SUCH a wait yesterday for those children! All day long. They did not leave Lyon until the four o'clock train and it was quite dark when they reached Ste. Foy. I wish I could give you an idea of that little group as they clung together on the platform. They had been told at Lyon that they were the first children to come to the American Hospital, and they must arrive clean, and they must be good. The result of such a declamation was the most intense and awestricken group. Dr. O., with his usual tact, broke the ice by picking up the smallest child and starting for the ambulance. Miss N. carried another and the rest came eagerly. The ambulance men swung them into the car with a flourish that delighted them, and in a few minutes they were chattering away, asking questions, and pressing up against the front to see where they were going. When they saw the lights of the château across the valley they began to quiet down a bit, and by the time they reached the château they were silent. A ride was one thing, a strange place was quite another matter. But our nurses and aides were so friendly and gay with them, that although they parted with their coats and caps rather reluctantly, they were too hungry to object to supper. Of course we all hovered around them. We could not help it. It was so splendid to have things really begin.

The children's dining-room used to be the servants' hall. It is a fine room, all paneled in oak, with cupboards lining the walls, and a big fireplace. Mrs. H. has low tables and little benches for the children, and the tables are covered with a checker-board blue and white tile that makes them pretty and easy to keep clean.

How they enjoyed that supper! Many smiles began to come from all but little Jean. He refused to eat. He did not cry, but kept asking for his brother who had not been sent with him. His head was bandaged and his hands covered with sores, a most miserable looking little fellow. He just sat there, looking at us all and asking for his "frère." When the other children were through little Jean still sat there; so we left him with one of the nurses, and when he was alone, he ate his supper quickly, she said.

Then came the "clean-up" and examination of them all. As much as is known about them came with them on their cards. I am going to give you as much as we know of the first group. I shall not have time probably to do it for the later ones, time gets so full, but those ten will probably be more or less typical of our children.

MARIE is the youngest, four years old; her eyes are almost closed with sores and her ears are even worse. Her father has been killed in the war and her mother has just died in the hospital at Chambéry. At Evian she has two little brothers and a grandmother.

JEAN is next; he is five years old. The nurse found him literally covered with abscesses from the skin disease he has, and the back of his head is in bad condition. No wonder he could not eat at first. His mother is dead, his father a prisoner. He comes from the lovely Ardennes.

YVONNE and PIERRETTE are sisters, ten and seven years old. Their mother is dead, their father has just been killed. Yvonne is suspicious T. B. and Pierrette is convalescent from diphtheria. They come from the little village of Charmes in the Aisne.

LOUIS is six years old. He comes from Arleux. His father is a prisoner. His mother was killed in January, 1915. He has three brothers and four sisters now at the orphanage in Lyon. The doctor says he is "loaded with infected glands."

Little ETIENNE is five years old. He has just come through from Saint-Quentin where his father and older brother are now prisoners. His mother died last January. He is lucky; he has a twenty-year-old sister who was rapatriéd with him, and she is going to work and look after him when he is well. He is in very bad condition from lack of food.

AUREEIEN, ACHTEEE and JULES are brothers, five and a half, seven and eight. Their father is a soldier. They told us that so proudly. Their mother died the first year of the war. They are all suffering from skin diseases. Poor Jules' eyes are so bad he cannot bear the light.

VOLTAIRE is five years old. His father is a prisoner at Lens. His mother is at a hospital in Lille. His big sister Jeanne, eighteen and a half, was allowed to bring him and his two little brothers out; she will look after them. Voltaire is suffering just from the usual skin infection. He will be well soon. He has the sweetest dimples.

The children were very tired last night, just fell into their beds and went right to sleep. They were all together in the big wards; Miss N–thought it best until they were more at home. No one cried but Jean, and he sobbed himself to sleep. No one could comfort him; he wanted his "frère." I think our nurses suffered more than he did. Miss A went in again and again to pat him, and sing to him, but in vain. It seemed such a long time before the little moaning sob stopped.

This morning they are all happy. The hour in the big bathroom, first a soak in the tub and then a shower, made them all shine, and they loved it. They want to know when they will have it again. Even Jean smiled, although he had to be handled most carefully.

As I came out of the bathroom a little while ago I almost knocked old Jean down. He was listening at the door. Clothilde says he has a "key-hole ear,"–he has listened to everything for thirty years. One thing he is cross about is that he cannot listen, he does not understand. Well, I was delighted to find him listening to the children. He looked quite pleasant. He endures me because I am not of the staff. I was rather hurt at his pleasure at the news that I am going off to Evian tomorrow and will not be back here until Christmas. He assured me it would be too cold to come here for Christmas.

Well, so much for our first ten. We will have fifty here by Christmas. We will increase the numbers as rapidly as our supplies of coal reach us. We want one hundred and fifty here as soon as possible.

The children are exploring the château today, tiptoeing around most eagerly. It is a fairy castle to them, I imagine. My room is in the big wing leading to the chapel and from this floor you can enter the little gallery of the chapel. I love to look in upon it, it is such a beautiful bit of Gothic, and I did so a little while ago. The sunshine streamed in through the lovely windows across the altar. Below, quite close, little Yvonne was kneeling all alone, her poor thin shoulders shaking with sobs. I closed the gallery door without a sound. I have her card here in my hand. "Yvonne, ten years old. Mother dead. Father has just been killed. Probably tubercular."

And yet only last week in Paris an American newspaper woman said to me: "I am not yet convinced that civilian relief is wise. It seems to me to confuse the issue."

Really there are times when language is most inadequate. The issue! What is the issue if it isn't saving the future generation, little Jeans, Maries and Yvonnes? The military? Yes, always. But what puts more courage into a fighting man than the thought that those he is fighting for are going to be cared for somewhere behind him?

You see men who have been taken from "No-Man's Land"–and it is a terrible place, that land between the enemies' trenches and our lines–but that little sobbing girl down there came from just as terrible a place,–"No-Child's Land," behind the enemies' trenches.

I get so angry I cry. I always have done that, you remember, and I must not; but to my mind nothing is too good or too beautiful for these ten little un-decorated heroes who have escaped from prison. Be proud of your American Red Cross that stands for the children as well as for their soldier fathers and brothers.

