[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]
M. Eugène Brieux, the celebrated French poet and playwright,
who is in this country as the official representative of the
French Academy--the "Forty Immortals"--has written a
remarkable tribute to American aid of France during the
present war. The address, which is herewith presented, was
read by M. Brieux at the residence of Mrs. John Henry Hammond
of New York City recently before a gathering of two hundred
men and women who have been interested in the work of the
American Ambulance Hospital in Paris.
Miss Marie Van Vorst, who nursed the wounded at the American Ambulance
in Paris, will speak to you of it as an eyewitness. From her you will
receive direct news of your splendid work of humanity. While she was
caring for wounded French, English, and German I was attached to another
hospital at Chartres. It happens, therefore, that I have never seen the
American Military Hospital created by you, but I am not in ignorance
concerning it any more than any other Parisian, any more, indeed, than
the majority of the French people. I know that the American Ambulance is
the most remarkable hospital that the world has seen. I know that you,
since the beginning of the war, have brought the aid of medical science
to wounded men and that you have given not only money, but an
institution, all ready, complete and of the most modern type, and, even
more, that you have sent there your best surgeons and a small army of
orderlies and nurses.
I know that at first one could not find a place; that there was
available only a building in course of construction, intended to be the
Pasteur School at Neuilly. This building was far from completion; it
lacked doors and there were no stairs. I know that in three weeks your
generosity, your energy, and your quick intelligence has made of this
uncertain shell a modern military hospital, with white walls, electric
light, baths, rooms for administering anaesthetics, operating rooms,
sterilizing plants, apparatus for X-rays, and a dental clinic. I know
that automobiles, admirably adapted to the service, carried the wounded.
And yet I do not know all. I know only by instinct of the devotion of
your young girls, of your women, and of your young men, belonging often
to prominent families, who served as stretcher bearers and orderlies.
I am not ignorant of the fact that they count by the hundreds those who
have been cured at the American Ambulance at Neuilly, nor of the further
fact that the rate of mortality is extremely low, although they have
sent you those most gravely injured. I know that it is all free; that
there are no charges made for the expenses of administration; that for
the service rendered by your people there is no claim, and that every
cent of every dollar subscribed goes entirely and directly to the care
of the wounded. I know also that the expenses at the hospital are $4,000
a day, and that ever since the beginning your charity has met this
demand.
Such splendid effort has not been ignored or misunderstood. The
President of the French Republic has cabled to President Wilson his
appreciation and his gratitude; General Fevier, Inspector General of
Hospitals of the French Army, has publicly expressed his admiration; the
English physicians and public men have shared their sentiments.
As to the people of Paris, as to the French nation, they have been
touched to the depths of their being. And yet in France we have found
all this quite natural. I shall tell you why. We have so high a regard
for you that when you do anything well no one is surprised. I believe
that if a wounded soldier arriving at your hospital exclaimed, "This is
wonderful!" his comrade who had been ahead of him would answer in a tone
of admonition: "That surprises you? You do not know then that it is done
by the Americans, by the people from the United States?" In this refusal
to be astonished in the face of remarkable achievements, when they come
from you, there is a tribute, a praise of high quality which your
feelings and your patriotism will know how to appreciate.
I have said that all that comes from you which is good and great seems
natural to us, and I have given you a reason; but there is another. In
France we are accustomed to consider the Republic of the United States
as an affectionate, distant sister. When one receives a gift from a
stranger one is astonished and cries out his thanks, but when the gift
comes from a brother or from some one who, on similar occasions, has
never failed, the thanks are not so outspoken but more profound. One
says: "Ah, it is you, my brother. I suffer. I expected you. I knew that
you would come, for I should have gone to you had you needed me. I thank
you."
And, indeed, we are closely bound together, you and we. Without doubt,
common interest and an absence of possible competition helps to that
end, but there is something more which unites us--it is our kindred
sentiments. It is this kinship which has created our attraction for each
other and which has cemented it; it is our common ground of affections,
of hatreds, of hopes; our ideals rest upon the same high plane. To
mention but one point, one of you has said: "The United States and
France are the only two nations which have fought for an ideal." And it
is that which separates us, you and us, from a certain other nation, and
which has served to bring us two close together.
We love you and we are grateful for what you are doing for us. When the
day came for my departure from France to represent here the French
Academy I asked of Mr. Poincaré, who had visited the American Ambulance
at Neuilly, if duty did not forbid me to go. "No," he said to me. "Go to
the United States. Carry greetings to the great nation of America." And
he gave to me, for your President, the letter with which you are
familiar, where he expressed the admiration and the sympathy that he has
for you.
I have been traveling North and South in the Eastern part of the United
States. I have had many opportunities to admire your power and the
extent of your efforts. Today, in thinking of the American Ambulance
Hospital in Paris, I admire your persistence in labor. You have
established this hospital. That was good. But it costs a thousand
dollars a day, and yet you keep on with the work. That is doubly good.
Indeed, one can understand that you have not been willing, after having
created this model hospital, that some day through lack of support its
doors should close and the wounded you have taken in be turned over to
others; certainly those first subscribers undertook a sort of moral
obligation to themselves not to permit the work to fail. But, none the
less, it is admirable that it should be so. To give once is something,
but it is little if one compares the value of the first gift to those
which follow.
The first charity is easily understood. Suddenly war is at hand. Its
horrors can be imagined and every one feels that he can in some measure
lessen them, and he opens his purse. Then time passes, the war
continues, and one becomes accustomed to the thoughts that were at first
unbearable--it is so far away and so long. Others in this way were
checked after their first impulse.
But you, you have thought that, if it is good to establish a hospital,
that alone was not enough, and that each day would bring new wounded to
replace those who, cured, took up their guns again and returned to the
field of battle. And since at the American Ambulance the wounded are
cured quickly, the very excellence of your organization, the science of
your surgeons, and the greatness of your sacrifices all bring upon you
other and new sacrifices to be made.
But the word "sacrifice" is badly chosen. You do not make sacrifices,
for you are strong and you are good. When you decide upon some new
generous act you have only to appeal to your national pride, which will
never allow an American undertaking to fail. You have the knowledge of
the good that you are doing, and that, for you, is sufficient. You know
that, thanks to your generosity, suffering is relieved, and you know
that, thanks to the science of your surgeons, this relief is not merely
momentary, but that the wounded man who would have remained a cripple if
he had been less ably cared for, will be, thanks to you, completely
cured, and that, instead of dragging out a miserable existence, he will
be able to live a normal life and support a family which will bless
you. Such men will owe it all to the persistence of your generosity.
I return always to that point, and it is essential. To give once is a
common impulse, common to nearly all the world. It means freeing one's
self from the suffering which good souls feel when they see others
suffer. But to give again after having given is a proof of reflection,
of an understanding of the meaning of life; it is to work intelligently;
it is to insure the value of the first effort; it means the possession
of goodness which is lasting and far-seeing. That is a rare virtue. You
have it. And that is why I express a three-fold thanks, for the past,
for the present, and for the future--thanks that come from the bottom of
the heart of a Frenchman.