CLARGES STREET, June 2nd, 1915.

MY DEAR BESSIE,

Is not Miss Wickersham perfectly charming? I never saw her before, and I lunched there today and found her unusually lovely. How gracious and good-looking she is!

The house was delightful, cool and sweet, and there was an atmosphere of waiting about it, as though the master were waiting to hear the news of some great victory that his shells have helped to bring about, or possibly even waiting for his wife to return from her nursing of the wounded. Of course they spoke of you with the warmest regard and admiration. You seem to have left the same impression with them that they made upon you. Mrs. Graham Murray was there for luncheon. She has charge of the bureau of inquiry for the wounded and missing at the Red Cross, and says that her heart is wrung from morning till night. I never heard anything more appalling and in a way more beautiful than her story of the sinking of the Lusitania. One of her friends, a woman, was among the saved. This lady and three others were clinging to an empty box in the sea. They all had on their life-preservers, and one or two of them could swim a little. Among them was Miss Dorothy Braithwaite, of Canada, coming to Lady Drummond here in London. Both of Miss Braithwaite's sisters had been widowed on the same day, their husbands being killed in action, and when Miss Braithwaite heard of this she sailed immediately to come to her young widowed sisters.

She was a beautiful girl, not more than twenty, and very frail. When the seas broke over the box, all four of them were obliged to let go and try blindly to find it again when they could. At length Miss Braithwaite grew paler and paler and finally the girl said, "I am afraid I cannot hold on much longer. Please don't any one help me, else we will all be lost." Her friend said that she smiled quite calmly, and they all four said a little prayer together, and the girl said, "Tell Lady Drummond that I died bravely and did not suffer, and cable the same to my mother." Then she let go. Her friend said that a few moments afterwards she saw the lovely little body float past her, and that Miss Braithwaite lay with both her hands peacefully clasped upon her breast like a lily on the water.

I wish this could be told just as I heard it. It would not take many more incidents like this to make us go into the war.

I saw Mr. Page. He was very agreeable, and he spoke of you. I told him you were doing some splendid work at home, and he said, "Of course she would, we expect it of her." I am now going down to Windsor to stay the night with Bridget, coming up to-morrow to go to see the Pages in the afternoon and dine at Sir Robert's. On Friday I shall go down to see Lady Northcliffe, at Guildford, where she is nursing wounded soldiers, and will write you of that experience.

Last night I went with Mr. Lane to the first night of "Armageddon," a new play by Stephen Phillips. It opened in Hell, then flashed on to Rheims, where the invading host were asphyxiated by French shells, then into a room in a château which was being devastated by the Germans. There were en suite an English garden, a scene in Berlin, and a scene in Cologne, and the play ended up in Hell.

I am going to arrange to stay a day with Lady Hadfield en route for Paris at her Field Hospital in Boulogne.

Mother writes that Madame de S. is desolate and, as you foresaw, will not speak of her son. Madame de Bresson is with her, I believe. Only two more women for whom the future is absolutely black and desperate. I dare not presage what is before us Americans, whether or not we shall be plunged into this dreadful war and thereafter be decidedly more of a nation than ever, or whether we are to remain at peace. At all events I am taking advantage of one of the secretaries from the Embassy to send my letters now, and I hope you will take every possible means of communicating with me. Everybody here to whom I have spoken seems eager to have America join the war, and some of them think it will materially shorten this terrible struggle. If this is true, I hope we will come in. And there will be undoubtedly a great spiritual benefit to us from it, even if we have to drain the bitter cup that these people are draining here. . .

LONDON, June 3rd, 1915.

DEAR VIOLET,

I cannot tell you how I miss you all. It would not be possible to say how I regret that we do not all live in the same country. Indeed, when I think about it, I do not want to live anywhere, for it is all too heart-rending and too nerve-racking---these separations and these adjustments of life without a compass. It is very interesting, however, and I suppose that that is something when you think of the women on far-off farms who from sunrise to sunset see nothing but cows and the incomings and outgoings of the hired men-not to speak of their husbands! . . . 