I feel sometimes as though I must shout that from the housetops. Do it for me, won't you?

WE came down from Paris last night. Such a crowd at the Gare de Lyon! It is a dramatic episode leaving Paris these days. One always feels "the Lord knows what we may find, dear Lass, and the deuce knows what we may do," but you do get the train if you allow one hour to find which one it is and where your seat may be on it. Last night the station was crowded with soldiers "on permission" for Christmas, going both ways, coming into Paris and leaving for the provinces. It was a thrilling push through the crowd. The French poilu carries so much on his back and over his shoulders that when he gets his bundles all on and covers all with his blue cape, he is a formidable object, and unless you have bundles suspended in a circle around your middle to meet him with, you are decidedly squashed into a unique pattern when you get through. :But such good nature, such Christmas cheer! To watch the crowd outside the gates last night, waiting for the soldiers to arrive, is a side of this war never to be forgotten,–mothers, and fathers awaiting for young boyish sons, wives, sweethearts! They fall upon their poilu and snatch his heavy bundles away, to carry for him.

At Lyon this morning when we arrived, the station platforms were blue with men waiting for our train. I thought we should never get out, they piled into the train so rapidly, by way of the windows as well as doors, until you wondered whether the old cars would stand it.

We found Lyon very cold and covered with dirty snow packed down and frozen, so that we knew the ride out to the château was going to be an adventure. We left Lyon at two o'clock. I sat on the back of the little Ford ambulance. Such a ride! After you grew used to the skidding and could forget the idea that the next lurch might land you in a snow drift, it was wonderful; the lovely winter landscape, great fields of snow, the trees in heavy white mantles, the bushes, the hedges, all deep with the snow; the tops of the walls so evenly edged; it was exquisite. And on the road such lovely flashes of color; old men in red mufflers driving their big pink pigs, an old woman in her green shawl with her stick and cow, a soldier now and then in his long blue cape, and once an old man in a deep blue smock and an old red béret driving a donkey. Everywhere, lovely winter; the everlasting beauty of it kept me warm; the soft pure landscape far away from the hideous war!

The forests on the way to the château are of cedar and pine and some redwoods, and with the snow on them, it was fairy land full of Christmas trees. At last across the deep ravine the château came in sight. I remember how old Jean tried to discourage me about the winter when I was here before. I am so glad to be here now.

Our trusty little Ford climbed the last long hill through the forest and we came up to the entrance on the broad terrace where I left old Pierre's roses–now a great stretch of deep, deep snow.

When we stepped into the great entrance hall, the loveliest sight was there, a beautiful Christmas tree all lighted standing just under the graceful curve of the great marble staircase, the deep red of the carpet on the white marble, the lighted tree, the circle of little children sitting before it and our nurses leaning from the landing above on the stairway, and the candle light over all. It was, I am sure, the most exquisite picture the old hall had ever framed. Immediately it was explained to us that these were not our children but the children from the little château village of Les Halles, who had come to bring Christmas gifts to our little rapatriés, and Dr. O. had decided to give them the old château welcome on Christmas Eve. So the tree had been lighted for them, and the aides had served hot chocolate and cookies to these village children. Our own little patients could not join with them because we do not dare risk contagion out here. Our children are all in such weakened conditions from different causes that great care must be taken. The village teacher was here with the children and they sang a Christmas song. Don't you think it was dear of our little village neighbors? I saw them waving to our children at the play-room windows as they went off down the snowy road under the Christmas trees.

It was dark by four o'clock, and I had time for just one romp in the play-room before supper. There are fifty children now, and some of them so pathetically happy, some of them sick. They are so good and our aides have worked hard to train them. They marched down to supper to-night so proudly; the smallest one marched with me; It was a picture; the low room, the leaded panes in the wide windows; outside, the winter dusk, snowy Christmas trees and high white drifts everywhere; inside, the warmth and cheer of the supper table and the happy, happy faces and the excited voices, for the Noël was coming swiftly and the children knew it.

It was six o'clock when they were all tucked in for the night in the big ward downstairs and the moon was up making a dream world outside. As we took the lights away, one little boy asked to have the windows left opened wide so he could see "Père Noël" pass by.

And none of the older ones laughed, they all seconded his request.

I slipped upstairs to see the sick children. It is so sad. Little Gaston, two years old, so sweet and fair, is struggling with a bad bronchitis and a severe dysentery. His mother is sick in Evian. He does not smile and just lies there with a little dumb look in his face. No one can make him smile but his brother Maurice, who is downstairs. The other very sick child is Albert, two years old; he has had whooping cough, then pneumonia, now bad dysentery, and to-night Dr. O fears another pneumonia. His father is uncertain; his mother is on her way from Evian with four other children and will be lodged in the village near here. I hope she gets here soon. This little mite is pretty sick and yet he still has resistance and his nurse, Miss A , insists that he is going to live.

After dinner to-night we all gathered in the office to get the toys ready for the Christmas tree. I shall never forget that scene; only the soft lamp light in the beautiful paneled room with its Italian marble fireplace at one end, piled high with great burning logs, the lights reflected on the black carved oaken chests, the high-backed chairs, the big tables, two of them covered with gay toys, dolls, wooden animals, horns, balls, carts and wagons –the kind one sees on the roads; and our nurses and aides with their white caps and soft white collars open at their throats, their eager interested faces as they chose two gifts apiece for their children. "Jean–Yvonne must have that;" Louis must have a "donkey," and every now and then Dr. O , with his teasing Irish wit, would throw in a remark slighting to some one's particular pet, and then such a shout of protest as rewarded him.

It was wonderful the way these workers forgot their own homesickness and flung themselves into the Christmas at this snowbound château. The blinds were not closed and the wonderful moonlight streamed into the warm Christmas glow of that beautiful room with the color of the gifts, the faces, the voices, sometimes the laughter very close to tears when some one remembered "last year at home." We sat until the fire burned low and the room grew too cold for comfort. I came up to my own fire and have written all this, and now my log has broken and rolled down on the hearth and I must stop.

