"Je suis allé le revoir hier, au soleil couchant. Le revoir, le saluer, lui dire: 'Nous voici! O porche sublime de nos vieilles victoires, élargis-toi pour laisser passer l'immense victoire qui vient, la victoire définitive, sublime et pure, qui a pris les ailes de la Liberté!'"(23)

This was Pierre Mule's opening paragraph to an article appearing over his signature in "Bulletin des Armées" on September 4, 1914. Away from the splendid Arch stretched the Avenue du Bois where, only the springtime just gone, we had seen King George and Queen Mary make their royal entry into Paris. Now the avenue was almost deserted, even the little, playing children had gone away and the women who rented the iron chairs had time to sit down alone and shake their empty coin bags. You remember how they looked, don't you, those women with their black dresses and aprons and the turned-down hats?

At St. Dié on August twenty-eighth notices had been posted by the German General Commander-in-Chief warning men and women alike of immediate punishment by death if they appeared on the streets between the hours of eight in the evening and seven in the morning.

"Compiègne et environs" were notified that any harm done to the invading army would be immediately avenged by the burning of that locality and this last notice was signed by "Sabath" on September 4, 1914, the day when Pierre Mille was standing at sunset before the Arc de Triomphe prophesying victory.

Reims could read (September 12, 1914) "a long list of hostages" under the protection of the German Army,---just as long as Reims submitted meekly to whatever that army chose to inflict.

Lunéville had its orders to place in the hands of the German Military authority the sum of fifty thousand francs. The time was brief. It must be in his hands at nine o'clock exactly. No delay would be permitted. This is the first payment on a fine of six hundred and fifty thousand francs. "En cas de non paiement des perquisitions domiciliaires auront lieu et tous les habitants seront fouillés."

I think I should have suffered most of all at Charleroi, where the dreadful orders that forbade all privacy were posted on September tenth, 1914: "Pour la nuit les habitants devront entretenir une lumière dans les chambres donnant sur la rue et les portes de chaque maison seront constamment ouverts afin de permettre l'accès des habitations aux Autorités de L'Armée Impériale Allemande."(24)

What followed such orders as these need not be written down.

Wahnschaffe General Major signed the orders for Lille in October, 1914 and the Bishop of Lille, Monseigneur Charost, was amongst those who were hostages. France had a word for those who lived in the region of Lille and that word was the phrase that guided all of France:

Have I quoted enough to show you how hard it is to be the host of an invading army?

It was August second, 1914, when the general order of Mobilization came in France and never while time lasts will we who saw the army go, forget the bravery of its going. Light glinting on the casques of the cuirassier---the horses and their riders and those who went to join their regiments. By every train, by every road they went.

August fifteenth, 1914, and already the flag of a regiment of Infantry, the 132nd of Germany's host, was taken by the 1st Bataillon, Chasseurs à Pied. The tenth of September and the flag of the 94th Regiment de Landwehr, Blason Saxon, was taken near Senlis by Captain Sonnois of the 3d Hussards.

Senlis was very near; we were wondering what September would see before it was ended. Paris was now under Military Government. General Galliéni had received orders to defend the city against the invader and had engraved his name forever in French hearts by his answer:

The books of the hour have recorded how he did it. Months afterwards, worn with toil and service, General Galliéni lay dead in the city he had saved and the city mourned him and honoured him, even as the canon sounded in her ears she honored him, had tears for him, for the brave gentleman of France, tears and music and prayers for his eternal rest and reward.

The hospitals were ready and the wounded were coming, oh! so many, so many, Algerian Tirailleurs, Scots Greys and English. On the highways everywhere there were refugees. The little cart in which the milkman had carried his wares now bore his family and the dogs drew it all the long way.

Paris was prepared to hold and endure for as long as need be. All along the Bois one could see great carts of hay (sometimes drawn by oxen) being taken to the field at Longchamps, there to await the needs of the capital. Think of it---Longchamps, whose races and whose fashions are reported wherever journals are printed! Longchamps was full of cattle; sheep were grazing in new pastures within the city walls; the city gates were nearly all closed; at the Porte Maillot the trees had been cut and used for an ambuscade; and trenches were dug at all the gates. Out at Aubervillier Mrs. James Gordon Bennett, Mrs. Marshall, Miss Marshall,(26) the Duchesse de Talleyrand and a host of French women were working day and night ministering to the perfectly endless troops of soldiers who passed that station. Out of our workrooms were going constantly supplies of every sort for the men who were passing through. On the other side of the city the forest of St. Germain lay in the autumn sunlight, all unconscious that Germany meant to cut it to the ground and make its palaces over to fit German ideas. Captain Maurice Dalton, whose maternal grandfather lived opposite the old Bennett mansion in New York, was "telephonist" near the front and the men who had been made officers at St. Cyr (the French West Point) had begun to send home the letters which are now treasured history. The one which you are just about to read was written by a French officer whose wife is an American.

(Copy)

My famous promenade the other evening when I had to jump from one shell hole to another, and sometimes crawl on my tummy, reduced my uniform to a mere cover of mud. I think I had begun the story to you of how I had been sent to a fort that the pigs were about to attack. I had a frightful trouble to get there for there was a serious barrage. It took me fifty-five minutes to crawl a kilometre. When I reached there I was rotten tired; they gave me some coffee and meat .... The fort without was like an earthquake but inside the people were in good spirits and quite sheltered. Finally the Boches began to run toward the fort and were immediately stopped. By entire rangiers they fell. In about three-quarters of an hour I was asked to go back with messages, to ask for more help and fresh supplies. That was rather "émotionnant," for my papers were important. I had to bring it; so there are moments when you must hurry and yet not hurry like a fool, for if your life counts but little yet it is necessary that you live it until your mission be fulfilled. Anyhow time seemed long to me, bullets were like a musical wave over my head, but the Boches were shooting high and I jumped from one hole to another; but shells were more annoying-one passed so near that its "souffle" knocked both me and my guide down. He did not move and I thought him dead. Finally I yelled at him, "Eh bien! pas de mal!" He raised himself on his elbow and quietly answered, "Mais cela va parfaitement." He was so brave and jolly. Finally we reached our underground post where I was greeted, bad rumors having come about the fort and here was I with the news. I was covered with mud and all scratched. They gave me brandy and coffee and by and by I sat at a table at work. Is it not splendid, the unknown heroes who night and day calmly bring orders. When one looks back some things even seem funny. We grew so tired from lack of sleep and from such continued excitement, sometimes we must sleep ten minutes before we can speak. We spent hours in our "bâton box" and often must be shaken awake to read an order. The strain on our nerves has been serious but I hope to keep my calm. That box room was like a Guignol drama and always noisy. Infernal rumour around it, people piled in the corridors, wounded that shrieked, vibration that broke china and glasses. The first time I was there we were surrounded with woods and trees; when I left, no more trees and shell holes everywhere. I was there eleven days. We wrote and walked over each other. Most essential it is that our Brigade was splendid and they prevented the Boche to pass and so kept the Fort. When I read of the Fort taken while I was in it I said, "They are liars." . . . Wonderful sleep of nine hours. .

The men are good-tempered . . . . We all have bronchitis; it is from gas intoxication . . . . God is good, I still live . . . . First days of Verdun."

MAX.

Almost as soon as the soldier began his task of defense the women who were left at home began to bear a new life for France. Everywhere the women were not only sheltering the old life but they were bearing in heart, brain and body new things for France. As early as October, 1914, Madame la Baronne de Laumont had founded a ligue called "La Ligue du Jouet Française." La Baronne lived in the Avenue Malakoff, quite in our neighborhood and one afternoon I went with the Princesse Ruspoli to see her and her toys. Le Baron de Laumont had been amongst the first to lay down his life for his country. One son had died also and there was left a golden-haired boy to bear the father's name. The mother, whose tears were not yet dried, began to work for France and to this end she founded the war of the dolls.

The dolls! Those who do not think would say, "What foolishness! What an error! Paris today deals with things of real value so it occupies itself with dolls and founds an industry patriotic and useful." The moral value of toys is not the question now. Before the war Germany sold millions of francs' worth of toys to France each year; now and at once France begins to make them for herself and the rest of the world. Madame de Laumont's drawing room was now the center of the newest French fashions for the dollies. There were many girls and women employed in the new industry. One does not say art, for France had always made toys and dolls as well, only now the production was to be entirely her own. For instance, dolls' eyes had come from Germany; now French artists undertook to copy the beauty of French eyes and at Limoges exquisite hands and heads were made for the perfect little bodies. Mlle. Valentine Thomson, Mlle. Rachel Boyer, Mme. Paul Simon and a very able group of women working throughout France had in a few weeks made the new industry known to all classes. Through the country peasants skilled in the ancient art of wood-carving were at work in their own houses. Precious bits of old fine woods were carved into beautiful heads. La Duchesse d'Uzes, douairière, had set herself the task of reviving certain almost forgotten gifts the peasants had for creating beauty and at Marvejols (you remember the avocat who sent the socks from Marvejols for the Belgian soldiers)---well, it was in that town that Madame la Comtesse de Las Cases founded what is now the first of the rural industries for making toys. As in Russia and in Germany, each province was encouraged to give expression to its native talents. The toys I saw that afternoon on the Avenue Malakoff were most amusing as well as that well nigh intranslatable French thing called spirituel. Even when the execution of these toys was not quite perfect the form was gracious and the colors harmonious.

The Princesse and I each bought a doll to keep and dolls to give away. My doll to keep, however, went to an American girl, Rose Peabody, who was one of America's first workers to come over to France. I have a dozen French Costume dolls in a Cabinet of toys and my friends of all ages are fascinated by them. Little Miss Aurel Sexton came to have tea with me one snowy afternoon about Christmas time and she loved my toys. A few weeks later she shyly offered me a little blown glass dog, a party favor that she had kept for several years. The dog had been swathed in cotton and kept with her other treasures.

"You are perfectly dear to give me your puppy," I said, "but I do not want to take him."

"Oh! please do, please do; he would so enjoy being in the cabinet with those darling dolls."

Under the sound of the canon, while yet the feet of men beloved sounded on the pavements of Paris, the French women had the courage to create things that won such a tribute from a little American girl. San Francisco saw some of these toys at her Exposition and now they are sold everywhere and a new industry is established.

Pierre Mille had need of a vision of the Arc de Triomphe grown very great. So many new things were marching to Victory in France and the Christmas Bazar was such a little step from the Victory Arch.

The reverse of the card inviting you to the Christmas sale represents a hobby going horse at full gallop. On his back Polichinelle in the gayest of costumes, waving a sword; troops of children following after him; little nurses, soldiers and even a standard bearer; and their battle cry is "Guerre aux Jouets Boches."

Even as the toys marched, little French children were ruthlessly slain in Paris itself and beside their beds and cradles, the toy which they dropped when they fell asleep was ground to dust as the dreadful bombs fell.

Mlle. Marie Leconte of the Comédie Française recited a poem called "The Crusade of the Toys." It begins,

and after many lovely lines full of flower thoughts as exquisite as flowers in a garden, she ends it with a bit of an old song that all French children love:

"Un cavalier passe au loin, ventre à terre.
C'est monsieur Malbrough qui s'en-va-t-en-guerre."

