BOOK I

FRENCHWOMEN IN WAR TIME

If this little book reads more like a memoir than a systematic study

of conditions, my excuse is that I remained too long in France and was

too much with the people whose work most interested me, to be capable,

for a long while, at any rate, of writing a detached statistical

account of their remarkable work.

In the first place, although it was my friend Owen Johnson who

suggested this visit to France and personal investigation of the work

of her women, I went with a certain enthusiasm, and the longer I

remained the more enthusiastic I became. My idea in going was not to

gratify my curiosity but to do what I could for the cause of France as

well as for my own country by studying specifically the war-time work

of its women and to make them better known to the women of America.

The average American woman who never has traveled in Europe, or only

as a flitting tourist, is firm in the belief that all Frenchwomen are

permanently occupied with fashions or intrigue. If it is impossible to

eradicate this impression, at least the new impression I hope to

create by a recital at first hand of what a number of Frenchwomen (who

are merely carefully selected types) are doing for their country in

its present ordeal, should be all the deeper.

American women were not in the least astonished at the daily accounts

which reached them through the medium of press and magazine of the

magnificent war services of the British women. That was no more than

was to have been expected. Were they not, then, Anglo-Saxons, of our

own blood, still closer to the fountain-source of a nation that has,

with whatever reluctance, risen to every crisis in her fate with a

grim, stolid, capable tenacity that means the inevitable defeat of any

nation so incredibly stupid as to defy her?

If word had come over that the British women were quite indifferent to

the war, were idle and frivolous and insensible to the clarion voice

of their indomitable country's needs, that, if you like, would have

made a sensation. But knowing the race as they did--and it is the only

race of which the genuine American does know anything--he, or she,

accepted the leaping bill of Britain's indebtedness to her brave and

easily expert women without comment, although, no doubt, with a glow

of vicarious pride.

But quite otherwise with the women of France. In the first place there

was little interest. They were, after all, foreigners. Your honest

dyed-in-the-wool American has about the same contemptuous tolerance

for foreigners that foreigners have for him. They are not Americans

(even after they immigrate and become naturalized), they do not speak

the same language in the same way, and all accents, save perhaps a

brogue, are offensive to an ear tuned to nasal rhythms and to the rich

divergencies from the normal standards of their own tongue that

distinguish different sections of this vast United States of America.

But the American mind is, after all, an open mind. Such generalities

as, "The Frenchwomen are quite wonderful," "are doing marvelous things

for their country during this war," that floated across the expensive

cable now and again, made little or no impression on any but those who

already knew their France and could be surprised at no resource or

energy she might display; but Owen Johnson and several other men with

whom he talked, including that ardent friend of France, Whitney

Warren, felt positive that if some American woman writer with a

public, and who was capable through long practice in story writing, of

selecting and composing facts in conformance with the economic and

dramatic laws of fiction, would go over and study the work of the

Frenchwomen at first hand, and, discarding generalities, present

specific instances of their work and their attitude, the result could

not fail to give the intelligent American woman a different opinion of

her French sister and enlist her sympathy.

I had been ill or I should have gone to England soon after the

outbreak of the war and worked with my friends, for I have always

looked upon England as my second home, and I have as many friends

there as here. If it had not been for Mr. Johnson and Mr. Warren, no

doubt I should have gone to England within the next two or three

months. But their representations aroused my enthusiasm and I

determined to go to France first, at all events.

My original intention was to remain in France for a month, gathering

my material as quickly as possible, and then cross to England. It

seemed to me that if I wrote a book that might be of some service to

France I should do the same thing for a country to which I was not

only far more deeply attached but far more deeply indebted.

I remained three months and a third in France--from May 9th, 1916, to

August 19th--and I did not go to England for two reasons. I found that

it was more of an ordeal to get to London from Paris than to return to

New York and sail again; and I heard that Mrs. Ward was writing a book

about the women of England. For me to write another would be what is

somewhat gracelessly called a work of supererogation.

I remained in France so long because I was never so vitally interested

in my life. I could not tear myself away, although I found it

impossible to put my material into shape there. Not only was I on the

go all day long, seeing this and that oeuvre, having personal

interviews with heads of important organizations, taken about by the

kind and interested friends my own interest made for me, but when

night came I was too tired to do more than enter all the information I

had accumulated during the day in a notebook, and then go to bed. I

have seldom taken notes, but I was determined that whatever else my

book might be it should at least be accurate, and I also collected all

the literature (leaflets, pamphlets, etc.) of the various oeuvres (as

all these war relief organizations are called) and packed them into

carefully superscribed large brown envelopes with a meticulousness

that is, alas, quite foreign to my native disposition.

When, by the way, I opened my trunk to pack it and saw those dozen or

more large square brown envelopes I was appalled. They looked so

important, so sinister, they seemed to mutter of State secrets, war

maps, spy data. I knew that trunks were often searched at Bordeaux,

and I knew that if mine were those envelopes never would leave France.

I should be fortunate to sail away myself.

But I must have my notes. To remember all that I had from day to day

gathered was an impossibility. I have too good a memory not to

distrust it when it comes to a mass of rapidly accumulated

information; combined with imagination and enthusiasm it is sure to

play tricks.

But I had an inspiration. The Ministry of War had been exceedingly

kind to me. Convinced that I was a "Friend of France," they had

permitted me to go three times into the War Zone, the last time

sending me in a military automobile and providing an escort. I had

been over to the War Office very often and had made friends of several

of the politest men on earth.

I went out and bought the largest envelope to be found in Paris. Into

this I packed all those other big brown envelopes and drove over to

the Ministère de la Guerre. I explained my predicament. Would they

seal it with the formidable seal of the War Office and write

_Propagande_ across it? Of course if they wished I would leave my

garnerings for a systematic search. They merely laughed at this

unusual evidence on my part of humble patience and submission. The

French are the acutest people in the world. By this time these

preternaturally keen men in the War Office knew me better than I knew

myself. If I had, however unconsciously and in my deepest recesses,

harbored a treacherous impulse toward the country I so professed to

admire and to desire to serve, or if my ego had been capable of sudden

tricks and perversions, they would long since have had these

lamentable deformities, my spiritual hare-lip, ticketed and docketed

with the rest of my dossier.

As it was they complied with my request at once, gave me their

blessing, and escorted me to the head of the stair--no elevators in

this great Ministère de la Guerre and the Service de Santé is at the

top of the building. I went away quite happy, more devoted to their

cause than ever, and easy in my mind about Bordeaux--where, by the

way, my trunks were not opened.

Therefore, that remarkable experience in France is altogether still so

vivid to me that to write about it reportorially, with the personal

equation left out, would be quite as impossible as it is for me to

refrain from execrating the Germans. When I add that during that visit

I grew to love the French people (whom, in spite of many visits to

France, I merely had admired coolly and impersonally) as much as I

abominate the enemies of the human race, I feel that the last word has

been said, and that my apology for writing what may read like a

memoir, a chronicle of personal reminiscences, will be understood and

forgiven.

G.A.

=THE LIVING PRESENT=

I

MADAME BALLI AND THE "COMFORT PACKAGE"

One of the most striking results of the Great War has been the

quickening in thousands of European women of qualities so long dormant

that they practically were unsuspected. As I shall tell in a more

general article, the Frenchwomen of the middle and lower bourgeoisie

and of the farms stepped automatically into the shoes of the men

called to the colors in August, 1914, and it was, in their case,

merely the wearing of two pairs of shoes instead of one, and both of

equal fit. The women of those clearly defined classes are their

husbands' partners and co-workers, and although physically they may

find it more wearing to do the work of two than of one, it entails no

particular strain on their mental faculties or change in their habits

of life. Moreover, France since the dawn of her history has been a

military nation, and generation after generation her women have been

called upon to play their important rôle in war, although never on so

vast a scale as now.

Contrary to the prevailing estimate of the French--an estimate formed

mainly from sensational novels and plays, or during brief visits to

the shops and boulevards of Paris--the French are a stolid, stoical,

practical race, abnormally acute, without illusions, and whose famous

ebullience is all in the top stratum. There is even a certain

melancholy at the root of their temperament, for, gay and pleasure

loving as they are on the surface, they are a very ancient and a very

wise people. Impatient and impulsive, they are capable of a patience

and tenacity, a deep deliberation and caution, which, combined with an

unparalleled mental alertness, brilliancy without recklessness,

bravery without bravado, spiritual exaltation without sentimentality

(which is merely perverted animalism), a curious sensitiveness of mind

and body due to over-breeding, and a white flame of patriotism as

steady and dazzling as an arc-light, has given them a glorious

history, and makes them, by universal consent, preëminent among the

warring nations to-day.

They are intensely conservative and their mental suppleness is quite

as remarkable. Economy is one of the motive powers of their existence,

the solid pillars upon which their wealth and power are built; and yet

Paris has been not only the home and the patron of the arts for

centuries, but the arbiter of fashion for women, a byword for

extravagance, and a forcing-house for a thousand varieties of

pleasure. No race is so paradoxical, but then France is the genius

among nations. Antiquity, and many invasions of her soil have given

her an inviolable solidity, and the temperamental gaiety and keen

intelligence which pervades all classes have kept her eternally young.

She is as far from decadence as the crudest community in the United

States of America.

To the student of French history and character nothing the French have

done in this war is surprising; nevertheless it seemed to me that I

had a fresh revelation every day during my sojourn in France in the

summer of 1916. Every woman of every class (with a few notable

exceptions seen for the most part in the Ritz Hotel) was working at

something or other: either in self-support, to relieve distress, or to

supplement the efforts and expenditures of the Government (two billion

francs a month); and it seemed that I never should see the last of

those relief organizations of infinite variety known as "oeuvres."