Well, we always said little children make Christmas, and to-night the beauty of the old winter world and such a service as this for little children has brought back the old precious meaning of the Christmas tide and the ugly side has vanished into the shadows for the moment.

THE children were awake early this morning; you could hear their eager voices in the distance. The first thing for the Christmas day was the Mass to be celebrated in the beautiful château Chapel. The old curé from the village was the celebrant and every one was welcome. It was pretty cold in the little chapel, but all the well children were warmly wrapped up in their winter coats and sweaters, mufflers and mittens. It was very touching---their joy in the familiar service --- the little homeless children kneeling and joining so beautifully in the service they knew so well, and the old curé with his tender voice, his fine face, his proud wearing of the beautiful vestments belonging to the château. Two little rapatrié boys, Lucien and Marcel, who had been altar boys back in their loved village before this terrible war, helped as of old. They wore no robes, just their winter coats and mufflers, but I shall never forget the little figures kneeling close to the old curé and carrying their part of the service through with such earnest dignity. It must have made them feel less homeless. Some of us knelt in the gallery above and looked down upon it all–the children, the village folk, a soldier standing at the back looking at the altar with its lighted candles, and over it all the tender voice of the old curé. I noticed Yvonne: her sad old little face looked almost happy, and she did not look so pale.

Then came breakfast, which happily for children in France on Christmas day is not a long meal, and then the tree. Just as the children reached the tree all lighted and filled with gifts, old Santy, the real genuine American Santa Claus, came rollicking down the old staircase, and how the children shouted: "Bonjour, Père Noël, bonjour, Père Noël!" He was a wonderful "Père Noël." He shook hands with them all; he hugged them all; he called for a song and four tiny boys sang with a will. He called for a march and six more marched and sang, led by the gay old gentleman himself. Then he ordered his staff to unload his tree. He settled his glasses on his jolly red nose with great care and began the serious business of reading French names, and what a fuss he made about each little gift and what funny mistakes he made. The children laughed until they cried, and so did the rest of us. The ambulance boys guarded the candles and helped reach for the toys, and presently Santa Claus vanished up the stairway with the gifts for the sick children in a pack on his back and Miss A and I flew along with him.

Albert and Gaston were pretty sick, Albert too sick to know, so we just tucked his toys in the foot of the bed. Gaston stretched out his arms for the doll, but no smile.

Jules sits on a chair, helpless, with patient face, sweet smile and his grave brown eyes. He is thirteen and alone. His father was killed in the war, his mother held by the Germans, and he is completely paralyzed. He was so pleased with his books. If he had not been exposed to scarlet fever on his way here, he would have been carried downstairs for the tree.

Madeleine, a tall pale child of eleven, was so happy over her paint box,–not for herself, oh no, but for her little brother when he comes; she does not know where he is. She has had glands in her throat and a high temperature. Her father has been killed in the war, her mother is crazy with grief and hardship, the little brother is lost!

Oh, I can't tell you all the heart-breaking records to-night, it would make too sad a story and the day has been full of joy in spite of everything. The playroom has been a gay place all day.

At luncheon stern old Jean showed he liked us a little. There was a wonderful basket of holly and mistletoe from the woods in the Estate on the table and in the center stood a little American flag. How we cheered! Old Jean smiled at last, just a grim flash of a smile, but I think he is thawing fast, for our dessert was a wonderful French sweet –Christmas logs they are called–long brown chocolate rolls with wreaths of cream festooning them!

So it has been a beautiful, strange Christmas; the wonderful winter landscape the snow has fallen all day–and the happy children safe and warm inside. I spent the bedtime hour with the children in the big ward to-night and such a happy chatter! When they were all in their beds and we were ready to leave them, a small boy near me said: "Bonne nuit, Madame," and held out his arms. I held him tight for a moment and then all down the long shadowy ward from each little bed came the call: "Bonne nuit, Madame," and twenty pairs of arms were stretched out to me. It was Christmas night and they wanted to be hugged and kissed. Well, I didn't miss any and I am probably pretty germy, but it was the best of the day.

We have had another evening by the fire. The wind is howling around the château and driving the snow against the windows. Mlle. I. told us tales of Brittany, old folks tales and legends. England, Rhodesia and fourteen American States were represented in our circle around the fire. We did not talk of home.

As I came to my room a little while ago, I saw one of our ambulance boys come softly out of the room where little Albert is fighting for his life. Tears were in his eyes; I was glad of my dim pocket light. H–is a big, fat, lovable boy who keeps a cigar store in his home town. He was refused by the army for overweight. He works like a slave for us, diets hard and worships the children. Albert is his special pet.

In many ways it is most difficult to believe that this is Christmas night, it is all so strange and different; but in all the big warm essential things it has been a wonderful day. I sometimes think the American Red Cross is doing quite as much for the workers as for France.

STILL snowing. The hedgerows of yesterday have vanished. Early this morning two oxen strolled by with a snow-plow, and opened our road so the boys could get the cars out of the garage (Pierre's greenhouse). Albert has been very low all day. Mathilde, W 's favorite, has developed scarlet fever She is a tiny scrap of a girl, six years old, with a big gland on one side of her neck. Her father is in the trenches and her mother is dead. But W--- from Michigan loves her. He has taught her to say, "Good-morning, Mon. Raymond, I lofe you verry mush." Luckily she has been under observation since her arrival so none of the other children have been exposed. It is not pleasant, as this is for convalescent children, but until we get a hospital in Lyon, where our children can be under observation for two weeks before coming to us out here, this is liable to happen.

Clothilde, the old maid-servant, had such a funny bout with H--- this morning. Miss N sent H--- for some dry wood for the fireplace in the room of one of the nurses who is not very well. He was gone some time. When he came back carrying an enormous box of dry wood, Clothilde was at his elbow scolding and protesting as fast and as loud as she could. H– smiled pleasantly: "I don't know what the matter is, Miss N . Evidently I have done something Clothilde doesn't like." All the time Clothilde was shouting in French that that was her own particular wood that Monsieur Mangini had given her before he died, for her laundry stove, and that Monsieur H was stealing it.

All the while H--- went right on piling the wood on the fire and talking sweetly to Clothilde in English.