Members of French peasant families are used to working together in the fields. Women know how to cultivate the vineyards; but will you please note that I said together. French wives are used to working with their husbands in shops and stores and in the fields, but, (and here is a very great point in the ways of their civilization) they do not usurp the man's place and it is to be hoped that they never will. When they were compelled to carry the whole burden it was too heavy. The ground was worked; some soldiers (sent home on permission) helped, but the burden was the women's burden.

In 1915 my husband sent a Deering New Ideal binder-harvester to the harvest fields near Fontaine-sous-Montdidier and the adjoining parishes where M. l'Abbé de Sanfucian was caring for the widows and orphans and the women toiling on alone. In 1916 another machine was sent out, this time to Rambouillet. A commission, of whom M. Gabriel Hanotaux was the head, received it and set it on its useful way. The Sous-Préfet, secretary of the Commission, ended his letter of thanks to the Rector by saying,

"Rest assured that we will not forget this new witness of the unfailing kindness which unites free America to France, the land of liberty."

Remember that the date of that letter was July 31st, 1916.

France's women began to be unutterably fatigued, body and soul, and the year 1916 was still young. Grace Whitney Hoff writing of French women at this time, says:

"Without waiting to be asked they had mobilized their force and taken upon themselves the men's tasks without abandoning their own. It was a spontaneous gift---from every class and every woman."

A French Woman! Those words became a title of honour to covet as they lived through the agonies of separation, bearing crosses of physical suffering and testing to the utmost limit their moral endurance. Whatever they endured they endured for their country, veiling their agonies with a mystic smile and looking the world steadily in the face with eyes on France's future.

Just as soon as the War was definitely a War, flags began to fly from every point of vantage in Paris and many houses were immediately offered for hospital purposes and as immediately began to fly the Red Cross Flag. Red Crosses appeared on taxis and carriages and then the government issued orders that only those who were authorized should use the banner of the Red Cross on either houses or vehicles.

Slowly we foreigners learned of the various sections into which the Red Cross is divided. There is the original society on which all the others are built. The foundation society is the "Société de Secours aux Blessés Militaires." This was founded in 1864.

L'Association des Dames Françaises founded in 1879.

L'Union des Femmes de France founded in 1881.

The Croix Rouge Française was made up of a union of these societies and came into being in 1907 under the presidency of the President of the "Société de Secours aux Blessés Militaires."

In June, 1914, the fiftieth anniversary of the French Red Cross was held in Paris and the record of their deeds of Mercy is one that should make us proud of men and women alike. Madame la Countess d'Haussonville was and is President of the French Red Cross. The society is so organized that its members are delegated for many sorts of service: work in cantines, in rest rooms for soldiers, work in hospitals, helpers when trains bring their loads of rapatriés, workers in the reconstruction of villages and farms, perhaps hardest of all, work for tuberculosis patients amongst France's poor.

Madame d'Haussonville, writing to me, says:

"Scores of women are hurt and dead and we are always training new ones. Their devotion and courage is beyond praise. We have now over eighteen thousand nurses (February, 1918) assisted by some thirteen thousand auxiliaries. They have accepted the greatness of their task as our soldier accepted his. They give pity and love to those whom God places in their care . . . ."

Having given me the ring which has on it the signet of their order she signs her letter with a Frenchwoman's affection and sends me a picture of herself.

You will let me tell you just one story or two to illustrate how these women worked for France and the stories are typical.

There was Natalie, the daughter of Mrs. Ingraham, Mme. Dutriel. She all but laid down her life in superb service as a nurse. Her husband was in the army and her mother worked every hour of the day helping to make hospital supplies. Mme. Dutriel was dreadfully hurt on Good Friday, 1918, when the Church of St. Gervais was wrecked with bombs.

There was Mme. Vimont who helped care for the rapatriés at the railway stations. For hours upon hours she was there, every week and for four and five days of every week. Her motor and her chauffeur constantly at work taking the worse than homeless to their temporary abiding places. I cannot write of what she told me but she lived on with her ministry through more than three years. Once we sent her fifty caps for men, once a big sample case in which were fifty ulster coats; and God knows how blessedly useful they were, these and all the other gifts that you gave us with which to help.

One specially dreadful day when she had to forget that she had a heart or feeling, to forget in order that she might help, she and the sergeant spoke to a woman who refused to leave the train because her husband was 'asleep.' The woman was old with pain and sorrow and the man beside her had closed his eyes and gone on the long, long journey. They could not make the woman understand that he would not waken again on earth and so Mme. Vimont just put her arms around the woman and she and the sergeant carried her out of the train and home.

Sometimes men came back and found a young wife all worn, with eyes from which joy had fled, ---and my friends, I tell you when you see such sorrow you cannot forgive the slow processes of diplomatic ideas and ideals. You know that War is Hell. You know that God's Justice is the only justice you dare to trust. Suffering does not ask for Vengeance; it asks for justice. The leaders of the Nations of the Earth must lead the people in great moral crises. It is better for a man to abdicate his leadership in Church or State than it is for him to fail God and the right. I am not, could not be a Pacifist, but I believe with Napoleon that the 'idea conquers the sword,' when men realize the force of the idea and make it potent by following the command "to do justice, to love Mercy and to walk humbly."

While Mme. Vimont, typifying hundreds of her countrywomen, was working with the rapatriés, women by the thousands were working in the Cantines at the railway stations. Mme. Maurice Romberg (French by birth) might well typify them, for her work began when the War began and ended long, long after the Armistice. All through the years, as the countless host passed, she looked for her brother who never returned. Of the "haute monde," accomplished, elegant and a brilliant musician, and young, too, she wore herself to a shadow. Her voice which had so often been heard at the choicest recitals was worn out in the service and comforting of the soldiers. She told, once, of a lot of Algerians who were passing through her station and of how much they suffered from the cold. She had a long pair of fur gauntlets to wear as she went about the trains and one poor shivering black man touched them gently with his cheek. Needless to say that she left the gloves with him. One of her letters, written in 1918, says,

"How I love to have your American boys come; they are wonderful and their gratitude to us is most lovely."

You see she spoke English very well so that helped with our boys.

When it comes to writing of hospitals in France the record of them is too tremendous to be told.

The Duchesse de Rohan, douairière, transformed her Paris house into a hospital and had perhaps forty men there. The Princesse Faucigny Lucinge worked with her and there was nothing of hard, manual labor and nursing that they did not do. It was the way the French woman worked and gave. I was in the hospital one day and passing a screened-in corner in the beautiful hail. I heard a little moaning voice like that of a broken hearted child. It was just a poor, shot, broken boy and he was long a-dying. For weeks he had waited for the angel of Death to come and his hostess told me that the only thing he ever seemed to notice was a fragrant flower. How sweet she was to him and tender.

The Duc de Rohan, Breton of the Bretons, was for a long time representative of that land where Melancholy displaces sober joy when hard things are to be borne. The Duc de Rohan, Captain of Chasseurs and deputy for the Morbihan, was the son of our lady of the hospital. He was shot by the enemy at about sunset one evening and he lay for hours in No-Man's Land. One of his men recovered the body next day and it was buried by a Breton priest who saluted the Duc in the name of Brittany, Brittany which had given so many, many men to France.

Lord Esher wrote a tribute to him for England to read and when prayers for the dead were said his name was not forgotten.

French women served in hospitals everywhere, in city and country alike. In many instances the cost of the hospital was maintained by an individual woman and her immediate connections.

Down in Bagniol sur l'Orne there was a remarkable little hospital. The Marquis de Frotte, not strong enough for the battle field, took the initiative there, establishing, directing and serving as executive for all the executive work required. The heart of the hospital was Madame Brolemann with her dear daughter Mary for her right hand. A few ladies came to help them and all the service was volunteer, nursing, cooking, scrubbing, housekeeping of every sort and the peasant women of the vicinity helped with the washing.

Remember that the ladies working here were cultivated, delightful women used to commanding every service at home. A young daughter took her mother's place at the Château de Vaugeois (the Brolemanns' home) and the father was guide, counsellor and friend for home, hospital and all the countryside. For over three years they worked and then when the need of a hospital in that vicinity was ended, Mary went to Châlons in a wicked, dreadful part of the war zone; there she nursed and worked while her mother helped the needy near home and at Tesse la Madeleine, Orne.

And the son of the house of Brolemann---what of him? Well! it was quite early one morning and the Rector was going out to meet some appointments when a young French officer asked to see him. He presented himself, "Sous-Lieutenant Brolemann," and asked when the next celebration of the Holy Communion would take place. The Rector said,

"There is a service tomorrow morning at eight o'clock."

"Oh!" answered the Lieutenant, "that would be too late. I shall be gone."

"Will you wait for half an hour?"

The Rector's telephone was busy for a few moments, his appointments changed and then he and the Lieutenant went into the Church. After a time, comforted and sustained, the soldier went his way and from that hour began a dear friendship between his family and ours. Whenever he had a "permission" Lieutenant Brolemann would come for the eight o'clock service and his family would come up from Vaugeois to meet him and sometimes they came after service to breakfast with us. It was like that on Palm Sunday, 1918; the family had come to meet him only they could not come to breakfast for they were too hurried. I met Paul in the Cloisters and he was so distressed because the Rector had just told him that we were going to America.

"I do not see how we are to carry on without you and the dear Rector. We need you so and he has meant so much to me with his prayers and his help."

Paul went that day. Our last telegram sent in France was to his family for Paul died. The device of his company is

Ancient Regiment-du royal dauphine, le 12e Cuirassiers.

By and by we had a letter from Nelly, the younger sister.

"You remember how Palm Sunday morning the big gun was bombing Paris, when Paul went. . . Thirteen days later he was killed in the lovely wood at Semnat, which no longer exists . . . . They were attacked most suddenly; they had to defend the Paris-Amiens railway . . . . Paul's Captain came and told him he must take part of the Semnat wood. It was terrible. The Boches had their machine guns behind the big trees. Paul gave this order, "Rassemblement! derriere moi, en tirailleurs!" Then with his revolver he advanced followed by eleven men, all that were left of thirty-six. He killed nine Boches and then he fell. Three of his men rushed to him and his last words were, "Vous êtes tous des braves; laissez-moi, allez me venger." . . . His body was wrapped in a toile de tente and the spot where it lies was marked. Mother and Father are so brave but so sad. . . You know how Mary and I loved him, how dear a friend he was to us, always helping, and so kind to our naughtiness . . . . Oh! I just can't believe it. How could Paul be dead?"

The lilies bloom and bloom again in the gardens above the river banks at Vaugeois. The pigeons walk on the sunny terrace. The family goes bravely on its way; the old gardener stops to speak to the young manservant whose right leg is gone. It is a sweet place but the soldier of France who was also God's soldier is not even sleeping there.

This is just one of the countless host who died. Through all their tears those who are left can still smile, for the circle of their love is unmarred.

I am so tired of sentimental vaporings about what the world gains by other people's pain. War is a wanton who takes our dearests for her pleasure or for her gain; who takes our little happiness and the sweet, homely things of living and murders them. It is time that men rose up and said that murder in the aggregate and unspeakable crimes must be punished as in the individual. The responsibility lies with the World's leaders; war is a consequent of greed and of trust betrayed, and there must be wars so long as Nations know no code but self-aggrandizement. No one who has lived through a War could be a Pacifist; but any one who has lived through a war realizes that to win and maintain Peace on the earth, national standards of honour must measure up to the highest individual standards, and that the day when men see that will be the day for the disarmament of the Nations.

Then will Life on the earth be ordered for honour and happiness on the earth.

