Surgeon In Arms — Ch 21 Paris In Wartime; Ch 22 In A Chateau Hospital

PARIS IN WARTIME

At this period of the war the restaurants of Paris--and no other city is so famous for its restaurants--were not appreciably curtailed in their food supplies.

They still served the well-seasoned, dainty dishes of the French chefs, though their clientele was considerably smaller in numbers.

You could still get a delicious cut off the joint at Boeuf à la Mode near the Palais Royal; or you could have a choice of many luscious dishes at Voison's well-known dining place.

If you preferred French society, you could still go to Larue's aristocratic restaurant, opposite the Madeleine, patronized by the society of Paris.

Prunier's oyster house was apparently as busy as it had been in the piping times of peace and tourists; and the most deliciously cooked fish in Europe--according to my taste--was still being served at Marguery's under the title of _Sole à la Marguery_.

The less pretentious eating places of the modest diner, such as Duval's dining-rooms or the Bouillon Boulant, served good meals at reasonable prices.

These latter are akin to the Child's restaurants in America.

But already the food question was beginning to cause some anxiety throughout the world, because of the lessened production and increased consumption due to the millions of men taken from productive occupations who had to be kept fit as fighters.

For this reason I decided one day to see how cheaply I could obtain a satisfying meal during wartime in Paris.

The Diner de Paris advertised exceptionally cheap meals, and they seemed to be well patronized, so I entered one of these eating places.

The large dining-room was filled to overflowing with a well-dressed throng, no doubt mostly clerks from the adjoining business blocks.

Here I partook of a tastily cooked meal of soup, roast pork and potatoes, apple pie, and a bottle of milk, all for the munificent sum of twenty-six cents, plus the regulation tip of two cents, most certainly a reasonable price for a good meal in the principal city of a country with the invader on its soil.

Unfortunately since that time the food situation in all the countries at war has become much more complicated.

The hotels of the first class still kept open doors, and a few of them seemed to have an air of prosperity, but these were very few.

Many of them who, in the season, considered it "infra-dig" to have more than a small card in the hotel columns of the daily papers, which card never hinted at their prices, had descended to the habit of advertising "special rates during the war."

But others still preferred their small, select clientele--and a deficit--to accepting prosperity obtained by any such plebeian method.

One point noticeable was the fact that unless the traveler carried them himself he saw no gold Louis or half-Louis, so much in evidence in times of peace.

I had brought with me some English gold, but once it disappeared from my hand it never returned.

A journalist friend of mine told me he was collecting the equivalent of one hundred dollars in gold to keep for an emergency, and was delighted when I gave him a few sovereigns in exchange for French money.

The gold was being gathered in by the government, and today in France only paper money is used in exchange.

All the smaller cities issue paper currency in denominations as low as one-quarter franc, or five cents.

Among my letters was one of introduction to the director of a large hospital in the Rue de la Chaise.

This hospital was supported by funds collected by _La Presse_, a daily journal of Montreal, and so it was partial to any Canadian visitors, though it received as patients only French officers and soldiers.

The institution was doing much good work, all of which was done by Paris medical men, Dr. Faure, a well-known surgeon, performing most of the operations.

My reception was cordial, and I became a regular visitor to its operating theater during my stay in the city.

On one of my early visits I was watching Dr. Faure remove some dead bone from an old wound of the leg, when a tall, distinguished lady entered.

She had donned a sterilized gown over her street dress, and was apparently a visitor like myself.

Noting that Dr. Faure's English and my French were both a trifle labored, she, during my visits, acted as interpreter for us, her English having the soft intonation of the educated Britisher.

She informed me that she was neither doctor nor nurse, but was simply learning something of nursing in order that she could be of service to her country in its need, though she had a little son and daughter of her own to care for.

That was the extent of my knowledge of her, though I saw that she was treated with more than ordinary consideration by surgeons, and nurses, one of the younger surgeons, by the way, being a stepson of the idolized Joffre.

The last day I visited the hospital she was not there, and as I was leaving Paris the following day I left my card for her with one of the sisters, with a word of thanks scribbled upon it for her kindness to a stranger.

That afternoon I went to Cook's to get my railway tickets, and as I came out of the door this lady stepped from an automobile to enter Cook's. Recognizing me, she told me that she had been at the hospital after I had left, and had been given my card.

