She interested me intensely, not only because she stood at the head of

the greatest relief organization in the world, but because she is one

of the very few women, of her age, at least, who not only is a great

lady but looks the rôle.

European women tend to coarseness, not to say commonness, as they

advance in age, no matter what their rank; their cheeks sag and

broaden, and their stomachs contract a fatal and permanent entente

with their busts. Too busy or too indifferent to charge spiteful

nature with the daily counter-attacks of art, they put on a red-brown

wig (generally sideways) and let it go at that. Sometimes they smudge

their eyebrows with a pomade which gives that extinct member the look

of being neither hair, skin, nor art, but they contemptuously reject

rouge or even powder. When they have not altogether discarded the

follies or the ennui of dress, but patronize their modiste

conscientiously, they have that "built up look" peculiar to those

uncompromisingly respectable women of the first society in our own

land, who frown upon the merely smart.

It is only the young women of fashion in France who make up lips,

brows, and cheeks, as well as hair and earlobes, who often look like

young clowns, and whose years give them no excuse for making up beyond

subservience to the mode of the hour.

It is even sadder when they are emulated by ambitious ladies in the

provinces. I went one day to a great concert--given for charity, of

course--in a town not far from Paris. The Mayor presided and his wife

was with him. As I had been taken out from Paris by one of the Patrons

I sat in the box with this very well-dressed and important young

woman, and she fascinated me so that I should have feared to appear

rude if she had not been far too taken up with the titled women from

Paris, whom she was meeting for the first time in her life, to pay any

attention to a mere American.

She may have been twenty-eight, certainly not over thirty, but she had

only one front tooth. It was a very large tooth and it stuck straight

out. Her lips were painted an energetic vermillion. Her mouth too was

large, and it spread across her dead white (and homely) face like a

malignant sore. She smiled constantly--it was her rôle to be gracious

to all these duchesses and ambassadresses--and that solitary tooth

darted forward like a sentinel on a bridge in the War Zone. But I

envied her. She was so happy. So important. I never met anybody who

made me feel so insignificant.

II

Madame d'Haussonville naturally suggests to the chronicler the

sharpest sort of contrasts.

I am told that she devoted herself to the world until the age of

fifty, and she wielded a power and received a measure of adulation

from both sexes that made her the most formidable social power in

France. But the De Broglies are a serious family, as their record in

history proves. Madame d'Haussonville, without renouncing her place in

the world of fashion, devoted herself more and more to good works, her

superior brain and executive abilities forcing her from year to year

into positions of heavier responsibility.

I was told that she was now seventy; but she is a woman whose

personality is so compelling that she rouses none of the usual vulgar

curiosity as to the number of years she may have lingered on this

planet. You see Madame d'Haussonville as she is and take not the

least interest in what she may have been during the years before you

happened to meet her.

Very tall and slender and round and straight, her figure could hardly

have been more perfect at the age of thirty. The poise of her head is

very haughty and the nostril of her fine French nose is arched and

thin. She wears no make-up whatever, and, however plainly she may feel

it her duty to dress in these days, her clothes are cut by a master

and an excessively modern one at that; there is none of the Victorian

built-up effect, to which our own grandes dames cling as to the rock

of ages, about Madame d'Haussonville. Her waist line is in its proper

place--she does not go to the opposite extreme and drag it down to her

knees--and one feels reasonably sure that it will be there at the age

of ninety--presupposing that the unthinkable amount of hard work she

accomplishes daily during this period of her country's crucifixion

shall not have devoured the last of her energies long before she is

able to enter the peaceful haven of old age.

She is in her offices at the Red Cross headquarters in the Rue

François I'er early and late, leaving them only to visit hospitals or

sit on some one of the innumerable committees where her advice is

imperative, during the organizing period at least.

Some time ago I wrote to Madame d'Haussonville, asking her if she

would dictate a few notes about her work in the Red Cross, and as she

wrote a very full letter in reply, I cannot do better than quote it,

particularly as it gives a far more comprehensive idea of her

personality than any words of mine.

"Paris, March 28th, 1917.

"DEAR MRS. ATHERTON:

"I am very much touched by your gracious letter and very happy if I

can serve you.

"Here are some notes about our work, and about what I have seen since

August, 1914. All our thoughts and all our strength are in the great

task, that of all French women, to aid the wounded, the ill, those who

remain invalids, the refugees of the invaded districts, all the

sufferings actually due to these cruel days.

"Some weeks before the war, I was called to the ministry, where they

asked me to have two hundred infirmaries ready for all possible

happenings. We had already established a great number, of which many

had gone to Morocco and into the Colonies. To-day there are fifteen or

sixteen thousand volunteer nurses to whom are added about eleven

thousand auxiliaries used in accessory service (kitchen, bandages,

sterilization, etc.) and also assisting in the wards of the ill and

the wounded.

"To the hospitals there have been added since the month of August,

1914, the infirmaries and station cantines where our soldiers receive

the nourishment and hot drinks which are necessary for their long

journeys.

"At Amiens, for instance, the cantine, an annex of the station

infirmary began with the distribution of slices of bread and drinks

made by our women as the trains arrived. Then a big room used for

baggage was given to us. A dormitory was made of it for tired

soldiers, also a reading-room. At any hour French, English or Belgians

may receive a good meal--soup, one kind of meat and vegetables, coffee

or tea. Civil refugees are received there and constantly aided and

fed.

"Our nurses attend to all wants, and above everything they believe in

putting their hearts into their work administering to those who suffer

with the tenderness of a mother. In the hospital wards nothing touched

me more than to see the thousand little kindnesses which they gave to

the wounded, the distractions which they sought to procure for them

each day.

"In our great work of organization at the Bureau on Rue François I'er,

I have met the most beautiful devotion. Our nurses do not hesitate at

contagion, nor at bombardments, and I know some of your compatriots

(that I can never admire enough), who expose themselves to the same

dangers with hearts full of courage.

"I have visited the hospitals nearest the Front, Dunkerque, so cruelly

shelled. I have been to Alsace, to Lorraine, then to Verdun from where

I brought back the most beautiful impression of calm courage.

"Here are some details which may interest your compatriots:

"June 1916. My first stop was at Châlons, where with Mme.

Terneaux-Compans our devoted senior nurse, I visited the hospital

Corbineau, former quarters for the cavalry, very well reconstructed by

the Service de Santé, for sick soldiers; our nurses are doing service

there; generous gifts have enabled us to procure a small motor which

carries water to the three stories, and we have been able to install

baths for the typhoid patients.

"At the hospital Forgeot (for the officers) I admired the

ingeniousness with which our nurses have arranged for their wounded a

quite charming assembly-room with a piano, some growing plants and

several games.

"I also visited our auxiliary hospital at Sainte-Croix. It would be

impossible to find a more beautiful location, a better organization. I

have not had, to my great regret, the time to visit the other

hospitals, which, however, I already know. That will be, I hope, for

another time.

"The same day I went to Revigny. Oh, never shall I forget the

impressions that I received there. First, the passage through that

poor village in ruins, then the visit to the hospital situated near

the station through which most of the wounded from Verdun pass.

"What was, several months ago, a field at the edge of the road, has

become one big hospital of more than a thousand beds, divided into

baraques. We have twenty-five nurses there. Since the beginning of the

battle they have been subjected to frightful work; every one has to

care for a number of critically wounded--those who have need of

operations and who are not able to travel further. What moved me above

everything was to find our nurses so simple and so modest in their

courage. Not a single complaint about their terrible fatigue--their

one desire is to hold out to the end. When I expressed my admiration,

one of them answered: 'We have only one regret: it is that we have too

much work to give special attention to each of the wounded, and then

above all it is terrible to see so many die.'

"I visited some of the baraques, and I observed that, in spite of the

excessive work, they were not only clean but well cared for, and

flowers everywhere! I also saw a tent where there were about ten

Germans; one of our nurses who spoke their language was in charge;

they seemed to me very well taken care of--'well,' because they were

wounded, not 'too well' because--we cannot forget.

"I tore myself away from Revigny, where I should have liked to remain

longer, and I arrived that night at Jeans d'Heurs, which seemed to me

a small paradise. The wounded were admirably cared for in beautiful

rooms, with windows opening on a ravishing park; the nurses housed

with the greatest care.

"The next day I was at Bar-le-Duc, first at the Central, which is an

immense hospital of three thousand beds. Before the war it was a

caserne (barrack). They reconstructed the buildings and in the courts

they put up sheds; our nurses are at work there--among them the

beloved President of our Association--the Mutual Association of

Nurses. All these buildings seemed to me perfect. I visited specially

the splendidly conducted surgical pavilion and the typhoid pavilion.

"The white-washed walls have been decorated by direction of the nurses

with great friezes of color, producing a charming effect which ought

to please the eyes of our beloved sick.

"I visited also the laboratory where they showed me the chart of the

typhoid patients--the loss so high in 1914--so low in 1915. I noted

down some figures which I give here for those who are interested in

the question of anti-typhoid vaccine: In November 1914, 379 deaths. In

November 1915, 22! What a new and wonderful victory for French

science! I must add that three of our nurses have contracted typhoid

fever; none of them was inoculated; twenty who were inoculated caught

nothing.

"While we were making this visit, we heard the whistle which announced

the arrival of taubes--we wanted very much to remain outside to see,

but we were ordered to go in; I observed that our nurses obeyed the

order because of discipline, not on account of fear. 'We can only die

once!' one of them said to me, shrugging her shoulders. Their chief

concern is for the poor wounded. Many of them now that they are in

bed, powerless to defend themselves, become nervous at the approach of

danger. They have to be reassured. If the shelling becomes too heavy,

they carry them down into the cellars.