Millions of children are fatherless and one of Raemaker's greatest cartoons of this war is the one showing an oncoming host of little children, all sad and with outstretched hands, asking,

"Where are our fathers?"

Think of the happiness that died in this war; the women who will grow old without the fulfillment of their lives that marriage means. I sometimes think of a lovely Frenchwoman who said to me,

"I should be playing with my grandchild; my daughter should give her lovely life to her husband, but the man she would have married is dead."

There is no glory that makes amends for a backward step in the life of the world---"Every man a soldier, every woman a worker for Righteousness." When you and I mean Honour and Peace to our world, the Victory is won.

"Will you go to the Bazar with me?"

"No, I'm sorry but I cannot afford it."

"Well, neither can I but this time I must go."

I went and what I saw and heard I have written down for you. It is an absolutely true story and it all happened in the Ritz Hotel in Paris and you could duplicate the experience at the Allies' Bazar in New York or anywhere you chose. It is always the same story. This time it was told me by a bird and so I called it

"Oh! la! la! la! such a hot place! and what a mess of things!"

Jadisa shifted himself a little on his perch and muttered an unspeakable word or two under his breath. Jadisa ordinarily spoke French but he knew five languages quite profanely well, and he had, occasionally, use for a word in some half-forgotten dialect. Jadisa was certainly one hundred years old and he had been the favorite of more than one Royal favorite and he had loved best of all a white-haired old priest who loved birds for the song in their hearts and the beauty of their plumage. Just now Jadisa was the beloved of a bird fancier who valued his company more than his price and had "loaned him" to a charity sale to watch other birds sold into captivity for goodly sums.

The Charity Sale was in a great hotel whose manager was continually beset by people who demanded to use his house, free of charge, for all sorts of fêtes. He could not help himself any more than could the merchants who were asked to give gifts to be sold at unholy prices to people who did not want the things or to be put up at a raffle, whereby many people got nothing and some one got something for nothing.

All this was done by the rich who took this means of helping the work for the man who gave youth and sometimes legs or arms for the liberties of the world. This explains why Jadisa was growling a little about the heat and why he wrote a few meditations with his best plume.

"What a heat! la! la! What a pretty old woman in that hard, silly looking hat. No, Madame, I'm not for sale. Seven devils, how all those people shriek and no woods to carry away the sounds. Why! when I was young and we all flocked together at twilight, it was still. My! My! damn such a racket! What's he talking through anyhow?"(27) Tres à-la-mode, full value for your money: pups, lions, any old beast or bird! There, now,---what's that? Ah, yes. The Countess de Rien with Madame d'Argent and Monsieur l'Eponge. Well, if it amuses them it doesn't hurt me since I am not to be sold."

"Kiss you!" Jadisa fluttered an eyelid at the lady in ultra-fashionable attire, a rope of pearls and a lorgnon, and then he moved a bit further along on his perch.

"I wouldn't like my beak to get red spots on it; I'm too old a bird for that."

"They are all going home. Some one says that they made a lot of money for Charity and that they meant well. None of them is a hundred years old. They will learn wisdom and real Charity some day. 'What was it the old Priest used to say: 'Charity suffereth long and is kind?' Well, I know a few words with lost meanings just now. Charity! Charity! Char-."

Jadisa's head went slowly to one side; he was asleep; forgotten the sale, forgotten the Priest, and now and again he muttered a word in a dimly remembered dialect that birds learn from savage tribes.

"Vous vivez sous la terre anonyme toujours,
O Morts! vous aurez chaud durant les nuits glacées
Nous avons fait avec la trame des pensées
Des lits de souvenirs et de berceaux d'amour."(28)

Maurice Magre.

Still the French Red Cross carried on and one day a small group, just four of us, were asked to come to the house of the Marquise de Talleyrand-Perigord. Those of you who have seen it remember how it stands on the Avenue Elisée Reclus just near the Eiffel tower. The drawing room is always full on the days when Madame receives and there are so many interesting people to meet and such good music to hear that to see the hostess with but four guests was most unusual. On this particular day we came together to hear the Countess d'Haussonville plan the founding of what she wished to call "Le Bien-Être du Blessé." Mme. d'Haussonville had been up and down the front line where first aid and first comforting was the hourly and instant need and she wished to provide some means of giving special food to the 'rest hospitals' just back of the lines.

The next meeting of this Committee, now an organized society with Mr. George Monroe for its treasurer, was held in the Count de Pourtalis' house not far from the Madeleine. It is a famous old place and its beautiful court and stairway lead up to the salons that have welcomed some of the world's most brilliant men and beautiful women. It welcomed the distinguished group, now known as Le Bien-Être du Blessé, gathered about the great table in the dining room and the Marquise d'Andigne called the meeting to order. There were about thirty women present and twelve of them were American born women permanently resident in France who had been France's allies and helpers from the first day of the war. Le Bien-Être du Blessé was a French society and never an American Charity although it ministered large gifts from America and its patron saint in America was Gertrude Atherton.

One afternoon in Holy Week, 1918, the Countess d'Haussonville came in to spend an hour with me and we talked of all that she had seen at the front. She is one of the bravest and most helpful women this War has seen. Tall and slender, with lovely manners and a most gracious presence, she has been her countrymen's ideal of the woman who serves. She had just come back from the front, the real front, not the front kept for groups of "investigators." Her black dress, elegant and becoming, her hat with its frills of lace and the brocaded bag she carried all betokened the Spirit of the women to whom these things were a part of life's sanity as well as its beauty. In vivid, fervent speech she spoke of the soldiers and among other things she said,

"Day before yesterday I was walking through a hospital ward when a voice called asking me to come near. 'Madame!' it said, 'Madame, they tell me that it is you who have seen to the comforts we have here; that it is you who have given us such sweet care while we wait to go home. Will you put your hand to my mouth that I may kiss it'?"

Needless to say how her tender love met that appeal, for the voice was that of a young soldier who had no arms.

I think that just here I will answer once and for all a question that I have been asked over and over and over again. What did French women of rank and position do?

Now in America we think and speak of rank and titles as little children speak of Kings and Queens that they have met in Fairy Land. We no longer believe in the divine right of Kings although the world must accept the divine right of Government. Kings, as Kings, are almost relegated to Fairy Land but custom dies hard and inherited titles are---inherited titles. Even in America we sometimes put crests on our stationery and on our spoons.

In the letters which we sent to America during the War we most carefully avoided the use of titles, knowing that it would not be quite understood there that people of every rank were one in heart, one in service to France.

In Kentucky, dear, blue-grass land, we have our Colonels and in Texas we have our Colonels also, at least we have one Colonel in Texas.

The life of a people does not change as the form of government changes and if your family has been part of a certain part of the land for generations, perhaps with your responsibilities and privileges you would have come to have pride of race and name. The abuses that follow such a social system are many, but life is not all decadent even in the Old World. Some Dukes and Counts are very charming and Duchesses certainly deserve their part in the Frenchwoman's place in history. As to titles,---"a man's a man for a' that!" No Americans have ever lived in France who came into closer touch with all classes of French people than we ourselves have done and in spite of tradition or perhaps because of it, we found the French people the most democratic people in the world, and their manners are those of people accustomed to the outward and visible signs of the graces of life. Men and women of place an privilege did just what you did. They gave their dearests; they went themselves. Personally I can never forget that for all the years we lived within the walls of Paris, it was a Frenchman who held the line, whose life stood between the invading host and the defenceless women and children whom the city sheltered.

Have you ever been out to Fontainebleau and seen the palace and the park or perhaps the forest and the little villages that skirts its borders? Listen! do you think the sound we hear is the rain blowing through the trees? It is troops, just troops and troops coming down the highway from the training fields and amongst all the Frenchmen, some Americans who had enlisted in the French Army. What splendid men they were! The old palace will shelter some of them in its hospital if they come back wounded. The portal where Napoleon used to enter remains closed but soldiers in whom he would have delighted pass it every day.

Just a little distance from here we come to Barbizon. Barbizon spells François Millet and The Angelus to most of us in America. The painter of The Angelus is dead, but in August, 1915, his name lived on in the name and person of his son, François. Late in August of that year we drove from Fontainebleau to Barbizon; the war was a year old and the night before our drive, Paris had been raided by six Zeppelins. All along the way the fields had been gleaned and the grain was stacked in conical piles like great beehives. The leaves blew in little golden flakes across the roadway and there was a curious sense of peace in the air despite the countless soldiers, the trenches and the cannons guarding the forks of the roads.

Down a narrow village street we went; on either side were stone walls overhung with branches of trees and trailing ivy.

When we reached our destination we found ourselves at a grey door in a grey wall just opposite what is now the Millet Museum. Madame François, the wife of the great painter's son, was Miss Geraldine Reed of New York and she and her gifted husband are both well known as artists. Will you come with us into the garden? M. Millet sits there in the sunshine, very big and very, very gentle looking. He is lame and is going blind. His sister sits beside him and in front of her are piles of fluffy cotton. She and a friend worked steadily making compresses for a hospital and a basket heaped high with them testified to a long day of industry. The birds sang as though there had never been a war and now and again we could hear the distant boom of a canon. It is to M. Millet's house that all the needy and the suffering hereabouts come for help and comfort but before the Armistice was signed, François Millet's eyes were closed to earth and his wife was 'carrying on' alone.

On our way back to Paris we passed soldiers, soldiers, soldiers and often we had to make a detour from a route barré. As we neared Versailles we saw, silhouetted against the sky, a coal-black horse and seated on him a Cuirassier. His shining casque looked pure gold in the waning sunlight and his uniform with the scarlet trousers seemed as much a matter of pride to the splendid horse as it did to the soldier who wore it. At the Cuirassier's signal our automobile was halted and soon there were many motors, carts, etc., lining the roadway back of us. Just beyond us stood a group of Generals and their Aides, all watching a review of a troop of dragoon. Immediately following this there was target practice on the range and the cannon spoke almost faster than we could count. Just as the sun disappeared the sentry's great black horse turned, the sentry waved his sword and galloped away and we all followed, through the paved square at Versailles, past hundreds of grey ambulances and baggage motors and on into Paris. That night there was a terrible raid.

On the same road we saw, when the war was new, something we can never forget. Our car was filled with food and supplies for a relief station; we were going up a winding road when down the roadway came an Ambulance. On the front seat with the chauffeur was sitting a sister of Charity, her sable draperies blowing out behind her, her right arm stretched straight out in front of her; in her hand was the cross at the end of her rosary.

They passed us in a flash and another woman of France was enshrined in our hearts.

The Panama Canal! The pen with which President Roosevelt signed the treaty! I suppose you are wondering what our story has to do with those things. Well! one evening in October, 1914, my husband came in and told me he had just seen that particular pen; that it hung with copies of the treaty on the wall in the library in the house of M. Bunau-Varilla in the Avenue d'Iéna. Madame Bunau-Varilla had come to the American hospital that day to ask for some anti-tetanus serum. The Americans had just a little and the need in all the hospitals was absolutely terrible. It was arranged that she was to have a small quantity for her hospital and my husband took it to her house. It was as welcome as the manna that fed the Israelites and he had the happiness of giving the gift.