She was leaving the following day for Switzerland for a two weeks' rest; and hoped that when I returned to Paris I would call and meet her husband.

"I should be delighted, madam, but I fear I do not know your name."

"Comtesse (Countess) de Sonlac," she replied.

All the French women were doing their bit.

A very clever, cultured woman-journalist whom I met at the home of a high Canadian official in Paris was leaving in a few days to take a position as _cook_ on an ambulance train in the north of France!

At night the streets of Paris were well lit up, even more brightly than those of London, though a little later, after the Germans had made a couple of Zeppelin raids, the lighting was dimmed.

When a raid was expected the police warned the people by the blowing of sirens, and the hurrying about of motor cars under police direction tooting foghorns.

The warnings were given when word had been received that Zeppelins had been seen going toward Paris; and on receiving these warnings the street lights were extinguished, and all other lights that could be seen, including the headlights of motor cars, had to be switched off.

The Opera was closed, but most of the theaters were in full swing, for it had been found that the people must have some recreation, and the order issued at the beginning of the war closing all places of amusement had been rescinded.

The far-famed and somewhat notorious Moulin Rouge music hall, well known to all visitors to Paris, had been burned a short time before, and had but recently reopened its doors at the Folies Dramatique in the Place République.

Wandering one evening along the boulevards I came to it, and entered.

A

very ordinary vaudeville was in progress, equaling neither in quality nor in gayety the performances at the original Red Mill in Montmartre.

Here and there throughout the evening skits in English were put on, in compliment to their British allies; just as French playlets are common today in the London theaters--a social touch to the Entente Cordiale.

About ten-thirty I tired of the rather tawdry performance, and made my exit to find the streets in pitch black darkness, only broken here and there by the small side-lights of a flitting automobile or a dim light far back in a boulevard café.

A gendarme, with whom I accidentally collided as I strolled slowly along the street, told me that a warning had been sent out that the Zeppelins were coming.

Rain was pattering on the pavement which glistened as the automobiles hurried by, and occasionally searchlights swept overhead, flashing from l'Étoile.

The people were good naturedly jostling their way along, and as someone near me struck a match to help him grope his way, a giggle was heard and a bright-eyed French girl pulled herself back from the escort who had just kissed her.

They apparently were not worrying about the Zeppelins that were coming, and so far as I could see neither was anyone else.

As the people collided in the dark, jokes and friendly banter were bandied to and fro.

Someone on the opposite side of the boulevard knocked something down which hit the pavement with a crash, and a gay voice cried: "_C'est un obus!

Les bodies, les boches!

_" (It's a shell!

The boches, the boches!

) And a roar of laughter greeted the remark.

All took the expected raid as a joke; and yet a few nights before the Zeppelins had reached Paris and had done some damage to property and life by dropping what the Parisians gaily call "a few visiting cards."

But this attack reached only the outskirts of the city, though the inhabitants had no way of knowing that such would be the case.

The following day I had dinner with some friends who live on the Champs Elysées, and the hostess was envying one of her maids who had had "the good fortune" to be spending the previous night with her family on the outskirts of the city, and had seen the Zeppelins!

In the more than two years since that time, I have been in London during a number of air raids, some by Zeppelins and others by aeroplanes.

The last was on July 7, 1917, on which occasion twenty-two planes sailed over London, dropping bombs and doing considerable damage in broad daylight.

The people of London accepted these raids as spectacles too precious to miss. I was writing a letter in the Overseas Officers' Club in Pall Mall at the moment when I received my first intimation that anything out of the ordinary was happening.

This intimation came to me by my noticing that everyone in the club, men and women alike, was rushing into the streets to see the German planes overhead, surrounded by the bursting shells of our anti-aircraft guns.

Only in the immediate neighborhood of the exploding bombs was anything but curiosity shown by the populace.

The spots where the bombs struck attracted the curious during the rest of the daylight hours.

All of which goes to show that human nature is much the same the world over--except in Germany, where by some kind of perverted reasoning the people seem to imagine that these child-mutilating, women-killing raids cause widespread terror amongst the English and French people.