"These taubes having gone back this time without causing any damage,

we set off for Savonnières, a field hospital of about three hundred

beds, established in a little park. It is charming in summer, it may

be a little damp in winter, but the nurses do not complain; the nurses

never complain!

"Saturday was the most interesting day of my trip. I saw two field

hospitals between Bar-le-Duc and Verdun. Oh! those who have not been

in the War Zone cannot imagine the impression that I received on the

route which leads 'out there,' toward the place where the greatest,

the most atrocious struggle that has ever been is going on. All those

trucks by hundreds going and coming from Verdun; those poor men

breaking stones, ceaselessly repairing the roads, the aeroplane bases,

the dépôts of munitions, above all the villages filled with troops,

all those dear little soldiers, some of them fresh and clean, going,

the others yellow with mud returning--all this spectacle grips and

thrills you.

"We breakfasted at Chaumont-sur-Aire; I cannot say how happy I was to

share, if only for an hour, the life of our dear nurses! Life here is

hard. They are lodged among the natives more or less well. They live

in a little peasant's room near a stable; they eat the food of the

wounded, not very varied--'boule' every two weeks. How they welcomed

the good fresh bread that I brought!

"Their work is not easy, scattered over a wide field; tents, and barns

here and there, and then they have been deprived of an 'autocher,'

which had to leave for some other destination.

"Many of the wounded from Verdun come there; and what wounded! Never

shall I forget the frightful plight of one unfortunate, upon whom they

were going to operate without much chance of success alas. He had

remained nearly four days without aid, and gangrene had done its work.

"I had tears in my eyes watching the sleep of our heroes who had

arrived that morning overcome and wornout, all covered with dust; I

would have liked to put them in good beds, all white with soft pillows

under their heads. Alas in these hospitals at the front, one cannot

give them the comfort of our hospitals in the rear.

"After having assisted at the great spectacle of a procession of

taubes going toward Bar-le-Duc, I was obliged to leave Chaumont to go

to Vadelaincourt, which is thirteen kilometres from Verdun, the

nearest point of our infirmaries. I was there in March at the

beginning of the battle.

"What wonderful work has been accomplished! It is not for me to judge

the Service de Santé, but I cannot help observing that a hospital like

that of Vadelaincourt does honor to the head doctor who organized it

in full battle in the midst of a thousand difficulties. It is very

simple, very practical, very complete. I found nurses there who for

the most part have not been out of the region of Verdun since the

beginning of the war. Their task is especially hard. How many wounded

have passed through their hands; how have they been able to overcome

all their weariness? It is a pleasure to find them always alert and

watchful; I admired and envied them.

"It was not without regret that I turned my back on this region whose

close proximity to the Front makes one thrill with emotion; I went to

calmer places, I saw less thrilling things, but nevertheless,

interesting: the charming layout at Void, that at Sorcy, in process of

organizing, the grand hospital of Toul which was shelled by taubes. I

was able to see the enormous hole dug by the bomb which fell very near

the building that sheltered our nurses, who had but one idea, to run

to their wounded and reassure them.

"I visited at Nancy a very beautiful hospital, the Malgrange, which is

almost unique; it is the Red Cross which houses the military hospital.

At the instant of bombardment, most of the hospitals were vacated;

ours, situated outside of the city, gathered in the wounded and all

the personnel of the military hospital, and it goes very well.

"I finished my journey with the Vosges, Épinal, Belfort, Gerardmer,

Bussang, Morvillars; all these hospitals which were filled for a long

time with the wounded from the battles of the Vosges (especially our

brave Alpines) are quiet now.

"If I congratulated the nurses of the region of Verdun upon their

endurance, I do not congratulate less those of the Vosges upon their

constancy; Gerardmer has had very full days--days when one could not

take a thought to one's self. There is something painful, in a way, in

seeing great happenings receding from you. We do not hear the cannon

any longer, the wounded arrive more rarely, we have no longer enough

to do, we are easily discouraged, we should like to be elsewhere and

yet one must remain there at his post ready in case of need, which may

come perhaps when it is least expected.

"I shall have many things still to tell you, but I am going to resume

my impressions of this little trip in a few words.

"I have been filled with admiration. The word has, I believe, fallen

many times from my pen, and it will fall again and again. I have

admired our dear wounded, so courageous in their suffering, so

gracious to all those who visit them; I have admired the doctors who

are making and have made every day, such great efforts to organize and

to better conditions; and our nurses I have never ceased to admire.

When I see them I find them just as I hoped, very courageous and also

very simple. They speak very little of themselves, and a great deal of

their wounded; they complain very little of their fatigue, sometimes

of not having enough to do. They always meet cheerfully the material

difficulties of their existence as they do almost always the moral

difficulties which are even more difficult. Self-abnegation, attention

to their duty, seem to them so natural that one scarcely dares to

praise them.

"There is one thing that I must praise them for particularly--that

they always seem to keep the beautiful charming coquetry that belongs

to every woman. I often arrived without warning. I never saw hair

disarranged or dress neglected. This exterior perfection is, I may

say, a distinctive mark of our nurses.

"And then I like the care with which they decorate and beautify their

hospital. Everywhere flowers, pictures, bits of stuff to drape their

rooms. At Revigny in one of the baraques I saw flowers, simple flowers

gathered in the neighboring field, so prettily arranged, portraits of

our generals framed in green. When I complimented a nurse, she

answered: 'Ah, no; it is not well done; but I hadn't the time to do

better.'

"At Vadelaincourt, a little room was set aside for dressings, all done

in white with curtains of white and two little vases of flowers. What

a smiling welcome for the poor wounded who come there! 'The

arrangement of a room has a great deal of influence on the morale of

the wounded,' a doctor said to me. All this delights me!

"I have finished, but I shall think for a long time of this journey

which has left in my memory unforgettable sights and in my heart very

tender impressions.

"In the Somme, also, our nurses have worked with indefatigable ardor,

and they go on without relaxation. The poor refugees, which the

Germans return to us often sick and destitute of everything, are

received and comforted by our women of the Red Cross.

"The three societies of the Red Cross--our Society for the Relief of

the Military Wounded, the Union of the Women of France, and the

Association of the Ladies of France--work side by side under the

direction of the Service de Santé.

"Our Society for the Relief of the Military Wounded has actually about

seven hundred hospitals, which represent sixty thousand beds, where

many nurses are occupied from morning until night, and many of them

serve also at the military hospital at the Front, and in the Orient

(three to four thousand nurses).

"Every day new needs make us create new oeuvres, which we organize

quickly.

"The making of bandages and compresses has always been an important

work with us. Yards of underclothing and linen are continually asked

of us by our nurses for their sick. The workshops which we have opened

since the beginning of the war assist with work a great number of

women who have been left by the mobilization of their men without

resources.

"The clubs for soldiers, in Paris especially, give to the

convalescents and to the men on leave wholesome amusement and

compensate somewhat for their absent families.

"Just now we are trying to establish an anti-tuberculosis organization

to save those of our soldiers who have been infected or are menaced.

Many hospitals are already opened for them. At Mentom, on the

Mediterranean, for the blind tubercular; at Hauteville, in the

Department of the Aisne, for the officers and soldiers; at La

Rochelle, for bone-tuberculosis; but the task is enormous.

"We seek also, and the work is under way, to educate intelligently the

mutilated, so that they may work and have an occupation in the sad

life which remains to them, and I assure you, chère madame, that so

many useful things to be done leave very few leisure hours. If a

little weariness has in spite of everything slipped into our hearts, a

visit to the hospitals, to the ambulances at the Front, the sight of

suffering so bravely, I will even say so cheerfully, supported by our

soldiers, very quickly revives our courage, and brings us back our

strength and enthusiasm...."

* * * * *

The Countess de Roussy de Sales (an American brought up in Paris) was

one of the first of the infirmières to be mobilized by Madame

d'Haussonville on the declaration of war. She went to Rheims with the

troops, standing most of the time, but too much enthralled by the

spirit of the men to notice fatigue. She told me that although they

were very sober, even grim, she heard not a word of complaint, but

constantly the ejaculation: "It is for France and our children. What

if we die, so long as our children may live in peace?"

At Rheims, so impossible had it been to make adequate preparations

with the Socialists holding up every projected budget, there were no

installations in the hospitals but beds. The nurses and doctors were

obliged to forage in the town for operating tables and the hundred and

one other furnishings without which no hospital can be conducted. And

they had little time. The wounded came pouring in at once. Madame de

Roussy de Sales said they were so busy it was some time before it

dawned on them, in spite of the guns, that the enemy was approaching.

But when women and children and old people began to hurry through the

streets in a constant procession they knew it was only a matter of

time before they were ordered out. They had no time to think, however;

much less to fear.

Finally the order came to evacuate the hospitals and leave the town,

which at that time was in imminent danger of capture. There was little

notice. The last train leaves at three o'clock. Be there. Madame de

Roussy de Sales and several other nurses begged to go with those of

their wounded impossible to transfer by trains, to the civilian

hospitals and make them comfortable before leaving them in the hands

of the local nurses; and obtained permission. The result was that when

they reached the station they saw the train retreating in the

distance. But they had received orders to report at a hospital in

another town that same afternoon. No vehicles were to be had. There

was nothing to do but walk. They walked. The distance was twenty-three

kilometres. As they had barely sat down since their arrival in Rheims

it may be imagined they would have been glad to rest when they

reached their destination. But this hospital too was crowded with

wounded. They went on duty at once. C'est la guerre! I never heard any

one complain.

XI

THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNÉ

The Marquise d'Andigné, who was Madeline Goddard of Providence, R.I.,

is President of Le Bien-Être du Blessé, an oeuvre formed by Madame

d'Haussonville at the request of the Ministère de la Guerre in May,

1915. She owes this position as president of one of the most important

war relief organizations (perhaps after the Red Cross the most

important) to the energy, conscientiousness, and brilliant executive

abilities she had demonstrated while at the Front in charge of more

than one hospital. She is an infirmiére major and was decorated twice

for cool courage and resource under fire.