Colonel Bunau-Varilla, a man over fifty years of age, was at the Front; the only son was in Aviation service; the lovely daughter, the Vicountess Rancougne known to many Americans was working then, as was her mother, in a French hospital. Later we came to know them well enough to share some of the work in which they were interested, and then we heard details of the son's captivity in Germany. He was an important prisoner and was offered in exchange for an important German prisoner and his father and mother, for France's sake, refused to ask that the exchange be made. Solitary confinement for this only son, one-half hour out of the twenty-four when he could speak and move out of his cramped cell. In that cell he sat making sacks for sand and earth and he saved his reason by drawing little fine threads here and there and embroidering tiny patterns on the edges of the coarse stuff. After a long and dreary time he was sent to Switzerland and his mother went to meet him.

Colonel Bunau-Varilla, being a great engineer, was charged with the water supply for the troops at Verdun and elsewhere and he was always at a post of danger. He lost a leg in the service of France and was otherwise injured. He wears the Cross of an Officer of the Legion of Honor added to his other decorations but his serene face and his pilon(29) are his greatest decorations. Our library has amongst its treasures his history of the "Creation, Destruction and Resurrection of Panama." You will forgive my quoting the Dedication he has written in it because it is yours also.

"To the Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Watson"

"I offer this book, the history of a long War of civilization against the passive forces of Nature. In grateful remembrance of the work they have accomplished in taking care of the heroes wounded in the battles of the great war of civilization, against that arrogant Despotism and refined Barbarism which is called German Militarism."

Signed---P. BUNAU-VARILLA.

M. Bunau-Varilla's book is dedicated to his son and his daughter. The dedication is very sincere and of the highest idealism and it ends with these words:

"The greatest virtue in a Frenchman is to cultivate truth and to serve France."

We have the pictures of the bridges being rebuilt after the first battle of the Marne, September, 1914, and one of them shows the great engineer himself in his automobile making the first crossing; the description of the work is in his own handwriting and is, as he says,

"After the victory over the Germans. The first essay of the bridge, September, 1914."

I do so wish you could have dined with us one evening not long after the first battle of the Marne. Our guests were Madame Waddington, Madame Jean Linzler,(30) Pastor Soulié and Mr. Beatty, the old acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Will Irwin in whose honour the little company had gathered. Mr. Irwin is too well known to require an introduction since his name is synonymous with recent journalism. He came to the Rector for certain sorts of information and one of the ways we could help was to put him in touch with this little group of people. Mr. and Mrs. Irwin were familiarizing themselves with spoken French so we helped by rapid translations, all the conversation being in French since Madame Linzler and Pastor Soulie did not speak English. When the time for coffee arrived Pastor Soulie told us the story of the battle of the Marne as he had lived it. Our long refectory table was lit with candles and soon candlesticks, spoons, glasses and little silver dishes had fallen into line. Mr. Irwin's chair was pushed back, his curly head on one side, the smoke from his cigarette going up in rings as he watched Pastor Soulie talk; Madame Linzler, ardent Frenchwoman as she is, leaning forward with shining eyes, Madame Waddington asking a question now and again and all of us living through the hours when the troops were told off to certain death that we and such as we might live. The little maids who served us forgot the hour and stood listening.

Suddenly the windows shook, the siren shrieked and darkness fell upon the city.

When soldiers die, women weep; women are widowed and what does it matter how brave a woman may be or how strong, how worthy or unworthy the husband who died; the shadow of loneliness lies about every hour for the widow. So when Mr. and Mrs. Irwin asked me to show them a purely French Charity I took them down on the rue de Madrid to the apartments where the "Veuves de Guerre" was housed. This was and is a French society to help care for and to give work to the Widows of the War, to women who had had houses and education, whose money was almost gone and who must see to the education as well as to the bodily wants of their children. Mr. Irwin looked at the cases containing the dossier, over three thousand of them at that early day, and he wiped his eyes more than once as he stood talking to the Directrice of the Oeuvre. He was, through his extensive acquaintance, able to put this Oeuvre in touch with Wanamaker's buyer and then,---really to help. The Society has branches throughout France and has worked miracles almost in silence and it is wholly French.

From the rue de Madrid we went to one of the poor quarters of the city to the "Oeuvre de la Chaussée du Maine". This Oeuvre has for its motto "Philantropy and Fellowship". It was founded in 1871 and as its Directors write,

"Our dear country has been supported in its war work by our Family Union, solidly based on half a century of honest, persevering work; it has opened its arms to all and met its new duties bravely."

I have never seen more beautiful Community Service than is done at this place. Even throughout the War on every Saturday evening France's great singers and actors were there to put a note of joy into weary, sad lives. Here in the Nursery were rows and rows of little willow cradles hooded over with flowered lawn, tiny shoes beside the cradles, babies born at Rheims, at Amiens, or by the wayside sleeping quietly while their mothers sewed in the workroom above. Poor, pinched little faces and thin little hands. Dear America, do you know that it was the milk that Mrs. Levi P. Morton sent to us for distribution that was used in feeding those little wayfarers? We used to send cases of malted milk regularly to the Nursery and my husband was their friend for every need when America could serve. The Oeuvre had little gardens around the fortifications and old soldiers trained the children to work there? The gardens amply repaid the little toilers, though each child might say,

This splendid service of Philanthropy and Fellowship keeps steadily on, for as one of its patronesses says,

"To do good, even to be good, hardly suffices, for beyond it all one still has one's "Sentry-go."

Widows---and then Orphans. Sometimes both father and mother gone, but in France and Belgium during this war the term "orphan" was used to designate a child whose father had died.

The echoes from the first shot that was fired in this war had not died away before there were orphans to be comforted and fed. France, the State, makes certain provision for each child whose father's life has been given for the State, but that is necessarily so little, so very little. Before you get excited or critical just say to yourself,

"How many orphan children are there in my own State; what is done for them and who does it?"

Not how many Christmas trees do we set up but how do we father for all of the year, those who are orphans? I leave you to think of the answer and beg you, of your courtesy, not to criticize the people of a land where an invading army has come and burned and destroyed the houses, making the land desolate; a land where little children have been maimed and killed; where womanhood was outraged, even the womanhood that had long, long ago given its best to its loves; wives, widows and nuns---nuns who had 'watched and prayed'. Of all of these was the toll of agony taken.

"M. le recteur Watson", whose American ancestry dates back to Lewis Morris, the first, in New York and to the old days in New Jersey when Cornwallis made barracks of Eglinton, the old Montgomery homestead; Charles Carroll of Carrollton whose ancestor had signed the Declaration of Independence. These men were now on a French government commission---one the Rector of the American Church in Paris, the other a loyal and devoted Catholic.

Nothing in all my husband's work in or for France was of such absorbing interest to him as this fathering, loving work for the orphaned children. It was work that he had personally undertaken from the very first and his appointment on this French Commission is to him the crowning honour of all the honours which privilege bestowed upon him. He, with Mr. Carroll, had for some time been the American representative of a Comité de Liaison between the Ministry of the Interior and the American Relief Clearing House. The weekly meetings of this Comité were held in the office of M. Ogier, Conseiller d'État, Directeur du Contrôle et de la Compatibilité du Ministre de L'Intérieur.

One of the men who served on that Comité was a man who died for France, Manuel Baudouin, President of the Court of Cassation, a Catholic and a Breton, the man who staked his all for justice when he undertook the reversal of the Court's sentence in the Dreyfus case. President Baudouin from the first instant of need gave time and all the gifts of learning and power at his command for the orphans of this country.

Journal Officiel de la Republique Française 4 Mai 1917

"Par arrêté du ministre de l'intérieur en date du 2 mai 1917, vu la loi de finances du 31 mars 1917, il est institué un comité de répartition des fonds inscrits au chapitre 50 bis du budget du ministère de l'intérieur, exercice 1917, pour venir en aide aux orphelins de la guerre nécessiteux.

Ce comité est composé comme suit:

Président.

M. Appell, membre de l'Institut, président du secours national."

Then followed a list of great names representing every shade of public opinion and religious belief in France, thirty-two names in all representing France's life. On this Comité one reads these two American names:

M. le recteur Watson, président du Comité de secours de L'American Relief Clearing House.

M. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, secrétaire de L'American Relief Clearing House.

What did France or the French people do? Why, ---all French people helped. Orphanages, schools and private houses were opened wide and little children sheltered there, and yet the need grew.

Every phase of religious and political life was represented in this work during the years, 1915-16. There was the Journée National des Orphelins, when the streets of Paris bloomed out with pretty young women carrying badges on cushions and everyone, everywhere, contributed their gift for the Orphans. France was all this while working toward a concerted effort that should unite all who were working for France's orphans and yet leave each free to be of the utmost service; and this veritable Union Sacrée was finally an accomplished fact. That does not seem so wonderful to you who do not fully realize how old world traditions stretch back to Time's shadow-land but to us who saw those shadows merge into the white light that is France's work for the Orphans, this Union Sacrée is one of the signs of France's greatness and of the Frenchman's patriotism. Not in one month, one day or one year was this union reached; but on Christmas Eve, 1917, La Fraternité Franco-Américaine held a great meeting in the Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne. Maréchal Joffre, President of the Society, presided at this meeting, he having succeeded to the Presidency left vacant by the death of M. Liard of the University of Paris. The Rev'd Dr. Watson was now Vice-President and Chairman of the Executive Committee of this Society (known in America as the Fatherless Children of France). The Society was housed, by the Government, in the old palace at 110 rue de Grenelle and the Fatherless Children of France meant Orphelinat des Armées and Oeuvres Co-opérantes.

On December twenty-fourth, 1917, the day of the great meeting at the Sorbonne, the theatre was packed to the farthest gallery. All of France, from the President of the Republic to the littlest child, was represented. We came in out of the cold and sleet and forgot it all at the sight of that vast assemblage. When Maréchal Joffre stood up to speak his voice was lost in cheers and white and shaken he stood with hands outstretched to the people. The Choristers from Holy Trinity Church sang; there was music by the Garde Républicain and by a choir of French children.

Miss Schofield, Miss Fell, M. Paul Painlevé, M. Eugene Brieux, M. Louis Barthou and the Rev'd Dr. Watson were the speakers. Dr. Watson's speech was for America and especially this when he said,

"Let us, beautiful France, little sister, offer you our arm while you walk the road of the cross; to aid you, you who give all. That which we offer to your children is the little extra, the knot of ribbon that makes the difference between a covering for the body and a little toilet."

When the speeches were ended a cable from America was read, one that was sent by Mr. Seymour Cromwell in New York. With the Christmas greeting came the news that various American cities had, in all, adopted seven thousand and five hundred Orphans of France through the American side of the Fatherless Children of France.

Americans all remember Miss Schofield and Miss Fell who made tours throughout America in the interests of the Fatherless Children of France. Very few know of the man who bore the expense of these journeys and gave his great services to the thankless task of being Treasurer of the Fatherless Children of France, M. Emile Deutsch de la Meurthe, the great Hebrew banker of Paris. What he gave in money represents only a tithe of his services. Knowing him and his family is one of the rewards of our life in France.

Just at this season we had in our own American Church a glimpse of an American girl surrounded by a group of orphaned French children. She was Miss Frances Park whose mother, now the wife of General Tauflieb, did so much for the soldiers. The day of which I speak was Miss Park's wedding day, the day on which she was married to Captain Stanley of the English Army. Miss Park had sheltered and cared for forty little orphans for many months. The orphans came to the wedding with their nurses, and after the wedding they went into the Sacristy to see the bride in her white dress and floating tulle veil; they all curtsied and wished her joy. When she came back from her wedding journey the Captain went to his post of danger and the bride went on taking care of her forty little orphans.