"That's all right, Clothilde; I know you are angry. I don't mind a bit. If I only understood what you said I could do something about it, but I don't, so there, there,"–patting her on the shoulder. "You'll get over it and like me again." And before we stopped laughing H– had Clothilde smiling and offering to get him a cup of "chocolat."

Really H–is worth his full weight in gold. He never does anything but smile and keep perfectly good-natured, while Jean or Marie or Clothilde rage at something he has done and he talks soothingly in English and it ends in their doing exactly what H--- wants. I can't give any idea of how adorably funny he is, and this morning, when every one was blue because of Albert and Mathilde, the scene over the wood saved us all. Clothilde simply had to laugh when H--- patted her nice dry wood and said: "Now you know, Clothilde, that's très beaucoup" (H--- pronounces it trays bowcoops always, just to be funny) and it was too much for Clothilde; she broke into a giggle.

This morning I helped with the baths. Six at a time get their scrubbings, first tub and then shower. I drew Jacques-Henri, eight years old, from St. Quentin, father a prisoner, mother missing. Jacques has a bad heart and he is the strangest blue color–it is most difficult to determine when he is clean.

This afternoon the ambulance went to the next village to get Albert's mother. She arrived from Evian at noon, and in the dark and the storm it was difficult to find her, but about five o'clock Burns came back triumphant with the poor frightened mother. She herself has been sick in Evian with the four other children. She looked haggard and worn and when she stood by the little bed she said nothing. Great tears rolled down her face; she patted the covers, but did nothing more. The nurse was working over Albert, his big dark eyes looking up at her without a gleam of recognition.

In such moments I long to have you share, not the hardships of the life here, for there are many–cold for instance. The furnace broke down for our side of the château over a week ago and the cold has been terrible and some are suffering badly from chilblains; the wards are warm and the dining-room, but that is all. It will be three weeks before the damage is repaired, and in the meantime water-pipes are freezing. No, I don't want you even to think of the hardships, but I long to have you see some of the service given by the beloved A. R. C. you work so hard for at home. That scene in Albert's room–the warm, beautiful room, the little bed, the tiny patient so tenderly and splendidly cared for, plenty of warm blankets, clean linen, drugs, a competent, devoted nurse, and the good doctor, the poor pale mother in her dark shabby clothes, looking at all that service as though she had stepped into a dream-world, and oh, the gratefulness!

Dr. O had told her that Albert was a very sick baby; she knew that, and yet she looked hungrily at the little face and said, "Oh, but he looks so nice; his eyes look so fine." (They had been very sore when he first came.) "You have helped him so much. He looks much better than when he left me at Evian. Surely he will not die."

It is almost midnight. She is still sitting there by the bed, her figure silhouetted against the window, the winter moonlight filling the room. She wears the heavy shawl of the village woman, and no head covering. Miss A–wanted her to go to bed, she is so tired, but she did not want to leave Albert. She has been crooning a little French lullaby very, very softly and Miss A thinks the baby is in a natural sleep.

I seem wide awake. I can't get that mother in there out of my mind, and there are thousands of them, homeless and alone, clinging to their children and trying to go on. Brave!

Sometimes you seem to ache with all the suffering around you. One of our helpers here is an English woman. She asked our Bureau in Paris to give her work among the children until she was brave enough to go home. She has just lost her husband and she spent three weeks before his death in a military hospital just back of the lines. She is still a bad sleeper, and we have been talking here by the fire. I don't think I have lived through more difficult moments than during her attempt to tell me the sad story, the fire light on her sad, strong face, the tears rolling down her cheeks, but her voice steady. "It wasn't my own suffering or my husband's that was so hard to bear, but the terrible suffering all around me," she said; "sixty and seventy men a day brought to the little tent hospital like logs; the bleeding and the agony. And at night I heard men sob like children, men who had been the bravest and the most cheerful all day." And yet when I said: "Yes, it is a terrible price," she flashed back at me: "Not too great if we can free the world of the power that planned such horrors."

One can't say much. I still feel we have not earned a right even to offer sympathy, but she knows my love of England and when we talked of familiar places we both love, I think it helped a little.

I have been down the hallway again to Albert's room. Miss A says he is better. The present crisis is over.

His mother is sitting there asleep in her chair, one hand clutching the blankets of the little bed as if even in her sleep Albert must not lose her touch.

I feel like shouting. Another trench held by the A. R. C. against the enemy!

IT has been a wet day, cold and pouring rain –just about the worst kind of a day for these poor homeless people. This morning as that bedraggled crowd of old women and little children, trying to protect their precious bundles from the wet, went through the street, it seemed the saddest convoy I have watched. Rain can be so cruel; it seemed to increase my wrath at the Boche to-day. I cannot bear to have these people meet anything but sunshine here. The first group that attracted my attention was of five children, such nice looking children all clinging together in a frightened kind of way, without any older person along so I joined them and that little group has filled the day for me.

Oh, if I can only give you a picture of this little family.

The oldest is Cyr, a boy of sixteen, a tall delicate looking lad, with big deep wistful eyes, and a sense of responsibility for the other four children that makes you ache.

The oldest girl, Victoire, is fourteen years old, and of all little mothers you have ever seen she was the most real. She held tight to Jean-Baptiste, a pale little four-year-old boy, with shining yellow hair and dark eyes, quite the lord and master of the children who adore him.

Then came Juliette, a little elf-like creature of nine, and Louis, a seven-year-old, who is coughing his head off with whooping cough. Cyr told me the story after they were all safely in our hospital. They come from Clay-le-Château, not far from Lens. -Their father is in the trenches and they have not heard from him for two years. Their mother was killed before their eyes on January 24, 1916. They were all in the cave under their house while the shelling was going on and the little maidservant had not come down, so mother went up the ladder to find her, Cyr said, and just as she reached the top she was struck and her body fell back into the cave before the children.

He told the story quite simply, with a dull sort of ache in his voice and a matter of factness I can never forget. You can't ask questions of these poor children, but I gather they have been in well-to-do circumstances Victoire asked me if I ever used an electric iron, saying they had one at home, and they speak of maid and nurse. It all makes it more poignant to me in many ways, what that poor man in the trenches is thinking, the agony of not knowing what has become of his family. The effort to communicate with him began this afternoon. The children are so eager to be claimed.