The object of Le Bien-Être du Blessé is to provide delicacies for the

dietary kitchens of the hospitals in the War Zone, as many officers

and soldiers had died because unable to eat eggs, or drink milk, the

only two articles furnished by the rigid military system of the most

conservative country in the world. The articles supplied by Le

Bien-Être du Blessé are very simple: condensed milk, sugar, cocoa,

Franco-American soups, chocolate, sweet biscuits, jams, preserves,

prunes, tea. Thousands of lives have been saved by Bien-Être during

the past year; for men who are past caring, or wish only for the

release of death, have been coaxed back to life by a bit of jam on the

tip of a biscuit, or a teaspoonful of chicken soup.

Some day I shall write the full and somewhat complicated history of Le

Bien-Être du Blessé, quoting from many of Madame d'Andigné's

delightful letters. But there is no space here and I will merely

mention that my own part as the American President of Le Bien-Être du

Blessé is to provide the major part of the funds with which it is run,

lest any of my readers should be tempted to help me out.[E] Donations

from ten cents to ten thousand are welcome, and $5 keeps a wounded man

for his entire time in one of those dreary hospitals in that

devastated region known as "Le Zone des Armées," where relatives nor

friends ever come to visit, and there is practically no sound but the

thunder of guns without and groans within. Not that the French do

groan much. I went through many of these hospitals and never heard a

demonstration. But I am told they do sometimes.

[E] All donations in money are sent to the bankers, Messers John

Munroe & Co., _Eighth Floor_, 360 Madison Avenue, New York.

To Madame d'Andigné belongs all the credit of building up Le Bien-Être

du Blessé from almost nothing (for we were nearly two years behind the

other great war-relief organizations in starting). Although many give

her temporary assistance no one will take charge of any one department

and she runs every side and phase of the work. Last winter she was

cold, and hungry, and always anxious about her husband, but she was

never absent from the office for a day except when she could not get

coal to warm it; and then she conducted the business of the oeuvre in

her own apartment, where one room was warmed with wood she had sawed

herself.

To-day Le Bien-Être du Blessé is not only one of the most famous of

all the war-relief organizations of the fighting powers but it has

been run with such systematic and increasing success that the War

Office has installed Bien-Être kitchens in the hospitals (before, the

nurses had to cook our donations over their own spirit lamp) and

delegated special cooks to relieve the hard-worked infirmières of a

very considerable tax on their energies. This is a tremendous bit of

radicalism on the part of the Military Department of France, and one

that hardly can be appreciated by citizens of a land always in a state

of flux. There is even talk of making these Bien-Être kitchens a part

of the regular military system after the war is over, and if they do

commit themselves to so revolutionary an act no doubt the name of the

young American Marquise will go down to posterity--as it deserves to

do, in any case.

XII

MADAME CAMILLE LYON

Madame Lyon committed on my behalf what for her was a tremendous

breach of the proprieties: she called upon me without the formality of

a letter of introduction. No American can appreciate what such a

violation of the formalities of all the ages must have meant to a

pillar of the French Bourgeoisie. But she set her teeth and did it.

Her excuse was that she had read all my books, and that she was a

friend of Mlle. Thompson, at whose École Hôtelière I was lodging.

I was so impressed at the unusualness of this proceeding that, being

out when she first called, and unable to receive her explanations, I

was filled with dark suspicion and sought an explanation of Mlle.

Jacquier. Madame Lyon? Was she a newspaper woman? A secret service

agent? Between the police round the corner and Mlle. Jacquier, under

whose eagle eye I conformed to all the laws of France in war time, I

felt in no further need of supervision.

Mlle. Jacquier was very much amused. Madame Lyon was a very important

person. Her husband had been associated with the Government for

fourteen years until he had died, leaving a fortune behind him, a

year before; and Madame Lyon was not only on intimate terms with the

Government but made herself useful in every way possible to them. She

was one of the two ladies asked to cooperate with the Government in

their great enterprise to wage war on tuberculosis--Le Comité Central

d'Assistance aux Militaires Tuberculeux; and was to open ateliers to

teach the men how to learn new trades by which they might sit at home

in comfort and support themselves.

And she had her own ouvroir--"L'Aide Immédiate"--for providing things

for the permissionnaires, who came to the door and asked for them. She

ran, with a committee of other ladies, a café in Paris, where the

permissionnaires or the réformés could go and have their afternoon

coffee and smoke all the cigarettes that their devoted patrons

provided. One hundred poilus came here a day, and her ouvroir had

already assisted eighteen thousand. And----

But by this time I was more interested to meet Madame Lyon than any

one in Paris. As I have said before, a letter or two will open the

doors of the noblesse or the "Intellectuals" to any stranger who knows

how to behave himself and is no bore, but to get a letter to a member

of the bourgeoisie--I hadn't even made the attempt, knowing how futile

it would be. If one of them was doing a great work, like Mlle. Javal,

I could meet her quite easily through some member of her committee;

but when Frenchwomen of this class, which in its almost terrified

exclusiveness reminds me only of our own social groups balancing on

the very tip of the pyramid and clutching one another lest some

intruder topple them off, or cast the faintest shadow on their

hard-won prestige, are working in small groups composed of their own

friends, I could not meet one of them if I pitched my tent under her

windows.

Madame Lyon gave me a naïve explanation of her audacity when we

finally did meet. "I am a Jewess," she said, "and therefore not so

bound down by conventions. You see, we of the Jewish race were

suppressed so long that now we have our freedom reaction makes us

almost adventurous."

Besides hastening to tell me of her race she promptly, as if it were a

matter of honor, informed me that she was sixty years old! She looked

about forty, her complexion was white and smooth, her nose little and

straight, her eyes brilliant. She dressed in the smartest possible

mourning, and with that white ruff across her placid brow--Oh là là!

She has one son, who was wounded so terribly in the first year of the

war, and was so long getting to a hospital where he could receive

proper attention, that he was gangrened. In consequence his recovery

was very slow, and he was not permitted to go again to the trenches,

but was, after his recovery, sent up north to act as interpreter

between the British and French troops. He stood this for a few months,

and Madame Lyon breathed freely, but there came a time when M. Lyon,

although a lawyer in times of peace, could not stand the tame life of

interpreter. He might be still delicate, but, he argued, there were

officers at the front who had only one arm. At the present moment he

is in the stiffest fighting on the Somme.

I saw a great deal of Madame Lyon and enjoyed no one more, she was so

independent, so lively of mind, and so ready for anything. She went

with me on two of my trips in the War Zone, being only too glad of

mental distraction; for like all the mothers of France she dreads the

ring of the door-bell. She told me that several times the ladies who

worked in her ouvroir would come down with beaming faces and read

extracts from letters just received from their sons at the Front, then

go home and find a telegram announcing death or shattered limbs.

Madame Lyon has a hôtel on the Boulevard Berthier and before her

husband's death was famous for her political breakfasts, which were

also graced by men and women distinguishing themselves in the arts.

These breakfasts have not been renewed, but I met at tea there a

number of the political women. One of these was Madame Ribot, wife of

the present Premier. She is a very tall, thin, fashionable looking

woman, and before she had finished the formalities with her hostess

(and these formalities do take so long!) I knew her to be an American.

She spoke French as fluently as Madame Lyon, but the accent, however

faint--or was it a mere intonation,--was unmistakable. She told me

afterward that she had come to France as a child and had not been in

the United States for fifty-two years!

One day Madame Lyon took me to see the ateliers of Madame Viviani--in

other words, the workshops where the convalescents who must become

réformés are learning new trades and industries under the patronage of

the wife of the cabinet minister now best known to us. Madame Viviani

has something like ten or twelve of these ateliers, but after I had

seen one or two of the same sort of anything in Paris, and listened to

long conscientious explanations, and walked miles in those enormous

hospitals (originally, for the most part, Lycées) I felt that

duplication could not enhance my knowledge, and might, indeed, have

the sad effect of blunting it.

Madame Lyon said to me more than once: "Ma chère, you are without

exception, the most impatient woman I have ever seen in my life. You

no sooner enter a place than you want to leave it." She was referring

at the moment to the hospitals in the War Zone, where she would lean

on the foot of every bed and have a long gossip with the delighted

inmate, extract the history of his wound, and relate the tale of

similar wounds, healed by surgery, time and patience--while I, having

made the tour of the cots, either opened and shut the door

significantly, or walked up and down impatiently, occasionally

muttering in her ear.

The truth of the matter was that I had long since cultivated the habit

of registering definite impressions in a flash, and after a tour of

the cots, which took about seven minutes, could have told her the

nature of every wound. Moreover, I knew the men did not want to talk

to me, and I felt impertinent hanging round.

But all this was incomprehensible to a Frenchwoman, to whom time is

nothing, and who knows how the French in any conditions love to talk.

However, to return to Madame Viviani.

After one futile attempt, when I got lost, I met Madame Lyon and her

distinguished but patient friend out in one of the purlieus of Paris

where the Lycée of Arts and Crafts has been turned into a hospital for

convalescents.

Under the direction of a doctor each convalescent was working at what

his affected muscles most needed or could stand. Those that ran

sewing-machines exercised their legs. Those that made toys and cut

wood with the electric machines got a certain amount of arm exercise.

The sewing-machine experts had already made fifty thousand sacks for

sand fortifications and breastworks.

