have just seen again at St. Dominic the 
 little soldier who told me such touching 
 stories about his "comrades." He begged 
 for permission to return to the front — "as 
 soon as possible" — and he is now back from 
 that second and terrible journey with a new 
 wound. He is very gay and full of spirit — 
 delighted with the hospital, the nurses, the 
 wounded, and everything else. I have a 
 fancy, however, that this particular little in- 
 fantryman has never lacked spoiling and 
 petting at home. To the circle that gathers 
 around his bed he protests eagerly and with 
 justice against the shade of contempt with 
 which people speak of his corps, the Fif- 
 teenth. Certain mistakes in the beginning, 
 promptly and cruelly expiated, have been a 
 hundred times atoned for. The Fifteenth 
 corps now inspires the most chivalrous devo- 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 115 
 
 tion. I know one young officer, twice 
 wounded, who, because of his knowledge of 
 English, was offered a place on the staff 
 of General Castelnau. He refused it, saying 
 that he was not willing, during hostilities, 
 to exchange his post as lieutenant in active 
 service in a corps slightly in disrepute, for a 
 position of less danger and apparently of 
 more honour. To-day my little infantry- 
 man, in a voice quivering with emotion, was 
 telling what he had seen, and I stopped to 
 listen to one of his stories as I passed. 
 
 At the front, down there, he had made 
 friends with a recruit sixteen years old whose 
 father had been killed at the beginning of 
 the war, and who had enlisted, as he said, 
 simply "because I know how hard it is to 
 lose one's father, and I want to serve in the 
 place of some father of a family." 
 
 He seems to have been a curious little sol- 
 dier; always with a great pipe in the corner 
 of his mouth and always on the lookout for 
 anything that touched his proteges, the fa- 
 
Il6 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 thers of families. He watched over them 
 and in every possible way guarded them 
 from danger. Every time that one of them 
 was told off for perilous service, the little 
 orphan, who could not bear to see them die, 
 would offer or even force himself in to go 
 in their place. But — as he knew the regi- 
 ment well — if a young man was called on he 
 never stirred but muttered between his teeth : 
 "I value my skin as much as you do yours," 
 and kept on peacefully smoking his pipe. 
 He was a child who had risen to this power 
 of absolute self-sacrifice because he had been 
 able to feel truly and profoundly one great 
 grief. 
 
 "In our regiment in the Fifteenth corps," 
 said the young infantryman, "a company has 
 been formed called 'the Company of the 
 Audacious. 5 It is commanded by a gallant 
 captain and made up of volunteers who 
 agree to undertake the most dangerous tasks. 
 One night the company was given orders to 
 cut the wires which formed the outer barrier 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 117 
 
 of a German trench. One by one they 
 crawled through the grass and bushes to the 
 terrible neighbourhood in which they had to 
 work. Suddenly a quantity of bombs 
 thrown by the enemy, revealed as clearly as 
 if by daylight the company at their adven- 
 turous work, and well-aimed bullets rained 
 on them from all sides. The Captain, lying 
 on the ground among his men, said to 
 them: 
 
 " 'My children, they have our range; 
 whether we go back or forward, death is 
 certain. It will be better to stay and finish 
 our work and die as brave men, and as we 
 cannot hide any longer, if you want to, we 
 will sing the "Marseillaise." ' 
 
 "Immediately the national hymn rose 
 around him mingled with the groans of the 
 dying. The regiment behind heard the song, 
 and the sound of the fusillade, and under- 
 stood. The splendid contagion of that rap- 
 ture — that enthusiasm for death — seized 
 them; that thing which 'the greatest of 
 
Il8 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 philosophers will never be able to explain 
 or understand.' Nothing could hold the 
 men, and for an hour the whole regiment 
 was part of the Company of the Audacious. 
 
 "The next day the official notice con- 
 tained this line : 
 
 " 'At X we took a German trench.' " 
 
 MEMORIES 
 
 I have just heard some very touching 
 stories from one of the many French 
 women who were able in a day to reach a 
 height of devotion and courage attainable 
 by them only because beneath their everyday 
 life of women of the world, they have al- 
 ways kept the same high standard of duty. 
 This one of whom I speak, who had been a 
 frequent visitor to our hospitals, was sent 
 at the time of mobilisation with several 
 
 others to open a hospital in S , a city 
 
 now occupied by the enemy. I asked her 
 what she remembered of that long and ter- 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 11Ç 
 
 rible struggle and will try to repeat her 
 story. 
 
 "To my great regret," she said, "I had 
 to let the other nurses go on two days ahead, 
 and I shall never forget the journey that I 
 took to reach S in the midst of the effer- 
 vescence of the mobilisation. The only 
 woman travelling, I felt that I, myself, was 
 also a soldier going to his post, a feeling 
 which was both exciting and steadying. In 
 passing through Rheims I saw a regiment of 
 Alsatians packed in cattle cars. The men 
 who composed it had come by many routes 
 and through many dangers to fight with their 
 French brothers. Most of them did not even 
 know the beloved language of their fathers. 
 A French officer gave them orders in Ger- 
 man. They had already cheered their col- 
 ours and the harsh accents of the enemy's 
 tongue around our flag expressed so well the 
 double tragedy of Alsace, that of forty-four 
 years ago, and that of to-day, which will be 
 a glorious contrast. In the corridor of my 
 
120 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 carriage some anti-militarists were talking 
 openly of their opinions, and with fine in- 
 consistency declaring themselves quite ready 
 to risk their lives in this 'necessary and 
 salutary war.' All along the route that won- 
 derful spirit which was to save the country 
 was all about me, calm yet thrilling with a 
 glowing life that one felt was inextinguish- 
 able. 
 
 "At the end of the journey I heard for 
 the first time the rumbling of cannon, and it 
 was to the accompaniment of that sound 
 which continued without a pause that we 
 worked to transform into a hospital the 
 large girls' school which had been turned 
 over to us. My companions had already 
 done wonders, but what a mass of detail 
 had still to be thought of in the midst of 
 such consuming anxiety. In a few days our 
 preparations were complete and we waited, 
 idle, for the wounded to come. It was pe- 
 culiarly trying to have nothing to do and 
 time to think of what those words mean, to 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 121 
 
 wait for the wounded. To wait until those 
 scenes of carnage for which the declaration 
 of war is the terrible signal should happen 
 close to us; to wait for the pitiful human 
 wrecks escaped from death to come back to 
 us from those fields of suffering. 
 
 "Our thoughts were racked by the horrible 
 realities that we could not see and yet knew 
 to be so near. Inaction depressed and un- 
 nerved us and yet how gladly would we have 
 put off forever the moment when our help 
 would be needed. Alas, that moment was 
 not long in coming. On August 14th the 
 wounded began to arrive, and I realised how 
 splendidly equal to their task my helpers 
 were. Several of them had already seen ac- 
 tive service in Morocco, Greece or Bulgaria 
 and their morale was even more valuable 
 than their talents and training. 
 
 "The atmosphere of S was electrified. 
 