We spoke, did we not, just a little while ago of Manuel Baudouin, Premier Président de la Cour de Cassation? He went at the end of a long and difficult day to a meeting held in the offices of the Secours National in the interests of the orphans. The day was cold, his fatigue very great and his years were many, for he was born January 26th, 1846. He had taken his seat at the long table next to President Appell, when suddenly his head dropped and without a word he was gone. Paris was in mourning. What the loss meant to his family each of you can imagine; they could bear only silence and it is a silence that is not for us to break. The homage of the people was paid him at the Court and M. Viviani finished the address that he made by saying,

"He has given his last thought to the disinherited, to the needs of the innocent victims, the little children. Amidst all the pomp and ceremony of this hour there is the gentle following of their regret and sorrow. .

After we have given our regret and our prayers to the first magistrate of France let us go back to our work and to our duty."

Then on foot they followed his body to St. Sulpice, great men of France, officials and diplomats and his own who loved him. When spring-time came they laid him for his long, last sleep in his beloved Rennes. He was my husband's colleague, friend, instructor and his adviser in every step he took for France. He gave us his friendship and that of his family, wife, children and grandchildren and his great-grandchild bears my name. I can shut my eyes and see him in his study with his delicate, lovely wife, a little great-grandson perched beside them busy with toys while he himself was translating English articles into French. He learned to read English in much less than two years, 1916-17.

Monsieur and Madame Baudouin were both gifted artists and Monsieur Baudouin had also much skill as a musician. No wonder life was rich and fine for them and that their children adored them.

Just as we rounded Longchamps a big, brown limousine swept in front of us. In it were President Poincaré and members of his staff. They were coming from the Canadian Hospital at St. Cloud.

When we came on the train from Lyons we were in a compartment with three French officers, one a Naval officer, quite young and refined looking. He sat there asleep and it made one's heart ache to see the deep shadows on so young a face. Their faces were full of deep shadows like Abraham Lincoln's face, not thin but hewn out with the chisel of great agonies. They were not aged, but ageless. They were courteous to us, those weary men. One left us at Toulon. One of the others began to smile and look out of the windows like a restless little boy as we left the snow behind and the earth grew redder and the sky all blue; the hills were soft with olive trees and pine and the little towns in the foothills had red-roofed houses. Now our soldier had the window open; there were tears on his cheeks and in his eyes as he said,

"They'll all be there, my wife and the little girl, just four now. She can put her arms around my knee while I kiss her mother, then I shall pick her up; and my father and my mother---!"

We were as excited as the soldier when we drew into the station and as for the soldier he was leaning far out and waving his cap. I couldn't even look I was so afraid that some of them had not come; but they had come and when he passed his luggage out of the window his father took it. There was a farewell to us and then our soldier was out of the train and the little girl did put her arms around his knees as he kissed his wife; and the mother was there and all of them in black. They stood very close to the soldier in his trim uniform, on his breast the honors he had won, over his left shoulder and about his arm the green and gold cord that meant Regimental honors. He would have nine days at home.

October 22, 1916

The Supreme Court opened today and Mr. and Mrs. Carroll, my husband and I were invited to be present as the Premier Président's guests. It was just quarter of one when we arrived at the Palais de Justice and went up the great stair-case and into the long corridor where a number of the judges were assembled. The corridor was brilliant with sunlight and a blaze of color from the crimson robes which the judges wore. These robes are in shape not unlike those worn by the Bishops of the English Church and the cloth of which they are made is very lustrous and beautiful. Over one shoulder of the robe hangs a crimson stole bordered with ermine and the fitted under-portion of the robe is black satin. Deep jabots of white lace are fastened at the throat and each judge carried a queer stiff little hat of black velvet with gold braid crimped on the edges, for all the world just the shape that the pastry cooks in the Arabian Nights wore. The Supreme judges wore an ermine cape and fur on the sleeveless coat over the scarlet robe. The last touch of glory was the orders that they wore.

The lawyers were in black robes with white bands and white gloves. The Premier Président came to welcome us and himself conducted us to the Court Room. Promptly at one o'clock the procession entered and anything more brilliant and impressive it would be hard to imagine.

Every one stood as the salutations were made and the roll was called. There was an appalling number of vacant places and as the names of those who had died during the past year were called, there would be a moment of silence and then the Secretary answered the call with a record of the man's service and told when and where he had died for France. Those moments of silence would grip one's heart so that we almost felt as though each man answered for himself---at the last. After the roll call was finished we were seated. The new judges were sworn in and received by the Court and the Premier Président's speech followed. After this we were taken through a long, cloistered way into his cabinet; there, after Court adjourned, he came to talk to us. On the wall were the portraits of his predecessors, amongst them that of his own father. At the beautiful old, old mahogany table sat the man whom we all reverenced, who will forever typify to us honour, generosity, the learning of a sage and the gaiety of a child. It was on this very spot that the Courts and the nation paid its last honors to him when he died; it was from here that the President of the Republic walked on foot to St. Sulpice following his body; then as now the Seine flowed swiftly and then as now France paid homage to her dead.

Faith, to be Faith at all, must be absolute.

When my husband said, "God gave us this work to do; we have only to do what He makes possible", he meant just what he said. We did take God at His word "Ask and ye shall receive". And do you know we never lacked wherewith to give, in the name of American Christianity, through all the years of the War.

One afternoon a friend came to us, a Belgian gentlewoman, and said,

"Could you help a little today? I have a friend, a lady who has her mother and eight little children to care for. They are in dreadful need for food and clothes. They live not far from the Spanish border and in a lovely Château .... The father was killed in 1914. (So many men of middle age had gone at the first call.) There are the children and the grandmother. There are no men left to work and even the cows are all gone!"

The Rector said,

"Of course; five hundred francs shall go tonight for food and tomorrow we will send cases of clothing. I do not know just what fund I can use, for my French orphan fund was exhausted yesterday, but I will borrow it from another fund on my own I. O. U."

The next morning's mail brought a letter from a New York bank enclosing one hundred dollars 'from an American gentleman who desires to remain unknown but who would like to have the money used by a lady and children in need and where the father is dead'. The gifts of food brought a letter too intimate for publication, the acknowledgment of the cases of clothing are yours as the gifts were yours and you were so dear to let us give them.

"This morning I received your cases and I can hardly look at the gifts they contained for the tears in my eyes. I must write you this and tell you as simply and sincerely as possible with what gratitude I am filled. I am not a child and I have known generous deeds and noble hearts, and I could not imagine now that my happiness lies dead and that my daily life means sorrow and privation. I could not imagine that one could think of me as a brother thinks and serve me as a sister would serve in the most delicate way .... I love to thank you in detail .... My baby is clothed and his little shoes were worn, his little stockings quite outgrown .... The children were too awed to speak as the cases were unpacked and they knew the gifts to be of American origin. One said, 'Mama! if all Americans are so good, I wish to be an American also.' Another said, 'Do you think they would hear me if I went into the garden and cried "Thank you" very hard, oh! very hard indeed?' What my children so naively say their mother thinks also in the depths of her heart. Pure kindness is the greatest comfort for those who are "abbatus" and I assure you that what I have received from America gives me new courage to support my desolation. In the name of their father who so bravely did his duty I cry to you with all my heart---Thank you and God bless you!"

At the end of the year when decorations were to be bestowed the oldest son of this family, aged ten, was dressed in a coat made by the mother herself from an old one of the father's wardrobe. The mother and son went a six-hour journey and then before his father's regiment a great General pinned the coveted honor on the little lad's breast.

Weeks later the mother was obliged to be in Paris on official business and while there she came to see us and to have tea with us. Tall, graceful, dressed in the plainest black, she sat in our little drawing room and gave us a wonderful hour. She told us that she would herself prepare her children for college. We did not, of course, speak of gifts or help but it was arranged that she would come to our workrooms next morning and that she should be our Almoner in her immediate neighbourhood. As she went down the stairway she stopped on the landing and, with the ready grace of a Frenchwoman, dropped on her knees before the Stars and Stripes which hung there; stooping low she raised the Starry banner to her lips and then without a word she went away.

After April, 1917, she writes,

"I have just been to the funeral of an old friend, going to represent my mother. There I met an officer of the Etat-Major who told me that the États-Unis had literally saved the situation of France.

There flies on high on our tower a flag of forty-eight stars, that my mother and my children have cut and sewn. It flies in honour of the United States. Oh! come when the war is over and keep holiday with us. We will keep festival in honour of America, L'Amérique libératrice . . . ."

And the children write,

"On top of grandmama's tower we have America's flag. Please send us the national song. We would learn and sing it.

With many loves,

E. AND M."

America does not need that we should copy for you many, or really that we should copy any of the letters of little orphans. In every city and village throughout the country there are "letters from Our Orphan" that are amongst the household treasures. The spirit of them all is summed up in a letter written by the children of Péguy, France's poet, who was France's patriot:

MONSIEUR AND MADAME SIEGFRIED

Offered to Madame Watson to whom I am happy to recall that I visited the United States twice, first in 1861 when I had the honour to be the guest of President Lincoln in the month of December, and again in 1901 when I visited President McKinley.

Signed---JULES SIEGFRIED

Paris, March 1, 1918

That is inscribed on the back of a photograph of M. Siegfried, who is France's oldest deputy. In his early youth his father sent him on a journey to Persia and you read that he has twice visited America, the first time as Abraham Lincoln's guest. M. Siegfried is tall and slight and although his hair is white his appearance does not suggest age. It is he that has deeded the great feudal Château Langeais to France, to be kept forever as a model of the château's age and time, after he and his wife have died. In Paris his apartment is on the Boulevard St. Germain. The rooms are full of treasures and in M. Siegfried's study one of the desks is ebony, a copy of one used by Lincoln, a desk at which one stands to write.

Mme. Siegfried speaks for the women of France; she is a suffragist and a recognized leader of her countrywomen. She is very gentle, and old enough and tolerant enough to speak for the women of France. An ardent Protestant, she is none the less President of the National Council of French women.

You would, of course, be interested in people like M. and Mme. Siegfried but I have a very particular reason for writing of them just here since they stand for all that you and I hold dear. They work hand in hand. French men seem to find pleasure in brilliant wives as men of no other nation do. The French wife who is brilliant or intellectual or who rounds out her husband's life is not regarded as an exotic, but she lives with him instead of for him and this creates a larger life than either of them could create alone and both retain their personality.

In November, 1918, Madame Siegfried writes to my husband,

"I am sure, dear friend, that you will learn with sorrow and with sympathy that we also have paid our part of the ransom in giving to the country a son well beloved; a soldier of France who has fallen in the Orient. God helps us to comfort each other and our consolation as we remember our child is that we still find strength to work and to serve . . . ."

JULIE SIEGFRIED.

One day, before the War, Madame Siegfried went to visit a woman who was not well and who had three little children for whom she must care.

"You should go to the hospital for the needed operation," said Madame Siegfried.

"How can I?" answered the woman, "I cannot leave my babies."

"I will take the babies," answered Madame Siegfried, "and no matter what comes they shall be my charge."

Before a week had passed she went to the hospital to see the woman and the first words she heard were,

"Oh! Madame, how I thank the good God that he sends friends like you to those who need."