From this enormous Lycée (which cost, I was told, five million francs)

we drove to the Salpêtrière, which in the remote ages before the war,

was an old people's home. Its extent, comprising, as it does, court

after court, gardens, masses of buildings which loom beyond and yet

beyond, not only inspired awed reflections of the number of old that

must need charity in Paris but made one wonder where they were at the

present moment, now that the Salpêtrière had been turned into a

hospital. Perhaps, being very old, they had conveniently died.

Here the men made wooden shoes with leather tops for the trenches,

cigarette packages, ingenious toys--the airships and motor ambulances

were the most striking; baskets, chairs, lace.

The rooms I visited were in charge of an English infirmière and were

fairly well aired. Some of the men would soon be well enough to go

back to the Front and were merely given occupation during their

convalescence. But in the main the object is to prepare the

unfortunates known as réformés for the future.

Since the fighting on the Somme began Madame Lyon has gone several

times a month to the recaptured towns, in charge of train-loads of

installations for the looted homes of the wretched people. In one

entire village the Germans had left just one saucepan. Nothing else

whatever.

XIII

BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK

THE DUCHESSE D'UZÈS

The Duchesse d'Uzès (_jeune_) was not only one of the reigning

beauties of Paris before the war but one of its best-dressed women;

nor had she ever been avoided for too serious tendencies. She went to

work the day war began and she has never ceased to work since. She has

started something like seventeen hospitals both at the French front

and in Saloniki, and her tireless brain has to its credit several

notable inventions for moving field hospitals.

Near Amiens is the most beautiful of the duc's castles, Lucheux, built

in the eleventh century. This she turned into a hospital during the

first battle of the Somme in 1915, and as it could only accommodate a

limited number she had hospital tents erected in the park. Seven

hundred were cared for there. Lucheux is now a hospital for officers.

She herself is an infirmière major and not only goes back and forth

constantly to the hospitals in which she is interested, particularly

Lucheux, but sometimes nurses day and night.

I was very anxious to see Lucheux, as well as Arras, which is not far

from Amiens, and, a vast ruin, is said to be by moonlight the most

beautiful sight on earth. We both besieged the War Office. But in

vain. The great Battle of the Somme had just begun. They are so polite

at the Ministère de la Guerre! If I had only thought of it a month

earlier. Or if I could remain in France a month or two longer? But

hélas! They could not take the responsibility of letting an American

woman go so close to the big guns. And so forth. It was sad enough

that the duchess risked her life, took it in her hand, in fact, every

time she visited the château, but as a Frenchwoman, whose work was of

such value to France, it was their duty to assist her in the

fulfillment of her own duty to her country. Naturally her suggestion

to take me on her passport as an infirmière was received with a smile.

So I must see Arras with a million other tourists after the war.

The duchess prefers for reasons of her own to work, not with the

noblesse division of the Red Cross, but with the Union des Femmes de

France. As she is extremely independent, impatient, and enterprising,

with a haughty disdain of red tape, the reasons for this uncommon

secession may be left to the reader.

And if she is to-day one of the most valued of the Ministère de la

Guerre's coöperators, she has on the other hand reason to be grateful

for the incessant demands upon her mind, for her anxieties have been

great--no doubt are still. Not only is the duc at the front, but one

of two young nephews who lived with her was killed last summer, and

the other, a young aviator, who was just recovering from typhoid when

I was there, was ill-concealing his impatience to return to the Front.

Her son, a boy of seventeen--a volunteer of course--in the sudden and

secret transfers the army authorities are always making, sometimes

could not communicate with her for a fortnight at a time, and

meanwhile she did not know whether he was alive or "missing." Since

then he has suffered one of those cruel misfortunes which, in this

war, seem to be reserved for the young and gallant. She writes of it

in that manner both poignant and matter-of-fact that is so

characteristic of the French mother these days:

"I have just gone through a great deal of anguish on account of my

oldest son, who, as I told you, left the cavalry to enter the

chasseurs à pied at his request.

"The poor boy was fighting in the splendid (illegible) affair, and he

was buried twice, then caught by the stifling gases, his mask having

been torn off. He insisted upon remaining at his post, in spite of the

fact that he was spitting blood. Fortunately a lieutenant passed by

and saw him. He gave orders to have him carried away. As soon as he

reached the ambulance he fainted and could only be brought to himself

with the greatest difficulty. His lungs are better, thank God, but his

heart is very weak, and even his limbs are affected by the poison.

Many weeks will be required to cure him. I don't know yet where he

will be sent to be attended to, but of course I shall accompany

him.... The duc is always in the Somme, where the bombardment is

something dreadful. He sleeps in a hut infested with rats. Really it

is a beautiful thing to see so much courage and patience among men of

all ages in this country."

In the same letter she writes: "I am just about to finish my new Front

hospital according to the desiderata expressed by our President of the

Hygiène Commission. I hope it will be accepted as a type of the

surgical movable ambulances."

Before it was generally known that Roumania was "coming in" she had

doctors and nurses for several months in France in the summer of 1916

studying all the latest devices developed by the French throughout

this most demanding of all wars. The officials sent with them adopted

several of the Duchesse d'Uzès' inventions for the movable field

hospital.

She has never sent me the many specific details of her work that she

promised me, or this article would be longer. But, no wonder! What

time have those women to sit down and write? I often wonder they gave

me as much time as they did when I was on the spot.

THE DUCHESSE DE ROHAN

Before the war society used to dance once a week in the red and gold

salon of the historic "hôtel" of the Rohans' in the Faubourg St.

Germain, just behind the Hôtel des Invalides. Here the duchess

entertained when she took up her residence there as a bride; and, as

her love of "the world" never waned, she danced on with the inevitable

pauses for birth and mourning, until her daughters grew up and brought

to the salon a new generation. But the duchess and her own friends

continued to dance on a night set apart for themselves, and in time

all of her daughters, but one, married and entertained in their own

hôtels. Her son, who, in due course, became the Duc de Rohan, also

married; but mothers are not dispossessed in France, and the duchess

still remained the center of attraction at the Hôtel de Rohan.

Until August second, 1914.

The duchess immediately turned the hôtel into a hospital. When I

arrived last summer it looked as if it had been a hospital for ever.

All the furniture of the first floor had been stored and the immense

dining-room, the red and gold salon, the reception rooms, all the

rooms large and small on this floor, in fact, were lined with cots.

The pictures and tapestries have been covered with white linen, four

bathrooms have been installed, and a large operating and

surgical-dressing room built as an annex. The hall has been turned

into a "bureau," with a row of offices presided over by Maurice

Rostand.

Behind the hôtel is the usual beautiful garden, very large and shaded

with splendid trees. During fine weather there are cots or long chairs

under every tree, out in the sun, on the veranda; and, after the War

Zone, these men seemed to me very fortunate. The duchess takes in any

one sent to her, the Government paying her one-franc-fifty a day for

each. The greater part of her own fortune was invested in Brussels.

She and her daughters and a few of her friends do all of the nursing,

even the most menial. They wait on the table, because it cheers the

poilus--who, by the way, all beg, as soon as they have been there a

few days, to be put in the red and gold salon. It keeps up their

spirits! Her friends and their friends, if they have any in Paris,

call constantly and bring them cigarettes. Fortunately I was given the

hint by the Marquise de Talleyrand, who took me the first time, and

armed myself with one of those long boxes that may be carried most

conveniently under the arm. Otherwise, I should have felt like a

superfluous intruder, standing about those big rooms looking at the

men. In the War Zone where there were often no cigarettes, or anything

else, to be bought, it was different. The men were only too glad to

see a new face.

The duchess trots about indefatigably, assists at every operation,

assumes personal charge of infectious cases, takes temperatures, waits

on the table, and prays all night by the dying. Mr. Van Husen, a young

American who was helping her at that time, told me that if a boy died

in the hospital and was a devout Catholic, and friendless in Paris,

she arranged to have a high mass for his funeral service at a church

in the neighborhood.

The last time I saw her she was feeling very happy because her

youngest son, who had been missing for several weeks, had suddenly

appeared at the hôtel and spent a few days with her. A week later the

Duc de Rohan, one of the most brilliant soldiers in France, was

killed; and since my return I have heard of the death of her youngest.

Such is life for the Mothers of France to-day.

COUNTESS GREFFULHE

The Countess Greffulhe (born Princesse de Chimay and consequently a

Belgian, although no stretch of fancy could picture her as anything

but a Parisian) offered her assistance at once to the Government and

corresponded with hundreds of Mayors in the provinces in order to have

deserted hotels made over into hospitals with as little delay as

possible. She also established a dépôt to which women could come

privately and sell their laces, jewels, bibelots, etc. Her next

enterprise was to form a powerful committee which responsible men and

women of the allied countries could ask to get up benefits when the

need for money was pressing.

Upon one occasion when a British Committee made this appeal she

induced Russia to send a ballet for a single performance; and she also

persuaded the manager of the Opera House to open it for a gala

performance for another organization. There is a romantic flavor about

all the countess's work, and just how practical it was or how long it

was pursued along any given line I was unable to learn.

MADAME PAQUIN

Madame Paquin, better known to Americans, I fancy, than any of the

great dressmakers of Europe, offered her beautiful home in Neuilly to

the Government to be used as a hospital, and it had accommodated up to

the summer of 1916 eight thousand, nine hundred soldiers.

She also kept all her girls at work from the first. As no one ordered

a gown for something like eighteen months they made garments for the

soldiers, or badges for the numerous appeal days--we all decorated

ourselves, within ten minutes after leaving the house, like heroes and

heroines on the field, about three times a week--and upon one occasion

this work involved a three months' correspondence with all the Mayors

of France. It further involved the fastening of ribbons and pins

(furnished by herself) upon fifteen million medallions. Madame Paquin

is also on many important committees, including "L'Orphelinat des

Armées," so well known to us.