They have heard a great deal from people on the train about being claimed at Evian, and Victoire said to me with tears standing deep in her blue eyes: "We belong to father, and mother said, if we ever got here, we would surely find him."

Fortunately Cyr knew the regiment and company, and we have every hope of finding him if he is alive.

Little Jean-Baptiste is in the worst condition in many ways. He was born in April, 1914, and he has a bad heart. Victoire says he has just had chicken-pox. Altogether the little fellow is in very poor condition. Victoire herself is just "nerves" and has been exposed of course to the chicken-pox and whooping cough. Juliette has the chicken-pox now.

The one joy in their hearts to-night is that they are all together. Poor little Victoire was so afraid she would be left out because she was not actually sick at present.

These children need a month or so at the Red Cross Convalescent Hospital at that lovely Château des Halles. They are the kind that will respond to all the beauty of it, and Cyr needs it so. I don't know whether he is tubercular or not, but he looks so delicate. He says his oldest brother is a prisoner in Flanders, and that his mother was eager to hear from him. Cyr asked me if I thought he could find a way of communicating with his brother.

That is what has impressed me so deeply about this family. They all seem to have just one desire to do all the things their mother had talked to them about before she was killed over a year ago. They have clung together, living in the cellar of their home and then in other people's cellars as the line moved back and probably going through one terror after another; and yet they have come back filled with what mother wanted them to do. The record Cyr gave says the father's name is Jean-Baptiste and the mother was Hortense, thirty-five years old, when the bomb ended it all and her brave body rolled back into the cave before her children.

Oh, I hope the miracles are happening and that somehow that brave soul knows her children are safe to-night in this big splendid hospital. As for the father, I suppose it is too much to ask to have him alive and well. I think Cyr is hopeless, but Victoire thinks "father will answer." I sided with Victoire just to encourage Cyr, but when I think of the two years that have passed since they have had any word from him, my belief in miracles becomes very tense–I don't know!

Well, there have been dozens of other children to-day, but I haven't time to record them all. This family the nurses took particular interest in, and let me trail around and be close to them to-day, and I think I can help the time pass until the answer comes from "father", if it comes.

MY little family have been very quiet all day from exhaustion, the reaction after the excitement of yesterday. Victoire has the chickenpox to-night and she is delighted. She seems to think it settles her securely in the hospital; but they have slept most of the time, Cyr, as though he had not really slept for weeks. He feels that the children are safe and he can forget for a time. We told them it might be a week or two before they hear from their father, so they did not expect anything to-day, although Cyr asked the question when he woke up late this afternoon. I find myself so intense about it, I feel that a father has just got to be produced.

It is still raining and both convoys have been crowded, about seven hundred and fifty in each. Our hospital has received twenty-eight contagious cases to-day and the one hundred and seventy-five beds are full to-night.

But I am all "wrought up," as Martha used to say, about the most distressing bit of tragedy I have witnessed in any of my trips to Evian. We have to-night in the babies' room on the non-contagious floor of the building, four Boche babies abandoned by their mothers to-day. Oh, I have had a lot of theories about this particular wretchedness, but I am in one big muddle about it all to-night. I saw those mothers and I can't blame one of them for leaving these children behind. All four of the women found letters here from their soldier husbands, eagerly waiting for their return.

One woman said, "How can I go to him with this Boche child?" That was Madeleine's mother; Madeleine is a year old, a poorly developed little creature with a club foot. "If only she were pretty!" The poor mother wept her heart out, came back three or four times to change her mind about leaving the little thing, but at last went off. She was a gentle dark-eyed young woman of about thirty, I should say. Her two children had died the first year of the war. She couldn't take that child to her people, and she couldn't bear to leave it alone. It was the cruelest struggle you can imagine, and you felt so helpless; there was nothing you could say or do.

Isabelle is ten months old, poorly nourished, but a rather nice, fair little baby. Her mother's face was like a stone; it expressed nothing. She was perfectly silent and calm. The baby showed care and niceness in its clothing and clung to its mother. She was gentle with it but firm. You felt that her decision had been made long ago, back perhaps in her lovely village of Revin in the Ardennes, and that nothing could move her now. I noticed when she consented to leaving an address, she took her husband's letter she had just received from next her heart. It may be, with her blouse open at the throat, that was an easy place to carry it safely, but her eyes as she turned the pages and the deep red that went over her dark stony face, made me feel that the intensity of her feeling for her fighting man, who was alive and waiting for her, far outweighed the claims of this child she had brought in.

Eugénie is a scrap of five months, with a strange deformity of head; and the fourth is the only boy, Robert, four months old, with bad, discharging eyes, both too young and too strange looking to have won much of a place in their mothers' hearts.

Eugénie's mother said: "I am sorry, but I cannot take her. She is saved, though; she has been baptized Catholic."

We found they had all been baptized Catholic. Strange ! isn't it ?

It isn't just the fact of illegitimacy. It's the awful bitterness and hatred that is behind such scenes. I look at the poor babies, who are so helpless and pathetic, and I think I have never seen anything more shocking; but, oh, the mothers! That any human being has been forced into such a hideous struggle, is what is so hard to bear. And there you are. But one great big fact remains clear, that the power that brought this on a peaceful world has got to be crushed, now.

Later.

I was interrupted just here, and in the meantime I have seen another tragedy, worse than all the rest–a mother, practically dying of tuberculosis, with four children clinging to her; Laure, a pale girl of eight; Albert, five years old; Albertina, four years old, and a baby, fifteen months old. Laure explained that this little Jules was her mother's baby, not her brother, but a Boche. The quiet scorn of that eight-year-old girl cut you like a knife. The poor mother, only twenty-eight years old, is the saddest victim I have seen. She has been sent to the tuberculosis hospital at Thonon, and the children are here, as the baby has the measles and is tubercular and little Albertina's card is marked "Suspicious T. B." They were brought to the A. R. C. hospital.