Some of this work is positively creative, much is original, and all is

practical and indispensable. As the most interesting of it centers in

and radiates from certain personalities whom I had the good fortune to

meet and to know as well as their days and mine would permit, it has

seemed to me that the surest way of vivifying any account of the work

itself is to make its pivot the central figure of the story. So I will

begin with Madame Balli.

II

To be strictly accurate, Madame Balli was born in Smyrna, of Greek

blood; but Paris can show no purer type of Parisian, and she has never

willingly passed a day out of France. During her childhood her brother

(who must have been many years older than herself) was sent to Paris

as Minister from Greece, filling the post for thirty years; and his

mother followed with her family. Madame Balli not only was brought up

in France, but has spent only five hours of her life in Greece; after

her marriage she expressed a wish to see the land of her ancestors,

and her husband--who was an Anglo-Greek--amiably took her to a hotel

while the steamer on which they were journeying to Constantinople was

detained in the harbor of Athens.

Up to the outbreak of the war she was a woman of the world, a woman of

fashion to her finger-tips, a reigning beauty always dressed with a

costly and exquisite simplicity. Some idea of the personal loveliness

which, united to her intelligence and charm, made her one of the

conspicuous figures of the capital, may be inferred from the fact that

her British husband, an art connoisseur and notable collector, was

currently reported deliberately to have picked out the most beautiful

girl in Europe to adorn his various mansions.

Madame Balli has black eyes and hair, a white skin, a classic profile,

and a smile of singular sweetness and charm. Until the war came she

was far too absorbed in the delights of the world--the Paris world,

which has more votaries than all the capitals of all the world--the

changing fashions and her social popularity, to have heard so much as

a murmur of the serious tides of her nature. Although no one disputed

her intelligence--a social asset in France, odd as that may appear to

Americans--she was generally put down as a mere _femme du monde_,

self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, dependent--what our more strident

feminists call parasitic. It is doubtful if she belonged to charitable

organizations, although, generous by nature, it is safe to say that

she gave freely.

[Illustration: MADAME BALLI President Réconfort du Soldat]

In that terrible September week of 1914 when the Germans were driving

like a hurricane on Paris and its inhabitants were fleeing in droves

to the South, Madame Balli's husband was in England; her

sister-in-law, an infirmière major (nurse major) of the First Division

of the Red Cross, had been ordered to the front the day war broke out;

a brother-in-law had his hands full; and Madame Balli was practically

alone in Paris. Terrified of the struggling hordes about the railway

stations even more than of the advancing Germans, deprived of her

motor cars, which had been commandeered by the Government, she did not

know which way to turn or even how to get into communication with her

one possible protector.

But her brother-in-law suddenly bethought himself of this too lovely

creature who would be exposed to the final horrors of recrudescent

barbarism if the Germans entered Paris; he determined to put public

demands aside for the moment and take her to Dinard, whence she could,

if necessary, cross to England.

He called her on the telephone and told her to be ready at a certain

hour that afternoon, and with as little luggage as possible, as they

must travel by automobile. "And mark you," he added, "no dogs!" Madame

Balli had seven little Pekinese to which she was devoted (her only

child was at school in England). She protested bitterly at leaving her

pets behind, but her brother was inexorable, and when he called for

her it was with the understanding that all seven were yelping in the

rear, at the mercy of the concièrge.

There were seven passengers in the automobile, however, of which the

anxious driver, feeling his way through the crowded streets and

apprehensive that his car might be impressed at any moment, had not a

suspicion. They were in hat boxes, hastily perforated portmanteaux, up

the coat sleeves of Madame Balli and her maid, and they did not begin

to yelp until so far on the road to the north that it was not worth

while to throw them out.

III

At Dinard, where wounded soldiers were brought in on every train,

Madame Balli was turned over to friends, and in a day or two, being

bored and lonely, she concluded to go with these friends to the

hospitals and take cigarettes and smiles into the barren wards. From

that day until I left Paris on the seventeenth of August, 1916, Madame

Balli had labored unceasingly; she is known to the Government as one

of its most valuable and resourceful aids; and she works until two in

the morning, during the quieter hours, with her correspondence and

books (the police descend at frequent and irregular intervals to

examine the books of all oeuvres, and one mistake means being haled to

court), and she had not up to that time taken a day's rest. I have

seen her so tired she could hardly go on, and she said once quite

pathetically, "I am not even well-groomed any more." I frequently

straightened her dress in the back, for her maids work almost as hard

as she does. When her husband died, a year after the war broke out,

and she found herself no longer a rich woman, her maids offered to

stay with her on reduced wages and work for her oeuvres, being so

deeply attached to her that they would have remained for no wages at

all if she had really been poor. I used to beg her to go to Vichy for

a fortnight, but she would not hear of it. Certain things depended

upon her alone, and she must remain at her post unless she broke down

utterly.[A]

[A] She is still hard at work, June, 1917.

One of her friends said to me: "Hélène must really be a tremendously

strong woman. Before the war we all thought her a semi-invalid who

pulled herself together at night for the opera, or dinners, or balls.

But we didn't know her then, and sometimes we feel as if we knew her

still less now."

It was Madame Balli who invented the "comfort package" which other

organizations have since developed into the "comfort bag," and founded

the oeuvre known as "Réconfort du Soldat." Her committee consists of

Mrs. Frederick H. Allen of New York, who has a home in Paris and is

identified with many war charities; Mrs. Edward Tuck, who has lived in

and given munificently to France for thirty years; Madame Paul Dupuy,

who was Helen Brown of New York and has her own oeuvre for supplying

war-surgeons with rubber, oil-cloth, invalid chairs, etc.; the

Marquise de Noialles, President of a large oeuvre somewhat similar to

Madame Dupuy's; the Comtesse de Fels, Madame Brun, and Mr.

Holman-Black, an American who has lived the greater part of his life

in France. Mrs. Willard sends her supplies from New York by every

steamer.

Madame Balli also has a long list of contributors to this and her

other oeuvres, who sometimes pay their promised dues and sometimes do

not, so that she is obliged to call on her committee (who have a

hundred other demands) or pay the deficit out of her own pocket. A

certain number of American contributors send her things regularly

through Mrs. Allen or Mrs. Willard, and occasionally some generous

outsider gives her a donation. I was told that the Greek Colony in

Paris had been most generous; and while I was there she published in

one of the newspapers an appeal for a hundred pillows for a hospital

in which she was interested, and received in the course of the next

three days over four hundred.

IV

I went with her one day to one of the éclopé stations and to the Dépôt

des Isolés, outside of Paris, to help her distribute comfort

packages--which, by the way, covered the top of the automobile and

were piled so high inside that we disposed ourselves with some

difficulty. These packages, all neatly tied, and of varying sizes,

were in the nature of surprise bags of an extremely practical order.

Tobacco, pipes, cigarettes, chocolate, toothbrushes, soap,

pocket-knives, combs, safety-pins, handkerchiefs, needles-and-thread,

buttons, pocket mirrors, post-cards, pencils, are a few of the

articles I recall. The members of the Committee meet at her house

twice a week to do up the bundles, and her servants, also, do a great

deal of the practical work.

It was a long drive through Paris and to the dépôts beyond. A year

before we should have been held up at the point of the bayonet every

few yards, but in 1916 we rolled on unhindered. Paris is no longer in

the War Zone, although as we passed the fortifications we saw men

standing beside the upward pointing guns, and I was told that this

vigilance does not relax day or night.

Later, I shall have much to say about the éclopés, but it is enough

to explain here that "éclopé," in the new adaptation of the word,

stands for a man who is not wounded, or ill enough for a military

hospital, but for whom a brief rest in comfortable quarters is

imperative. The stations provided for them, principally through the

instrumentality of another remarkable Frenchwoman, Mlle. Javal, now

number about one hundred and thirty, and are either behind the lines

or in the neighborhood of Paris or other large cities. The one we

visited, Le Bourget, is among the largest and most important, and the

Commandant, M. de L'Horme, is as interested as a father in his

children. The yard when we arrived was full of soldiers, some about to

march out and entrain for the front, others still loafing, and M. de

L'Horme seemed to know each by name.

The comfort packages are always given to the men returning to their

regiments on that particular day. They are piled high on a long table

at one side of the barrack yard, and behind it on the day of my visit

stood Madame Balli, Mrs. Allen, Mr. Holman-Black and myself, and we

handed out packages with a "Bonne chance" as the men filed by. Some

were sullen and unresponsive, but many more looked as pleased as

children and no doubt were as excited over their "grabs," which they

were not to open until in the train. They would face death on the

morrow, but for the moment at least they were personal and titillated.

Close by was a small munition factory, and a large loft had been

turned into a rest-room for such of the éclopés as it was thought

advisable to put to bed for a few days under medical supervision. To

each of these we gave several of the black cigarettes dear to the

tobacco-proof heart of the Frenchman, a piece of soap, three picture

post-cards, and chocolate. I think they were as glad of the visits as

of the presents, for most of them were too far from home to receive

any personal attention from family or friends. The beds looked

comfortable and all the windows were open.

From there we went to the Dépôt des Isolés, an immense enclosure where

men from shattered regiments are sent for a day or two until they can

be returned to the front to fill gaps in other regiments. Nowhere, not

even in the War Zone, did war show to me a grimmer face than here. As

these men are in good health and tarry barely forty-eight hours,

little is done for their comfort. Soldiers in good condition are not

encouraged to expect comforts in war time, and no doubt the discipline

is good for them--although, heaven knows, the French as a race know

little about comfort at any time.

There were cots in some of the barracks, but there were also large

spaces covered with straw, and here men had flung themselves down as

they entered, without unstrapping the heavy loads they carried on

their backs. They were sleeping soundly. Every bed was occupied by a

sprawling figure in his stained, faded, muddy uniform. I saw one

superb and turbaned Algerian sitting upright in an attitude of extreme

dignity, and as oblivious to war and angels of mercy as a dead man in

the trenches.