MADAME PAUL DUPUY

Madame Dupuy was also an American girl, born in New York and now

married to the owner of Le Petit Parisien and son of one of the

wealthiest men in France. She opened in the first days of the war an

organization which she called "Oeuvre du Soldat Blessé ou Malade," and

from her offices in the Hôtel de Crillon and her baraque out at the

Dépôt des Dons (where we all have warehouses), she supplies surgeons

at the Front with wheeling-chairs, surgical dressings, bed garments,

rubber for operating tables, instruments, slippers, pillows, blankets,

and a hundred and one other things that harassed surgeons at the Front

are always demanding. The oeuvre of the Marquise de Noailles, with

which a daughter of Mrs. Henry Seligmen, Madame Henri van Heukelom, is

closely associated, is run on similar lines.

I have alluded frequently in the course of these reminiscences to

Madame Dupuy, who was of the greatest assistance to me, and more than

kind and willing. I wish I could have returned it by collecting money

for her oeuvre when I returned to New York, but I found that Le

Bien-Être du Blessé was all I could manage. Moreover, it is impossible

to get money these days without a powerful committee behind you. To go

to one wealthy and generous person or another as during the first days

of the war and ask for a donation for the president of an oeuvre

unrepresented in this country is out of the question. It is no longer

done, as the English say.

XIV

ONE OF THE MOTHERLESS

Versailles frames in my memory the most tragic of the war-time

pictures I collected during my visit to France. That romantic and

lovely city which has framed in turn the pomp and glory of France, the

iconic simplicities of Marie Antoinette, the odious passions of a

French mob, screeching for bread and blood, and the creation of a

German Empire, will for long be associated in my mind with a sad and

isolated little picture that will find no niche in history, but, as a

symbol, is as diagnostic as the storming of the palace gates in 1789.

There is a small but powerful oeuvre in Paris, composed with one

exception of Americans devoted to the cause of France. It was founded

by its treasurer, Mr. Frederic Coudert. Mr. August Jaccaci, of New

York, is President; Mrs. Cooper Hewett, Honorary President; Mrs.

Robert Bliss, Vice-President; and the Committee consists of the

Comtesse de Viel Castel, Mrs. Francis G. Shaw, and Mrs. William H.

Hill, of Boston. It is called "The Franco-American Committee for the

Protection of the Children of the Frontier."

This Committee, which in May, 1916, had already rescued twelve hundred

children, was born of one of those imperative needs of the moment

when the French civilians and their American friends, working behind

the lines, responded to the needs of the unfortunate, with no time for

foresight and prospective organization.

In August, 1914, M. Cruppi, a former Minister of State, told Mr.

Coudert that in the neighborhood of Belfort there were about eighty

homeless children, driven before the first great wind of the war, the

battle of Metz; separated from their mothers (their fathers and big

brothers were fighting) they had wandered, with other refugees, down

below the area of battle and were huddled homeless and almost starving

in and near the distracted town of Belfort.

Mr. Coudert immediately asked his friends in Paris to collect funds,

and started with M. Cruppi for Belfort. There they found not eighty

but two hundred and five children, shelterless, hungry, some of them

half imbecile from shock, and all physically disordered.

To leave any of these wretched waifs behind, when Belfort itself might

fall at any moment, was out of the question, and M. Cruppi and Mr.

Coudert crowded them all into the military cars allotted by the

Government and took them to Paris. Some money had been raised. Mr.

Coudert cabled to friends in America, Mrs. Bliss (wife of the First

Secretary of the American Embassy) and Mrs. Cooper Hewett contributed

generously, Valentine Thompson gave her help and advice for a time,

and Madame Pietre, wife of the sous-préfet of Yvetot, installed the

children in an old seminary near her home and gave them her personal

attention. Later, one hundred were returned to their parents and the

rest placed in a beautiful château surrounded by a park.

Every day of those first terrible weeks of the war proved that more

and more children must be cared for by those whom fortune had so far

spared. It was then that Mr. Jaccaci renounced all private work and

interests, and that Mrs. Hill, Mrs. Shaw and the Comtesse de Viel

Castel volunteered. The organization was formed and christened, Mrs.

Bliss provided Relief Dépôts in Paris, and Mr. Coudert returned to New

York for a brief visit in search of funds.

During the bombardment of the Belgian and French towns these children

came into Paris on every train. They were tagged like post-office

packages, and it was as well they were, not only because some were too

little to know or to pronounce their names correctly, but even the

older ones were often too dazed to give a coherent account of

themselves; although the more robust quickly recovered. The first

thing to do with this human flotsam was to wash and disinfect and feed

it, clip its hair to the skull, and then, having burned the rags of

arrival, dress it in clean substantial clothes. While I was in Paris

Mr. Jaccaci and Mrs. Hill were meeting these trains; and, when the

smaller children arrived frightened and tearful they took them in

their arms and consoled them all the way to the Relief Dépôts. The

result was that they needed the same treatment as the children.

It was generally the Curé or the Mayor of the bombarded towns that had

rounded up each little parentless army and headed it toward Paris.

When the larger children were themselves again they all told the same

bitter monotonous stories. Suddenly a rain of shrapnel fell on their

village or town. They fled to the cellars, perhaps to the one Cave

Voûtée (a stone cellar with vaulted roof) and there herded in

indescribable filth, darkness, fear, hunger for weeks and even months

at a time. The shelling of a village soon stopped, but in the larger

towns, strategic points desired of the enemy, the bombarding would be

incessant. Mothers, or older children, would venture out for food,

returning perhaps with enough to keep the pale flame of life alive, as

often as not falling a huddled mass a few feet from the exit of the

cellar. Mothers died of typhoid, pneumonia, in childbirth; others

never had reached the cellar with their own children in the panic; one

way or another these children arrived in Paris in a state of

orphanhood, although later investigations proved them to have been

hiding close to their mother (and sometimes father; for all men are

not physically fit for war) by the width of a street, in a town where

the long roar of guns dulled the senses and the affections, and the

constant hail of shrapnel precluded all search for anything but food.

Moreover, many families had fled from villages lying in the path of

the advancing hordes to the neighboring towns, and there separated,

crowding into the nearest Caves Voûtées. Most of these poor women

carried a baby and were distraught with fear besides; the older

children must cling to the mother's skirts or become lost in the

mêlée.

When one considers that many of these children, in Rheims or Verdun,

for instance, were in cellars not for weeks but for months, without

seeing the light of day, with their hunger never satisfied, with

corpses unburied for days until a momentary lull encouraged the elders

to remove the sand bags at the exit and thrust them out, with their

refuge rocking constantly and their ear-drums splitting with raucous

sounds, where the stenches were enough to poison what red blood they

had left and there were no medicines to care for the afflicted little

bodies, one pities anew those mentally afflicted people who assert at

automatic intervals, "I can't see any difference between the cruelty

of the British blockade and the German submarines." The resistant

powers of the human body, given the bare chance of remaining alive,

are little short of phenomenal. But then, when Nature compounded the

human frame it was to fling it into a newborn world far more difficult

to survive than even the awful conditions of modern warfare.

Some of these children were wounded before they reached the cellars.

In many cases the families remained in their homes until the walls, at

first pierced by the shrapnel, began to tumble about their ears. Then

they would run to the homes of friends on the other side of the town,

staying there until the guns, aided by the air scouts, raked such

houses as had escaped the first assault. Often there were no Caves

Voûtées in the villages. The mothers cowered with their children under

the tottering walls or lay flat on the ground until the German guns

turned elsewhere; then they ran for the nearest town. But during these

distracted transfers many received wounds whose scars they are likely

to carry through life. The most seriously wounded were taken to the

military hospitals, where they either died, or, if merely in need of

bandages, were quickly turned out to make room for some poilu arriving

in the everlasting procession of stretchers.

Sometimes, flat on their stomachs, the more curious and intelligent of

the children watched the shells sailing overhead to drop upon some

beautiful villa or château and transpose it into a heap of stones.

Where there were English or Americans in these bombarded towns, or

where the Curés or the Mayors of those invaded had not been shot or

imprisoned, the children were sent as quickly as possible to Paris,

the mothers, when there were any, only too content to let them go and

to remain behind and take their chances with the shells.

One little Belgian named Bonduelle, who, with two brothers, reached

Paris in safety, is very graphic: "We are three orphans," he replied

in answer to the usual questions. "Our uncle and aunt took the place

of our dear parents, so soon taken from us.... It was towards the

evening of Wednesday, 6th September, 1914, that I was coming back to

my uncle's house from Ypres, when all at once I heard shrieks and

yells in the distance. I stopped, for I was like one stunned. On

hearing behind me, on the highway, German cavalry, I ran into a house

where I spent the night. I could not close my eyes when I thought of

the anxiety of my uncle and aunt and of the fate of my two small

brothers, Michael and Roger. Early the following day I rushed to our

house. Everybody was in the cellar. We shed tears on meeting again. I

found two of my cousins wounded by a shell which had exploded outside

our door. Soon another shell comes and smashes our house. I was

wounded. Dazed with fear, my cousin and myself got out through a

window from the cellar, we ran across fields and meadows to another

uncle, where the rest of the family followed us soon. We remained

there the whole winter, but what a sad winter! We have not taken off

our clothes, for at every moment we feared to have to run away again.

"The big guns rumbled very much and the shells whistled over our

heads. Every one heard: 'So-and-so is killed' or 'wounded, by a

shell.' 'Such-and-such-a-house is ruined by a shell.'

"After having spent more than seven months in incredible fear, my

brothers and myself have left the village, at the order of the

gendarmes, and the English took us to Hazebrouck, from where we went

to Paris."