 We felt the line of fire and iron close around 
 us. We were told that one hundred Ger- 
 man cannon balls had fortunately only 
 
122 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 killed four and wounded twelve people. For 
 the first time enormous aeroplanes flew over 
 the city. They seemed heavier than our own 
 and were painted a darker colour. A few 
 bombs were dropped. Each day we saw 
 great numbers of autobuses loaded with pro- 
 visions for the army rush past at full speed, 
 going we knew not where. The mystery that 
 enveloped us was most oppressive. An In- 
 spector coming to see us, stumbled without 
 knowing it into the middle of the General 
 Staff. He saw fifty or sixty officers and was 
 told that he was between six army corps. 
 Before letting him go they required his word 
 of honour not to tell where this happened. 
 
 "August 15th. — Mass in the open air. 
 The deep voice of the cannon sounds nearer. 
 Every one sang in chorus the creed and the 
 canticle, 'Have pity, O God, 15 and many 
 officers and soldiers received the communion. 
 What one feels at such a time lies in the 
 depth of the heart and cannot be expressed. 
 The badly wounded have begun to arrive 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 123 
 
 and in one day our hospital is almost full. 
 
 "August 20th. — General X, commanding 
 an army corps, and his staff visited us as 
 they passed through. The general was 
 cheerful and spoke to the men in a comfort- 
 ing, fatherly way. He told them not to 
 worry. 'Whatever happens we will end by 
 shaking hands with our Russian allies in 
 Berlin.' One of his officers took particular 
 interest in the hospital and when he was 
 brought back to us three days later on a 
 stretcher, I was surprised to hear this pa- 
 tient whom I thought a stranger, saying: 'I 
 did not expect, Madame, the pleasure of 
 seeing you again so soon.' 
 
 "The 23rd of August was the day after a 
 
 great battle — that in the wood of St. H , 
 
 and the wounded were brought in in quanti- 
 ties. About noon came a general whom we 
 placed as best we could in a little room. He 
 did not want us to give him any special 
 care, though he was suffering terribly, and 
 was anxious only about two of his officers. 
 
124 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 By a curious chance a soldier of his division 
 was brought in a few moments later, and the 
 general was eager to learn from him what 
 had happened to some of his 'children.' He 
 insisted upon seeing the soldier at once. 
 
 " 'The Major? he asked. 
 
 " 'Dead, sir.' 
 
 " 'The Captain?' 
 
 " 'Dead, sir.' 
 
 "Four times the question was repeated 
 with the same sad answer. The general 
 bowed his head and asked no more, but we 
 saw the tears on his strong face and stole out 
 of the little room in silence, as if we were 
 afraid of waking from their glorious sleep 
 the men whose names had just been called. 
 
 "A Lieutenant de V , who came to us 
 
 with a flesh wound on his head, a ball had 
 glanced from his skull, told us that his regi- 
 ment had gone out with one thousand two 
 hundred and sixty men and only sixty-seven 
 were left. He refused to stay out of danger, 
 to go back to the depot of his corps, or even 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 125 
 
 to report his wound, but only asked us to 
 dress his head, and started out the next 
 morning alone to try to find his regiment. 
 Nothing could persuade him to give up the 
 dangerous plan, and heaven knows what be- 
 came of him. 
 
 "August 24th. — It was evident that the 
 
 situation in S was becoming more and 
 
 more serious, and my responsibilities weighed 
 heavily on my shoulders. That afternoon I 
 heard that the military hospital was being 
 emptied. Should we do the same, or should 
 we stay 1 ? I felt deeply that the lives of 
 those around me depended upon this deci- 
 sion. I asked advice of the Dean of S , 
 
 who had seen 1870, and he was quite de- 
 cided. 'Empty your hospital; go yourself 
 as soon as possible; do you want your 
 wounded bombarded or massacred*? Do you 
 want to be forced with your nurses into the 
 hospital service of the enemy for the rest of 
 the war*?' 
 
 "That decided me. Nurse Prussians, un- 
 
12Ô IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 der orders, like a German woman? Never! I 
 went to the station and they promised me 
 after some difficulty just space enough on 
 the last train that evening. The railroad 
 officials reserved a car for our personal use. 
 Then I went back to the hospital and told 
 the others of my decision. They begged me 
 to change and some of them asked to stay, 
 or if the hospital was closed, to be sent to 
 the front. I told them that places were re- 
 served for them in the train with the 
 wounded, but they all refused to go, and 
 my responsibilities were made heavier by 
 their courage. 
 
 "We began to dress our poor wounded for 
 their journey, taking them from the rest that 
 they had bought so dearly. To avoid excit- 
 ing them we told them that they were being 
 moved to make room for some more severely 
 wounded, so it was 'all right,' and there was 
 not a complaint about the change which cost 
 them such torture. While we were hurry- 
 ing to prepare them, more wounded arrived, 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 127 
 
 and then still more. They had to be packed 
 wherever we could put them in the hall and 
 theatre of the school. One poor little second 
 lieutenant, very badly hurt, asked if he 
 might not stay; he was hardly twenty, with 
 the face of a boy, and he accepted my de- 
 cision with the obedience of a child. I felt 
 myself in his mother's place, and thought of 
 her when I advised him to go. He had lost 
 all his uniform and we wrapped him up in 
 an old brown overcoat which had been given 
 to the hospital, under which he quite disap- 
 peared. We put an old hat on his head and 
 I wrote 'officer' on a label, which I sewed on 
 his chest, in spite of much protestation, for 
 he wanted no privileges. 
 
 "Once ready, he seemed so weak and ex- 
 hausted that I provided him with two in- 
 jections of camphorated oil for the journey. 
 He could give them to himself or get help 
 from a comrade if he was too faint. At nine 
 the carriages came, and the painful start 
 was accomplished. Was this horrible night- 
 mare a reality 4 ? The sound of the departing 
 
128 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 wheels struck into our hearts. A moment 
 later as we were taking a little food, a 
 Colonel of the Staff brought us a motor full 
 of wounded. He had found them in the 
 ditches all along the road, and some of them 
 were delirious. He took them straight on to 
 the train, with a permit, for no one could 
 now drive through the streets, as the bridges 
 were all mined. 
 
 "We had now to arrange for the most se- 
 riously wounded. The doctors, whose devo- 
 tion had never for an instant flagged, had 
 refused to let these go and some of them 
 were dying. We could not bear to desert 
 them, and yet from every side I was given 
 the same counsel, c Go, empty your hospital. 
 Your wounded will be safer in the civil 
 hospital than under the Red Cross.' I called 
 the doctors together again and they prom- 
 ised to give particular care to those whom I 
 was leaving behind. At ten o'clock the curé 
 came to confess them and administer the 
 communion. There were still arrangements 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 12Ç 
 
 to be made about their admission to the 
 civil hospital, so I wanted to go there. I 
 had the password, but after eleven o'clock 
 it was of no use, as no one was allowed in 
 the streets. With one of the nurses I walked 
 for miles along the Meuse to avoid passing 
 through the city. We heard the explosion 
 of some of the mines which were blowing up 
 the bridges. The good man who went with 
 us had seen his father shot in '70; he himself, 
 a baby, had been tossed about by the Uhlans, 
 and he begged us over and over again not 
 to go. 
 