Certainly everybody is not meant for marriage. Here is Countess -----, for instance, happy for the first time in her life, nursing wounded in a military hospital, whilst in order to keep her husband peaceful and satisfied, she has imported a beautiful cousin from the United States! . . . 

I cannot tell you how I love this beautiful city. Every time I come back to it it has new charm. Here in this very street in 1891, I sat in one of these impersonal rooms with Adèle, idly turning over the leaves of a book of Rossetti's poems. I had never read Rossetti---never. He was new to me. She introduced me to him. I remember so distinctly even the day and how beautiful Adèle was, and how ardently interested. She said to me, "Why don't you write something here?" And on the fly-leaf of that book 1 wrote a piece of verse which I sent to Scribner's Magazine. It was, in short, the first thing of mine ever published. And you remember how I have told you that it was received with interest.

London charmed me then, and down this selfsame street at night-time would come that man with his remarkable voice singing:

I was young then and full of ambition and interest, and even then, my dear, how singularly alone I was. With no one to direct me or guide me, or command me, and only the influence of chance acquaintances upon me.

My next keen recollection is when I came here at one melancholy Christmas time, after my brother's death, and learned by cable from America that every cent of money I had then in the world had gone. And I knew then from henceforth that I had to face life at first hand. I bore that here alone, in a London fog, where later the sun rose up like a great big orange lantern over St. James's Park.

Then again I remembered London when in a little room under the eaves I stayed here for a few days with the MS. of my first novel in my trunk. I remember the excitement of those times, going from one publisher to another, and that feeling of oneness with the mass, and I realised what Dickens meant when in "Bleak House" the poor clerk said to Joe, the street sweeper, "I am as poor as you are, Joe, and I can't give you anything, my lad," for I had nothing then, and you can't have less than that!

It was Christmas time. Ladysmith was besieged, and all London was plunged in the profoundest gloom. I remember the crowds around the War Office. It was war time then, and such a fly speck on the page of history compared to now.

I never shall forget my excitement in selling that first book, and how in tune I felt with the whole world of English writers; unknown and unimportant as I was, I felt so close to all those who had written English in this home of English letters, and London spoke to me then in every street, in every park, in all its great, mysterious charm.

I won't return to my coming here last year in August, before England went to war, because you know too well all it meant to me then, and here I am once more.

I am sure it will amuse you to know that my maid, in the kindness of her heart, unpacked my Victor and installed it here, so that when I am very lonely I can play the tunes I like to hear; but some of them I cannot play, for they make me sad. I do hope with all my heart, dearest girl, that you will like the things I have chosen. Of course I have seen some beautiful antiquities, but I hardly dared send them from here; besides, I have no money to do so.

When you get this letter you will probably be still awaiting the German response to the American Note, driving around the beautiful country and leading your serene and lovely life. Do not forget me, that is, remember something of me that you can remember with pleasure, and try not to dwell upon my unsatisfactoriness and all my shortcomings. It makes too long a story.

CLARGES STREET, June 4th, 1915.

MY DEAR,

When I am at home with you all, seeing the kind of lives you lead, and the immunity that you all have from everything that is really trying and difficult and, I might almost say, serious, I realise then as I do now a certain futility in entering into discussions and in trying to solve moral, psychological and sentimental problems. Nevertheless, these problems are all there in human hearts. They are things that cause the deepest anguish, they are also the things that when properly met, cause souls to rise to their greatest heights. If it is possible for you to do so, I wish you would try to put yourself for a moment in my place. Those eight days of loneliness on board ship facing what the course of other events must prove to be a possible danger at least, returning here to a country where the preceding months have added daily to its anguish, to its grave questions, and looking forward to grappling with new and old problems has made me more grave and more serious in my point of view than I have ever been before.

One thing is certain: I am not willing to go on for the rest of my existence in the constant society of myself, unless I can make that society at least agreeable and at least have it under my control.