In some cases the parents, or, as was most generally the case, the

mother, after many terrifying experiences in her village, passed and

repassed by the Germans, having heard of the relief stations in Paris,

sent their children, properly tagged, to be cared for in a place of

comparative safety until the end of the war. Young Bruno Van

Wonterghem told his experience in characteristically simple words:

"Towards the evening of September 6th, 1914, the Germans arrived at

our village with their ammunition. One would have thought the Last

Judgment was about to begin. All the inhabitants were hiding in their

houses. I was hiding in the attic, but, desirous to see a German, I

was looking through a little window in the roof. Nobody in the house

dared to go to bed. It was already very late when we heard knocks at

the door of our shop. It was some Germans who wanted to buy chocolate.

Some paid but the majority did not. They left saying, 'Let us kill the

French.' The following morning they marched away toward France. In the

evening one heard already the big guns in the distance.

"Turned out of France the Germans came to St. Eloi, where they

remained very long. Then they advanced to Ypres. The whole winter I

heard the rumbling of the big guns, and the whistling of the shells. I

learned also every day of the sad deaths of the victims of that awful

war. I was often very frightened and I have been very happy to leave

for France with my companions."

While I was in Paris the refugee children, of course, were from the

invaded districts of France; the Belgian stream had long since ceased.

Already twelve hundred little victims of the first months of the war,

both Belgian and French, either had been returned to their mothers or

relatives by the Franco-American Committee, or placed for the

educational period of their lives in families, convents, or boys'

schools. The more recent were still in the various colonies

established by Mrs. Hill and the other members of the Committee, where

they received instruction until such time as their parents could be

found, or some kind people were willing to adopt them.

It was on my first Sunday in Paris that Mr. Jaccaci and Mrs. Hill

asked me to drive out with them to Versailles and visit a sanitorium

for the children whose primary need was restoration to health. It was

on the estate of Madame Philip Berard, who had contributed the

building, while the entire funds for its upkeep, including a trained

nurse, were provided by Mrs. Bliss.

Versailles was as green and peaceful as if a few miles away the shells

were not ripping up a field a shot. After lunch in the famous hotel

ordinarily one of the gayest in France at that time of the year, we

first visited the rest hospital of Miss Morgan, Miss Marbury and Miss

de Wolfe, and then drove out into the country to Madame Berard's

historical estate. Here, in the courtyard of a good-sized building,

we were greeted by about forty children in pink-and-white gingham

aprons, and heads either shaved or finished off with tightly braided

pigtails. It seemed to me then that they were all smiling, and--for

they had been there some weeks--that most of them looked round and

healthy. But I soon found that some were still too languid to play.

One lying in a long chair on the terrace at the back of the house and

gazing vacantly out at the beautiful woods was tubercular, the victim

of months in a damp cellar. Another, although so excessively cheerful

that I suspect she was not "all there" was also confined to a long

chair, with a hip affection of some sort, but she was much petted, and

surrounded by all the little luxuries that the victims of her smile

had remembered to send her. One beautiful child had the rickets, and

several suffered from intestinal prolapsus and other internal

complaints, but were on the road to recovery.

While their Swedish nurse was putting them through their gymnastic

exercises I studied their faces. At first my impression was one of

prevailing homeliness; scrubbed, flat, peasant faces, for the most

part, without the features or the mental apparatus that provides

expression. But soon I singled out two or three pretty and engaging

children, and rarely one whose face was devoid of character. And they

stood well and went through their exercises with precision and vigor.

It was just before we left that my wandering attention was directed

toward the scene to which I alluded in my first paragraph. The greater

number of the children were shouting at play in a neighboring field.

The preternaturally happy invalid was smiling at the lovely woods

beyond the terrace, woods where little princes had frolicked, and

older princes had wooed and won. Mr. Jaccaci was still petting the

beautiful little boy who looked like the _bambino_ on the celebrated

fresco of Florence; Mrs. Hill was kissing and hugging several little

girls who had clung to her skirts. It was, in spite of its origin, a

happy scene.

I had been waiting by the door for these ceremonies of affection to

finish, when I happened to glance at the far end of the wide stone

terrace. There, by the balustrade, in the shadow of the leafy woods,

stood a girl of perhaps eight or ten. Her arms hung at her sides and

she was staring straight before her while she cried as I never have

seen a child cry; silently, bitterly, with her heavy plain face hardly

twisted in its tragic silent woe.

I called Mrs. Hill's attention to her, for I, a stranger, could not

intrude upon a grief like that, and the idol of all those children

immediately ran over to the desolate figure. She questioned her, she

put her arms about her. She might as well have addressed one of the

broken stone nymphs in the woods. That young mind, startled from the

present, it may be, by witnessing the endearments lavished upon

prettier and smaller children, had traveled far. She was in the past,

a past that anteceded even that past of death and thundering guns and

rocking walls and empty stomachs; a past when the war, of whose like

she had never heard, was still in the sleepless brains of the monster

criminals of history, when she lived in a home in a quiet village with

the fields beyond; where she had a mother, a father, sisters,

brothers; where her tears had been over childish disappointments, and

her mother had dried them. Small and homely and insignificant she

stood there in her tragic detachment the symbol of all the woe of

France, and of the depraved brutality of a handful of ambitious men

who had broken the heart of the world.

XV

THE MARRAINES

It is hardly too much to say that every woman in France, from noblesse

to peasant, has her filleul (godson) in the trenches; in many cases,

when she still has a considerable income in spite of taxes,

moratoriums, and all the rest of it, she is a marraine on the grand

scale and has several hundred. Children have their filleul, correspond

with him, send him little presents several times a month and weep

bitterly when word comes that he is deep in his last trench.

Servants save their wages so that when the filleuls of their

mistresses come home on their six days' leave they at least can

provide the afternoon wine and entertain them royally in the kitchen.

Old maids, still sewing in their attic for a few sous a day, have

found a gleam of brightness for the first time in their somber lives

in the knowledge that they give a mite of comfort or pleasure to some

unknown man, offering his life in the defence of France, and whose

letters, sentimental, effusive, playful, almost resign these poor

stranded women to the crucifixion of their country.

Busy women like Madame d'Andigné sit up until two in the morning

writing to their grateful filleuls. Girls, who once dreamed only of

marrying and living the brilliant life of the _femme du monde_ spend

hours daily not only on cheerful letters, but knitting, sewing,

embroidering, purchasing for humble men who will mean nothing to their

future, beyond the growth of spirit they unconsciously induced. Poor

women far from Paris, where, at least, thousands of these

permissionnaires linger for a few hours on their way home, toil all

night over their letters to men for whom they conceive a profound

sentiment but never can hope to see. Shop girls save their wages and

lady's maids pilfer in a noble cause.

It was Madame Berard (who was a Miss Dana of Boston) who organized

this magnificent spirit into a great oeuvre, so that thousands of men

could be made happy whom no kindly woman so far had been able to

discover.

Madame Berard, who has three sons in the army herself, nursed at the

Front for several months after the war broke out. Even officers told

her that they used to go off by themselves and cry because they never

received a letter, or any sort of reminder that they were anything but

part of a machine defending France. These officers, of course, were

from the invaded district, and in addition to their isolation, were

haunted by fears for their women now in the power of men who were as

cruel as they were sensual and degenerate.

When she returned to her home she immediately entered upon the career

of marraine, corresponding with several hundred of the men she either

had known or whose names were given to her by their commanding

officers. Naturally the work progressed beyond her capacity and she

called upon friends to help her out. Out of this initial and purely

personal devotion grew the great oeuvre, Mon Soldat, which has met

with such a warm response in this country.

Madame Berard's headquarters are in a villa in the Parc Monceau. Here

is conducted all the correspondence with the agents in other cities,

here come thousands of letters and presents by every mail to be

forwarded to the Front, and here come the grateful--and

hopeful--permissionnaires, who never depart without a present and

sometimes leave one, generally an ingenious trinket made in the

trenches.

When I visited the villa last summer the oeuvre had eight thousand

marraines, and no doubt the number has doubled to-day. Fifteen hundred

of these were American, marshalled by Madame Berard's representative

in New York, Mr. R.W. Neeser. Some of these fairy godmothers had ten

filleuls. Packages were dispatched to the Front every week. Women that

could not afford presents wrote regularly. There were at that time

over twenty thousand filleuls.

The letters received from these men of all grades must be a source of

psychologic as well as sympathetic interest to the more intelligent

marraines, for when the men live long enough they reveal much of their

native characteristics between the formalities so dear to the French.

But too many of them write but one letter, and sometimes they do not

finish that.

XVI

PROBLEMS FOR THE FUTURE

I

What the bereft mothers of France will do after this war is over and

they no longer have the mutilated sons of other mothers to nurse and

serve and work for, is a problem for themselves; but what the younger

women will do is a problem for the men.

Practically every day of the three months I spent in Passy I used one

of the three lines of tramcars that converge at La Muette (it is

almost immoral to take a taxi these days); and I often amused myself

watching the women conductors. They are quick, keen, and competent,

but, whether it was owing to the dingy black uniforms and

distressingly unbecoming Scotch military cap or not, it never did

occur to me that there would be any mad scramble for them when the men

of France once more found the leisure for love and marriage.

Grim as these women looked, however, "on their job," I often noticed

them laughing and joking when, off duty for a few moments, they rested

under the trees at the terminus. No doubt there is in them that

ineradicable love of the home so characteristic of the French race,

and as there is little beauty in their class at the best, they may

appeal more to the taste of men of that class than they did to mine.

And it may be that those who are already provided with husbands will

cheerfully renounce work in their favor and return to the hearthstone.

Perhaps, however, they will not, and wise heads of the sex which has

ruled the world so long are conferring at odd moments upon these and

other females who have taken up so many of the reins laid down by men

and driven the man-made teams with a success that could not be more

complete if they had been bred to it, and with a relish that has

grown, and shows no sign of retroaction.