The real result is disgust for such barbarous methods, hatred against the Huns who employ them, and a more firm determination on the part of the allies to continue the war until the German perpetrators of these atrocities, realizing the enormity of their offenses against the laws of civilization and real culture, decide to honor their treaties, abide by the laws of nations, and keep faith with the other people of the world.

On Sunday morning I visited Napoleon's old church, the Madeleine, noting as I walked along the streets that any business houses with German names had an extra allowance of French and allied flags across their fronts.

These air raids made them nervous!

The Madeleine was jammed to the doors, many of those present being, like myself, strangers in the city.

The service was an elaborate high mass, and I found it high in more ways than one, for four collections were taken up: the first for the seats; the second for the clergy; the third for _les blessés_--the wounded; and the fourth for the soldiers.

I could not help but think that they should have taken up a fifth from the soldiers, the clergy, and the wounded, for the rest of us, for when I got outside I possessed only my gloves and a sense of duty well done!

That afternoon I visited the Bois de Boulogne.

Thousands were there.

It might easily have been a Sunday during any of the previous forty years of peace.

On superficial inspection one could not see any sign of the injury done to the trees due to many of them being cut down at the beginning of the war in preparation for the defense of Paris.

The tea houses of the Bois were doing their usual business, and it was just as difficult as at other times to find a table.

Two of the famous sights of Paris to which the tourist always goes are Napoleon's Tomb in the Invalides, and Notre Dame.

At the former in ordinary times one will always find a crowd of sightseers of various nationalities, admiring the beauty of the immense porphyry sarcophagus and its surroundings; dreaming of Napoleon's days of greatness as a youthful general in Italy, or as dictator of the whole of Europe except Britain; or giving a pitying thought to his last days at St. Helena.

Today, as I strolled in, few were there, and they were mostly the veterans who live in the Invalides, and I have no doubt their thoughts consisted of hopes that another would arise with the military genius of Napoleon to drive the invader from the soil of France, and to once more dictate terms from Berlin.

On my return I went for a moment into the Louvre from which most of the art treasures, such as the Venus of Milo, have been removed to underground vaults, safe from bombs dropped by the destruction-loving Hun.

And a painting that I looked for, but did not find, was Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the lady of the mysterious smile, the stealing of which had caused such a furore in the world of art.

It had just been returned before my last visit to the Louvre.

The following day I wandered across the Seine and viewed again that magnificent Gothic pile, the church of Notre Dame de Paris.

It happened to be a holy day and immense crowds were entering.

Someone said to me that the war seems to have brought back religion to the spirit of France.

After all, there are few people in the world who, when beset by troubles, do not glance upward at times and utter a prayer that the Supreme Being will take notice of them and have pity on them.

I joined those entering, and mingled with them as they made their way into the solemn interior of the great edifice.

It seemed that thousands were there.

Those entering were directed in such a way that they passed in order before two immense lifelike paintings arranged on one side of the church, one above the other--the Last Supper, and the Crucifixion.

Before these paintings myriads of candles were burning, and as the people passed each took one or two or three more candles and lit them.

It was a splendid, solemn, and impressive spectacle.

To send telegrams or cables from France was a most troublesome procedure.

You had to get the written consent of the military police after they had interviewed you as to your objects in sending the message, and had scrutinized the message carefully to find if, perchance, you had hidden somewhere within it information that might be of service to the enemy.

But even this was an easy matter compared with getting out of Paris once you had entered.

For to get out was very much more difficult than to get in.

You had first to report to the police station nearest to your hotel that you were leaving the city.

Then you had to go to the office of the Consul of the country to which you were going, explain the purpose of your change of residence, and have the consul or his representative _visé_ your passport.

Then finally you had to call at the Prefecture of Police--akin to our central police station in a large city--and again get your papers certified.

Each of these moves meant considerable time lost, sometimes as much as a day, since long lines of people were at each of these places hours before they opened for business.

On my departure, during my visit to the British Consulate, I had an amusing experience that is worth relating.

As I turned into the court of the building in which the consulate is situated, an automobile drove up, and out stepped a stylish and pretty woman of perhaps thirty years.

She followed me into the court, and after looking about her doubtfully for a minute, she turned and asked if I could direct her to the office of the British Consul.