 "'You would not desert us now; that 
 would mean that the Prussians were coming 
 back. You won't go 4 ?' 
 
 "At last we reached the hospital and saw 
 that heavenly, peaceful sight in time of war, 
 the white headdress of the Sisters ready to 
 help all who are in trouble. Our wounded 
 would be expected at dawn. As we went 
 back we saw far away in the dark town the 
 red glow of a fire. I heard cries from the 
 
130 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 same quarter. The machine guns were in 
 place, ready for the Uhlans. How dreadful 
 it all was! 
 
 "We reached home at two o'clock and 
 found the others still stoically on duty. At 
 three o'clock came the sound of carriages in 
 the courtyard and we ourselves helped to 
 load them with our poor wounded. It was 
 the dying that we were sending this time. 
 But we may at least have secured them a 
 peaceful end, sheltered from the terrors of 
 the bombardment and the arrival of Prus- 
 sian soldiers around their deathbeds and 
 all the horrors that threatened them so near 
 the lines. It was such reasons alone that 
 kept my decision from wavering. 
 
 "What anguish we felt! We got into 
 the last wagon to accompany them to the 
 hospital. During our passage through the 
 town, half-dressed people with haggard faces 
 came out of their doors or appeared at the 
 windows along our route. The least noise 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I3I 
 
 made them think the Prussians had come. 
 "For the last time we went into our hos- 
 pital, and with aching hearts made once 
 more the round of the great empty rooms. 
 What an amount of wasted effort was rep- 
 resented by those abandoned preparations. 
 We took all the men's arms and military 
 equipment with us and at last got into an 
 ambulance and the porter took us to the sta- 
 tion. There we learned that the communi- 
 cations with S were broken. There 
 
 were no more trains — it was the end. They 
 told us that the commanding officer could 
 perhaps requisition an automobile for our 
 use. We went to him, but he was sick and 
 had lost his voice and had nothing to give 
 us but one bicycle. Then we thought of the 
 general who had come to visit us. He had 
 chosen the house of one of the chief sup- 
 porters of our hospital for his quarters with 
 his staff. We went there, but, alas, there 
 was only emptiness and silence, for the gen- 
 
132 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 eral had already betaken himself farther 
 
 away. At any moment S might become 
 
 a part of the very front of the huge battle. 
 
 "We made up our minds to make use of 
 our good horse, Tirot,' as long as his 
 strength should last. His driver, however, 
 who was afraid that he would not be able to 
 rejoin his family after the bridges had been 
 blown up, declared that he, himself, was 
 going to leave us for good. One of us, who 
 has the faculty of making quick and happy 
 decisions, took the reins, and was ready to 
 drive our cart through the thousand difficul- 
 ties of the way. Our destination was uncer- 
 tain. We would go in the direction of 
 Rheims as long as 'Tirot' was willing to 
 drag us. 
 
 "At last we started across this marvel- 
 lously beautiful country, covered at that 
 moment by a population of strangers, who 
 were the incarnation either of war or fear. 
 We passed through the whole system of de- 
 fence. The Eleventh corps was there and a 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 133 
 
 part of the Sixteenth ready for the action 
 which was to take place that very evening. 
 Batteries were hidden behind every hedge. 
 Looking across the fields, we could see rows 
 of men's heads in the trenches. As we went 
 along we distributed to the men the arms 
 and supplies which filled our cart. Some ar- 
 tillerymen asked us for some sacred medals. 
 The road was blocked by the pitiful crowd 
 of fugitives. They drove carts loaded with 
 old men, children, household furniture and 
 the greatest variety of things. In the midst 
 of the unbelievable dust every one travelled 
 along slowly, very slowly, saving their 
 horses, so as to get the longest possible dis- 
 tance out of them. We got down at all the 
 hills in order to rest 'Tirot.' A number of 
 unfortunate people who were on foot with- 
 out any kind of cart, carried heavy bundles 
 on their backs. I noticed one young woman 
 almost exhausted, who was soon to become 
 a mother. There was a child of about two 
 years old in the wheelbarrow which she was 
 
134 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 pushing, and another ran beside her holding 
 to her skirts. She was all alone. Nowhere 
 did we see any men. All these wretched 
 people, torn brutally from the homes which 
 in the absence of their fathers or husbands 
 would have offered protection to their lone- 
 liness, were thrown out on the world without 
 any support or any safeguard. What will 
 become of them'? The soldiers, themselves, 
 who were marching in the opposite direction 
 on their way to the firing line and who had 
 cares enough of their own, could not see 
 them without being moved. I heard one of 
 them mutter, 'It's hard, all the same.' 
 
 "Our poor Tirot' was very tired. We fed 
 him a little every now and then along the 
 way, for we did not know what else to do. 
 To rest him some of us travelled for two 
 kilometres in a motor loaded with meat, 
 from which we finally got down saturated 
 with unpleasant smells. We rested in a vil- 
 lage and a zealous young doctor brought us 
 a raw leg of mutton as provender for our 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I35 
 
 journey. We heard that at S while we 
 
 were still busy over our wounded, the first 
 patrol of the Uhlans had entered the town 
 and that eighteen of them had been killed. 
 
 "We had to begin our journey again on 
 foot, for the horse could go no farther. 
 From time to time we gave him a little water 
 in a bandage box. A battle was going on, 
 it seems, only twelve kilometres away, and 
 we heard the cannon continuously from that 
 direction. 
 
 "We reached the top of a little ridge and 
 sat down at the edge of a field of wheat to 
 catch our breath. At our feet the immense 
 movement of the troops went on vaguely 
 far and near. The regimental wagons and 
 the medical corps passed one after the other. 
 You would have thought that they were 
 huge colonies of human ants hastening to- 
 wards some mysterious goal. Suddenly 
 three German aeroplanes flew over us, spy- 
 ing out the movements of the armies. Seated 
 on that little hill in our white nurses' uni- 
 
I36 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 forms, we became at once a very convenient 
 target, so that we were obliged to go on 
 again. It was ten hours since we had left 
 S and so far we had only covered twen- 
 ty-five kilometres. 
 
 "We were going through the beautiful 
 woods of Mont Dieu, and there, in striking 
 contrast, the quiet was profound. All the 
 peace of the evening had taken refuge in the 
 forest. The peasants, who were leaving their 
 homes, did not disturb it, but under the dim 
 splendour of the great leafy shadows they 
 marched silently along followed by their 
 long flocks, until they made you think of the 
 old patriarchs in the happy times of univer- 
 sal peace. But these moments of respite 
 were short. As we came out of the woods 
 we met an officer who secured a horse and a 
 bicycle for us and sent ahead word about us 
 to the next station, where three automobiles 
 were very kindly placed at our disposal. In 
 
 that way we finally reached V . We had 
 
 been travelling since dawn and arrived at the 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I37 
 
 close of the day. It was impossible to find 
 a single free room in any hotel, but for- 
 tunately some hospitable people took care 
 of us and, military to the last, found quar- 
 ters for us with some people of the village. 
 We were looking forward to the prospect of 
 enjoying a little rest there while we waited 
 for orders from Paris, but on the second 
 morning we learned that the town was to be 
 evacuated and that we must leave in a hurry. 
 I asked the authorities for some means of 
 transportation. They sent us an automobile 
 much too small to hold us all. To my great 
 anxiety I had to leave my nurses behind me 
 for a while, but I could come back for them 
 that very evening. My chauffeur under- 
 stood the value of time in these days of in- 
 vasion, but he had to moderate his speed in 
 going through the village of Souain, all pre- 
 pared for defence and destined to become in 
 a few days the scene of that hard struggle, 
 so bloody and so glorious for one of our 
 regiments. Already on that very evening we 
 
I38 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 ran into chains stretched across the streets, 
 and we were challenged at every street cor- 
 ner. That was our very last sight of what 
 was soon to be the field of battle." 
 