This is a night when I am in perfect sympathy with our soldiers, who are so eager for hand-to-hand encounters that, unless watched, they throw discretion to the winds. As I came back to my room something happened to make it possible to go on.

I peeked in at Jean-Baptiste. He knows three prayers by heart which Victoire has taught him. He was kneeling in Miss A 's lap with his arms tight around her neck saying them, and the little rascal was making it just as long a ceremony as possible, with interminable entr'acts. Victoire from behind the isolation curtain was trying to hurry him, but to no avail. If you could see the nurse you wouldn't blame Jean-Baptiste. I love to think that thousands of these poor kiddies are going to have stowed away in the happy side of their memory boxes the love and devotion of our American Red Cross nurses.

After you finish reading this, won't you just hug blessed Joey and David kind of especially for me. I have seen so many little chaps just their ages to-day. To be four years old, to be six years old, and alone, "Mother killed by bomb, father in the trenches"; the hundreds of cards on which it says that, catalogued in this little town here to-day, must be answered by the whole civilized world.

THANK goodness, the sun came out to-day! I was so depressed last night, as you know, that I was a dangerous member of the community. But the warm sunshine and the fun of taking some of the children out on the sun porch cheered me up. I stayed away from the convoys to-day. I felt I was too full to witness any more and remain useful.

The children love the sunny roof from which they look down on the lake and across to Lausanne and the high mountains to the southeast. We took André out first. He is a most bewitching little chap of three and a half, whom nothing can kill apparently. He has had whooping cough, chicken-pox and measles, and still smiles. His mother is held a prisoner by the Germans in Lieburg; his father has been killed. He came through all carefully labeled to be delivered to his aunt, but she can't be found as yet, so André continues to be spoiled by the nurses. But he is so sweet and so jolly that he is a tonic to the others.

This morning he pranced around making faces and doing his best to make dear Fernand laugh. Fernand is fourteen years old; he comes from Belgium, where his father is a prisoner; his mother was killed in 1914. The boy has a bad heart and an infected foot. He brought just one connection out and that was his brother serving in the Belgian Army. This brother had been written to, and only yesterday the letter from his commandant came informing us that L–had "died for France in the battle of Bois St. Mard, October 1911."

Fernand has said nothing–just holds the precious paper in his hand, and occasionally screws his face down into his pillows. So we are glad of André's pranks.

I think Fernand will make friends with Félix; he is just about the same age, with the same tragedy–father died at Mons, his mother killed by a bomb in Lievin when walking along the street with Félix. Félix has a bad heart, and looks so sort of knocked out by life.

I don't see how the lads survive such shocks. I should think the future medical specialty would be hearts---broken, smashed, bleeding hearts to be mended out of the wreck of this awful war.

I wish I could make you see another star performer we have here named Mathilda Zonelia. She is six years old and has a generous supply of T. B. glands. She has been in isolation with Eugene, aged seven, who has rickets and is dull and shuffles about. But he adores Mathilda and she bosses him around as she does everybody. Some days she won't notice him at all and then he is very sad, but still adores her. She is a little queen. We don't know anything about her, but her name and the written instructions on a card around her neck, "Please keep her safe," and the mother's name and the town she sent the child from. Evidently Mathilda is some one very precious –she certainly acts the part. This morning on the roof she pulled her chair quite apart from the rest of us and sat there rocking and singing to the Teddy bear she loves, and at every laugh from the rest looked most disapprovingly at us, but said nothing. It was really too ridiculous for words, to see her.

While we were out there we had a great excitement for Solange. Do you remember the little nine-year-old girl I told you about, who had lost her mother in the flight from Lille and who had not seen her father since the war began? Well, he came while we were sitting there in the sun. Just another miracle. He walked right out on the porch unannounced, and I was thankful Solange was not a heart case or she would have died of joy. After he had held Solange tight in his arms for about an hour, it was very sweet to see this French poilu go out shyly to the other children. He sensed their tragedies and you felt he was doing a lovely bit of fathering for some unknown comrades. He talked to Fernand and Félix quite as he would to soldiers and you could see the boys bracing up under his kindness.

He had received the letter about Solange just when his permission was due, so he had come at once. He told me he would wait here his full time in hopes that his wife may come through. Then he is willing we should send Solange to the Château des Halles to be made strong and well. He was most touchingly grateful. He kept saying: "You Americans are doing this for our children? How splendid! I did not know."

Late this afternoon another glad and sad thing happened. The father of another family here of three, Marie, three and a half years old, Jules, five, and Kruger, seven, came hurrying into the hospital. Kruger was the only one who seemed to know him; they had not seen him for three years, and the younger ones did not remember him, of course. That man's joy over finding them–he had come of his own volition just to see if his children and wife had come through–and his grief over the record Kruger's card showed, that the mother had died three months ago in the hospital at Saint Quentin, was really the most pitiable struggle I have ever seen. He just hugged those children close, with the tears rolling down his face, and then when he saw that was frightening them, he would try to laugh and brush away the tears and talk to them cheerfully.

So our sun porch this morning had many aspects, sad and glad. I shall hate to leave to-morrow. I am going over to the A. R. C. Convalescent Hospital near Lyon, dear Château des Halles. We have one hundred and seven children there getting well and rested. Gabrielle is making me an Easter card, cross stitched "Happy Easter," Evian, and then her name. You remember she is the little girl of seven who lost her left eye in a bombardment.

What would this old world do without these youngsters who cling to life with the tenacity of surgeon's plaster?

P. S.–I found Irene crying in her small bed as I put my head in to say good-night. Irene is eight years old; her father was killed in 1914; her mother died of tuberculosis in 1917. Irene was crying because the boy in the next bed had said she was an orphan. She says she isn't an orphan, she has a sister. Bless her heart!

SOME day you can know "where" and "when"–for the present all I can give is the "what" of this thrilling experience. The realness and the unrealness of this war world are inextricably bound up together. The crowds of tired poilus asleep on the station platforms as we left Paris are very real. One tall fine looking French gentleman was saying good-by to his son quite close to our compartment window this morning. Over and over again he kissed that young officer of his good-by, on both cheeks, then stood with his arm around him until the train started kind the young fellow jumped on to the moving carriage. That father's face seemed to start us off with a sense of the great reality, the nearness of Death.