I had walked there the day before to "learn the ropes," and so knew my way about.

I replied that it was up a couple of flights of stairs, but as I was just going there I should be pleased to show her the way.

We went up the two flights of stairs, and reaching the waiting room found some thirty or forty people ahead of us.

We took our place in the line to await our turn, which meant a delay of an hour or two.

As the people waited conversation was quite free, as was also criticism of the consulate for not having more help at a time of pressure such as the present.

The lady whom I had shown up was next to me in the line.

She looked upon me as an American compatriot, for she was from New York, and apparently felt quite safe in carrying on a conversation with a stranger in a strange city.

She mentioned that she was on her way back from Spain to England.

"Spain," I said in some surprise.

"Might I be curious enough to ask why a young woman like yourself should be traveling in Spain in times like the present?"

"Oh, I'm a eugenist," she replied readily, "and I have been in Spain studying the effects of the war on the Spanish people in relation to eugenics for a book I am preparing for publication.

I am going to spend some time in London, in the British Museum, looking up some data to complete my manuscript."

And then quite voluntarily she went on to criticize the majority of all the cherished institutions of society, and as she became more enthusiastic her criticisms became more free, more radical, almost nihilistic.

She ended in a tirade against civilization as we know it, not by any means becoming at all boisterous, but simply youthfully animated in her fault-finding with the world in general.

I could hardly believe my ears.

Here was a pretty American woman of thirty, highly educated, whose outlook on life was more nihilistic than that of the most extreme German socialist.

But finally she capped the climax by telling me frankly that she was an anarchist; had taken part in two anarchistic plots in Italy; and promised me that the next ruler who was going to pay the death penalty for his tyranny was King Alfonso of Spain.

Beginning to feel certain that she was "ragging" me, I asked her jokingly if she expected me to believe her.

"Does it sound like something that a young woman would claim were it untrue?"

she asked, and I was forced to admit that it did not.

"I will tell you something further," she continued, "I dare not return to New York at the present time or I should be put in jail.

For the last time I was there I was jailed for some of my writings.

I obtained my freedom on bail of three thousand dollars, and, hearing that I was to be railroaded to prison, I jumped it."

"Why do you tell a stranger like myself this story?"

I asked.

"How do you know that I am not going to report you to the police?"

"I know you are not going to report me to the police," she answered coolly, "because if you did I would shoot you."

"Do you carry much of your artillery on your person?"

I asked, laughing.

And seeing that I was taking it all as a joke, she joined in the laugh.

"It's your turn, madam," said the porter to her, and she passed out of the line into the office of the consul, giving me a charming smile and curtsy as she left.

Whether her story was the result of mischief, insanity, or conviction, I really have no idea; but I do know that I have in my life passed many more tedious and less interesting hours than the one I passed while awaiting my turn at the office of the British Consul that day.

CHAPTER XXII IN A CHÂTEAU HOSPITAL

Early in the conflict, after the Germans had been pushed back from their rush on Paris, the French were in a bad way for many of the necessities of a country at war.

Among the necessities that France lacked was sufficient hospital accommodation for the sick and wounded of her armies, and for the first year of the war this shortage was partially supplied by voluntary ambulances--the word ambulance in French being employed for a field hospital.

Many rich Americans gave valuable service at this time to their sister republic, the American ambulances at Neuilly and Juilly being among the most noted of the war hospitals.

It was not at all difficult to get staffs for these hospitals, for thousands of young Americans with red blood in their veins and the love of romance in their hearts were only awaiting the opportunity to do something useful anywhere between Paris and the firing line.

Between the people of the United States and the French there has always been a deep sympathy, possibly engendered up to half a century ago by their common antipathy to England, a sentiment forever removed by mutual sufferings and common interests and ideals in this war.

A witty writer one time said that "good Americans, when they die, go to ---- Paris"; jokingly showing the love which the people of the southern half of this continent have for the French.

But, no matter what the reasons, the greatest republic in the world was early in responding to the call, and so placed her sister republic, France, under deep obligations for assistance of surgeons, nurses, and hospitals long before Mr. Wilson led the United States to join with the other civilized peoples in their fight against barbarism.