 Stories of this kind are like scraps of the 
 gigantic strife which, blown by the battle 
 winds, reach even to those fortunate parts 
 of the country that are sheltered from the 
 horrible devastation and immediate fear. 
 We listen and say nothing. Silence is the 
 fervent homage called forth by the courage 
 and all the inexpressible feelings aroused 
 by such memories. 
 
 Little children of 1914, you must listen 
 later on, without saying anything; you must 
 devoutly listen to the "true stories," ter- 
 rible and glorious, made up of danger, of 
 heroism and of tears, which are being pre- 
 pared for you in every home in France. 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 139 
 
 NEWS FROM THE MECHINS 
 
 It was understood that the Mèchins 
 would write me about their sad voyage 
 home. Poor people, I saw them crowd into 
 the third-class railway carriage where all 
 around them were young soldiers of their 
 son's age who had been wounded, but who 
 had recovered and were going home to their 
 lucky parents. The Mèchins left in sorrow 
 from the same station at which they had ar- 
 rived two months before with hearts so full 
 of hope. At dusk as they climbed sadly into 
 the great brilliant express train, their son's 
 lonely grave was sinking into darkness under 
 the shadow of the pines. A tri-colour ribbon 
 tied to the cross drooped in the dampness of 
 the November night. But the Mèchins are 
 French peasants in the best sense of the 
 word; possessing beside their deep Christian 
 faith, that peaceful balance of soul and body 
 which is the result of the healthy life in the 
 
140 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 fields. They have also the touch of fatalism 
 which teaches them to say in the face of 
 trouble, "Well, since we can do nothing 
 about it — " Above all, they feel a fine and 
 constant sense of responsibility to the earth, 
 and have the habit of putting aside even the 
 greatest sorrows to meet a demand that can- 
 not wait, and which calls them to the work 
 of each season. 
 
 All this was in the letter which Père 
 Mèchin wrote to me and in which was en- 
 closed, as a sign of respect, a visiting card 
 carefully printed, "Mèchin, farmer." Fine 
 souls with a proud title. I shall probably 
 never see the Mèchins again, but the letter I 
 shall always keep. 
 
 "Madame : I have the honour to tell you 
 that we reached home at six in the evening 
 after a journey of thirty hours. All our 
 children and grandchildren were waiting for 
 the arrival of the diligence. How many 
 tears were shed with ours Ï It is hard for us 
 to be comforted for the loss of our beloved 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I4I 
 
 child, but we must conquer our grief so that 
 we can do our duty as working people. As 
 I said to my family, it is a duty more than 
 ever, now that the little one has died, to de- 
 fend the soil that we are cultivating. Poor, 
 dear child, his face is always before our 
 eyes. 
 
 "I end, dear lady, in begging you to ac- 
 cept our thanks, and in sending you a warm 
 handclasp of friendship. My wife, my chil- 
 dren and my grandchildren join me. 
 
 "MÈCHIN, PÈRE. 
 
 "Decorated in 1870. 
 "Please remind Sister Gabrielle of her 
 promise to have a wreath of laurel put on 
 the grave of Private Mèchin. We do not 
 want them to put anything else." 
 
 No, truly, nothing else should be put 
 there. 
 
 Strew not upon this urn you close 
 The flower of Aphrodite, the rose. 
 For love came not his way. 
 
14 2 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 Nor even gently o'er it shower 
 The immortelle, old age's flower. 
 He lived but for a day. 
 
 But lest men feel that to his shade 
 All flowers have been denied, 
 Pluck for him laurel from the woods around, 
 'Twas for his land he died. 1 
 
 A LAMENT 
 
 Sister Gabrielle pointed out to me to- 
 day one of the wounded who was growing 
 worse. Absorbed by so many operations she 
 could not wait by that bed of pain. I took 
 her place there, and can you imagine the la- 
 ment full of sadness and tender with an in- 
 expressible tenderness which came from the 
 lips of that young man? 
 
 "Poor France, how your children suffer! 
 Poor, poor France." 
 
 He was pitying her for the martyrdom 
 which she is suffering through her own flesh 
 
 "^The Phoenician Women, adapted by G. Rivollet. Act 
 IV, Scene I. 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I43 
 
 and blood. How completely he felt that he 
 was her son. And certainly she has never 
 been more gloriously, more cruelly or more 
 tenderly a mother than she is to-day. Her 
 care for her soldier children reaches to the 
 smallest hut of her land. We think of them, 
 we work for them, everywhere, every day 
 uninterruptedly. There is nothing like the 
 pity which they inspire. It touches the very 
 bottom of your heart and makes you suffer 
 not with a sympathetic but with a personal 
 sorrow. It haunts you and follows you 
 everywhere. It is indeed the national soul 
 of France which shudders and weeps in 
 every one of us, which ceaselessly implores 
 relief, at the cost of every sacrifice of her 
 heroic and unhappy children. 
 
 SOME LETTERS 
 
 Here are some letters from abroad, which 
 hail France as once more the great nation of 
 the past. Ah! That does indeed do one 
 
144 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 good after so often bringing back from 
 abroad the bitter memory of the hardly dis- 
 guised contempt felt towards us beyond our 
 frontiers. "Our ties with France are com- 
 ing to mean to us all that is dearest and most 
 sacred," the Marquise X writes from Rome. 
 And here are letters from our friends, the 
 English, always calm, even in their heroism, 
 and sound in their judgment. 
 
 September 3rd. 
 Naturally I can not talk to you, my dear madam, 
 of anything but this terrible war. Our people are 
 slow to begin; but you will see that they are 
 equally slow to give up what they take hold of. 
 When "the spirit of battle" has once entered into 
 us we will go on to the very end. It is a splendid 
 sight to see how our men fight, and perhaps our 
 little force — which, besides, will grow larger very 
 soon — will help toward the happy result. On both 
 sides the losses will certainly be terrible, but par- 
 ticularly on the German side. Nevertheless, we 
 must brave everything and prepare ourselves for 
 every sacrifice both of a private and a public kind 
 so that we may escape the Teutonic peril. My 
 daughter is busy in the hospital, but she would 
 prefer to go to France in one of the ships with 
 the troops. It is truly splendid to think that our 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I45 
 
 two nations, so often enemies in the past, are to- 
 day fighting side by side in this most critical hour 
 of their history. Good-bye, and may we meet 
 again once more in happier days. 
 