In that hour were begun the plans for Les Asiles Maternels in Paris. When the War came these homes had need, as had the Arc de Triomphe, to spread wide their portals, their sheltering wings. The house at 88 rue de Gregoire became the shelter of a throng of little refugees. In our own Ouvroir we made all the clothing that these little children wore. Hundreds of little garments, made according to the Asile's own patterns, made from stuff that you gave, sewn with your needles. In the children's name we received a great sheaf of roses, you and I. We had the flowers but the card that came with them bears this inscription:

"Some French roses sent on behalf of the little children of L'Asile Maternel Temporaire, 88 rue de Gregoire, with all the gratitude of which their little hearts are capable."

One of the duties in which French women shared was that of helping refugees' families to find those of their immediate connections who had disappeared. To this end the National Council of French Women established offices at 27 Avenue de l'Opéra, "Office de Renseignements pour les Familles Dispersées."

Your imagination will make pictures of all that such an office meant, and you must remember that all these services began almost synonymously with the War and by men and women who were themselves a part of all of the agony. Not long before the Armistice Madame Siegfried wrote,

"You will not mind if my letter is somewhat incoherent; our quarter suffered much in last night's raids; there is no glass in our windows today. We long for a little while in the country but would not think of going since we are so greatly needed here."

On the same boulevard with our friends the Siegfrieds we have another friend. He is one of the men who makes public opinion, M. Leon Bailby, editor of the Intransigeant, the little sheet that every one buys in the evening that they may see what Léon Bailby has to say. My husband has served with him on various Committees and M. Bailby has been our guest. His charities are as far-reaching as his editorials and one of the things that interests him most is work for children who are suffering from tuberculosis. He is one of the Committee of the "Petits Lits Blancs" and you want to know something about that, but first you shall go with us to dine at M. Bailby's. It is a lovely springtime evening; there had been no raids for three nights and we felt almost gay. Facing the boulevard were two shops where old copper and brass and curious earthenware pots were to be bought; between the shops an arched doorway through which we went into a thirteenth century courtyard and then into a bare, beautiful, stone hallway. The light from the windows in the upper halls shone through the wrought iron traceries of the balustrades and a carved chair stood just beside the entrance to M. Bailby's apartment which is on the ground floor. As the door opened for us we saw down the length of his hall and beyond the open doorway a walled-in garden where our host stood to receive his guests. In the heart of the city---and it was as still as though the city were miles away. Great trees shaded the garden. There were little gravelled walks; ivy growing on the walls, a little summer house, and all the walks were bordered with Mary's lilies. There was even a statue and a basin for birds, and the whole garden could have been set down in a space forty by sixty feet. The long windows opened out on the garden and after a time we went in to dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Carroll were there, M. and Madame Henri Lavedan, Albert Flamand and two French officers, and there was also the Princesse Murat, born Marie de Rohan-Chabot, just back from Russia and having just finished her book in which you will find her account of Rasputin. M. Bailby will forgive my speaking of the exquisite simplicity of his table. It was spread with a soft blue damask cloth which seemed to be covered with hoar-frost; in the centre of the table was a blue and silver bowl heaped high with cherries. There were four silver candlesticks and four tall white candles with silver filigree shades. There was no fuss about knives and spoons; they came with each course. The talk was wonderful; sometimes we laughed, sometimes we cried and after dinner we sat and listened while M. Bailby played to us. I had sat at his right during the dinner and at my right was M. Lavedan and now in the drawing room after M. Bailby played for us, Madame Lavedan sang. The garden was flooded with moonlight. Then, as always in those days, we spoke of those in need and mostly we spoke of "Les Petits Lits Blancs." This is one of the French charities founded during the War. Its head is Dr. Pinard of the French Academy of Medicine and its active president is Madame Henri Lavedan, its vice-president M. Leon Bailby. The Rev'd Dr. Watson with Mrs. Walter Gay, Mr. M. J. Rubell and representative Americans serve on the Committee with a distinguished group of French men and women, whose names include that of M. Vallery-Radot and Edmond Rostand. "The Little White Beds"! That title could have only one meaning in such connection and that meaning is sick and suffering children, children suffering from bone tuberculosis, children taken from L'Hôpital St. Louis and from the poorest quarters of Paris. One of the terrors of the war was the suffering of little children, not only those whose bodies were maimed or marred by shot and shell but those who lacked nourishing food in sufficient quantity. Mme. Lavedan was used to visiting little children in L'Hôpital St. Louis. As the war increased in violence and grew long the hospitals became overcrowded and there was little opportunity to care for the tubercular children.

Henri Lavedan is one of the "forty immortals,"- a member of L'Académie Française and one of the editors of L'Illustration. His most lovely wife had his aid and sympathy in founding "Les Petits Lits Blancs." The editor of L'Intransigeant at once placed his paper at the disposition of the newly organized charity founded for "the future of the Race." Dr. Pinard passed on all cases and only curable children were given the desired care. A ward was established at Roscoff in Finisterre and the sick were healed. Sad eyes began to shine and twinkle; good nurses cared for the little patients who spent long days on the beach under gay awnings. The first group (twenty-four in number) sent to Roscoff went clothed in comfortable garments made in our workrooms. Some one had sent us fifty yards of lovely scarlet cloth. We do not know who gave that gift but whoever did provide it provided also the possibility of each of those children having a beautiful, warm dressing-gown. The first year's subscriptions were ninety-eight thousand, eight hundred and ninety-nine francs. Of this amount five thousand, six hundred and fifty francs was American gifts; the rest was French and from people of every age and social condition. In addition to these personal and private subscriptions the American Relief Clearing House gave the Committee fifty beds completely furnished and two thousand, five hundred francs in money. The first year saw forty children given back to France in health. The work goes on steadily. Edmond Rostand wrote some touching verses dedicated to "Les Petits Lits Blancs" and the poem ends thus:

"L'homme du front n'est bien vainqueur
Que grâce à vous, femmes du coeur!

Nous sentons que derrière nous
L'Avenir est sur vos genoux;

Nos enfants, dans nos yeux qu'ils ont,
Gardent, neuf, le bleu horizon." (31)

What was undertaken for the children is only a sample of what was undertaken for the soldiers and for all who needed. It would be quite impossible, would it not, that even the French army should be on the march without the immediate raising of new problems, problems that must be met? What we Anglo-Saxons term the Moral Question was immediately thrust in the foreground. It is not a question that I intend to discuss except as it is related to the lives of little children whose fathers' place must be taken by the State. There were first the little creatures whose fathers were German soldiers. Sometimes the mothers did not let those children live and the mother was not punished. Sometimes those children were placed in orphanages and given a name. Sometimes the mother kept the child. You just must realize what it meant to have not only the enemy army but the Allied Armies in France. The wonder is, not that so many men and women stepped out of the beaten path but that so many were true to the ideals in which they had been trained, loyal in deed to those who loyally waited their return. Add to this the fact that there are at all times and in every country men and women whose emotions and whose desires are first in their lives and you may answer your own questions, draw your own conclusions. Out of our workrooms have gone over two thousand, five hundred outfits for newborn children. Over one-half of that number went to people where the gift of the new life was what we term "legal." As for the rest of our packages they were sent to hospitals and maternity homes.

Once a great artist friend came to us asking a layette for a woman refugee in his village. She was a French soldier's widow and had four children and then came this son whose father was one of the hated race.

"If Jacques were living, this child should not live; but Jacques is dead."

We packed the layette with much care, the whole story was so sad, so hopeless and the only thing we could do was to give something fair and fine. The mother's gratitude was beautiful but our friend's cook who delivered the gift said,

"It's almost encouraging wickedness to give that. I think I must just adopt a child myself."

One day the son of the Marquise Scribot de Bons came to ask some gifts for his men. Amongst other things which the Captain wanted was a good 'impermeable' for one of his men and to ask that a layette be sent to the same man's wife. They were gentle people but now very poor. That very same day the packages were arranged but somehow or other the porter mixed the labels and Grospiron(32) sent the layette off to the trenches and the raincoat to the mother. Some weeks later the Captain came again and then he told us what had happened. When we expressed our regret he said,

"Oh! but it was just right. It was a jest of the good God. My men were utterly downhearted with the cold and the mud and I felt that God must help somehow to renew their courage. One morning the packages came, among them the package with the layette. When it was opened the men smiled and then they placed it before them and knelt as one kneels at a shrine. The little blue blanket was there, the one with white rabbits, and as they passed it out fell a little knitted shoe. This they kissed and took anew their oath of allegiance, smiling as they said, 'It is for this we fight, for the little feet that follow after. Vive la France.' God knew how to give them courage."

One morning Miss Rees came and asked me to go into the library to see a lady who sat there holding a baby in her arms, while beside her stood two lovely little girls. The dear baby-! The mother was a lady from the North. She told me that she could not understand how any of them had lived through the privations and cold that they had endured; that when the baby was born there was nothing but her love to welcome him and that he had been a brave boy from the hour of his birth. He was lovely and let us play with him, crowing with happiness while we arranged for his mother's needs.

Then some weeks later we had a letter from the father and that, too, is a letter exemplifying the grace with which your gifts have been received.

20 Juillet, 1917

Monsieur-Madame:

Will you pardon the liberty which I take in writing to you since I have not the honour to be known to you. I cannot let pass in silence the sentiments of profound gratitude which are suggested to me by the letter which I have just received from my dear wife.

In that letter my wife tells me all her joy, all her gratitude for the aid which you have given her, given too, so generously and so discreetly. You with your American sympathy have understood the sadness of our present situation; the war has modified, oh! how much for us the course of our daily life, a life that was exempt from anxieties as to material needs, a life calm and happy. You have understood that for us the fulfilment of our sacred duty has put our personal lives completely in the shadow of need. In 1914 we became of those who are called 'les pauvres honteux'---the ashamed poor. I do not fear to use these words because I know you understand. With all your delicacy you have wished that we should share in America's generosity. I do not know which to thank you for most, the gifts which you have given or the manner in which you gave them.

From the bottom of my heart, as husband and as father, with all my strength I thank you. Thank you for my wife and my dear children; you have won the right to my profound gratitude. I will remember you always with more than thankfulness. We had left all our house and all we possessed for the defence of our country, greatly beloved---our France; but the cruel suffering, the separation seemed to us to be growing daily harder to bear. Then comes America, the young, great country, to take part in our suffering. I tell you, I, a Soldier of France---you, our dear American friends, have merited much from us of France. It is with joy that we fight for the sacred cause of humanity beside our valiant brothers, the soldiers of America. We look with a soul all serene to the place where hides the Boche since America is with us. And then our homes where live our own who are so dear to us, for them we are no longer so fearful since we know that you are watching over them and comforting them.

Again I thank you from the bottom of my heart, you and all our friends in America. . .

E----- V----

Grave to Gay. That is life even in war time. The Rector sent this letter over to America in 1916 and you want to read it, it is so amusing, so vivid a picture of life in a village to which he had sent food and clothing.

"Mama is so busy with washing her dishes and looking after the garden, the oats and the barley and the wood and her lambs and her little chickens. I was almost going to say her soldiers, but the last crowds have gone since yesterday morning and I write for her. Mama with her house full has more of them than grandmother. There is always some one at our house,-----and such washings; it is awful. At the other house Nini puts the sheets back on the bed without washing them. She says Mama does the same but it is not true---our house is not a tavern."