The British were very early up and doing in the same manner, and not many months after Kitchener's Contemptibles--a name now revered in Britain--had made their heroic retreat from Mons, many well-equipped hospitals manned by Britons were doing excellent work behind the French lines.

It was my good fortune to serve at the beginning of 1915 in one of these, the Château de Rimberlieu, just three miles from the point at which the German lines came nearest to Paris, and seven miles north of Compiègne where a little over one hundred years ago Napoleon for the first time met Marie Louise of Austria when she came to replace the unhappy Josephine.

I obtained the position after much searching for an opportunity to be of service.

Going across from New York to London I had been refused a position by the British unless I could enlist, which personal reasons prevented at the time.

Then, after two days interviewing, taxicabbing, viséing, pleading, and explaining, I obtained a permit to go to France.

At Boulogne the authorities of the British Red Cross and St. Johns Ambulance Association told me they were oversupplied with surgeons and I decided to go to Amiens, where I had a surgical friend.

I could not get away till the following morning, so I spent the afternoon wandering about.

The streets were filled with a cosmopolitan throng of soldiers of all shades of color--white, black, and brown--and of various nationalities, British and Canadian Tommies in their khaki, French poilus in their blue-gray uniforms, Ghurkas from India in their picturesque dress, and French Soudanese with strange accouterments.

The better hotels were all occupied by the military authorities as headquarters, and the harbor was filled with hospital ships and transports.

Walking about the streets one had to look sharp to avoid being run down by hurrying Red Cross ambulances or lumbering motor lorries.

I strolled to the beach, where on the sands Tommies were lounging, gazing longingly across at the shores of England, dimly visible in the distance.

One of the soldiers turned to me with a smile and said: "I was just taking a last look at the old 'ome, sir.

Of course, I 'opes to see it again sometime if I don't 'appen to stop somethink."

And it was all said most cheerfully.

I added my wishes for his luck to his own.

On the slow train from Boulogne to Amiens we passed many military camps with their white tents in orderly rows.

Here and there oxen were being used by old men and women on their farms, and in one little brook some boys were fishing.

I could hardly believe that forty miles or less away two armies of millions of men were contending for the mastery, with civilization depending on the outcome.

When, later, I was much nearer to the front I was struck again and again by the matter-of-fact manner in which the French peasant accepts his or her military surroundings.

He works coolly in fields into which at times enemy shells are dropping, or over which long range guns are firing into some semi-ruined town of Northern France.

Something which is always a cause of wonder and admiration to the observer is that, despite the fact that all the young and able Frenchmen are in the trenches, the women, old men and children who remain succeed in cultivating the farmlands of France right up to the lines.

At Amiens my surgeon friend, who had over twelve hundred war operations to his credit in the past six months, much regretted that I could not be used at the moment,--much regretted; but still regretted.

I began to feel that the gods of ill luck were camping on my trail.

I went on to Paris.

Here my letters of introduction were looked at with anxiety and I with suspicion, for in the early months of the war some foreign surgeons were found to be giving information to the enemy.

At any rate, though courtesies and promises were showered upon me, I remained a useless guest at my hotel in the Rue de Rivoli until I reached an almost desperate stage, realizing that, though surgeons were urgently needed, I could not be of service.

Sickly visions of returning home after a futile attempt to be of use came to me, when suddenly luck changed.

The director of the Ambulance Anglo-Française in the Château de Rimberlieu came to Paris in search of assistance.

Being an Englishman, he looked in at the British Red Cross in the Avenue d'Ièna where they told him of this forlorn Canadian who had been haunting their offices, but of whom they had lost track.

By a bit of luck their commanding officer met me that afternoon on the Place de l'Opéra, and gave me the director's address at the Hotel de Crillon.

I

hurried at once to call upon him, and offered to take any position from chauffeur to surgeon.

There is a biblical quotation that the meek are blessed, for they shall inherit the earth.

I

inherited the surgeoncy--not a lucrative inheritance, it must be admitted, for it carried no salary, no railway fares, no uniform, all of which must be supplied by the inheritor.

After obtaining a _sauf conduit_ from the military authorities to take me as far as Creille, I left on the train that afternoon for Compiègne, sixty miles to the north, accompanied by an affable young Red Cross orderly, of English parents and Paris birth, who in civil life was a drygoods salesman.