Two English girls, the Miss Gracies, had opened a cantine at this

dépôt. Women have these cantines in all the éclopé and isolé stations

where permission of the War Office can be obtained, and not only give

freely of hot coffee and cocoa, bread, cakes and lemonade, to those

weary men as they come in, but also have made their little sheds look

gaily hospitable with flags and pictures. The Miss Gracies had even

induced some one to build an open air theater in the great barrack

yard where the men could amuse themselves and one another if they felt

inclined. A more practical gift by Mrs. Allen was a bath house in

which were six showers and soap and towels.

It was a dirty yard we stood in this time, handing out gifts, and when

I saw Mrs. Allen buying a whole wheelbarrow-load of golden-looking

doughnuts, brought by a woman of the village close by, I wondered with

some apprehension if she were meaning to reward us for our excessive

virtue. But they were an impromptu treat for the soldiers standing in

the yard--some already lined up to march--and the way they disappeared

down those brown throats made me feel blasée and over-civilized.

I did not hand out during this little fête, my place being taken by

Mrs. Thayer of Boston, so I was better able to appreciate the picture.

All the women were pretty, and I wondered if Madame Balli had chosen

them as much for their esthetic appeal to the exacting French mind as

for their willingness to help. It was a strange sight, that line of

charming women with kind bright eyes, and, although simply dressed,

stamped with the world they moved in, while standing and lying about

were the tired and dirty poilus--even those that stood were slouching

as if resting their backs while they could--with their uniforms of

horizon blue faded to an ugly gray, streaked and patched. They had not

seen a decent woman for months, possibly not a woman at all, and it

was no wonder they followed every movement of these smiling

benefactresses with wondering, adoring, or cynical eyes.

But, I repeat, to me it was an ill-favored scene, and the fact that it

was a warm and peaceful day, with a radiant blue sky above, merely

added to the irony. Although later I visited the War Zone three times

and saw towns crowded with soldiers off duty, or as empty as old gray

shells, nothing induced in me the same vicious stab of hatred for war

as this scene. There is only one thing more abominable than war and

that is the pacificist doctrine of non-resistance when duty and honor

call. Every country, no doubt, has its putrescent spots caused by

premature senility, but no country so far has shown itself as wholly

crumbling in an age where the world is still young.

V

A few days later I went with Madame Balli and Mr. Holman-Black to the

military hospital, Chaptal, devoted to the men whose faces had been

mutilated. The first room was an immense apartment with an open space

beyond the beds filled to-day with men who crowded about Madame Balli,

as much to get that personal word and smile from her, which the French

soldier so pathetically places above all gifts, as to have the first

choice of a pipe or knife.

After I had distributed the usual little presents of cigarettes,

chocolate, soap, and post-cards among the few still in bed, I sat on

the outside of Madame Balli's mob and talked to one of the

infirmières. She was a Frenchwoman married to an Irishman who was

serving in the British navy, and her sons were in the trenches. She

made a remark to me that I was destined to hear very often:

"Oh, yes, we work hard, and we are only too glad to do what we can for

France; but, my God! what would become of us if we remained idle and

let our minds dwell upon our men at the Front? We should go mad. As it

is, we are so tired at night that we sleep, and the moment we awaken

we are on duty again. I can assure you the harder we have to work the

more grateful we are."

She looked very young and pretty in her infirmière uniform of white

linen with a veil of the same stiff material and the red cross on her

breast, and it was odd to hear that sons of hers were in the trenches.

After that nearly all the men in the different wards we visited were

in bed, and each room was worse than the last, until it was almost a

relief to come to the one where the men had just been operated on and

were so bandaged that any features they may have had left were

indistinguishable.

For the uncovered faces were horrible. I was ill all night, not only

from the memory of the sickening sights with which I had remained

several hours in a certain intimacy--for I went to assist Madame Balli

and took the little gifts to every bedside--but from rage against the

devilish powers that unloosed this horror upon the world. One of the

grim ironies of this war is that the Hohenzollerns and the junkers are

so constituted mentally that they never will be haunted with awful

visions like those that visited the more plastic conscience of Charles

IX after St. Bartholomew; but at least it will be some compensation to

picture them rending the air with lamentations over their own downfall

and hurling curses at their childish folly.

It is the bursting of shrapnel that causes the face mutilations,

and although the first room we visited at Chaptal was a witness

to the marvelous restorative work the surgeons are able to

accomplish--sometimes--many weeks and even months must elapse while

the face is not only red and swollen, but twisted, the mouth almost

parallel with the nose--and often there is no nose--a whole cheek

missing, an eye gone, or both; sometimes the whole mouth and chin have

been blown away; and I saw one face that had nothing on its flat

surface but a pipe inserted where the nose had been. Another was so

terrible that I did not dare to take a second look, and I have only a

vague and mercifully fading impression of a hideousness never before

seen in this world.

On the other hand I saw a man propped up in bed, with one entire side

of his face bandaged, his mouth twisted almost into his right ear, and

a mere remnant of nose, reading a newspaper with his remaining eye and

apparently quite happy.

The infirmière told me that sometimes the poor fellows would cry--they

are almost all very young--and lament that no girl would have them

now; but she always consoled them by the assurance that men would be

so scarce after the war that girls would take anything they could get.

In one of the wards a young soldier was sitting on the edge of his

cot, receiving his family, two women of middle age and a girl of about

seventeen. His face was bandaged down to the bridge of his nose, but

the lower part was uninjured. He may or may not have been permanently

blind. The two older women--his mother and aunt, no doubt--looked

stolid, as women of that class always do, but the girl sat staring

straight before her with an expression of bitter resentment I shall

never forget. She looked as if she were giving up every youthful

illusion, and realized that Life is the enemy of man, and more

particularly of woman. Possibly her own lover was in the trenches. Or

perhaps this mutilated boy beside her was the first lover of her

youth. One feels far too impersonal for curiosity in these hospitals

and it did not occur to me to ask.

Madame Balli had also brought several boxes of delicacies for the

private kitchen of the infirmières, where fine dishes may be concocted

for appetites still too weak to be tempted by ordinary hospital fare:

soup extract, jellies, compotes, cocoa, preserves, etc. Mr.

Holman-Black came staggering after us with one of these boxes, I

remember, down the long corridor that led to the private quarters of

the nurses. One walks miles in these hospitals.

A number of American men in Paris are working untiringly for Paris,

notably those in our War Relief Clearing House--H.O. Beatty, Randolph

Mordecai, James R. Barbour, M.P. Peixotto, Ralph Preston, Whitney

Warren, Hugh R. Griffen, James Hazen Hyde, Walter Abbott, Charles R.

Scott, J.J. Hoff, Rev. Dr. S.N. Watson, George Munroe, Charles

Carroll, J. Ridgeley Carter, H. Herman Harges--but I never received

from any the same sense of consecration, of absolute selflessness as I

did from Mr. Holman-Black. He and his brother have a beautiful little

hôtel, and for many years before the war were among the most brilliant

contributors to the musical life of the great capital; but there has

been no entertaining in those charming rooms since August, 1914. Mr.

Holman-Black is parrain (godfather) to three hundred and twenty

soldiers at the Front, not only providing them with winter and summer

underclothing, bedding, sleeping-suits, socks, and all the lighter

articles they have the privilege of asking for, but also writing from

fifteen to twenty letters to his filleuls daily. He, too, has not

taken a day's vacation since the outbreak of the war, nor read a book.

He wears the uniform of a Red Cross officer, and is associated with

several of Madame Balli's oeuvres.

VI

A few days later Madame Balli took me to another hospital--Hôpital

Militaire Villemin--where she gives a concert once a week. Practically

all the men that gathered in the large room to hear the music, or

crowded before the windows, were well and would leave shortly for the

front, but a few were brought in on stretchers and lay just below the

platform. This hospital seemed less dreary to me than most of those I

had visited, and the yard was full of fine trees. It was also an

extremely cheerful afternoon, for not only was the sun shining, but

the four artists Madame Balli had brought gave of their best and their

efforts to amuse were greeted with shouts of laughter.

Lyse Berty--the most distinguished vaudeville artist in France and who

is certainly funnier than any woman on earth--had got herself up in

horizon blue, and was the hit of the afternoon. The men forgot war and

the horrors of war and surrendered to her art and her selections with

an abandon which betrayed their superior intelligence, for she is a

very plain woman. Miss O'Brien, an Irish girl who has spent her life

in Paris and looks like the pictures in some old Book of

Beauty--immense blue eyes, tiny regular features, small oval face,

chestnut hair, pink-and-white skin, and a tall "willowy" figure--was

second in their critical esteem, because she did not relieve their

monotonous life with fun, but sang, instead, sweet or stirring songs

in a really beautiful voice. The other two, young entertainers of the

vaudeville stage, were not so accomplished but were applauded

politely, and as they possessed a liberal share of the grace and charm

of the Frenchwoman and were exquisitely dressed, no doubt men still

recall them on dreary nights in trenches.

I sat on the platform and watched at close range the faces of these

soldiers of France. They were all from the people, of course, but

there was not a face that was not alive with quick intelligence, and

it struck me anew--as it always did when I had an opportunity to see a

large number of Frenchmen together at close range--how little one face

resembled the other. The French are a race of individuals. There is no

type. It occurred to me that if during my lifetime the reins of all

the Governments, my own included, were seized by the people, I should

move over and trust my destinies to the proletariat of France. Their

lively minds and quick sympathies would make their rule tolerable at

least. As I have said before, the race has genius.