Madame de Raymond wrote a letter telling us about the beans and the peas and the barley that is being sent, and the things in tins. Madame's letter was read by the Curé from the pulpit at the "prière du Soir" on Sunday, before the Sixth Cuirassiers and the refugees and our village and then instructions were given how to use these things in cans; and after that we all said a prayer for the bons Américains . . . ."

There is something equally naïve and appealing, also in a letter that we had from a Curé. In the first rush of the Germans, they invaded his village and destroyed his little belongings in the presbytère, and his things in the Church. The Church itself had holes blown through its roof, its windows broken by shells.

But that kind of damage was all in the course of the battle; tearing up the old Curé's things was wanton destruction. One day he came to see the Rector and said,

"I come just as I am, M. le Recteur, like a snail I carry my belongings on my back."

We gave him some supplies and tools and when he was again at home he wrote,

"You kindly permitted me to buy something for my Church out of the money you gave me. I bought a fair-linen cloth for the Altar and it was used at the first service on Christmas Day; and I thought, in sadness, that the dear Christ was better sheltered in the stable at Bethlehem nineteen hundred and fifteen years ago than in my poor church all in mourning from the War and its consequences, with the rain weeping through the roof and the shattered windows."

After this comes a perfectly natural picture of French peasant life.

"There was held yesterday evening a council of the women of the village. They beg me to thank you for the tools sent from America. They beg me also to ask if you cannot send them a rooster and two hens of American stock (for they have great confidence in the American spirit and the chicken coops are empty) and I myself think that with at least two roosters and six hens we can succeed in repopulating the deserted poultry yards of the village. Pardon me,---I am sure you will, M. le Recteur---to impose upon you these little details; but being both of us disciples of the Good Master who troubled himself to feed His people in the desert, I have thought it right to make you partner of my griefs, feeling sure that you will do your utmost to aid our necessities."

Chickens of American stock we could not find, but Orpingtons went in their stead and the repopulation of the chicken coops was assured.

The Madame de R. mentioned in the above letter is the Countess St. Giles de Raymond, French by birth and Belgian by marriage. While the war was very young she became godmother to some four thousand refugees. Her husband was in the Army, her children were sent away to school to the Island of Jersey and she spent her entire time working for the needy. Either in an automobile or on a bicycle she went from place to place in her district. After a time her husband was sent on a diplomatic mission to far-away Persia and their young son went with the father. The Countess remained at her post, helped in her work by one secretary, and she gave, with the utmost devotion, her youth and her strength to her country.

Before I tell you a little bit about Rheims I want you to know how instantly France's work for the Mutilés began. You see we always knew what was being done, for the American Relief Clearing House was working with France and not for France.

First there were the blind, those for whom the beauty of the new day and the sight of their flag, most of all the sight of their beloved must be forever memories. If you had gone in 1915 to 130 Avenue Daumesnil you would have found the offices of a Society called "Les Amis des Soldats Aveugles." The object of this society was to come to the aid of soldiers who were blind because of injuries received in the war. It was to help them to help themselves by teaching them some craft in the exercise of which they might help in their own support and wherever possible assist them to establish or to keep a home for themselves.

This work was, of course, under the Minister of the Interior and the great National Hospital was at Quinze-Vingt. My husband who served on the Committee for the blind, went one day to this great hospital and when he came home to luncheon he could not eat a morsel nor could he speak. He was so saddened at what he had seen. The men were being healed and helped and taught but by 1918 there were over six thousand blind soldiers and that was terrible. You need neither speak nor think of compensations in connection with such blindness-there are none.

The head of this work for the blind soldiers of France was M. Vallery-Radot, the son-in-law of the great Pasteur. M. Vallery-Radot has written a life of Pasteur and that of Madame Pasteur. His father-in-law was his adoration and he loved always to speak of him. We were honoured by the friendship of M. Vallery-Radot and his wife and daughter.

Miss Winifred Holt had come from America to found a "Lighthouse" in Paris. It was to be purely American and for officers only. Its story has been told you many times as has the story of the courteous help given by French officials to Miss Holt. One Sunday afternoon we were asked to meet Miss Holt and a group of Frenchmen at M. Vallery-Radot's house in the rue St. Dominique. The little maid who answered the knocker's summons ushered us almost directly into the drawing room. The ceilings of this room were very high, the long windows covered with delicate lace so transparent that through it one could see the leaves on the trees in the enclosed garden. There were some beautiful portraits in the room; the one over the fireplace is a little girl portrait of Pasteur's daughter. Just on the opposite side of the room sat the little girl, grown tall. The firelight made the sheen on her gray satin skirt gay and her lovely white collar gave her toilet a look of elegance not often seen; she has a serene, beautiful face and although she and her daughter worked through all the years of the war for the bereaved and the blind, they kept that high look of serenity and sweetness and Madame Vallery-Radot is as beautiful as a moonlit night. There were many Americans in France helping in this work for the blind, notably Miss Getty, whose unselfish and most wonderful service can never be told in words. After a time the Grand Palais was given over to the blind and Dr. Louis Borsch gave his skill and his service to directing the work largely made possible through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Cromwell. The American Relief Clearing House sent full reports of all of this work to America and the reports were over the signature of Manuel Baudouin.

The work of reconstruction for the Mutilés was equally promptly and thoroughly undertaken. Schools of various sorts were opened in many parts of France, where arts and trades were taught and men were helped to begin again to do a man's work in the world.

The immediate question for this class of wounded soldiers was that of artificial legs and arms. Of course we were grateful to our friends in America who, at the very first, consigned great cases of these articles to Dr. Watson for his distribution. They were all distributed, all used; but it was gruesome work opening boxes filled with linen and clothing and finding arms and legs laid away in the interstices, especially when we were seeing poor maimed, crippled lads every hour of the day.

My husband was on a Committee which on one occasion met in M. Hanotaux's house. Cardinal Amette's official representative was present and a number of distinguished officials. Any committee, even much less notable than this one, would have looked distinguished in M. Hanotaux's drawing room. The question of the possibility of adjusting supply to demand was being discussed. M. Colin was telling why he could not meet the emergency when a stranger entered the room, bowed most politely and quietly took his seat. Every one supposed that he was known and invited; the bow was returned and the discussion went on. At the first definite pause, the stranger arose, announced his connection with an American house from which artificial limbs were to be obtained, quantity and quality all that could be desired; and then to prove his assertions, before his astonished audience knew what was happening he slipped off his trousers, showed them his own artificial leg, performed some magic stunts with it and made his appeal for a French clientèle.

Madame von Hemert, wife of the Dutch banker in Paris, M. Philippe von Hemert, was one of our American women who gave and raised large sums of money for buying the very superior quality of arms for men who could thus be restored to a measure of usefulness in an art or trade to which they had already served an apprenticeship.

Once she sent this note with a gift of money:

"I saw a boy with light curly hair, a boy about twenty years old on the Avenue de l'Alma on Friday. He had lost both legs. I stood and cried and some little boys who were playing in the street lined up and saluted him. It is too, too sad. 1 must just help all I can."

ANNA E. VON HEMERT.

Once the. Clearing House had a great case of sample shoes from America. The shoes were all used by mutilated men.

We have a letter sent from 5 Rond-Point Bugeaud on the ninth of November, 1914. The letter is signed by the great French philosopher Emile Boutroux. Some of you have met him either in France or America; some of you know his wife who writes English very well. Emile Boutroux is almost beyond the age when philosophy is anything but,---well, but philosophy. However he and Madame Boutroux are very gentle and kind and at S Rond Point Bugeaud they were the moving spirits in the hospital sheltered in "Fondation Thiers". They knew that a gay spirit is the best of medicines so they had a group of players come from the Comédie Française to entertain the wounded in their hospital. They asked my husband to bring some of the wounded from the American Ambulance that they might share in the gaiety. They said Mrs. Herrick would come and Mr. Roosevelt's daughter, Mrs. Derby, would come and the soldiers would love it all. The latter was signed "Emile Boutroux de l'Académie Française".

The organist from Rheims is playing for us this afternoon at Mr. Carroll's house. Some great singers are to be there too. They are all going to the Front tomorrow to sing in hospitals and camps but just for this hour they are content to be in a firelit room and we are happy to be with them. How many times during these years were wonderful things planned in Mrs. Carroll's drawing-room and what charming friends we met there. There was Fournies-Sarlovez, tall, white-haired,---the great artist. It was at Mrs. Carroll's that he gave me a little colored copy of the triptych that he painted during the war. Amongst the figures thereon portrayed were those of both men and women of his own family. The central panel represents the Priest saying Mass in the open field; the left panel is Rheims burning, nuns. and nurses caring for the wounded and at the right amidst wreck and ruin, march those who bear the dead; before them lifted high---the Crucifix. Fournies-Sarlovez is dead and Manuel Baudouin is dead and the great mural painter once the presiding genius of the Beaux Arts, Alfred Roll, is dead. M. Roll once said to us,

"We who have lived through the War can never really paint its picture. Our agony is too great."

He was very fine, M. Roll, of lofty stature and gentle mien and an almost transparent beauty of countenance.

It was at Mr. Carroll's house that we met the man said to be the head of the Dominicans in France, heard his magic voice and ate the salad which he prepared with rare skill. It was there that we saw in 1914 a boy about nineteen years of age, who told us how he escaped with just one other boy from a cellar where twenty-five men, women and children were killed. So many stories followed that one that I forget the place where this happened, but I do not forget the boy or the old uncle in the workman's blouse who stood with his hand on the boy's shoulder while the story went on. The boy said the people were just on the street in their village just as any of us might be on any common day and suddenly there were fierce shoutings and torches of flame and an army,---people running and seeking shelter. Somehow two boys escaped and the destroyer passed on. The boy told it all dully enough; only his hands and eyes twitched.

You remember that our Belgian co-worker, the Countess Renée de Chérisey, lived on the rue de Grenelle within a short walk of many of the wonderful old buildings of Paris. It is just in this quarter that Mr. and Mrs. Charles Prince live, on the rue de Grenelle at 113. That is to say, they have an apartment there; their real home being on an island off the Brittany coast. America owes them both much honour for they brought much honour to her dear name. Few Americans have a larger or more cosmopolitan circle of friends than they. Mrs. Prince, linguist and writer, is also a lovely woman. She has been one of the very foremost amongst those who have served the rapatriés. As for Mr. Prince, all the Maison de la Presse knows his achievements for America in France. He told us a funny story of how one evening he was at the Hotel Meurice with his brother Dr. Morton Prince arranging some personal affairs, when suddenly there were sounds of cannon and a vigorous ringing of the telephone bell. He answered it and his wife's voice called:

"Charlie! Charlie! is this you?"

"Yes, Helen, yes. Anything wanted?"

"Yes, oh yes. Don't come home! Don't think of it. I never, never will forgive you if you do come---if you even try to come."

He dropped the phone, grabbed his hat and stick and of course started for home. It was absolutely black, pitch black out of doors, only cannons booming and bombs falling, but he went on.

The bombs seemed to be falling near his home---and Helen was there. Across the Place de la Concorde, his stick stretched out in front of him, he walked his perilous way. Suddenly he bumped into some one who fell and as he fell swore a round volley of good American swears. Mr. Prince helped the American to his feet and before he could utter more than a few words of apology he was clasped around the neck himself and heard a voice say:

"Oh! never mind me; never mind me. Thank God you speak English. I'm an American football player."