At Creille, which was the beginning of the war zone, our troubles began.

I was in civilian dress, my uniform not yet being completed.

The French military officers here were almost adamant.

My passport, director's letter, Red Cross authority, all proved of no avail to get me further.

Rather strangely, the letter which obtained the desired permission to proceed was an ordinary letter of introduction from a prominent French Canadian parliamentarian which I had in my pocket.

Presto!

The officer knew his name, and by I went.

We arrived at Compiègne about midnight, and for the first time we heard the sound of the guns ten miles away.

As we were now only seven miles from the Château, we thought our troubles were over.

But we had reckoned without the sous-prefet de police, who said in the morning when we called that we could go no further without a special permit.

"That chap's a bit of an awss," remarked my young friend, expressing my sentiments to a nicety.

However, about 10 a. m.

the director whirled into town in his 60-horsepower Rolls-Royce, and learning of our troubles, he smilingly said that he thought he could get around that difficulty.

He pulled from beneath the rear seat a military overcoat and cap which I put on;

and out of the town we whirled, past sentries at crossroads and railway crossings, to whom the director yelled the password--it was "Clairemont" that day.

The password changes daily at a certain hour, and anyone without the new word when required is hailed before the authorities.

The director ran some slight risk in thus smuggling me through the lines, but nothing ever came of it; and I gave a sigh of relief when we at last swung into the spacious grounds of the château.

The house was a large stone building, used in peace times as the summer home for the family of the Count de Bethune, one of the oldest titled families in France.

His two daughters, the Countess de Ponge and the Marquise de Chabannes, lived in a small corner of the building, and gave their time to help us in our nursing work.

They did everything in their power, and it was much, to make life pleasant for the patients and for the staff.

The building was ideal for a hospital with room for a couple of hundred patients.

The reception hall was used as a general reception room for patients, as well as a lounging room for us in our spare time.

Its immense, exquisitely carved mahogany mantel was one of the artistic ornaments that had not been removed to avoid injury.

The drawing and reception rooms and the dining hall had been transformed into wards, called the Joffre, French, and Castelnau wards, as were also the larger of the bedrooms on the next floor.

The surgeons, nurses, and staff occupied the servants' quarters on the top floor.

The oak-paneled library and smoking room had become the operating theater and the X-ray studio.

Our dining-room was the original servants' dining-room in the basement.

The French officers and men who were cared for here received, as they deserved to receive, the best we had to give, the staff gladly taking second place in all things.

And at that our life was so much easier than that of the boys in the trenches that we often felt a bit ashamed of the difference.

The château was surrounded by some two or three hundred acres of well-laid-out gardens, artificial lakes, fountains, and woods.

These grounds had been cut up to a certain extent by trenches, wire entanglements, dugouts, funk-holes, and gun emplacements, all in order and ready for use if the enemy should drive the French back in this direction.

The fighting trenches were only three or four miles to the north of us, this château being said to be the nearest hospital to the lines in the whole theater of war.

We worked, slept, ate, and killed time to the sound of the guns and shells, the latter often bursting well within a mile of us.

The really interesting part of the hospital was the personnel of the staff.

There were four surgeons, a French military medical officer, Villechaise; Allwood, a Jamaican, an old college friend of mine whom I had neither seen nor heard of for twelve years until the day I arrived at the château, when he came forward to give an anesthetic for me to a case which General Berthier had ordered me to operate upon; King, a Scotsman; and myself.

And we four were practically the only members of the staff who were not paying for the privilege of being allowed to serve.

The rest of the staff were well-to-do society people who not only financed the institution but also did the nursing and orderly work, gave their automobiles as ambulances, and their personal servants and chauffeurs to act as servants in the hospital.

Besides the Comtesse and the Marquise, we had as nurses a niece of an ex-president of France; a grand-niece of Lord Beaconsfield;

and another was a sister-in-law to Lord Something-or-other in Scotland.

The latter nurse had as a pal Miss C----, who had stumped her father's constituency for him during the last general elections in England.

She was a clever girl of twenty-three, an exceptionally good nurse, but oh, what a Tory.

She had all the assurance of her age, and Mrs. Pankhurst in her palmiest moments could not put Lloyd George "where he belonged" as could this charming girl of twenty-three.