After we had distributed the usual gifts, I concluded to drive home in

the car of the youngest of the vaudeville artists, as taxis in that

region were nonexistent, and Madame Balli and Mr. Holman-Black would

be detained for another hour. Mademoiselle Berty was with us, and in

the midst of the rapid conversation--which never slackened!--she made

some allusion to the son of this little artist, and I exclaimed

involuntarily:

"You married? I never should have imagined it."

Why on earth I ever made such a banal remark to a French

vaudevilliste, whose clothes, jewels, and automobile represented an

income as incompatible with fixed salaries as with war time, I cannot

imagine. Automatic Americanism, no doubt.

Mlle. Berty lost no time correcting me. "Oh, Hortense is not married,"

she merely remarked. "But she has a splendid son--twelve years old."

Being the only embarrassed member of the party, I hastened to assure

the girl that I had thought she was about eighteen and was astonished

to hear that she had a child of any age. But twelve! She turned to me

with a gentle and deprecatory smile.

"I loved very young," she explained.

VII

Chaptal and Villemin are only two of Madame Balli's hospitals. I

believe she visits others, carrying gifts to both the men and the

kitchens, but the only other of her works that I came into personal

contact with was an oeuvre she had organized to teach convalescent

soldiers, mutilated or otherwise, how to make bead necklaces. These

are really beautiful and are another of her own inventions.

Up in the front bedroom of her charming home in the Avenue Henri

Martin is a table covered with boxes filled with glass beads of every

color. Here Madame Balli, with a group of friends, sits during all her

spare hours and begins the necklaces which the soldiers come for and

take back to the hospital to finish. I sat in the background and

watched the men come in--many of them with the _Croix de Guerre,_ the

_Croix de la Legion d'Honneur,_ or the _Medaille Militaire_ pinned on

their faded jackets. I listened to brief definite instructions of

Madame Balli, who may have the sweetest smile in the world, but who

knows what she wants people to do and invariably makes them do it. I

saw no evidence of stupidity or slackness in these young soldiers;

they might have been doing bead-work all their lives, they combined

the different colors and sizes so deftly and with such true artistic

feeling.

Madame Balli has sold hundreds of these necklaces. She has a case at

the Ritz Hotel, and she has constant orders from friends and their

friends, and even from dressmakers; for these trinkets are as nearly

works of art as anything so light may be. The men receive a certain

percentage of the profits and will have an ample purse when they leave

the hospital. Another portion goes to buy delicacies for their less

fortunate comrades--and this idea appeals to them immensely--the rest

goes to buy more beads at the glittering shops on the Rue du Rivoli.

The necklaces bring from five to eight or ten dollars. The soldiers in

many of the hospitals are doing flat beadwork, which is ingenious and

pretty; but nothing compares with these necklaces of Madame Balli, and

some of the best dressed American women in Paris are wearing them.

VIII

On the twentieth of July (1916) _Le Figaro_ devoted an article to

Madame Balli's Réconfort du Soldat, and stated that it was

distributing about six hundred packages a week to soldiers in

hospitals and éclopé dépôts, and that during the month of January

alone nine thousand six hundred packages were distributed both behind

the lines and among the soldiers at the Front. This may go on for

years or it may come to an abrupt end; but, like all the Frenchwomen

to whom I talked, and who when they plunged into work expected a short

war, she is determined to do her part as long as the soldiers do

theirs, even if the war marches with the term of her natural life. She

not only has given a great amount of practical help, but has done her

share in keeping up the morale of the men, who, buoyant by nature as

they are, and passionately devoted to their country, must have many

discouraged moments in their hospitals and dépôts.

Once or twice when swamped with work--she is also a marraine

(godmother) and writes regularly to her filleuls--Madame Balli has

sent the weekly gifts by friends; but the protest was so decided, the

men declaring that her personal sympathy meant more to them than

cigarettes and soap, that she was forced to adjust her affairs in such

a manner that no visit to a hospital at least should be missed.

It is doubtful if any of these men who survive and live to tell tales

of the Great War in their old age will ever omit to recall the

gracious presence and lovely face of Madame Balli, who came so often

to make them forget the sad monotony of their lives, even the pain in

their mutilated limbs, the agony behind their disfigured faces, during

those long months they spent in the hospitals of Paris. And although

her beauty has always been a pleasure to the eye, perhaps it is now

for the first time paying its great debt to Nature.

II

THE SILENT ARMY

I

Madame Paquin, the famous French dressmaker, told me casually an

incident that epitomizes the mental inheritance of the women of a

military nation once more plunged abruptly into war.

Her home is in Neuilly, one of the beautiful suburbs of Paris, and for

years when awake early in the morning it had been her habit to listen

for the heavy creaking of the great wagons that passed her house on

their way from the gardens and orchards of the open country to the

markets of Paris. Sometimes she would arise and look at them, those

immense heavy trucks loaded high above their walls with the luscious

produce of the fertile soil of France. On the seats were always three

or four sturdy men: the farmer, and the sons who would help him unload

at the "Halles."

All these men, of course, were reservists. Mobilization took place on

Sunday. On Monday morning Madame Paquin, like many others in that

anxious city, was tossing restlessly on her bed when she heard the

familiar creaking of the market wagons which for so many years had

done their share in feeding the hungry and fastidious people of Paris.

Knowing that every able-bodied man had disappeared from his usual

haunts within a few hours after the Mobilization Order was posted, she

sprang out of bed and looked through her blinds.

There in the dull gray mist of the early morning she saw the familiar

procession. There were the big trucks drawn by the heavily built cart

horses and piled high with the abundant but precisely picked and

packed produce of the market gardens. Paris was to be fed as usual.

People must eat, war or no war. In spite of the summons which had

excited the brains and depressed the hearts of a continent those

trucks were playing their part in human destiny, not even claiming the

right to be five minutes late. The only difference was that the seats

on this gloomy August morning of 1914 were occupied by large stolid

peasant women, the wives and sisters and sweethearts of the men called

to the colors. They had mobilized themselves as automatically as the

Government had ordered out its army when the German war god deflowered

our lady of peace.

These women may have carried heavy hearts under their bright coifs and

cotton blouses, but their weather-beaten faces betrayed nothing but

the stoical determination to get their supplies to the Halles at the

usual hour. And they have gone by every morning since. Coifs and

blouses have turned black, but the hard brown faces betray nothing,

and they are never late.

II

Up in the Champagne district, although many of the vineyards were in

valleys between the two contending armies, the women undertook to care

for the vines when the time came, risking their lives rather than

sacrifice the next year's vintage. Captain Sweeney of the Foreign

Legion told me that when the French soldiers were not firing they

amused themselves watching these women pruning and trimming as

fatalistically as if guns were not thundering east and west of them,

shells singing overhead. For the most part they were safe enough, and

nerves had apparently been left out of them; but once in a while the

Germans would amuse themselves raking the valley with the guns. Then

the women would simply throw themselves flat and remain

motionless--sometimes for hours--until "Les Boches" concluded to waste

no more ammunition.

In Rheims the women have never closed their shops. They have covered

their windows with sandbags, and by the light of lamp or candle do a

thriving business while the big guns thunder. The soldiers, both

British and French, like their trinkets and post-cards, to say nothing

of more practical objects, and, admiring their inveterate pluck, not

only patronize them liberally but sit in their coverts and gossip or

flirt with the pretty girls for whom shells bursting in the street are

too old a story for terror.

[Illustration: DELIVERING THE MILK IN RHEIMS]

III

Many of the women of the industrial classes who have been accustomed

all their hard dry lives to live on the daily wage of father or

husband have refused to work since the war began, preferring to

scrape along on the Government allocation (allowance) of

one-franc-twenty-five a day for the wives of soldiers, plus fifty

centimes for each child (seventy-five in Paris). These notable

exceptions will be dealt with later. France, like all nations,

contains every variety of human nature, and, with its absence of

illusions and its habit of looking facts almost cynically in the face,

would be the last to claim perfection or even to conceal its

infirmities. But the right side of its shield is very bright indeed,

and the hands of many millions of women, delicate and toil-hardened,

have labored to make it shine once more in history.

The Mayoress of a small town near Paris told me of three instances

that came within her personal observation, and expressed no surprise

at one or the other. She probably would not have thought them worth

mentioning if she had not been asked expressly to meet me and give me

certain information. One was of a woman whose husband had been a

wage-earner, and, with six or eight children, had been able to save

nothing. The allocation was not declared at once and this woman lost

no time bewailing her fate or looking about for charitable groups of

ladies to feed her with soup. She simply continued to run her

husband's estaminet (wine-shop), and, as the patronage was

necessarily diminished, was one of the first to apply when munition

factories invited women to fill the vacant places of men. She chose to

work at night that she might keep the estaminet open by day for the

men too old to fight and for the rapidly increasing number of

"réformés": those who had lost a leg or arm or were otherwise

incapacited for service.

A sister, who lived in Paris, immediately applied for one of the

thousand vacant posts in bakeries, cut bread and buttered it and made

toast for a tea-room in the afternoon, and found another job to sweep

out stores. This woman had a son still under age but in training at

the Front. He had been in the habit of paying her periodical visits,

until this woman, already toiling beyond her strength to support her

other children, sat down one day and wrote to the boy's commanding

officer asking him to permit no more leaves of absence, as the ordeal

was too much for both of them.

The third story was of a woman whom the Mayoress had often

entertained in her homes, both official and private. When this

woman, who had lived a life of such ease as the mother of eleven

children may, was forced to take over the conduct of her husband's

business (he was killed immediately) she discovered that he had been

living on his capital, and when his estate was settled her only

inheritance was a small wine-shop in Paris. She packed her trunks,

spent what little money she had left on twelve railway tickets for

the capital, and settled her brood in the small quarters behind the

estaminet--fortunately the lessee, who was unmarried, had also been

swept off to the Front.