You knew by the mourning bands on the father's sleeve that he had already given of his own. He saw only the boy those few moments there. I can never forget the agony of that good-by. These French fathers have an intensity about their sons this fourth year of the war that seems to wither you, the ache of it all!

It's a beautiful valley, the valley of the Marne, and if one did not constantly see the black crosses along the roads and in the fields one could never connect it with war. Those crosses are so real; the artificial wreath of flowers, loved by the French, hangs on the crosses, the only unreal touch. To many I saw a little pathway worn and fresh flowers on the ground. The little village gardens are beginning to be green again. Constantly as we passed slowly along, a real American smile greeted us, a wave of the hand, a cheer from a group of khaki-clad, broad-hatted soldiers who recognized our American "Hello."

I can't believe it, my dear, that our troops are here in France, thousands of them, settling down into the soldier's life. You have seen them march away from American towns, I have been here too long for that. I just suddenly find them crowding station platforms, pouring down village streets in France, and I am a foolish old goose about it. Things get blurry and I have a perfectly absurd sense of personal possession. I respect officers' "Reserves," but no mere private escapes me. I ask him his name and home address and write his mother that I have seen her boy and that he looks happy and well–perfectly sentimental, I know, and I can't explain why I do it, but I am getting some wonderful "thank you's" from home. We American Red Cross women here of respectable age ought to mother these American boys, don't you think so?

I longed to get off the train this morning at every stop, but we had to content ourselves with hand shakes through the windows. We reached T–at two o'clock. It has been a brilliant day, warm sunshine and blue sky. The station was crowded with soldiers, there was the noise and hum of voices, the buzz of aeroplanes overhead, the busy life of the town going on as usual, and the distant sound of guns, just about as unreal, then, as the artificial wreaths along the road.

We went down the winding street across an ancient drawbridge to the town, and close by the square we found the funny little hôtel crowded with officers, ambulance men, Y. M. C. A. men, and nurses here and there. It could not be war; it seemed impossible. We found some rooms and left our bags and started off to see our Red Cross hospital for children here which we started in August, 1917, in connection with Préfet M 's refugee home for the children of these poor little gassed villages in this lovely country.

Naughty boys and girls of the War Zone who won't wear their gas masks, or are too little, are collected into these refugee centers, and the need of a hospital for them was so great that it was the first one our Children's Bureau started six months ago.

Just as we were getting into the ambulance to drive the two miles to the hospital, the siren began blowing and every one rushed into the streets to watch the big German taube sailing in the blue sky overhead, with a dozen little puffs of smoke breaking all around it like wads of cotton. That siren meant we were all to get out of the streets so as not to be struck by flying pieces of shrapnel, but it seemed to me to have just the opposite effect. I found myself calmly watching the fight as though it were quite detached from anything on earth.

We waited a while until the big taube sailed away and we went off across the river between the two forts, to the hilltop where the hospital and refugees are.

It is a wonderful location, an old army barracks converted into a home for four hundred and eighty children and about fifty mothers, and a hospital of ninety-five beds for the use of the whole district. The children were all out in the sunshine having their bread and chocolate. As the hilltop is between the two forts, the shelling goes on daily and the children have to be kept inside out of the way while the air fights go on. We have made it plain to the Germans that this is a hospital for children, but who can tell? Why hesitate to bomb the children when you have already attempted to gas them? Oh, this mad psychology of the German military staff!

I was much interested in two groups of children, those who had been there since August and those who had just come. I felt a big Red Cross pride in the first group, the children looked so well and happy and clean; the others looked pale and frightened, bearing the marks of the inevitable filth diseases. The delousing clinic is still a thriving part of the institution. These children here seem worse than those who come through Evian. I have a new respect for a louse I had no idea what mischief just one can do if left to roam about the human head. I saw this afternoon some of the most awful sores and ulcers on heads and necks of these newly arrived children.

One small boy, Henri, has lost one eye in the bombing of his village. One of the nurses told me that he is the naughtiest little rascal about the air fights; he wants to stand in the middle of the barrack square and watch it all. We have a detail of soldiers who guard us up there, giving the alarms and getting the children under cover as quickly as possible.

I talked with one little woman whose only child has been very sick with pneumonia in the Red Cross hospital here. She has a small farm up near the line. It's spring almost; she wants to prepare her ground. The Germans bomb her if she works in the daytime, and at night they throw gas bombs, but she shrugged her shoulders: "Je me fiche d'eux, je mets un masque et travaille dans l'obscurité" (I fool them, I wear a mask and work in the dark). Yes, she goes the six kilometers at night and carries on the work of her little farm. I had the feeling as I stood there in the sunshine listening to that little French woman, that to be able to care for her one small boy was worth the whole Red Cross hospital. I rather like the idea that the American Red Cross kept the son of such a mother alive, don't you?

We came back to T–just at sunset. It was almost warm; the smell of earth was everywhere and I had to talk vigorously with Mack about carburetors, of which I know nothing, to keep the thoughts of early spring at home out of my mind.

As it grew dark the town seemed to have doubled its population, soldiers, soldiers everywhere, and for the first time to-day no distant guns–a rather ominous silence.

The siren sounded all through the dinner hour to-night, but no one noticed. I saw a man move a little away from the window, that was all. If the church bells ring, we have been told to go to the caves in the cellar here. I keep wondering whether I'd rather dodge in the open and run the chances or sit in a dark cave expecting to be buried alive any moment.

After dinner all was quiet for a time. B--- and I walked out into the little street to the fountain in the square, but it was so crowded with soldiers of all colors we came back to sit in the restaurant and write up the inspection reports by the dimmest of lights.

It is difficult to do, there is so much going on. The waiter sends many drinks to the sidewalk tables just outside and we hear the chatter of the soldiers, the rumble of the machines on the cobble stones, the laughter of children passing. It is a strange hour. Finally the big iron shutters have been slammed down and the street door closed. The officers still laugh and talk in the back room; two hungry cats dash madly about looking for food. Our proprietress, Madame X , leans on the counter and talks to her pretty daughter. A tired-looking little boy washes glasses behind the bar. Slowly, the men are going out, some quietly, some noisily. The pretty dark-eyed daughter gets many salutes!