The son of a prominent Paris lawyer, a young, black-eyed chap of seventeen who was doing his bit there till he became old enough to join the army, was one of her great admirers; and when he was not scrubbing floors or performing some other necessary work, he sometimes wrote poetry to her.

The last four lines of one of his rhymes I remember: May your years of joy be many, Your hours of sorrow few;

Here's success in all ambitions To the man who marries you.

A Mr. and Mrs. G----, of Cambridge, originally of Belfast, were two of the most pleasant, kindly, and useful people the hospital possessed.

Their automobile was now an ambulance which their chauffeur handled at their expense; they paid two hundred dollars per month in cash; they were continually buying luxuries for the patients and necessities for the hospital.

Mrs. G---- acted as nurse in a most capable manner; and her husband as an orderly.

A Mr. and Mrs. R---- from Cairo, Egypt, were also with us.

In Cairo he was a professor in the University; here he acted as chauffeur on his own automobile ambulance, and his wife looked after the checking and arranging of the laundry for the whole hospital.

One afternoon I went into Compiègne with him in his car, and he delighted some French African troops by chatting to them in Arabic, after which they followed him around like little boys.

Mr. R---- also paid a goodly sum toward the upkeep of the hospital.

The director of whom I have already spoken, and the directress, both were heavy donors to the hospital, as well as giving automobiles and servants as assistants.

A godly clergyman from York acted in the triple capacity of chaplain, chauffeur on his own auto-ambulance, which his parishioners had given him when he left, and general chore boy.

One of my finest recollections of him is on a Sunday evening when he held service, while outside the guns roared and shells from the enemy burst a mile or so to the north of us in plain view from the windows of the room in which the clergyman was interpreting the word of God.

It was a most impressive ceremony.

My last recollection of him, and it's just as fine, he had thrown aside his tunic and was working with pick and shovel digging a dump for the refuse of the hospital, the sweat rolling down his honest face.

The above people are only among the most interesting of the staff.

There were also a sheep farmer from the north of England, a journalist of London, a student from Oxford, and many other ladies and gentlemen who gave of their best, all of them, giving the French soldier scientific, sympathetic, and kindly attention.

Those names mentioned will illustrate the personnel of hospitals such as this, for there were many of them on the western front in the early months of the war.

Ours was a part of General Castelnau's army, and while nominally under the Red Cross we were under the discipline of the French army.

General Berthier, who had charge at that time of the medical arrangements of that sector of the line, visited us daily, inspecting the whole institution, ordering this, advising that, and perhaps insisting upon something else.

More ether and hydrogen peroxide were used by the French military surgeons in wounds than appealed to my ideas; but one little trick they had of sterilizing basins by rinsing them out with alcohol and touching a match to it--"flammer," they called it--was both rapid and thorough where steam sterilizers were not too common.

Sometimes we were also inspected by civilian surgeons on behalf of the military authorities.

Dr. Tuffier, a famous Paris surgeon, who is as well known on this continent as in Europe, came to make one of these periodical inspections.

I had first met him at a surgical congress in Chicago before the war; then in Paris I had called upon him.

"Ho, ho!"

he said with a smile, "I have meet you one time in Chicago; then I have meet you in Paris; now I meet you here.

Perhaps the nex' time it may be at the Nort' Pole that we meet"; and with a friendly slap on the shoulder he passed on.

He had been very courteous to me in Paris, but had not given me the position that I desired so much.

In fact I had found myself sometimes wishing that the French authorities had given me less politeness, but more opportunity to be of service.

In our spare hours of the day we watched the shells bursting in our neighborhood.

By night we often sat and smoked in the dark while we watched the flashing of shells and guns and the flares sent up in the lines to prevent surprise attacks.

We often saw aeroplanes being bombarded as they sailed to and fro along the lines directing the fire of the artillery.

One soon got to recognize by ear the puff, puff, puff of the anti-aircraft shells bursting about the planes.

Why the enemy did not shell our institution I know not, for we were well within range.

In passing, it may be mentioned that no Red Cross flag flew from our roof, and when I inquired the reason I was told that it would only serve as a target for German shells.

Our work alternated, as it always does on the battle front, between days of strenuous labor and days of ease.