[Illustration: DELIVERING THE POST]

The French women of the people, however, unlovely to look upon,

toil-worn, absorbed from childhood in petty economics, have little to

tempt men outside of the home in which they reign, so for those that

do return the problem ends. But it is an altogether different matter

with the women of the leisure classes. The industrial women who have

proved so competent in the positions occupied for centuries by men

merely agitate the economic brain of France, but the future of the

women of the upper strata of the bourgeoisie is shaking the very soul

of the social psychologist.

II

At the outbreak of the war hundreds of girls belonging to the best

families volunteered as nurses. Some quickly retired to committee work

in disgust, or because their pampered bodies rebelled under the

strain.

Others have never faltered, doing the most repulsive and arduous work

day by day, close to the thunder of guns, or under the constant menace

of the taube whose favorite quarry is the hospital full of ill and

wounded, and of pretty women whose torn bodies even in imagination

satisfy the perversities of German lust; but if they ever go home to

rest it is under the peremptory orders of their médecin major, who has

no use for shattered nervous systems these days.

While these girls may have lost their illusions a little earlier than

they would in matrimony, the result is not as likely to affect the

practical French mind toward the married state as it might that of the

more romantic and self-deluding American or English woman. There is

little doubt that they will marry if they can, for to marry and marry

early has been for too many centuries a sort of religious duty with

well-born French women to be eradicated by one war; and as they will

meet in hospital wards many officers who might not otherwise cross

their narrow paths, their chances, if the war ends soon enough, will

be reasonably increased.

Moreover, many a man who was a confirmed bachelor will, after the

acute discomfort of years of warfare, look upon the married state as a

greater reward than the medals on his breast; and on the other hand

many girls will be glad to marry men old enough to be a parent of the

young husband they once dreamed of; for hardly since the Thirty

Years' War will men when peace comes be so scarce and women so many.

There has even been talk from time to time of bringing the Koranic law

across the Mediterranean and permitting each able-bodied Frenchman of

any class to have three registered wives besides the one of his

choice, the additional expense and responsibility being borne by the

State.

But of all the countries in Europe polygamy is most unthinkable in

France. The home is as perfected and as sacred an economic institution

as the State. To reign over one of those important units, even if deep

in the shadow of the expansive male, to maintain it on that high level

of excellence which in the aggregate does so much to maintain France

at the very apex of civilization, in spite of another code which

shocks Anglo-Saxon morality--this, combined with the desire to gratify

the profoundest instincts of woman, is the ambition of every

well-conditioned French girl.

She would far rather, did the demand of the State for male children

become imperative, give it one or more outside the law rather than

forfeit her chance to find one day a real husband and to be a

component part of that great national institution, The Family. She

would not feel in the same class for a moment with the women who live

to please men and refrain from justifying themselves by fulfilling at

the same time a duty to their depleted State.

III

The women of the noblesse, like the aristocracies of any country, and

whatever the minor shadings and classifications, are divided into two

classes: the conservative, respectable, home-loving, no matter what

the daily toll to rank; and the devotees of dress, pleasure, sex,

subdivided, orchestrated, and romanticized. As these women move in the

most brilliant society in the world and can command the willing

attendance of men in all circles; as their husbands are so often

foraging far afield; and as temptation is commonly proportionate to

opportunity, little wonder that the Parisian _femme du monde_ is the

most notable disciple of Earth's politer form of hedonism.

This is true to only a limited extent in the upper circles of the

bourgeoisie. Some of the women of the wealthier class dress

magnificently, have their lovers and their scandals (in what class do

they not?), and before the war danced the night away. But the great

majority rarely wandered far from their domestic kingdom, quite

content with an occasional ball, dinner, or play. A daughter's

marriage was the greatest event in their lives, and the endless

preparations throughout the long engagement, a subdued but delicious

period of excitement. Their social circles, whatever their birth, were

extremely restricted, and they were, above all things, the mates of

their husbands.

IV

But the war has changed all that. France has had something like a war

a generation from time immemorial, but in modern times, since woman

has found herself, they have been brief. Feminism, whether approved by

the great mass of Frenchwomen or not, has done its insidious work. And

for many years now there has been the omnipresent American woman with

her careless independence; and, still more recently, the desperate

fight of the English women for liberty.

It was quite natural when this war swept across Europe like a fiery

water-spout, for the French woman of even the bourgeoisie to come

forth from her shell (although at first not to the same degree as the

noblesse) and work with other women for the men at the Front and the

starving at home. Not only did the racing events of those first weeks

compel immediate action, but the new ideas they had imbibed, however

unwillingly, dictated their course as inevitably as that of the more

experienced women across the channel. The result was that these women

for the first time in their narrow intensive lives found themselves

meeting, daily, women with whom they had had the most distant if any

acquaintance; sewing, knitting, talking more and more intimately over

their work, running all sorts of oeuvres, founding homes for refugees,

making up packages for prisoners in Germany (this oeuvre was conceived

and developed into an immense organization by Madame Wallestein),

serving on six or eight committees, becoming more and more

interdependent as they worked for a common and unselfish cause; their

circle of acquaintances and friends as well as their powers of

usefulness, their independent characteristics which go so far toward

the making of personality, rising higher and higher under the impetus

of deprisoned tides until they flowed gently over the dam of the

centuries; the flood, be it noted, taking possession of wide pastures

heretofore sacred to man.

Naturally these women spent very little time at home; although, such

is the incomparable training of those practical methodical minds, even

with a diminished staff of servants the domestic machinery ran as

smoothly as when they devoted to it so many superfluous hours.

And with these new acquaintances, all practically of their own class,

they talked in time not only of the war and their ever augmenting

duties, but, barriers lowered by their active sympathies, found

themselves taking a deep interest in other lives, and in the things

that had interested other women of more intelligence or of more

diversified interests than their own.

Insensibly life changed, quite apart from the rude shocks of war;

lines were confused, old ideals were analyzed in many instances as

hoary conventions, which had decayed inside until a succession of

sharp quick contacts caused the shell to cave in upon emptiness.

V

A year passed. During that time husbands did not return from the front

unless ill or maimed (and thousands of husbands are even to-day quite

intact). Then came Chapter Two of the domestic side of the War, which

should be called "Les Permissionnaires." Officers and soldiers were

allowed a six days' leave of absence from the front at stated

intervals.

The wives were all excitement and hope. They snatched time to

replenish their wardrobes, and once more the thousand corridors of the

Galeries Lafayette swarmed, the dressmakers breathed again. Shop

windows blossomed with all the delicate fripperies with which a

Frenchwoman can make old garments look new. Hotel keepers emerged from

their long night like hibernates that had overslept, and rubbing their

hands. The men were coming back. Paris would live again. And Paris,

the coquette of all the ages, forgot her new rôle of lady of sorrows

and smiled once more.

The equally eager husband (to pass over "les autres") generally

sneaked into his house or apartment by the back stairs and into the

bathtub before he showed himself to his adoring family; but after

those first strenuous hours of scrubbing and disinfecting and shaving,

and getting into a brand new uniform of becoming horizon blue, there

followed hours of rejoicing unparalleled by anything but a victory

over "Les Boches."

For two days husband and wife talked as incessantly as only Gauls can;

but by degrees a puzzled look contracted the officer's brow, gradually

deepening into a frown. His fluent wife, whose animation over trifles

had always been a source of infinite refreshment, was talking of

things which he, after a solid year of monotonous warfare far from

home, knew nothing. He cared to know less. He wanted the old exchange

of personalities, the dear domestic gabble.

The wife meanwhile was heroically endeavoring to throw off a feeling

of intolerable ennui. How was it that never before had she found the

hearthstone dull? The conversation of her life partner (now doubly

honored) induced a shameful longing for the seventh day.

So it was. During that year these two good people had grown apart. The

wife's new friends bored the husband, and the gallant soldier's

stories of life at the Front soon became homogeneous. Whether he will

accept his wife's enlarged circle and new interests after the war is

over is one of the problems, but nothing is less likely than that she

will rebuild the dam, recall the adventurous waters of her

personality, empty her new brain cells, no matter how much she may

continue to love her husband and children.

VI

Nor to give up her new power. In those divisions of the bourgeoisie

where the wife is always the husband's partner, following a custom of

centuries, and who to-day is merely carrying on the business alone,

there will be no surrender of responsibilities grown precious, no

sense of apprehension of loss of personal power. But in those more

leisured circles where, for instance, a woman has been for the first

time complete mistress of all expenditures, domestic or

administrative, and of her childrens' destinies; has learned to think

and act for herself as if she were widowed in fact; and in addition

has cultivated her social sense to an extreme unprecedented in the

entire history of the bourgeoisie, she will never return to the old

status, even though she disdain feminism per se and continue to prefer

her husband to other men--that is to say, to find him more tolerable.

A young woman of this class, who until the war widowed her had been as

happy as she was favored by fortune: wealthy, well-bred, brilliantly

educated, and "elle et lui" with her husband, told me that no American

could understand the peculiarly intensive life led by a French couple

who found happiness in each other and avoided the fast sets. And

whereas what she told me would have seemed natural enough in the life

of a petite bourgeoisie, I must confess I was amazed to have it from

the lips of a clever and beautiful young woman whom life had pampered

until death broke loose in Europe.

The husband, she told me, did the thinking. Before he left home in the

morning he asked his wife what she intended to order for dinner and

altered the menu to his liking; also the list of guests, if it had

been thought well to vary their charming routine with a select

company.

Before his wife bought a new gown she submitted the style and colors

to what seems literally to have been her other half, and he solemnly

pondered over both before pronouncing his august and final opinion.