 November 10th. 
 I have been so fearfully busy at the war depart- 
 ment that until now I have not been able to find 
 the time to answer your interesting letter. I work 
 for twelve hours every day, including Sundays, 
 and when I do get home all I can do is to go to 
 bed, dead from fatigue. To-day, however, I have 
 come to the seashore for twenty-four hours' rest 
 and that has enabled me to have the pleasure of 
 writing to you. What a time of gloomy anxiety 
 we are going through ! I hope that your wounded 
 are getting better and that you have good news 
 from those who are still fighting. In the midst of 
 your own family troubles it should be a cause of 
 great pride and of consolation to you to feel that 
 the whole world has its eyes fixed on your com- 
 patriots and that it knows that they are fighting 
 even better, if that is possible, than they ever 
 fought before — with all the old dash which be- 
 longs peculiarly to them and which has made them 
 famous in history and also with a new tenacity 
 which I would describe, if you will let me, as 
 rather English. You have in Joffre a great leader. 
 He and our own General French have curious like- 
 nesses, moral and even physical, and we like to 
 
I46 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 point them out. So far as I can judge the Ger- 
 mans are failing completely in their successive 
 plans of going to Paris and to Calais. We can 
 congratulate ourselves mutually on these defeats. 
 The way in which they come back again and again 
 to the attack brings them to certain death, and 
 even if the Allies suffer great losses, the Germans 
 will meet with incalculable and irreparable ones. 
 As to how long the horrible war will last, how 
 can I tell you anything? Nobody can know any- 
 thing about it. If things go on the way they are 
 going at present, it will die out of itself by the 
 exhaustion of Germany. The result, whether more 
 or less near, will depend a good deal on what is 
 going to be done by the Russians, whose millions 
 of men are just beginning to really move. But you 
 as well as I, we must both "possess our souls in 
 patience" and forbid ourselves to allow our 
 thoughts to dwell unnecessarily on the horror of 
 the slaughter. It is better to save our strength 
 for work. 
 
 Here we are waiting for some wounded soldiers 
 and my daughter has a great deal to do in getting 
 the house ready. We shall also have some con- 
 valescent officers in need of the open air and those 
 who may have been mentally deranged by their 
 terrible experiences. Once more I beg of you, let 
 us force ourselves to look forward and to think 
 of the better times which are coming. 
 
 C. R . 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL I47 
 
 And here are some letters from our own 
 side, and from what indeed is particularly 
 our own side, those fields of French heroism 
 where, behind a veil of mystery which we 
 must respect, the army that is saving us is 
 manoeuvring. This is from one of our best 
 officers, who so writes to his wife that he 
 makes it possible for her to follow, almost 
 day by day, his hard campaign life : 
 
 September 25th. 
 I am scribbling this letter to you during the 
 heaviest bombardment that I have suffered so far. 
 The Germans are trying with their shells to drive 
 us from this village which we have held for eight 
 days in spite of all their efforts. Shells of very 
 large calibre rain with a deafening noise on the 
 shattered farms and set on fire the few which are 
 still left standing. At this moment our life is like 
 a penny tossed in the air, and what will happen 
 is so much a matter of chance that no one's heart 
 beats any the faster for it. We have just finished 
 a game of bridge and I can assure you that it was 
 not all this which made us stop it. The men are 
 just going to eat their soup; they are waiting for 
 the end of the tornado to go and retrieve those 
 of their soup kettles that haven't been tipped over. 
 Perhaps this is the forerunner of a German at- 
 
I48 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 tack. So much the better. An attack — wherever 
 it comes from — would be a change from this ex- 
 asperating condition of waiting face to face with 
 each other for days, and which can not last. After 
 the Marne, we need another victory to free our 
 Northern frontier. May we soon have it. 
 
 September 29th. 
 After some sharp disturbances, it seems to me 
 as if to-night there was going to be a few moments' 
 calm. I'm hurrying to take advantage of it with 
 you. Our position is maintained in the ruined 
 village which we captured by a night attack on 
 the evening of the 13th, lost on the 14th toward 
 noon, recaptured by another night attack on the 
 15th, and since then have held in spite of an un- 
 believable bombardment. It is telling you enough 
 to say that we are in a part of the great battle 
 where the struggles of the two sides to gain the 
 ground in front neutralize and counterbalance each 
 other. The Germans do this poor burned and dev- 
 astated village the honour of treating it like a 
 fort. These deluges of iron and fire fortunately 
 produce more fear than harm, but they are, above 
 all, a severe test of morale. Our regiment is win- 
 ning a fine reputation for itself in the army for 
 keenness and tenacity, and I understand they are 
 thinking of congratulating it for this officially. 
 Our units, which are now made up almost entirely 
 of reservists, are behaving well. Ah! there is no 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 149 
 
 longer the fire and youthful dash that our regu- 
 lar companies had at the beginning of the war. 
 The men are slow to manœuvre, they think a little 
 too much about eating and sleeping, but they are 
 determined, tenacious, firm under fire, profoundly 
 anxious to expel the invader, and bearing up well 
 under the prodigious fatigue of our life. We have 
 neither undressed nor taken off our shoes for nearly 
 three weeks, and in the course of that time we 
 spent five or six days in a heavy rain in the woods, 
 crouching in the bottom of chalky trenches, from 
 which we came out in the morning in a condition 
 which you can imagine! There is no question, 
 naturally, of our having our horses, who remain 
 with our orderlies five or six kilometres in the 
 rear. The provisioning on the whole is carried out 
 very well. The wagons come up during the night 
 to within one thousand five hundred to two thou- 
 sand metres of the line. We send squads back to 
 them and in the morning the companies find that 
 they have almost all they need. Thanks to the 
 smoking ruins, the men can do their cooking with- 
 out attracting the attention of the lookouts or the 
 aviators of the enemy, but if ever that attention 
 is attracted we get a hail of "plums." 
 
 There is nothing to buy in this country, so com- 
 pletely deserted and ravaged. When we dislodge 
 some frightened peasant from the ruins of a cellar 
 we hurry him to the rear. We buy or kill the few 
 rare animals which are still left in the stables in 
 
150 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 order to use to the limit what the country still has 
 to give, and at any rate to make it useless to the 
 enemy. Here we only find some starved pigeons 
 for poultry and some frightened cows whose milk 
 we struggle for, and once in a great while a few 
 potatoes and some cauliflower and carrots. They 
 say that the Germans are in serious need of food 
 and that they live only on canned things. They 
 hold on just the same and won't let themselves be 
 pushed out. That will be done nevertheless. The 
 most terrible thing is the prospect of a hard win- 
 ter's campaign. The few days of rain last week 
 gave us a sharp foretaste of it. 
 
 The thought of you never leaves me, any more 
 than the wallet in which I have your photograph 
 and that of the children, and also the prayer to 
 the Virgin "for those who love one another and 
 are separated." But my courage does not desert 
 me either; does it not spring from our love? May 
 God do as he wills with us, but may he always 
 bless us, together or apart. 
 