When the work was heavy all went to it with a will.

In the hours of leisure the ladies, who in civil life knew nothing of danger and strife, begged and sometimes vainly insisted on being permitted to go with the ambulances as far as the trenches.

We were all civilians and knew little of discipline and our lack of it at times was troublesome to the French military authorities, and some irritation arose because of it.

For example,--lights were ordered not to be shown in the windows after dark till all the shutters were closed and curtains drawn.

This rule was occasionally so carelessly obeyed that the military would at times sneeringly call our hospital "the lighthouse."

One afternoon there drove up to our entrance a cream-colored limousine, and out stepped an English society girl, saying that she had come to nurse.

Some of those who were already there were friends of hers, but the authorities decreed that we had enough assistance and that she must return to Paris the following morning.

In the morning she started in the limousine, ostensibly to return to Paris, taking the sister-in-law of Lord Something-or-other as company for a short run.

When outside the grounds she told the chauffeur to turn toward the lines instead of toward Paris.

With the military pass which she had obtained through influence in Paris, they passed sentry after sentry till they were only a few hundred yards from the trenches.

Here they were overtaken by a pursuing military motor cyclist who ordered them put under arrest, and they were taken before a high-up officer who told them he was forced to confiscate their automobile and send the ladies under arrest to the rear.

But beauty in distress--and one of them was a real beauty--made him relent.

They were allowed to proceed rearward after a severe reprimand and a considerable fright.

A few weeks later I met the lady of the automobile in a train near Paris and she told me that she had just sent up a big box of real cigarettes--not French ones--to the officer who should have confiscated her car, but didn't. I

did not inquire how she had obtained his address!

There was another occasion when a plot was hatched to duck a disagreeable officer in the artificial lake at the lower end of the grounds.

Fortunately the saner heads prevailed and averted any further complications.

And "it would have served the creature bally well right, for what right had he anyhow to insist so strongly on his old rules," as one of the hotheads expressed it.

It was a trifle irritating at times to have a nurse, in reply to your order to give such and such a patient massage, say that she would do it presently, as she was just going for a short tramp in the grounds.

_Mais, que voulez vous?

_ as the French say with that delightful shrug.

Were they not paying to be there, and should not that fact have given them some rights over those horrid rules of discipline?

And we men were the same on occasions, for discipline cannot be had outside of the trained army.

But the breaches of discipline were small in comparison to the really excellent work that the hospital was carrying on, so they were overlooked, and, as they occurred only at wide intervals, they but served to give a touch of humor to the life which was monotonous enough at times.

The French realized full well the sacrifices that were made daily by these aristocrats who had given up their luxurious homes, their autos, their servants and their money, to live in the servants' quarters of this old château, and to wait hand and foot upon wounded poilus, with at any moment of the day or night the chance of a shell coming through the roof and stirring things up.

No praise is too high for the self-sacrificing work of these men and women, all voluntary workers and untrained in this type of labor.

The women were members of the V. A.

D.

, Voluntary Aid Detachment, which has been the target at times of coarse jibes and criticisms, spoken by those who do not know whereof they speak.

I have worked with members of this corps of women workers in hospitals in England and France, and I know that, taking it all in all, their work is beyond praise, and their nobility of character beyond estimate.

This is vouched for by many a lonely, hard-hit common soldier, sick in a strange land, far from his home and his loved ones.

A field telephone line ran from the château up to the rear trenches.

The cases were brought out of the trenches to a sheltered spot and one of our ambulances was telephoned for.

One of us medical men accompanied the ambulances on these journeys, and they were often very interesting.

On one of the trips on which I accompanied the ambulance we came to a ruined village, Gury by name, from which the civilian population had been sent away.

It was occupied by French soldiers not in the front line.

This village had just been shelled rather heavily by the Huns, one hundred and fifty shells having been dropped into it.

After the first shell, which hit one of the houses but injured no one, the soldiers took shelter in the cellars and when the smoke had cleared away, just before our arrival, it was found that the only damage done was the killing of a cow and a pigeon!

The soldiers were hilariously laughing at this waste of shells.

An officer showed us the remains of a brass bed in a wrecked house, saying that he had been sleeping in that when the shelling began.

We were then taken to see a battery of the famous .