If they had children, the interest was naturally extended. His concern

in health and in illness, in play and in study, was nothing short of

meticulous. I asked my informant if Frenchwomen would ever again

submit to a man's making such an infernal nuisance of himself, and,

sad as she still was at her own great loss, she replied positively

that they would not. They had tasted independence and liked it too

well ever to drop back into insignificance.

"Nor," she added, "will we be content with merely social and domestic

life in the future. We will love our home life none the less, but we

must always work at something now; only those who have lost their

health, or are natural parasites will ever again be content to live

without some vital personal interest outside the family."

Words of tremendous import to France, those.

VII

I caught a glimpse more than once of the complete submergence of

certain Frenchwomen by husbands too old for war, but important in

matters of State. They bored me so that I only escaped betraying acute

misery by summoning all my powers of resistance and talking against

time until I could make a graceful exit. They were, these women (who

looked quite happy), mere echoes of the men to whom their eyes

wandered in admiration and awe. The last thing I had imagined,

however, was that the men would concern themselves about details that,

in Anglo-Saxon countries at least, have for centuries been firmly

relegated to the partner of the second part. How many American women

drive their husbands to the club by their incessant drone about the

iniquities of servants and the idiosyncrasies of offspring?

And much as the women of our race may resent that their rôle in

matrimony is the one of petty detail while the man enjoys the "broader

interests," I think few of us would exchange our lot for one of

constant niggling interference. It induces a certain pleasure to

reflect that so many Frenchwomen have reformed. Frenchmen, with all

their conservatism, are the quickest of wit, the most supple of

intellect in the world. No doubt after a few birth-pains they will

conform, and enjoy life more than ever. Perhaps, also, they will cease

to prowl abroad for secret entertainment.

VIII

Nothing, it is safe to say, since the war broke out, has so astonished

Frenchwomen--those that loved their husbands and those that loved

their lovers--as the discovery that they find life quite full and

interesting without men. At the beginning all their faculties were put

to so severe a strain that they had no time to miss them; as France

settled down to a state of war, and life was in a sense normal again,

it was only at first they missed the men--quite aside from their

natural anxieties. But as time went on and there was no man always

coming in, husband or lover, no man to dress for, scheme for, exercise

their imaginations to please, weep for when he failed to come, or

lapsed from fever heat to that temperature which suggests exotic

fevers, they missed him less and less.

Unexpected resources were developed. Their work, their many works,

grew more and more absorbing. Gradually they realized that they were

looking at life from an entirely different point of view.

Voilà!

Is the reign of the male in the old countries of Europe nearing its

end, even as Kings and Kaisers are reluctantly approaching the vaults

of history? An American woman married to a Frenchman said to me one

day:

"Intelligent Frenchwomen complain to me that they never win anything

on their merits. They must exert finesse, seduction, charm, magnetism.

For this reason they are always in a state of apprehension that some

other woman equally feminine, but more astute and captivating, will

win their man away. The result is the intense and unremitting

jealousies in French society. They see in this war their opportunity

to show men not only their powers of individual usefulness, often

equal if not superior to that of their husband or lover, but their

absolute indispensability. They are determined to win respect as

individuals, rise above the rank of mere females."

IX

Moreover, this war is bringing a liberty to the French girl which must

sometimes give her the impression that she is living in a fantastic

dream. Young people already had begun to rebel at the old order of

matrimonial disposition by parental authority, but it is doubtful if

they will ever condescend to argument again, or even to the old formal

restrictions during the period of the long engagement. Not only will

husbands be too scarce to dicker about, but these girls, too, are

living their own lives, going to and coming from hospital work daily

(unless at the Front), spending long hours by convalescent cots,

corresponding with filleuls, attending half a dozen clubs for work;

above all, entertaining their brothers' friend during those oases

known as _permission_, or six days' leave. And very often the friends

of their brothers are young men of a lower rank in life, whose valor

or talents in the field have given them a quick promotion.

The French army is the one perfect democracy in the world. Its men,

from duke to peasant-farmer, have a contemptuous impatience for social

pretense when about the business of war, and recognition is swift and

practical. As the young men of the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie

have lost more and more of their old friends they have replaced them

with men they like for good masculine reasons alone, and these they

have taken to bringing home, when permissionnaires at the same time.

Nothing can be more certain than that girls, once haughty and

exacting, will marry these young men and be glad to get them.

A student of his race said to me one day: "France is the most

conservative country in Europe. She goes on doing the same thing

generation after generation paying no attention to rebellious mutters,

hardly hearing them in fact. She believes herself to have been moulded

and solidified long since. Then, presto! Something sudden and violent

happens. Old ideas are uprooted. New ones planted. Is there a

struggle? Not for a moment. They turn an intellectual somersault and

are immediately as completely at home with the new as the old."

During the second year of the war a feminist was actually invited to

address the graduation class of a fashionable girls' school. She told

them that the time had come when girls of all classes should be

trained to earn their living. This war had demonstrated the

uncertainty of human affairs. Not a family in France, not even the

_haute finance_, but would have a curtailed income for years to come,

and many girls of good family could no longer count on a dot if the

war lasted much longer. Then there was the decrease in men. Better go

out into the world and make any sort of respectable career than be an

old maid at home. She gave them much practical advice, told them that

one of the most lucrative employments was retouching photographs, and

implored them to cultivate any talent they might have and market it as

soon as possible.

The girls sat throughout this discourse as stunned as if a bomb had

dropped on the roof. They were still discussing it when I left Paris.

No doubt it is already beginning to bear fruit. Few of them but have

that most dismal of all fireside ornaments, a half-effaced old-maid

sister, one of the most tragic and pitiable objects in France. The

noble attributes which her drab and eventless life sometimes leave

un-withered were superbly demonstrated to the American audience some

years ago by Nance O'Neil in "The Lily."

X

One of the new officers I happened to hear of was a farmer who not

only won the _Croix de Guerre_ and the _Croix de la Legion d'Honneur_

very early in the war but rose in rank until, when I heard the story,

he was a major. One day a brother officer asked him if he should

remain in the army after peace was declared.

"No," he replied, and it was evident that he had thought the matter

over. "My wife is not a lady. She is wholly unfitted to take her place

in the officers' class. There is no democracy among women. Better for

us both that I return whence I came."

This is a fair sample of the average Frenchman's ironic astuteness,

that clear practical vision that sees life without illusions. But if

the war should drag on for years the question is, would he be willing

to surrender the position of authority to which he had grown

accustomed, and which satisfies the deepest instincts of a man's

nature after youth has passed? After all there may be a new "officers'

class."

I heard another story, told me by a family doctor, equally

interesting. The son of a wealthy and aristocratic house and his valet

were mobilized at the same time. The young patrician was a good and a

gallant soldier but nothing more. The valet discovered extraordinary

capacities. Not only did he win the coveted medals in the course of

the first few months, but when his shattered regiment under fire in

the open was deprived of its officers he took command and led the

remnant to victory. A few more similar performances proving that his

usefulness was by no means the result of the moment's exaltation but

of real however unsuspected gifts, he was rapidly promoted until he

was captain of his former employer's company. There appears to have

been no mean envy in the nature of the less fortunate aristocrat.

Several times they have received their _permission_ together and he

has taken his old servant home with him and given him the seat of

honor at his own table. His mother and sisters have made no demur

whatever, but are proud that their ménage should have given a fine

soldier to France. Perhaps only the noblesse who are unalterably sure

of themselves would have been capable of rising above the age-old

prejudices of caste, war or no war.

XI

French women rarely emigrate. Never, if they can help it. Our servant

question may be solved after the war by the manless women of other

races, but the Frenchwoman will stay in her country, if possible in

her home. All girls, the major part of the young widows (who have

created a panic among the little spinsters) will marry if they can,

not only because marriage is still the normal career of woman but

because of their sense of duty to the State. But that social France

after the war will bear more than a family resemblance to the France

that reached the greatest climax in her history on August second,

nineteen-fourteen, has ceased to be a matter of speculation.

* * * * *

Although I went to France to examine the work of the Frenchwomen only,

it would be ungracious, as well as a disappointment to many readers,

not to give the names at least of some of the many American women who

live in France or who spend a part of the year there and are working

as hard as if this great afflicted country were their own. Some day

their names will be given to the world in a full roll of honor. I do

not feel sure that I know of half of them, but I have written down all

I can recall. The list, of course, does not include the names of

Americans married to Frenchmen:

Mrs. Sharp, Miss Anne Morgan, Mrs. Tuck, Mrs. Bliss, Miss Elisabeth

Marbury, Miss Elsie de Wolfe, Mrs. Robert Bacon, Mrs. W.K. Vanderbilt,

Mrs. Whitney Warren, Mrs. Wharton, Mrs. Canfield Fisher, Miss Grace

Ellery Channing, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Carroll of Carrollton, Mrs. Sherman,

Mrs. Cooper Hewett, Miss Holt, Mrs. William H. Hill, Mrs. Shaw, Mrs.

Frederick H. Allen, Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, Miss Fairchild, Mrs.

Younger, Mrs. Morton Mitchell, Mrs. Fleury, Mrs. Sales, Mrs. Hyde,

Mrs. William Astor Chanler, Mrs. Ridgeley Carter, Miss Ethel Crocker,

Miss Daisy Polk, Miss Janet Scudder, Mrs. Lathrop, Miss Vail, Mrs.

Samuel Watson, Mrs. Armstrong Whitney, Mrs. Lawrence Slade, Miss

Yandell, Mrs. Greene, Mrs. Duryea, Mrs. Depew, Mrs. Marion Crocker,

Miss Mary Eyre, Mrs. Gros, Mrs. Van Heukelom, Mrs. Tarn McGrew, Mrs.

Schoninger, Miss Grace Lounsbery, Mrs. Lawrence, the Princess

Poniatowska, and Isadora Duncan.