The next morning she reopened the doors and stood smiling behind the

counter. The place was well stocked. It was a long while before she

was obliged to spend any of her intake on aught but food and lights.

So charming a hostess did she prove that her little shop was never

empty and quickly became famous. She had been assured of a decent

living long since.

IV

When I arrived in Paris in May (1916) a little girl had just been

decorated by the President of the Republic. Her father, the village

baker, had made one of those lightning changes from citizen to soldier

and her mother had died a few weeks before. She was an only child. The

bakery had supplied not only the village but the neighboring inn,

which had been a favorite lunching place for automobilists. Traveling

for pleasure stopped abruptly, but as the road that passed the inn was

one of the direct routes to the Front, it still had many hasty calls

upon its hospitality.

Now, bread-making in France is a science, the work of the expert, not

of the casual housewife. The accomplished cook of the inn knew no more

about mixing and baking bread than he did of washing clothes; and

there was but this one bakery, hitherto sufficient, for the baker and

his wife had been strong and industrious. The inn was in despair. The

village was in despair. A Frenchman will go without meat, but life

without bread is unthinkable.

No one thought of the child.

It is possible that in her double grief she did not think of

herself--for twenty-four hours. But the second day after mobilization

her shop window was piled high with loaves as usual. The inn was

supplied. The village was supplied. This little girl worked steadily

and unaided at her task, until her father, a year later, returned

minus a leg to give her assistance of a sort.

The business of the bakery was nearly doubled during that time.

Automobiles containing officers, huge camions with soldiers packed

like coffee-beans, foot-weary marching regiments, with no time to stop

for a meal, halted a moment and bought the stock on hand. But with

only a few hours' sleep the girl toiled on valiantly and no applicant

for bread was turned empty-handed from the now famous bakery.

How she kept up her childish strength and courage without a moment's

change in her routine and on insufficient sleep can only be explained

by the twin facts that she came of hardy peasant stock, and, like all

French children, no matter how individual, was too thoroughly imbued

with the discipline of "The Family" to shirk for a moment the

particular task that war had brought her. This iron discipline of The

Family, one of the most salient characteristics of the French, is

largely responsible for the matter-of-fact way in which every soldier

of France, reservist or regular, and whatever his political

convictions, has risen to this ordeal. And in him as been inculcated

from birth patience and perseverance as well as loyalty to his beloved

flag.

The wives of hotel and shop keepers as well as the women of the farms

have by far the best of it in time of war. The former are always their

husband's partners, controlling the money, consulted at ever step.

When the tocsin rings and the men disappear they simply go on. Their

task may be doubled and they may be forced to employ girls instead of

men, but there is no mental readjusting.

The women of the farms have always worked as hard as the men. Their

doubled tasks involve a greater drain on their physical energies than

the petite bourgeoise suffers, especially in those districts

devastated by the first German invasion--the valley of the Marne. But

they are very hardy, and they too hang on, for stoicism is the

fundamental characteristic of the French.

This stoicism as well as the unrivaled mental suppleness was

illustrated early in the war by the highly typical case of a laundress

whose business was in one of the best districts of Paris.

In France no washing is done in the house. This, no doubt, is one of

the reasons why one's laundry bills, even on a brief visit, are among

the major items, for _les blanchisseuses_ are a power in the land.

When I was leaving Paris the directrice of the École Feminine in

Passy, which had been my home for three months, suggested delicately

that I leave a tip for the laundress, for, said this practical person,

herself a sufferer from many forms of imposition, "she has been

extremely complaisante in coming every week for Madame's wash." I

remarked that the laundress might reasonably feel some gratitude to me

for adding weekly to her curtailed income; but my smiling directrice

shook her head. The favor, it appeared, was all on the other side. So,

although I had tipped the many girls of my unique boarding-place with

pleasure I parted with the sum designated for my patronizing laundress

with no grace whatever.

But to return to the heroine of the story told me by Mrs. Armstrong

Whitney, one of the many American women living in Paris who are

working for France.

This laundress had a very large business, in partnership with her

husband. Nobody was expected to bring the family washing to her door,

nor even to send a servant. The linen was called for and delivered,

for this prosperous firm owned several large trucks and eight or ten

strong horses.

War was declared. This woman's husband and all male employees were

mobilized. Her horses were commandeered. So were her trucks. Many of

her wealthier patrons were already in the country and remained there,

both for economy's sake and to encourage and help the poor of their

villages and farms. The less fortunate made shift to do their washing

at home. Nevertheless there were patrons who still needed her

services at least once a fortnight.

This good woman may have had her moments of despair. If so, the world

never knew it. She began at once to adjust herself to the new

conditions and examine her resources. She importuned the Government

until, to be rid of her, they returned two of her horses. She rented a

cart and employed girls suddenly thrown out of work, to take the place

of the vanished men. The business limped on but it never ceased for a

moment; and as the months passed it assumed a firmer gait. People

returned from the country, finding that they could be more useful in

Paris as members of one or other of a thousand oeuvres; and they were

of the class that must have clean linen if the skies fall. Also, many

Americans who had fled ignominiously to England returned and plunged

into work. And Americans, with their characteristic extravagance in

lingerie, are held in high esteem by _les blanchisseuses_.

Further assaults upon the amiable Government resulted in the return of

more horses and one or two trucks. To-day, while the business by no

means swaggers, this woman, thanks to her indomitable courage and

energy, combined with the economical habit and the financial genius of

the French, has ridden safely over the rocks into as snug a little

harbor as may be found in any country at war.

III

THE MUNITION MAKERS

I

Aside from the industrial class the women who suffered most at the

outbreak of the war were those that worked in the shops. Paris is a

city of little shops. The average American tourist knows them not, for

her hectic experiences in the old days were confined to the Galeries

Lafayette, the Louvre, the Bon Marché, and the Trois Quartièrs. But

during the greater part of 1915 street after street exhibited the

dreary picture of shuttered windows, where once every sort of

delicate, solid, ingenious, costly, or catch-penny ware was displayed.

Some of these were closed because the owner had no wife, many because

the factories that supplied them were closed, or the workmen no longer

could be paid. To-day one sees few of these wide iron shutters except

at night, but the immediate consequence of the sudden change of the

nation's life was that thousands of girls and women were thrown out of

work: clerks, cashiers, dressmakers' assistants, artificial flower

makers, florists, confectioners, workers in the fancy shops, makers of

fine lingerie, extra servants and waitresses in the unfashionable but

numerous restaurants. And then there were the women of the opera

chorus, and those connected with the theater; and not only the

actresses' and the actors' families, but the wives of scene shifters

sent off to the trenches, and of all the other humble folk employed

about theaters, great and small.

The poor of France do not invest their money in savings' banks. They

buy bonds. On the Monday after mobilization the banks of France

announced that they would buy no bonds. These poor bewildered women

would have starved if the women of the more fortunate classes had not

immediately begun to organize relief stations and ouvroirs.

Madame Lepauze, better known to the reading public of France as Daniel

Lesauer, who is also the wife of the curator of the Petit Palais, was

the first to open a restaurant for soup, and this was besieged from

morning until night even before the refugees from Belgium and the

invaded districts of France began to pour in. Her home is in the Petit

Palais, and in the public gardens behind was Le Pavillion, one of the

prettiest and most popular restaurants of Paris. She made no bones

about asking the proprietor to place the restaurant and all that

remained of his staff at her disposal, and hastily organizing a

committee, began at once to ladle out soup. Many other dépôts were

organized almost simultaneously (and not only in Paris but in the

provincial towns), and when women were too old or too feeble to come

for their daily ration it was left at their doors by carts containing

immense boilers of that nourishing soup only the French know how to

make.

Madame Lepauze estimates that her station alone fed a million women

and children. Moreover, she and all the other women engaged in this

patriotic duty had soon depleted their wardrobes after the refugees

began streaming down from the north; it was generally said that not a

lady in Paris had more than one useful dress left and that was on her

back.

Many of these charitable women fled to the South during that

breathless period when German occupation seemed inevitable, but

others, like Madame Pierre Goujon, of whom I shall have much to say

later, and the Countess Greffuhle (a member of the valiant Chimay

family of Belgium), stuck to their posts and went about publicly in

order to give courage to the millions whose poverty forced them to

remain.

II

The next step in aiding this army of helpless women was to open

ouvroirs, or workrooms. Madame Paquin never closed this great branch

of her dressmaking establishment, and, in common with hundreds of

other ouvroirs that sprang up all over France, paid the women a wage

on which they could exist (besides giving them one meal) in return for

at least half a day's work on necessary articles for the men in the

trenches: underclothing, sleeping bags, felt slippers, night garments;

sheets and pillow-cases for the hospitals. As the vast majority of

the peasant farmers and petite bourgeoisie had been used to sleeping

in airtight rooms they suffered bitterly during that first long winter

and spring in the open. If it had not been for these bee-hive ouvroirs

and their enormous output there would have been far more deaths from

pneumonia and bronchitis, and far more cases of tuberculosis than

there were.

A good many of these ouvroirs are still in existence, but many have

been closed; for as the shops reopened the women not only went back to

their former situations but by degrees either applied for or were

invited to fill those left vacant by men of fighting age.

III

And then there were the munition factories! The manager of one of

these _Usines de Guerre_ in Paris told me that he made the experiment

of employing women with the deepest misgiving. Those seeking positions

were just the sort of women he would have rejected if the sturdy women

of the farms had applied and given him any choice. They were girls or

young married women who had spent all the working years of their lives

stooping over sewing-machines; sunken chested workers in artificial

flowers; confectioners; florists; waitresses; clerks. One and all

looked on the verge of a decline with not an ounce of reserve vitality

for work that taxed the endurance of men. But as they protested that

they not only wished to support themselves instead of living on

charity, but were passionately desirous of doing their bit while their

men were enduring the dangers and privations of active warfare, and as

his men were being withdrawn daily for service at the Front, he made

up his mind to employ them and refill their places as rapidly as they

collapsed.