 Neighbourhood of Ypres, 
 
 November 8th, 1914. 
 We have just undergone the most awful day of 
 fighting which we have so far lived through. For 
 five consecutive days and nights my battalion has 
 been on the firing line attacked, attacking, fired at 
 and firing, but unluckily cannonaded above all. 
 The Boches have terrible heavy artillery, and in 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 15 1 
 
 addition they are turning against us all their enor- 
 mous equipment from the siege of Antwerp, and 
 pouring out their ammunition so that we wonder 
 how they are ahle to feed at such a rate so many 
 fiery mouths. Even at S we did not under- 
 go such a deluge of iron nor especially so con- 
 tinuous a stream of it. These four days of fight- 
 ing have been frightful in every way and they are 
 far from being over; but this morning before day- 
 light we were withdrawn from under fire so that 
 we might be reorganised. Judging by the furious 
 energy which is being put forth on both sides at 
 this moment, it would seem as if this must be their 
 last kick, at which the emperor has come to assist 
 in person. But, no, I do not believe any longer that 
 this is so The trenches and wire entanglements 
 appear again on both sides. They mean once 
 more that condition of deadlock, front to front. 
 After twenty-four or forty-eight hours of waiting 
 we shall enter this furnace again and the result 
 of the gigantic strife will be reached-God knows 
 when ! What will life in the trenches be like with 
 rain and cold? Just think that, during these fear- 
 ful bombardments, we are kept hours and hours 
 crouching in the trenches, backs against the wall, 
 legs drawn up, heads sunk between our shoulders, 
 like oxen passively waiting for the blow of the 
 hatchet that will finish them-except for the look- 
 outs, who, with their heads above the edge, have 
 the duty of watching the ground in front so as 
 
l$1 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 to be sure that the enemy does not try to advance, 
 and except also when we ourselves receive the or- 
 der to advance from the trenches in spite of the 
 storm to throw ourselves into an attack. But at 
 that dreadful moment the artillery of the enemy 
 notices what we are doing and redoubles its fierce- 
 ness in company with the rifles and the machine 
 guns. Oh, those machine guns ! 
 
 Near Ypres, 
 November 19th. 
 
 I have been fighting continuously since the be- 
 ginning of the war, but the battle around Ypres 
 during the last two weeks reached the maximum 
 of intensity, conceivable and inconceivable. The 
 efforts on both sides are pushed almost to what is 
 impossible; gigantic, as far as the offensive of the 
 Germans is concerned and no less so in our de- 
 fensive. From time to time they tried to with- 
 draw us from the first line so as to give us a few 
 hours' respite. But as soon as we arrived in our 
 "relief quarters" they recalled us to the front. 
 That is what happened to me in the evening the 
 day before yesterday at the moment when, with 
 my battalion, I was occupying a farm where I 
 hoped to catch my breath. They recalled me ur- 
 gently to go into an action where for the sixth 
 time I lost in a few hours half of my command. 
 
 "Your battalion," writes the general under 
 whose' orders I had been placed in thanking me 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 153 
 
 this morning, "has shown a devotion above all 
 praise." 
 
 That is perhaps just what may happen to me 
 again this evening, now that I am once more back 
 at that same farm to reorganise my command there 
 again. Anyway, on account of the frightful ar- 
 tillery of the Boches, you can not get rest any- 
 where behind the lines. The "big pots" with 
 their terrible explosives follow you everywhere, 
 showering dismay and conflagration on all the 
 roofs within a radius of ten kilometres. The noise 
 of these is continuous from sunrise to sunset. It 
 is carried to the ultimate limits, the "Colossal" 
 which happily breaks down before our colossal 
 tenacity. "Strange people, those people there," 
 as the song says — emphasising militarism wher- 
 ever it is brutal and savage, aggravating it by 
 stratagems, by treachery, by unbelievable deceit, 
 while we, with our dark uniforms standing out 
 against all the green backgrounds, express the nat- 
 ural carelessness of a race which is a little too self- 
 confident when it comes to the preparation for pos- 
 sibilities which do not seem to it likely to be real- 
 ised immediately. 
 
 All that is not meant to be bitter, believe me. 
 What will win finally is the combination of hero- 
 ism and tenacity, and from that point of view we, 
 on the contrary, see only things that are consol- 
 ing. Frenchmen "tenacious even in inaction," 
 that's what no one would ever have believed. And 
 
154 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 yet it is impossible to deny such a quality to men 
 like mine who have just spent six successive days 
 in the trenches without budging from there day or 
 night, their feet in water up to their ankles, eating 
 only once in every twenty-four hours the provi- 
 sions prepared during the night four kilometres 
 away, and undergoing without a pause this fright- 
 ful and murderous racket. 
 
 Near Ypres, 
 November 28th. 
 At the moment, wonderful to relate! we are 
 twenty kilometres behind the lines, having a rest 
 for three or four days. This is something that 
 has not happened to us before since the very be- 
 ginning of the campaign! We are certainly mak- 
 ing the most of it, stuffing ourselves with good 
 food and good wine and regaining as much strength 
 as possible in order to use it up again right away 
 in new battles. They withdrew us from the firing 
 line four days ago on the east front of Ypres, 
 where we had ourselves relieved the English, and 
 they are reorganising us here with recruits whom 
 we take into our ranks and by promotions and ap- 
 pointments, and from the wounded who returned 
 cured from the rear and in every way they can — 
 and then they will do whatever they like with us, 
 sending us back into the Belgian trenches, or ship- 
 ping us off perhaps to some new zone of fighting. 
 The attempt on Ypres has been a failure for the 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 155 
 
 Boches. We wonder if they are going to try an- 
 other or whether if, through fear of the Russians, 
 they are going to decide at last to take away their 
 men from the French front where during four 
 months they have accumulated such formidable re- 
 sources. 
 
 This rest, as you will understand from my 
 earlier letter, we have fairly earned. The month 
 of November was the most terrible of the cam- 
 paign; we have had bloody battles on every side. 
 My division, which had been brought here in 
 autos, was used to reinforce every part of the 
 front as fast as the formidable attacks of the 
 Boches against Ypres developed. Our battalions, 
 on account of their well-known steadiness, were 
 called and recalled, sent hither and thither, to at- 
 tack, to defend, to take trenches, to retake them, 
 to organise them or to give an example of stoical 
 calm under a bombardment. One day one of my 
 companies, without firing a gun, lost seventy-six 
 men in its trench, their backs bent beneath the 
 shells which must be endured "just the same," 
 ready to stay to the last man, in that trench which 
 their orders were not to give up and from which 
 after nightfall the survivors were still able to re- 
 pulse a violent attack. That's modern warfare! 
 Twice my battalion has lost half of its members 
 and has had its ranks refilled by reinforcements 
 from the rear, but everywhere it has received the 
 congratulations and thanks of the chiefs under 
 
I56 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 whose orders it has momentarily been placed. All 
 that is both beautiful and sad at the same time. 
 Then, when the ferocity of the fighting had slack- 
 ened a little, the cold came, with three or four 
 nights of heavy frost, and against that new trial 
 they have once more valiantly held their ground. 
 Day and night we hear over our heads the hissing 
 whistle of enormous shells flying towards Ypres, 
 wicked, savage and incendiary. And the other day 
 in crossing the city at dawn in order to get around 
 here we saw the horrible devastation which nothing 
 can justify and which nothing can ever excuse. 
 Ah, what savages they are, but what redoubtable 
 and terrible fighters ! When shall we "have them" 
 for good! . . . 
 