Later.

No, not a bomb, but some music–the sound of a drum roll! We rushed out into the black street to see. It was just seething with soldiers pouring out of the little theater next door. We asked the bar boy and he said these are Moroccan troops "on repose here." They have suffered heavy losses and the town had given them a "theater party" as reward for good fighting. It was a weird scene; the flash of pocket lights lighting up an occasional dark face with red fez above, the strange cries, the calling of numbers. For half an hour the street rang with calls and voices, little lights twinkling, people leaning from house windows, and finally in the dark the regiment formed and marched away with bugle and drum. I came up here to my room to the little balcony to look down upon the bedlam. It was unbelievable in its strange significance. I have come back to the restaurant to tell you this. The chef and his assistants are now having their evening meal. It is ten-thirty. The street outside is quiet. I think we will get some sleep before guns begin. A strange world!

WE did have a good night last night. I heard the siren several times, but it was quiet otherwise. To-day has been full of all kinds of impressions. This busy little war town fascinates me.

This morning we walked through the winding streets. The soft color of the walls, the vines hanging over, early spring blossoms in boxes here and there, made charming glimpses at every turn. We stepped into the cloisters of a beautiful church, Ste. C--- , so lovely with its fan-vaulting, and old, old, old; and then into the church itself with its lighted altar, the worn battle flags, and flowers everywhere. In the corner of the little nave was a rough wooden hut for the soldier's guard. Just beyond the church we met the curé driving in his little basket phaeton, his fine sweet face under his broad clerical hat, and his caped coat making an old painting out of him.

We reached the cathedral square just as a bride with her soldier bridegroom drove up from the Hôtel de Ville, with six of their family or friends. We followed them at a distance through the great door of the cathedral, up the beautiful nave, and sat a little way from them. Two little altar boys in white with red capes came first and lighted the candles on the altar; then the priest in his beautiful vestments stood at the altar steps and the little bride and her soldier knelt before him with the others close behind them, and all through the brief ceremony the siren whistled loudly, but no one seemed to notice. The whole party went off with the priest to sign the register, while we strolled through the aisles, reading the touching war prayers and memorial tablets. There was one to a young aviator, "un pilote tombé pendant un héroïque combat" ("a pilot who fell in heroic action"). I suppose that means little white wads of cotton in a blue sky!

The cathedral is very beautiful, the old stone tracery so exquisite, but all sense of shelter and peace is gone. I kept thinking of what a splendid target it was in the landscape. Just as we came out, the scream of the siren sent us to cover in a "cave voûtée," in a stable opposite the cathedral, where we waited until the firing ceased, and then walked back to the hôtel.

If only I could reproduce the little pictures of the life in the quaint door yards and shops; at the open square a fruit stand with two peasant women and a nun in her black and white, talking earnestly; close to them an old donkey braying his head off, a more terrible noise than the siren; and everywhere in the crowded streets our American soldiers!

The town is so picturesque it is most unreal. I feel as though it must be just a grand-opera stage and not war at all, but the siren keeps jolting me back into life. Just as we reached the hôtel the tocsin sounded and the street cleared. We investigated the cellar and found the old concierge and four of the servants sitting in rustic garden chairs close to the rows of wine bottles. The old man is very nervous and was eager to have us remain long after the "C'est fini, c'est fini" announced that the danger was over.

As we sat at the sidewalk tables after lunch, a very dingy old man came up the street beating a drum. He stopped close to the fountain, beat very hard for a few moments and then in a loud voice read the law on the subject of lights out at night and no street lights, or "the Boche will surely come." No one seemed to pay attention to him; the army cars, the Red Cross ambulances, the heavy motor lorries rumbled by; the soldiers laughed and talked, all kinds of soldiers, French, American, Italian, Algerians, Moroccan, East Indians, Chinese ---just the most unbelievable groups of men in the world. And all so gay and cheerful and in wonderful condition! A regiment coming back from the front-line trenches passed by, dirty, yes, but the most splendid, well-fed, happy-looking set of soldiers you can imagine. I have been sort of nervous and anxious before coming here–the tension among civilians has been noticeable but up here close to the real business the spirit is wonderful. There is no fear here, I assure you.

This afternoon we spent at the Hospital St. C---. The French surgeon at the head, Docteur Pillon, has such a fine face, with a look of strength and sweetness about his eyes. He was gracious and kindly and so eager to show what was needed for his men. There are three hundred men in that hospital, with only fourteen nurses, so you can imagine the burden. Fifty thousand men have been in his operating room and he is in need of instruments. A wounded aviator was brought in while we were there, both legs fractured, and smashed jaws. When I come to such moments I have such a strange feeling of exaltation sweep over me, and it is caused by the thought of those twenty-two million members of the American Red Cross at home. I wonder if you will ever realize what that has done over here, that backing. When we meet a need here, the American Red Cross says "Yes" instantly. No "hesitations," no "ifs." Twenty-two million Americans say yes to your need of instruments, Docteur; yes, to your wounded man from out the blue; yes, to the women and children from bombed villages. Never again will I scorn the drudgery of membership committees. Twenty-two million people behind the needs of our boys here for hospital care and comforts! Is it any wonder they walk these little streets of France with a confidence that is contagious, that has quickened these little towns with fresh courage and hope ?

I can't help writing this. I am so afraid the home people won't be told often enough what their Red Cross means over here; every one is so busy doing the work that few write of this feeling. I was talking with a French social worker the other day, of the war and the different terrible crises they have passed through and the plight of the civilian populations, and she said: "For us there has always been the miracle. Since the Marne we know that, however black the clouds, the miracle will happen. That's what we call the American Red Cross, you know, our 'miracle of 1917.' We saw no way through this winter until you came."

Oh, my dear, do everything you can to make the people feel this at home. I must stop; the candle has burned too low to see. We are here waiting for papers to make the trip over the gassed villages in search of children, and to the first-aid dressing station just back of the line. We will probably get off Monday.