He took me over his great establishment and showed me the result. It

was one of the astonishing examples not only of the grim courage of

women under pressure but of that nine-lived endowment of the female in

which the male never can bring himself to believe save only when

confronted by practical demonstration.

In the correspondence and card-indexing room there was a little army

of young and middle-aged women whose superior education enabled them

to do a long day's work with the minimum output of physical energy,

and these for the most part came from solid middle-class families

whose income had been merely cut by the war, not extinguished. It was

as I walked along the galleries and down the narrow passages between

the noisy machinery of the rest of that large factory that I asked the

superintendent again and again if these women were of the same class

as the original applicants. The answer in every case was the same.

The women had high chests and brawny arms. They tossed thirty-and

forty-pound shells from one to the other as they once may have tossed

a cluster of artificial flowers. Their skins were clean and often

ruddy. Their eyes were bright. They showed no signs whatever of

overwork. They were almost without exception the original applicants.

[Illustration: MAKING THE SHELLS]

I asked the superintendent if there were no danger of heart strain. He

said there had been no sign of it so far. Three times a week they were

inspected by women doctors appointed by the Government, and any little

disorder was attended to at once. But not one had been ill a day.

Those that had suffered from chronic dyspepsia, colds, and tubercular

tendency were now as strong as if they had lived their lives on farms.

It was all a question of plenty of fresh air, and work that

strengthened the muscles of their bodies, developed their chests and

gave them stout nerves and long nights of sleep.

As I looked at those bare heavily muscled arms I wondered if any man

belonging to them would ever dare say his soul was his own again. But

as their heads are always charmingly dressed (an odd effect

surmounting greasy overalls) and as they invariably powder before

filing out at the end of the day's work, it is probable that a

comfortable reliance may still be placed upon the ineradicable

coquetry of the French woman. And the scarcer the men in the future

the more numerous, no doubt, will be the layers of powder.

I asked one pretty girl if she really liked the heavy, dirty,

malodorous work, and she replied that making boutonnières for

gentlemen in a florist-shop was paradise by contrast, but she was only

too happy to be doing as much for France in her way as her brother

was in his. She added that when the war was over she should take off

her blue linen apron streaked with machine grease once for all, not

remain from choice as many would. But meanwhile it was not so bad! She

made ten francs a day. Some of the women received as high as fifteen.

Moreover, they bossed the few men whose brawn was absolutely

indispensable and must be retained in the _usine_ at all costs.

These men took their orders meekly. Perhaps they were amused. The

French are an ironic race. Perhaps they bided their time. But they

never dreamed of disobeying those Amazons whose foot the Kaiser of all

the Boches had placed on their necks.

IV

One of the greatest of these _Usines de Guerre_ is at Lyons, in the

buildings of the Exposition held shortly before the outbreak of the

war. I went to this important Southern city (a beautiful city, which I

shall always associate with the scent of locust[B]-blossoms) at the

suggestion of James Hazen Hyde. He gave me a letter to the famous

Mayor, M. Herriot, who was a member of the last Briand Cabinet.

[B] It is called acacia in Europe.

M. Herriot was also a Senator, and as he was leaving for Paris a few

hours after I presented my letter he turned me over to a friend of his

wife, Madame Castell, a native of Lyons, the daughter of one silk

merchant and the widow of another. This charming young woman, who had

spent her married life in New York, by the way, took me everywhere,

and although we traversed many vast distances in the Mayor's

automobile, it seemed to me that I walked as many miles in hospitals,

factories, ateliers (workrooms for teaching the mutilated new trades),

and above all in the _Usine de Guerre_.

Here not only were thousands of women employed but a greater variety

of classes. The women of the town, unable to follow the army and too

plucky to live on charity, had been among the first to ask for work.

The directeur beat his forehead when I asked him how they behaved when

not actually at the machines, but at least they had proved as faithful

and skillful as their more respectable sisters.

Lyons was far more crowded and lively than Paris, which is so quiet

that it calls to mind the lake that filled the crater of Mont Pelée

before the eruption of 1902. But this fine city of the South--situated

almost as beautifully as Paris on both sides of a river--is not only a

junction, it not only has industries of all sorts besides the greatest

silk factories in the world, but every train these days brings down

wounded for its many hospitals, and the next train brings the family

and friends of these men, who, when able to afford it, establish

themselves in the city for the period of convalescence. The

restaurants and cafés were always crowded and this handsome city on

the Rhône was almost gay.

There were practically no unemployed. The old women of the poor went

daily to an empty court-room where they sat in the little amphitheater

sewing or knitting. In countless other ouvroirs they were cutting and

making uniforms with the same facility that men had long since

acquired, or running sleeping bags through sewing-machines at the rate

of thousands a day. M. Herriot "mobilized" Lyons early in the war, and

its contribution to the needs of the Front has been enormous.

The réformés (men too badly mutilated to be of further use at the

front) are being taught many new trades in the ateliers: toy-making,

wooden shoes with leather tops for the trenches, cigarette packages,

baskets, typewriting, stenography, weaving, repairing. In one of the

many ateliers I visited with Madame Castell I saw a man who had only

one arm, and the left at that, and only a thumb and little finger

remaining of the ten he had taken into war, learning to write anew.

When I was shown one of his exercises I was astounded. He wrote far

better than I have ever done, and I can recall few handwritings so

precise and elegant. One may imagine what a man accomplishes who still

has a good hand and arm. It was both interesting and pathetic to see

these men guiding their work with their remaining hand and

manipulating the machinery with the stump of the other arm. Those who

come out from the battlefields with health intact will be no charge to

the state, no matter what their mutilations.

[Illustration: SOCIÉTÉ L'ECLAIRAGE ELECTRIQUE, USINE DE LYON]

One poor fellow came in to the École Joffre while I was there. He was

accompanied by three friends of the Mayor's, who hoped that some one

of the new occupations might suit his case. He was large and strong

and ruddy and he had no hands. Human ingenuity had not yet evolved far

enough for him. He was crying quietly as he turned away. But his case

is by no means hopeless, for when his stumps are no longer sensitive

he will be fitted with a mechanical apparatus that will take the place

of the hands he has given to France.

Madame Castell's work is supplying hospitals with anything, except

food, they may demand, and in this she has been regularly helped by

the Needlework Guild of Pennsylvania.

Madame Harriot's ouvroir occupies the magnificent festal salon of the

Hôtel de Ville, with its massive chandeliers and its memories of a

thousand dinners and balls of state from the days of Louis XIV down to

the greatest of its mayors. She supplies French prisoners in Germany

with the now famous comfort packages. Some of them she and her

committee put up themselves; others are brought in by members of the

family or the friends of the unfortunate men in Germany. The pièce de

résistance had always been a round loaf of bread, but on the day I

first visited the salon consternation was reigning. Word had come from

Germany that no more bread nor any sort of food stuff should be sent

in the packages, and hundreds were being unpacked. Crisp loaves of

bread that would have brought comfort to many a poor soul were lying

all over the place.

The secret of the order was that civilian Germans were begging bread

of the French prisoners, and this, of course, was bad for the tenderly

nursed German morale.

IV

MADEMOISELLE JAVAL AND THE ÉCLOPÉS

I

Mlle. Javal, unlike Madame Balli, was not a member of the fashionable

society of Paris, a _femme du monde_, or a reigning beauty. But in

certain respects their cases were not dissimilar. Born into one of the

innumerable sets-within-sets of the upper bourgeoisie, living on

inherited wealth, seeing as little as possible of the world beyond her

immediate circle of relatives and friends, as curiously indifferent to

it as only a haughty French bourgeoisie can be, growing up in a large

and comfortable home--according to French ideas of comfort--governing

it, when the duty descended to her shoulders, with all the native and

practised economy of the French woman, but until her mother's illness

without a care, and even then without an extra contact, Mlle. Javal's

life slipped along for many years exactly as the lives of a million

other girls in that entrenched secluded class slipped along before the

tocsin, ringing throughout the land on August 2, 1914, announced that

once more the men of France must fight to defend the liberty of all

classes alike.

Between wars the great central mass of the population in France known

as the bourgeoisie--who may be roughly defined as those that belong

neither to the noblesse at one end nor to the industrials and peasant

proprietors at the other, but have capital, however minute, invested

in _rentes_ or business, and who, beginning with the grande

bourgeoisie, the haughty possessors of great inherited fortunes,

continuing through the financial and commercial magnates, down to the

petite bourgeoisie who keep flourishing little shops, hotels,

etc.--live to get the most out of life in their narrow, traditional,

curiously intensive way. They detest travel, although at least once in

their lives they visit Switzerland and Italy; possibly, but with no

such alarming frequency as to suggest an invasion, England.

The most aspiring read the literature of the day, see the new plays

(leaving the _jeune fille_ at home), take an intelligent interest in

the politics of their own country, visit the annual salons, and if

really advanced discuss with all the national animation such violent

eruptions upon the surface of the delicately poised art life, which

owes its very being to France, as impressionism, cubism, etc. Except

among the very rich, where, as elsewhere, temptations are many and

pressing, they have few scandals to discuss, but much gossip, and

there is the ever recurrent flutter over births, marriages, deaths.