 Here are some passages from the letters 
 of General X, commanding an army corps, 
 who also writes from the front: 
 
 October 20th. 
 My confidence is complete. The struggle will be 
 long, but we shall have entire success. ... I have 
 spoken to you, I think, of that colonel, an officer 
 of the Legion of Honour, who enlisted as an ordi- 
 nary soldier at more than sixty years of age. I 
 have in my corps a second lieutenant sixty-one 
 years old whose son has been killed, and many 
 other officers who are volunteers, who no longer 
 owed any service to the army. At their side there 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 157 
 
 are mere children, "the little warriors of France." 
 Yesterday I saw a little chap of fourteen, dressed 
 in uniform, marching proudly between two troop- 
 ers. These children, in the costumes which have 
 been gotten up for them, with their sabre-bayonets 
 at their sides, look absurd, or rather they bring 
 the tears to your eyes. It is eleven o'clock at 
 night. I have just ordered an attack to take one 
 of the enemy's positions which I have overwhelmed 
 all day long with the fire of twenty batteries. 
 Poor village ! What devastation ! So wills the 
 safety of the country. But how happy those parts 
 of the country which are away from the field of 
 operations should consider themselves. I have 
 seen so many families fleeing and carrying away 
 hurriedly pathetic bundles or carts loaded with 
 clothes and all sorts of things. Ah, but this war 
 is terrible. They bring into it an unbelievable 
 ferocity, the result of the barbarism of these peo- 
 ple who push their mania to the point of pretend- 
 ing to arrogate to themselves the control of every- 
 thing that thinks or works. But their tone and 
 their attitude are changing; fortune no longer 
 smiles on them; the ship is leaking. 
 
 October 29th. 
 I assure you that everybody from the most mod- 
 est combatant to the Generalissimo will have a 
 right to the victor's crown, for our successes are 
 due to the bravery of these brave little troopers. 
 
I58 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 They pass days and nights in the trenches within 
 fifty yards of the enemy, exchanging shots continu- 
 ously, or marching gaily to the assault and some- 
 times falling without a complaint. 
 
 I have just been to see an officer who was se- 
 verely wounded. He was smiling. He said to 
 me, "We've got that trench all right, haven't we, 
 General? I told my comrades to avenge me. 
 Good-bye, for a while." 
 
 How can one help having confidence in such 
 troops ! 
 
 November 10th. 
 Heaven knows if I ever expected a war like this, 
 a regular mole trap. We have to fight not only 
 against the enemy but against the cold. I try in 
 a thousand different ways to keep my men in 
 good health. What cares I have ! You must look 
 after everything: hygiene, clothes, food, hospitals. 
 It is a very great responsibility to lead troops into 
 action. We take many precautions to avoid 
 bronchitis, for we must not increase too much 
 the number of your clients. Ah, if we could only 
 call the nurses into the lines to carry away the 
 wounded. But we are afraid of the shells and 
 none of them must be allowed to show themselves 
 around here. In order to harden our young sol- 
 diers little by little, I keep them behind the lines 
 in places where they have nothing to fear. I shall 
 begin very soon to send them to the front. In 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 159 
 
 that way we always have strong forces. Let us 
 go forward, therefore, full of confidence. 
 
 November 16th. 
 You must spend yourself here like a vigorous 
 young man. I can assure you that those who 
 come out of this will have given proof of strong 
 constitutions. In the first battle a shell burst two 
 or three metres above my head, wounding two offi- 
 cers of my staff and killing two horses. At other 
 times they have burst in front or behind without 
 doing any harm to those around me. Three days 
 ago it was infernal; they rained on us from every 
 side. One single shell killed thirty-eight artillery 
 horses. The men have been superb; they have 
 stood undisturbed under this deluge of iron and 
 fire. What brave fellows they are! And it is 
 touching to see how their hearts beat as one; how 
 the French nation has gotten hold of itself again. 
 In spite of all this anguish, truly this war is a 
 "splendid ordeal." It will leave France strong 
 and regenerated, as we all long for her to be. 
 
 SISTER GABRIELLE'S CHRISTMAS 
 TREE 
 
 December 26th, 1914. — In these days of 
 deep sorrow the unchangeable church in- 
 vites us to celebrate, not the agony of Cal- 
 
ÎÔO IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 vary, but the gay holiday of Christmas. 
 What, celebrate that blessed holiday of in- 
 timate pleasures and of sweet memories in 
 these times of anxiety, of troubles and of 
 cruel separation ! Yes, Christmas is ever the 
 same. Christmas which comes again in the 
 shimmering starry night to recall to the earth 
 that everlasting promise which through all 
 the centuries since the dawn of the first 
 Christmas day shall comfort every sorrow. 
 That blessed word is everywhere. 
 
 It was Christmas in those houses of 
 mourning which gained an hour of respite 
 from the thought that heaven, where now 
 the souls of the well beloved are living, 
 draws near to-day through the coming of the 
 Child. 
 
 It was Christmas in the trenches toward 
 which our hearts were turned with such 
 strength and fervour that a perfume of anx- 
 ious tenderness must have floated that even- 
 ing in the air of France around those be- 
 loved soldiers. They had not our churches, 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL l6l 
 
 alas, but above their heads in the broad, 
 open sky their eyes could look for the shin- 
 ing star. 
 
 It was Christmas in all our hospitals and 
 in Sister Gabrielle's ward. The evening of 
 the 25th was spent around a splendid tree 
 wonderfully decorated. A number of little 
 girls, the nurses of to-morrow, full of the 
 desire to make themselves useful but still too 
 young to be admitted regularly to the hos- 
 pital, had been working outside for their be- 
 loved wounded. They brought us quantities 
 of their own work and of the results of their 
 collections. 
 
 "Ah, those children," Sister Gabrielle said 
 to me one day as she watched them leaving 
 the hospital, carrying without the least em- 
 barrassment huge bundles of red trousers 
 to be mended, "those children without know- 
 ing it are creating a new generation which 
 will be moulded by life itself in its highest 
 expression ; by daily sacrifice, by living close 
 to heroism, by the control and forgetful- 
 
1Ô2 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 ness of self in the midst of unutterable emo- 
 tion." 
 
 The Sister was only too glad to let all 
 that eager young life come to the ceremony 
 of "the tree." Happy and eager, they en- 
 tered like the fresh spring into that long 
 room where there was always suffering in 
 spite of the holiday atmosphere. The smiles 
 of the invalids followed them. At the very 
 end of the room between the two rows of 
 white beds stood the tree. It was a stately 
 spruce sent from the mountains especially 
 for our wounded. Its branches bent gently 
 under the weight of numberless mysterious 
 packages. Gold and silver stars glittered 
 through the branches, along which flowed tri- 
 colour ribbons, those beloved ribbons, the 
 sight of which brings tears to our eyes. In 
 the middle at the very end of the two largest 
 branches were fastened two French flags. 
 When you touched the trunk the flags 
 waved. You might have said that our 
 spruce itself waved them at the ends of its 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 163 
 
 outstretched arms for some mysterious sig- 
 nal to those other flags which fly over our 
 battlefields. At the very bottom, hidden 
 among the thickest branches, a little, a very 
 little plaster Christ Child, whom you had 
 to look hard to find, slept sheltered by a 
 mass of tri-colour ribbon. The child Jesus, 
 with the three colours of France for its 
 cradle, is that not something to dream 
 about? 
 