Mr. Prince's nephew, Norman Prince, is amongst our dead in France and he was amongst the first of our men to die. "Helen" was safe although this night of which I write was the night when the Ministry of War was so terribly damaged and when we sat for hours in our house with wet towels over our faces, the air about us thick with pungent dust. That night our leaded windows bowed outward and the candlesticks rocked to and fro on the shelf above the fire-place.

It was at the Embassy one winter's afternoon and in the great hall that his Excellency and Mrs. Sharp stood to receive a most unusual group of guests, the little orphaned children who are cared for by the "Société des Artistes", children who are being trained from their earliest days for the work of beautifying or of interpreting the beauty of their country. They came trooping up the stairs accompanied by the friends who make their world and their environment possible. Graceful little girls, three at a time like a garland of flowers hands joined, they made their curtsy and passed on. They were simply dressed in black and white cotton frocks, snoods of black velvet ribbon in their shining hair, white knitted stockings (which they make themselves) and little black sandals. Then the boys came, and they too bowed low and kissed Mrs. Sharp's hand and last of all came a very tiny girl and boy carrying between them a huge bunch of violets which they gravely presented to Mrs. Sharp. The guests and Mrs. Sharp's own children enjoyed it all as much as the orphans. Then there was a movie and cakes and ice cream and the orphans sang "The Star Spangled Banner" and one or two old southern songs.

Madame Rachel Boyer of the Comédie Française and fairy god-mother to these children was there and Madame Poilpot. Perhaps you do not know Madame Poilpot; she is blind and a widow but she is none the less President of the Society for "Des Orphelinats des Arts". If she gives you the entree to her salon you will recognize her place in the artistic world of France's singers and players. They take their first applause from her hands and to hear them with her is a treat indeed. Her husband, Theodore Poilpot, was an "artiste-peintre'. He won many honors civil and military and he was decorated with the Médaille Militaire in 1870. Later he became President-General of the society "Médaille Militaire".

Since American soldiers have been in France we are all quite naturally interested in the Honors that France gives to soldiers. The "Médaille Militaire" was instituted in January, on the twenty-second day of that month, in 1852, by the Prince-President, afterwards Napoleon III. The honor was destined for Generals and for the private soldier and was given for long service or for acts of exceptional courage. With the honor was an annual gift of one hundred francs.

With the democratic ideas prevailing in the French army it is fitting that the highest in command and the simple soldier should alike consider this decoration their greatest honor. General Joffre always wears that one medal. During the war of 1870 several women performing miracles of service were decorated with this medal on the field of battle. Mademoiselle Weick and Madame Renon are the only two living women who possess The Médaille Militaire.

The Society has sometimes been permitted to make a gift of a brooch in the centre of which is the Médaille Militaire.

The Society of the Médaille Militaire" had its part in the work for soldiers' orphans and the following letter speaks again of France's appreciation of America's help:

"The Rev'd Dr. Watson is a great friend of France. We would wish to make our appreciation known to his compatriots. His friendship is deeply appreciated by those who know him here and to my own gratitude for his service to France I would add that of all those who wear the "Médaille Militaire". This testimony would be incomplete if I did not, at its close, recall to your memory the fact that the first American who has received the Médaille Militaire is the aviator, Mr. Norman Prince. He voluntarily gave his life to France and it is with the most profound respect that we salute, here, this Comrade of the first hour."

Le Président Général
TERNAUX-COMPANS.

"Ternaux-Compans"! You are asking what he represents in France. Well, he was once Chargé d'Affaires in Russia. His life has been such that fourteen decorations have come to him from various countries. He is a soldier, a scholar and a gentleman of France. He has worked heroically through this War and his wife deserves her country's best of honor. She had the supervision of many hospitals in the neighbourhood of Châlons and was never far from a post of grave danger.

The American Relief Clearing House sometimes helped her with supplies, sometimes L'Ouvroir de l'Eglise Américaine would answer some special need for her hospitals, such for instance as making pillow slips, dressing gowns or pyjamas.

The amazing thing about these women of France was with what quiet fidelity they kept at their chosen tasks. 1914 had found Madame Ternaux-Compans at work for la Patrie and 1918 found her still working and giving. One of her daughters, Madame Jean Balsan, worked amongst the orphans at Châteauroux and we used to send her clothes and shoes for the children. Another daughter, Madame Hermite, who is a musician, rendered a very special service to France. Germany, you remember, made the best clinical thermometers in the world; Germany made dollies' eyes and dollies' hands and Germany also was the great engraver of music. There was need for skilled workers in the engraving of music in France.

Madame Hermite drew about her a small group of men and women and they in turn opened a workroom to a group of intelligent French girls and began to educate them in the art of engraving music. The girls were poor, needing the luncheon ticket and the few francs that accompanied it each day. Perhaps you will tell me that this has nothing to do with War. Not one of the girls employed in this new and exacting industry but was hurt or impoverished by the War. The whole social fabric is so interwoven that those who have one sort of training and intelligence to add to its weaving must, of necessity, share with those who have another sort. It is one of the joys of life that this is a truth of life.

"L'Ecole de Gravure de Musique" was first opened by the sanction and under the protection of 'Monsieur le Ministre des Beaux Arts'. The school was opened on March 1st, 1916, under the presidency of M. Vincent d'Indy and was located at 112 Boulevard Malsherbes.

1e. "Enlever a l'Allemagne le monopole de la gravure de musique qu'elle détenait presque exclusivement jusqu'ici. Pour cela, former de parfaites graveuses françaises."

After stating the personal and educational requirements of the girls who could be trained for this work, the appeal for the school ends with these lines:

"Il s'agit ici d'aider à la diffusion et presqu'à la création à PARIS d'un des meilleurs métiers qui puisse être donné à la femme. Il s'agit surtout de libérer l'art musical français de l'humiliante dépendance matérielle qu'il ne doit plus subir."(34)

Madame Hermite made this school her special charge.

Throughout France, wherever new needs arose, there were women of education and refinement ready to meet the emergency. Of this number was the Marquise de Gontaut-Saint-Blancard who managed her farms that the hungry might be fed and refugees sheltered; and of them, too, was the Countess de Cosse-Brisac whose tapestries and treasures were exchanged for bread and shelter for children.

French fashions are much quoted and copied in America, more especially the eccentric things made for the passing stranger or the woman who likes to be conspicuous, but never worn by a French gentlewoman. M. Worth's name is one with which writers of fashion articles conjure. He gave his son, M. Jacques Worth, to France in this War and he had his own hospital and supported it.

Madame Paquin!! Well, if that name is embroidered on your frock or coat your body will be fitly clad and your soul at peace. Madame Paquin's workrooms in 1914 were filled with soldiers' supplies and her own service on committees, including that of "The Fatherless Children of France," was constant and effective. At one time she asked my husband for a supply of pamphlets containing an article which he had written (one of many he wrote and published for France's better understanding of America). He sent her about five hundred copies although she could have used several thousand. Shortly after this she sent him two hundred francs with which to cover the cost. He could not accept the money; he did not want to return it with just a note.

It was my pleasant privilege to see Madame Paquin and tell her that a generous American friend provided the money which made these pamphlets a gift to any one who could and would distribute them in France. Madame Paquin is beautiful, you know, and her plain black velvet dress with its delicate white collar seemed the loveliest thing she could have chosen to wear. When I told her about our American friend she allowed me to give her back the money and said:

"How good you are to make possible that I should have another gift for my favorite charity and this time I will give it with your kind permission, in America's name, to . . . . . . crèche."

You have had a glimpse before now of the house of the Duc de Vendôme, who lives on the rue Borghese in Neuilly. Having met the Duchesse you would, if it were New Year's Day, go and sign their Register, but this particular time you may step on your magic carpet and come into the pleasant house. Don't you like a magic carpet? I could not get on without mine and if you have lost yours just come with me on mine. The Duc and the Duchesse have worked hard throughout the War. You do not need to be reminded that the Duc is the uncle of Emperor Carl of Austria and that the Duchesse is the sister of King Albert of Belgium. Think of the agony of mind and of the separations that this war has brought to them. They are such dear people, gentle, genuine and sincere. They came to be our personal friends and they will not mind my telling you something about them, for however democratic we are in forms of government we never lose interest in those who either by inheritance or election are amongst the rulers of the earth.

The house in the rue Borghese is set in a garden and is long and low, just two stories high, built of grey stone. The salons on the first floor look out upon the gardens and are lovely rooms furnished in soft neutral tints; and everywhere, where they can be put, are vases filled with flowers. The Duc is a man of literary tastes as his library testifies; interested in all sorts of questions, civic and religious, and a delightful host whether one is a guest on a formal occasion or just en famille.

The Duchesse is greatly beloved. She is not unlike King Albert in appearance and she is so sincerely kind and so tactful that it is a pleasure to be with her. She, too, has most discriminating taste in books and pictures and is herself an artist. Her own charming rooms look down on the garden and its flower-bordered walks and her walls are hung with paintings and etchings. All during the War one the apartments in her house was used for a workroom The furniture was taken away, the walls were covered over, shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling and down the middle of the room was a long, plain table. Her chaplain was forever at work for her hospitals, amongst the needy, or in this workroom, with one or more of the dames d'honneur engaged in arranging, packing or shipping supplies. You permit me to diverge for just a moment from this narrative to speak of Mademoiselle de Teincey who was one of the ladies of this household. She was also head nurse at a hospital and another one of her charities was that of visiting the contagious ward at l'Hôpital Beaujon. We used to save sweets, if we had any, and also to buy fruit and wine for her to take to this ward on her weekly visits. This was the special task of a little group of French women, no one else but the nurses being permitted to enter this ward. Well, by and by America's boys had need of care in that same ward. Mademoiselle de Teincey carried our gifts to them and big bundles of English and American magazines.

During all this time her highness worked as hard as any one could work. The Princesse Marie Louise d'Orléans was always with her mother until her marriage to Philippe de Bourbon, Prince des Deux Siciles, and now she lives in Spain and has a little baby son. Geneviève, Princesse d'Orléans was just fifteen when we first knew her; pretty, shy and very charming, she had her own personal charities at which she really worked and for which she was responsible. Some of our American soldiers who had their holidays at Aix-les-Bains have seen the little Princesse there with her mother and they will tell you that she is lovely. I write these details about King Albert's sister for you because I know that you will love to read about a real woman who is fine and unselfish, gifted and generous, a woman who is entrusted with many gifts and privileges and understands perfectly the difficult and most gracious task of sharing as well as of giving.

And now before we turn to America and the end of our story, shall we visualize for ourselves for just one moment one of the sources of France's power of endurance,---France that is so grave, so brave, so gay, France, the land where little things as well as great keep beauty and charm ever new?

You are at Chartres, at the portal of the great Cathedral built in honour of the Virgin, built in the eleventh century which was one of Time's great epochs.

Come quickly through the portal and sit just here with me. At first you will see nothing in the dusk, but by and by exquisite glass and carved stone begin to take form and then you forget it all except one spot, the Chapel where one kneels to pray for La Patrie.

The Chapel's Altar is lit with tapers; they twinkle and shine about it and every worshipper who comes sets another little flame glowing in the dusk. Now and again the Priest comes and says a prayer but the candles burn without ceasing and they shine on an endless procession, men and women, men young and old, soldiers, sailors and men of all classes, women in black with white caps from which float long white streamers, or women veiled in black; and they all kneel and pray for France, and the flame of undying Faith is alight in their souls for they take God at His Word and "Ask", knowing that without Faith their nation would have perished.

America
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