They have no snobbery in the climber's sense. When a bourgeois,

however humble in origin, graduates as an "intellectual" he is

received with enthusiasm (if his table manners will pass muster) by

the noblesse; but it is far more difficult for a nobleman to enter the

house of a bourgeois. It is seldom that he wants to, but sometimes

there are sound financial reasons for forming this almost illegitimate

connection, and then his motives are penetrated by the keen French

mind--a mind born without illusions--and interest alone dictates the

issue. The only climbers in our sense are the wives of politicians

suddenly risen to eminence, and even then the social ambitions of

these ladies are generally confined to arriving in the exclusive

circles of the haute bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie are as proud of their class as the noblesse of theirs,

and its top stratum regards itself as the real aristocracy of the

Republique Française, the families bearing ancient titles as

anachronistic; although oddly enough they and the ancient noblesse are

quite harmonious in their opinion of the Napoleonic aristocracy! One

of the leaders in the grande bourgeoisie wrote me at a critical moment

in the affairs of Greece: "It looks as if Briand would succeed in

placing the lovely Princess George of Greece on the throne, and

assuredly it is better for France to have a Bonaparte there than no

one at all!"

It is only when war comes and the men and women of the noblesse rise

to the call of their country as automatically as a reservist answers

the tocsin or the printed order of mobilization, that the bourgeoisie

is forced to concede that there is a tremendous power still resident

in the prestige, organizing ability, social influence, tireless

energy, and self-sacrifice of the disdained aristocracy.

During the war oeuvres have been formed on so vast a scale that one

sees on many committee lists the names of noblesse and bourgeois side

by side. But it is a defensive alliance, bred of the stupendous

necessities of war, and wherever possible each prefers to work without

the assistance of the other. The French Army is the most democratic in

the world. French society has no conception of the word, and neither

noblesse nor bourgeoisie has the faintest intention of taking it up as

a study. There is no active antagonism between the two classes--save,

to be sure, when individual members show their irreconcilable

peculiarities at committee meetings--merely a profound indifference.

II

Mlle. Javal, although living the usual restricted life before the war,

and far removed from that section of her class that had begun to

astonish Paris by an unprecedented surrender to the extravagancies in

public which seemed to obsess the world before Europe abruptly

returned to its normal historic condition of warfare, was as highly

educated, as conversant with the affairs of the day, political,

intellectual, and artistic, as any young woman in Europe. But the war

found her in a semi-invalid condition and heartbroken over the death

of her mother, whom she had nursed devotedly through a long illness;

her girlhood intimacies broken up not only by the marriage of her

friends, but also by her own long seclusion; and--being quite

French--feeling too aged, at a little over thirty, ever to interest

any man again, aside from her fortune. In short she regarded her life

as finished, but she kept house dutifully for her brother--her only

close relation--and surrendered herself to melancholy reflections.

Then came the war. At first she took merely the languid interest

demanded by her intelligence, being too absorbed in her own low

condition to experience more than a passing thrill of patriotic

fervor. But she still read the newspapers, and, moreover, women in

those first anxious days were meeting and talking far more frequently

than was common to a class that preferred their own house and garden

to anything their friends, or the boulevards, or even the parks of

Paris, could offer them. Mlle. Javal found herself seeing more and

more of that vast circle of inherited friends as well as family

connections which no well-born bourgeoise can escape, and gradually

became infected with the excitement of the hour; despite the fact that

she believed her poor worn-out body never would take a long walk

again.

Then, one day, the thought suddenly illuminated her awakening mind:

"How fortunate I am! I have no one to lose in this terrible war!" (Her

brother was too delicate for service.) "These tears I see every day

after news has come that a father, a brother, a husband, a son, has

fallen on the battlefield or died of horrible agony in hospital, I

shall never shed. Almost alone of the many I know, and the millions of

women in France, I am mercifully exempt from an agony that has no end.

If I were married, and were older and had sons, I should be suffering

unendurably now. I am fortunate indeed and feel an ingrate that I have

ever repined."

Then naturally enough followed the thought that it behooved her to do

something for her country, not only as a manifest of thanksgiving but

also because it was her duty as a young woman of wealth and leisure.

Oddly enough considering the delicate health in which she firmly

believed, she tried to be a nurse. There were many amateurs in the

hospitals in those days when France was as short of nurses as of

everything else except men, and she was accepted.

But nursing then involved standing all day on one's feet and sometimes

all night as well, and her pampered body was far from strong enough

for such a tax in spite of her now glowing spirit. While she was

casting about for some work in which she might really play a useful

and beneficent rôle a friend invited her to drive out to the environs

of Paris and visit the wretched éclopés, to whom several charitable

ladies occasionally took little gifts of cigarettes and chocolate.

Then, at last, Mlle. Javal found herself; and from a halting

apprehensive seeker, still weary in mind and limb, she became almost

abruptly one of the most original and executive women in

France--incidentally one of the healthiest. When I met her, some

twenty months later, she had red cheeks and was the only one of all

those women of all classes slaving for France who told me she never

felt tired; in fact felt stronger every day.

III

The éclopés, in the new adaptation of the word, are men who are not

ill enough for the military hospitals and not well enough to fight.

They may have slight wounds, or temporary affections of the sight or

hearing, the effect of heavy colds; or rheumatism, debilitating sore

throat, or furiously aching teeth; or they may be suffering too

severely from shock to be of any use in the trenches.

There are between six and seven thousand hospitals in France to-day

(possibly more: the French never will give you any exact military

figures; but certainly not less); but their beds are for the severely

wounded or for those suffering from dysentery, fevers, pneumonia,

bronchitis, tuberculosis. In those first days of war before France,

caught unprepared in so many ways, had found herself and settled down

to the business of war; in that trying interval while she was ill

equipped to care for men brought in hourly to the base hospitals,

shattered by new and hideous wounds; there was no place for the merely

ailing. Men with organic affections, suddenly developed under the

terrific strain, were dismissed as Réformés Numéro II--unmutilated in

the service of their country; in other words, dismissed from the army

and, for nearly two years, without pension. But the large number of

those temporarily out of condition were sent back of the lines, or to

a sort of camp outside of Paris, to rest until they were in a

condition to fight again.

If it had not been for Mlle. Javal it is possible that more men than

one cares to estimate would never have fought again. The éclopés at

that time were the most abject victims of the war. They remained

together under military discipline, either behind the lines or on the

outskirts of Paris, herded in barns, empty factories, thousands

sleeping without shelter of any sort. Straw for the most part composed

their beds, food was coarse and scanty; they were so wretched and

uncomfortable, so exposed to the elements, and without care of any

sort, that their slight ailments developed not infrequently into

serious and sometimes fatal cases of bronchitis, pneumonia, and even

tuberculosis.

This was a state of affairs well known to General Joffre and none

caused him more distress and anxiety. But--this was between August and

November, 1914, it must be remembered, when France was anything but

the magnificent machine she is to-day--it was quite impossible for the

authorities to devote a cell of their harassed brains to the

temporarily inept. Every executive mind in power was absorbed in

pinning the enemy down, since he could not be driven out, feeding the

vast numbers of men at the Front, reorganizing the munition

factories, planning for the vast supplies of ammunition suddenly

demanded, equipping the hospitals--when the war broke out there were

no installations in the hospitals near the Front except

beds--obtaining the necessary amount of surgical supplies, taking care

of the refugees that poured into the larger cities by every train not

only from Belgium but from the French towns invaded or bombarded--to

mention but a few of the problems that beset France suddenly forced to

rally and fight for her life, and, owing to the Socialist majority in

the Chamber of Deputies, criminally unprepared.

There were plenty of able minds in France that knew what was coming;

months before the war broke out (a year, one of the infirmière majors

told me; but, as I have said, it is difficult to pin a French official

down to exact statements) the Service de Santé (Health Department of

the Ministry of War) asked the Countess d'Haussonville, President of

the Red Cross, to train as many nurses as quickly as possible, for

there was not an extra nurse in a military hospital of France--in many

there was none at all. But these patriotic and far-sighted men were

powerless. The three years' service bill was the utmost result of

their endeavors, and for six months after the war began they had not a

gun larger than the famous Seventy-fives but those captured at the

Battle of the Marne.

As for the poor éclopés, there never was a clearer example of the

weaker going to the wall and the devil taking the hindmost. They had

been turned out to grass mildly afflicted, but in a short time they

were progressing rapidly toward the grave or that detestable status

known as Réformés Numéro II. And every man counts in France. Quite

apart from humanity it was a terribly serious question for the Grand

Quartier Général, where Joffre and his staff had their minds on the

rack.

IV

The Curé of St. Honoré d'Eylau was the first to discover the éclopés,

and not only sent stores to certain of the dépôts where they were

herded, but persuaded several ladies of Paris to visit and take them

little presents. But practically every energetic and patriotic woman

in France was already mobilized in the service of her country. As I

have explained elsewhere, they had opened ouvroirs, where working

girls suddenly deprived of the means of livelihood could fend off

starvation by making underclothing and other necessaries for the men

at the Front. Upon these devoted women, assisted by nearly all the

American women resident in Paris, fell to a great extent the care of

the refugees; and many were giving out rations three times a day, not

only to refugees but to the poor of Paris, suddenly deprived of their

wage earners. It was some time before the Government got round to

paying the daily allowance of one-franc-twenty-five to the wives and

seventy-five centimes (fifty outside of Paris) for each child, known

as the allocation. Moreover, in those dread days when the Germans

were driving straight for Paris, many fled with the Government to

Bordeaux (not a few Americans ignominiously scampered off to England)

and did not return for three weeks or more; during which time those

brave enough to remain did ten times as much work as should be

expected even of the nine-lived female.

They knew at this critical time as well as later when they were

breathing normally again that the poor éclopés beyond the barrier were

without shelter in the autumn rains and altogether in desperate

plight; but it was only now and again that a few found time to pay

them a hasty visit and cheer them with those little gifts so dear to

the imaginative heart of the French soldier. Sooner or later, of

course, the Government would have taken them in hand and organized

them as meticulously as they have organized every conceivable angle of

this great struggle; but meanwhile thousands would have died or

shambled home to litter the villages as hopeless invalids. Perhaps

hundreds of thousands is a safer computation, and these hundreds of

thousands Mlle. Javal saved for France.