 As the evening fell, toward four o'clock, 
 Sister Gabrielle ordered the long windows 
 closed. Thereupon the many-coloured balls 
 hung on the tree became alive and grew 
 transparent and luminous. The dark green 
 branches grew darker still and the red of our 
 flags flamed out against them. Then the 
 mysterious spirit of Christmas came down all 
 around. It illuminated with its indefinable 
 charm the presents hung on the table laden 
 with mandarins and the traditional nougat, 
 and indeed the whole atmosphere. Two or- 
 derlies carried in on a cot the "darling" of 
 
164 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 the room, a little volunteer from Bar-le-duc, 
 who answered proudly when he was com- 
 plimented for his ardour, "But at home all 
 the young men of eighteen have gone. You 
 don't meet, one in the town." 
 
 To-day he is blushing and confused by 
 the honour being done him, for it is he who 
 is going to draw the numbers. They settle 
 him as comfortably as possible with a chair 
 on which to rest his wounded leg. All the 
 men who are able to get up surround him, 
 their heads bandaged, their arms in slings, 
 limping along on crutches or the shoulder of 
 a comrade. From the beds pathetic heads 
 are raised in order to see better. The cere- 
 monies begin. The system is very simple. 
 The numbers contained in the bag corre- 
 spond to the hospital numbers of the men 
 and those whose numbers were first drawn 
 choose first. From one end of the room to 
 the other they went back and forth to de- 
 scribe to those who were in bed the look, the 
 size and the shape of the packages. After 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 165 
 
 they have heard these details they consider, 
 occasionally for a long time, and give their 
 orders, which are immediately executed. 
 The lucky ones who were on their feet, care- 
 fully make the round of the tree, again and 
 again, before deciding, as if it were a ques- 
 tion of very serious moment. The pleas- 
 ure of all these veterans was very touching. 
 By a tender memory they found again that 
 evening the feeling they had as children. A 
 fictitious number marked with the name of 
 the surgeon of the room suddenly came out. 
 There just at that moment was Dr. X, gay 
 and kind as always. The men feel great 
 admiration and affection for him, which is 
 well deserved, because his untiring devotion 
 is as great as his scientific skill. He gra- 
 ciously accepted a box of caramels and at 
 his request one of the young girls passed it 
 around the room. 
 
 An adjutant whose bed was far away, 
 claimed when his turn came, the honour of 
 having one of the flags. Boisset confided to 
 
l66 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 me his satisfaction at being the last one 
 called. "It's the least we can do, to give 
 our dear wounded the first choice," he said. 
 The directors of the hospital arrived in 
 the midst of the distribution of the presents. 
 Behind them we saw, to our great surprise, 
 a little harmonium pushed by vigorous arms, 
 and with it a whole choir of soldiers. Sis- 
 ter Lucy, the accompanist, was summoned. 
 She took her place; the uniforms were 
 grouped around her white headdress and in 
 front of the glowing tree we sang once more 
 the old French carols. 
 
 People, on your knees, await your 
 deliverance. 
 
 That command to hope and pray chanted 
 by the fine, serious voice of a singer whose 
 head was bandaged, awoke the far echoes of 
 the room over which a tense and profound 
 silence had spread. But as the songs fol- 
 lowed one another we could hear from some 
 of the beds, here and there, the sound of 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 167 
 
 stifled sobs. They are gay, really, our sim- 
 ple old songs! But to-day their gaiety 
 stirred in our hearts too many memories of 
 past Christmases, from those which we cele- 
 brated as children in the abandonment of 
 careless happiness, to the later ones, even to 
 that of last year. That one was perhaps 
 made up of the happiness of other children, 
 grown up around us; it was filled anyway 
 with the inexpressible sweetness of home. 
 Two of the invalids were affected in a par- 
 ticularly harrowing way. It was because 
 they suffered with an agony for which we 
 shall never have pity enough. They came 
 from the regions that have been invaded and 
 they did not know what had become of their 
 wives and children. The little girls, who 
 were brought into the hospital room for the 
 first time yesterday, were completely over- 
 come by the tears of these men. They came 
 to me to say, in a slightly horrified tone, 
 that Sister Gabrielle had said that they 
 should not try to comfort them. She would 
 
l68 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 talk to them herself later on, but she was 
 sure, that for the time being, it was better 
 to leave them alone. Sister Gabrielle was 
 right. She knew well that at certain times 
 there are griefs that cannot be comforted. 
 
 During that day of respite when the se- 
 vere rules of the hospital bowed before the 
 gentle Christmas time, in front of that tree 
 of memories, in that softening family atmos- 
 phere, we could not but let them weep 
 freely, these fathers, husbands and chil- 
 dren who suddenly saw near them again 
 the longed-for vision of their threat- 
 ened homes. Ever since the manger at Beth- 
 lehem no doubt men have wept at the feet 
 of the new-born babe whose divine hand 
 consoles and lifts up sorrowing hearts. No, 
 we must say nothing. No one should try to 
 come between human sorrow and the child 
 who is to suffer on the cross, for since that 
 night the bond is beyond our understanding. 
 Let the very tears of our soldiers help us 
 pray for those dreadful troubles that we see 
 
IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 169 
 
 and for the other more hidden ones which 
 weigh on our souls. To-morrow when the 
 great windows open again to the cold air 
 of December we shall take up once more 
 with greater courage after to-day's tears, our 
 customary life and our self-control. To- 
 morrow, Sister Gabrielle, who has seemed to 
 see nothing, will remember, as if by a 
 miracle, those beds where so many tears 
 have been shed. She will bend those quiver- 
 ing white wings over them for a few mo- 
 ments and will say words of strength and 
 consolation. To-morrow the blessed Christ- 
 mas day will be over, of course, but the tree 
 stripped of its garlands and presents, will 
 still hold the tri-colour ribbons and also hid- 
 den in its lowest branches, the divine child, 
 who stretches out his arms. Sister Gabrielle 
 still has that silent and eloquent sermon; 
 the child of sacrifice under the colours of 
 that France for which we must be ready to 
 give all and even to die; that is what she 
 leaves before the eyes of the soldiers. 
 
170 IN A FRENCH HOSPITAL 
 
 But their thoughts and ours also can rise 
 beyond, even higher than the hardships of 
 the stable and of the present moment. This 
 Jesus who smiles in the straw of the manger 
 and who is willing through love to become 
 the God of the Crucifixion, is also the God 
 of the Resurrection. The feast of His com- 
 ing has given to humanity a radiant thought. 
 To truly celebrate that anniversary we must 
 know how to hear beyond the days of sad- 
 ness the distant Alleluia. The true Christ- 
 mas of Christian souls is at all times the 
 feast of hope. 
 
 THE END 
 
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