I have been trying to feel in a humor to write all this month, but what
with the changeable weather, a visit to Paris, and the depression of
the terrible battle at Soissons,--so near to us--I have not had the
courage. All the same, I frankly confess that it has not been as bad
as I expected. I begin to think things are never as bad as one
expects.
Do you know that it is not until now that I have had a passport from
my own country? I have never needed one. No one here has ever
asked me for one, and it was only when I was in Paris a week ago
that an American friend was so aghast at the idea that I had, in case
of accident, no real American protection, that I went to the Embassy,
for the first time in my life, and asked for one, and seriously took the
oath of allegiance. I took it so very seriously that it was impressed on
me how careless we, who live much abroad, get about such things.
I know that many years ago, when I was first leaving the States, it
was suggested that such a document might be useful as an
identification, and I made out my demand, and it was sent after me to
Rome. I must have taken the oath at that time, but it was in days of
peace, and it made no impression on me. But this time I got a great
big choke in my throat, and looked up at the Stars and Stripes over
the desk, and felt more American than I ever felt in my life. It cost me
two dollars, and I felt the emotion was well worth the money, even at
a high rate of exchange.
I did practically nothing else in Paris, except to go to one or two of the
hospitals where I had friends at work.
Paris is practically normal. A great many of the American colony who
fled in September to Bordeaux and to London have returned, and the
streets are more lively, and the city has settled down to live through
the war with outward calm if no gaiety. I would not have believed it
would be possible, in less than five months, and with things going
none too well at the front, that the city could have achieved this
attitude.
When I got back, I found that, at least, our ambulance was open.
It is only a small hospital, and very poor. It is set up in the salle de
récréation of the commune, which is beside the church and opposite
the mairie, backed up against the wall of the park of the Château de
Quincy. It is really a branch of the military hospital at Meaux, and it is
under the patronage of the occupant of the Château de Quincy, who
supplies such absolute necessities as cannot be provided from the
government allowance of two francs a day per bed. There are twenty-
eight beds.
Most of the beds and bedding were contributed by the people in the
commune. The town crier went about, beating his drum, and making
his demand at the crossroads, and everyone who could spare a bed
or a mattress or a blanket carried his contribution to the salle. The
wife of the mayor is the directress, the doctor from Crécy-en-Brie
cares for the soldiers, with the assistance of Soeur Jules and Soeur
Marie, who had charge of the town dispensary, and four girls of the
Red Cross Society living in the commune.
The installation is pathetically simple, but the room is large and
comfortable, with four rows of beds, and extra ones on the stage, and
it is heated by a big stove. Naturally it gets more sick and slightly
wounded than serious cases, but the boys seem very happy, and
they are affectionately cared for. There is a big court for the
convalescents, and in the spring they will have the run of the park.
About the twelfth we had a couple of days of the worst cannonading
since October. It was very trying. I stood hours on the lawn listening,
but it was not for several days that we knew there had been a terrible
battle at Soissons, just forty miles north of us.
There is a great difference of opinion as to how far we can hear the
big guns, but an officer on the train the other day assured me that
they could be heard, the wind being right, about one hundred
kilometres--that is to say, eighty miles--so you can judge what it was
like here, on the top of the hill, half that distance away by road, and
considerably less in a direct line.
Our official communiqué, as usual, gave us no details, but one of the
boys in our town was wounded, and is in a near-by ambulance,
where he has been seen by his mother; she brings back word that it
was, as he called it, "a bloody slaughter in a hand-to-hand fight." But
of course, nothing so far has been comparable to the British stand at
Ypres. The little that leaks slowly out regarding that simply makes
one's heart ache with the pain of it, only to rebound with the glory.
Human nature is a wonderful thing, and the locking of the gate to
Calais, by the English, will, I imagine, be, to the end of time, one of
the epics, not of this war alone, but of all war. Talk about the "thin red
line." The English stood, we are told, like a ribbon to stop the German
hordes,--and stopped them.
It almost seems a pity that, up to date, so much secrecy has been
maintained. I was told last week in Paris that London has as yet no
dream of the marvellous feat her volunteer army achieved--a feat that
throws into the shade all the heroic defenses sung in the verse of
ancient times. Luckily these achievements do not dull with years.
On top of the Soissons affair came its result: the French retreat
across the Aisne caused by the rising of the floods which carried
away the bridges as fast as the engineers could build them, and cut
off part of the French, even an ambulance, and, report says, the men
left across the river without ammunition fought at the end with the
butts of their broken guns, and finally with their fists.
Of course this brings again that awful cry over the lack of preparation,
and lack of ammunition.
It is a foolish cry today, since the only nation in the world ready for
this war was the nation that planned and began it.
Even this disaster--and there is no denying that it is one--does not
daunt these wonderful people. They still see two things, the Germans
did not get to Paris, nor have they got to Calais, so, in spite of their
real feats of arms--one cannot deny those--an endeavor must be
judged by its purpose, and, so judged, the Germans have, thus far,
failed. Luckily the French race is big enough to see this and take
heart of grace. God knows it needs to, and thank Him it can.
Don't you imagine that I am a bit down. I am not. I am cold. But, when
I think of the discomfort in the hurriedly constructed trenches, where
the men are in the water to their ankles, what does my being cold in a
house mean? Just a record of discomfort as my part of the war, and it
seems, day after day, less important. But oh, the monotony and
boredom of it! Do you wonder that I want to hibernate?
X