V

Today there are over one hundred and thirty Éclopé Dépôts in France;

two or three are near Paris, the rest in the towns and villages of the

War Zone. The long baraques are well built, rain-proof and

draught-proof, but with many windows which are open when possible,

and furnished with comfortable beds. In each dépôt there is a hospital

baraque for those that need that sort of rest or care, a diet kitchen,

and a fine large kitchen for those that can eat anything and have

appetites of daily increasing vigor.

These dépôts are laid out like little towns, the streets of the large

ones named after famous generals and battles. Down one side is a row

of low buildings in which the officers, doctors and nurses sleep; a

chemist shop; a well-fitted bathroom; storerooms for supplies; and

consulting offices. There is also, almost invariably, a cantine set up

by young women--English, American, French--where the men are supplied

at any time with cocoa, coffee, milk, lemonade, cakes; and the little

building itself is gaily decorated to please the color-loving French

eye.

Mlle. Javal took me out to the environs of Paris to visit one of the

largest of these dépôts, and there the men in hospital were nursed by

Sisters of Charity. There was a set of well-filled bookshelves and a

stage in the great refectory, where the men could sit on rainy days,

read, write letters, sing, smoke, recite, and get up little plays. I

saw a group of very contented looking poilus in the yard playing cards

and smoking under a large tree.

The surroundings were hideous--a railroad yard if I am not

mistaken--but the little "town" itself was very pleasing to the eye,

and certainly a haven of refuge for soldiers whose bodies and minds

needed only repose, care, and kind words to send them back to the

Front sounder by far than they had been in their unsanitary days

before the war.

Here they are forced to sleep with their windows open, to bathe, eat

good food, instead of mortifying the body for the sake of filling the

family stocking; and they are doctored intelligently, their teeth

filled, their tonsils and adenoids taken out, their chronic

indigestion cured. Those who survive the war will never forget the

lesson and will do missionary work when they are at home once more.

All that was dormant in Mlle. Javal's fine brain seemed to awake under

the horrifying stimulus of that first visit to the wretches herded

like animals outside of Paris, where every man thought he was drafted

for death and did not care whether he was or not; where, in short,

morale, so precious an asset to any nation in time of war, was

practically nil.

The first step was to get a powerful committee together. Mlle. Javal,

although wealthy, could not carry through this gigantic task alone.

The moratorium had stopped the payment of rents, factories were

closed, tenants mobilized. Besides, she had already given right and

left, as everybody else had done who had anything to give. It was

growing increasingly difficult to raise money.

But nothing could daunt Mlle. Javal. She managed to get together with

the least possible delay a committee of three hundred, and she

obtained subscriptions in money from one thousand five hundred firms,

besides donations of food and clothing from eight hundred others,

headed by the King of Spain.

Her subscription list was opened by President Poincaré with a gift of

one thousand francs; the American War Relief Clearing House gave her

four thousand three hundred francs, Madame Viviani contributed four

thousand francs; the Comédie Française one thousand, and Raphael Weill

of San Francisco seven thousand seven hundred and fifty; Alexander

Phillips of New York three thousand; and capitalists, banks, bank

clerks, civil servants, colonials, school children, contributed sums

great and small.

Concerts were given, bazaars hastily but successfully organized,

collections taken up. There was no end to Mlle. Javal's resource, and

the result was an almost immediate capital of several hundred thousand

francs. When public interest was fairly roused, les pauvres éclopés

became one of the abiding concerns of the French people, and they have

responded as generously as they did to the needs of the more

picturesque refugee or the starving within their gates.

This great organization, known as "L'Assistance aux Dépôts d'Éclopés,

Petits Blessés et Petites Malades, et aux Cantonments de Repos," was

formally inaugurated on November 14, 1914, with Madame Jules Ferry as

President, and Madame Viviani as Vice-President. Mlle. Javal shows

modestly on the official list as Secrétaire Genérale.

The Government agreed to put up the baraques, and did so with the

least possible delay. Mlle. Javal and her Committee furnish the beds

(there were seven hundred in one of the dépôts she showed me), support

the dietary kitchen and the hospital baraques, and supply the

bathrooms, libraries, and all the little luxuries. The Government

supports the central kitchen (_grand régime_), the doctors, and, when

necessary, the surgeons.

VI

Mlle. Javal took me twice through the immense establishment on the

Champs Élysées, where she has not only her offices but workrooms and

storerooms. In one room a number of ladies--in almost all of these

oeuvres women give their services, remaining all day or a part of

every day--were doing nothing but rolling cigarettes. I looked at them

with a good deal of interest. They belonged to that class of French

life I have tried to describe, in which the family is the all

important unit; where children rarely play with other children,

sometimes never; where the mother is a sovereign who is content to

remain within the boundaries of her own small domain for months at a

time, particularly if she lives not in an apartment, but in an hôtel

with a garden behind it. Thousands of these exemplary women of the

bourgeoisie--hundreds of thousands--care little or nothing for

"society." They call at stated intervals, upon which ceremonious

occasion they drink coffee and eat pastry; give their young people

dances when the exact conventional moment has arrived for putting them

on the market, and turn out in force at the great periodicities of

life, but otherwise to live and die in the bosom of The Family is the

measure of their ambition.

I shall have a good deal to say later of the possible results of the

vast upheaval of home life caused by this war; but of these women

sitting for hours on end in a back room of Mlle. Javal's central

establishment in Paris it is only necessary to state that they looked

as intent upon making cigarettes in a professional manner, beyond

cavil by the canny poilu, as if they were counting the family linen or

superintending one of the stupendous facts of existence, a daughter's

trousseau. Only the one to whom I was introduced raised her eyes, and

I should not have been expected to distract her attention for a moment

had not she told Mlle. Javal that she had read my books (in the

Tauchnitz edition) and would like to meet me when I called.

It seemed to me that everything conceivable was in those large

storerooms. I had grown used to seeing piles of sleeping-suits,

sleeping-bags, trench slippers, warm underclothes, sabots, all that is

comprised in the word _vêtement_; but here were also immense boxes of

books and magazines, donated by different firms and editors, about to

be shipped to the dépôts; games of every sort; charming photogravures,

sketches, prints, pictures, that would make the baraques gay and

beloved--all to be interspersed, however, with mottoes from famous

writers calculated to elevate not only the morale but the morals of

the idle.

Then there were cases of handkerchiefs, of pens and paper, pencils,

songs with and without music, knives, pipes, post-cards, razors,

parasiticides, chocolate, vaseline, perfumes (many of these articles

are donations from manufacturers), soap in vast quantities; books

serious and diverting; pamphlets purposed to keep patriotism at fever

pitch, or to give the often ignorant peasant soldier a clear idea of

the designs of the enemy.

In small compartments at one end of the largest of the rooms were

exhibited the complete installations of the baraques, the portable

beds, kitchen and dining-room utensils and dishes, all extraordinarily

neat and compact. In another room was a staff engaged in

correspondence with officers, doctors and surgeons at the Front,

poilus, or the hundred and one sources that contribute to the great

oeuvre. Girls, young widows, young and middle-aged married women whose

husbands and sons were fighting, all give their days freely and work

far harder and more conscientiously than most women do for hire.

All of these presents, when they arrive at the dépôts, are given out

personally by the officers, and this as much as the genuine democracy

of the men in command has served to break down the suspicious or surly

spirit of the French peasant on his first service, to win over the

bumptious industrial, and even to subdue the militant anarchist and

predatory Apache. This was Mlle. Javal's idea, and has solved a

problem for many an anxious officer.

She said to me with a shrug: "My brother and I are now run by our

servants. I have quite lost control. Our home is like a bachelor

apartment. After the war is over I must turn them all out and get a

new staff."

And this is but one of the minor problems for men and women the Great

War has bred.

VII

Magic lanterns and cinemas are also among the presents sent to the

éclopé dépôts in the War Zone; some of which, by the way, are

charmingly situated. I visited one just outside of a town which by a

miracle had escaped the attention of the enemy during the retreat

after the Battle of the Marne. The buildings of the dépôt have been

built in the open fields but heavily ambushed by fine old trees. Near

by is a river picturesquely winding and darkly shaded. Here I saw a

number of éclopés fishing as calmly as if the roar of the guns that

came down the wind from Verdun were but the precursor of an evening

storm.

In the large refectory men were writing home; reading not only books

but the daily and weekly newspapers with which the dépôts are

generously supplied by the editors of France. Others were exercising

in a gymnasium or playing games with that childish absorption that

seems to be as natural to a soldier at the Front when off duty as the

desire for a bath or a limbering of the muscles when he leaves the

trenches.

Another of Mlle. Javal's ideas was to send to the War Zone automobiles

completely equipped with a dental apparatus in charge of a competent

dentist. These automobiles travel from dépôt to dépôt and even give

their services to hospitals where there are no dental installations.

Other automobiles have a surgeon and the equipment for immediate

facial operations; and there are migratory pedicures, masseurs, and

barbers. So heavy has been the subscription, so persistent and

intelligent the work of all connected with this great oeuvre, so

increasingly fertile the amazing brain of Mlle. Javal, that

practically nothing is now wanted to make these Dépôts d'Éclopés

perfect instruments for saving men for the army by the hundred

thousand. I once heard the estimate of the army's indebtedness placed

as high as a million and a half.

The work of M. Frederic Masson must not be ignored, and Madame Balli

assisted him for a short time, until compelled to concentrate on her

other work; but it is not comparable in scope to that of Mlle. Javal.

Hers is unprecedented, one of the greatest achievements of France

behind the lines, and of any woman at any time.

V

THE WOMAN'S OPPORTUNITY

I