I went the other night to stay in Windsor Forest with Bridget. There she has been ever since the beginning of the war, just with her little children and her painting and her Belgian refugees. She was sweet and lovely, and I enjoyed supper in her little house, with the children at another tiny table, and Lady K. and two beautiful English girls who adore their mother, so that it was the prettiest thing I ever saw. It gave you a perfect glow of happiness to see such love between mother and daughters. Bridget has great talent. We took a motor after dinner and took Lady K. home and Bridget drove. And there we got stuck in a country village in the dead of night with a whole regiment of Welsh soldiers round us. Even the police had all they could do to keep the men from hanging on to our car and paying us compliments! We finally made a raid upon a garage and got patched up and went plunking along through deserted roads home ....

CLARGES STREET, June 5th, 1915.

DEAREST BELLE,

You will think it strange that I have lingered on here for a week, and yet, business aside, I am reluctant to go over and take up my life. It is not a question of indecision this time, it is lingering on a threshold, always a sympathetic one, and which now I feel I leave for an indefinite period to go into what is both known and unknown. Well, I must go, and I leave to-morrow on what is now a twelve-hours' trans-Channel journey, for instead of seven hours to Paris it is twelve, and even that is doing pretty well. There is an enormous lot of red tape about passports, but nothing like so much as there was, nor with the luggage either, for that matter, and the boats run regularly twice a day.

Each day I grow gladder and gladder so far of this lonely experience and of all it has meant to me, psychologically, mentally, and morally. I can see how in every way I needed it, and that is a great deal. I remember a very beautiful verse in the Bible which says: "In patience possess ye your souls:" and I have often thought that the possession of one's soul was a very wonderful thing and a very necessary one. Of course, it was probably in order to do this that in the days of old saints used to go off for periods into the wilderness alone. It is not a very agreeable thing, this coming face to face with one's own personality, as we all have to do from time to time. I suppose it is salutary, and therefore good, and for many of us absolutely indispensable.

Last night I went to the English version of "Watch your Step." The thing that interested me, for the show was nothing at all, was the officers and soldiers in their uniforms, crowds of them. It was very touching to me to see these young men absorbed and amused by this light vaudeville affair. I do not know how many of them had been to the front or were going or what they knew of it, but you would have thought that England was only playing at war to have seen their careless expressions and their gaiety. I sat scarcely able to laugh at the comedy on the stage. I could hardly look at their khaki and at their accoutrements without seeing them as they were carried in on a hospital stretcher, or taken off in the ambulance. Of course having been a nurse does not make me so abnormal that I cannot also think of the glorious part of it, but it is very hard in these days of active fighting to reconcile a lot of soldiers at a vaudeville show, laughing and splitting their sides, with what we know of war across the Channel.

The house was so crowded that I had the last seat. All the music halls are going well, I think. Last night we had another Zeppelin raid, and my hairdresser says she was up all night and out in the streets in her night-dress, and part of the street she lives in was destroyed by fire. Now this is not told in the papers. London does not know and the German spies here are being kept in ignorance. Several airships have been over the town, or rather the distant quarters, of the town, within the last few days.

I know you will be interested to hear that in the last few days I have probably placed my war letters with John Lane. It seems "Big Tremaine" sold fairly well here---considering the times, very well---so that is better news than I had before about it.

After the play last night I walked home at twelve o'clock from Leicester Square to my lodgings quite alone through these dimly-lit streets, and when I came in I sat here smoking and thinking until long after one, and in the interval I wrote the enclosed. What do you think of it?

The shops are full of war paraphernalia. How they make your heart twist, to think where those military beds will lie and how all those objects gotten up with so much science, taste, and care will be strewn on foreign fields, and if they do come home again what marks they will bear!

There is not one thing about the whole ensemble that is not picturesque, romantic, and with elements of beauty in it. Uniforms, accoutrements, all that goes with the big military game has so much colour. And the Scotch soldiers in their plaids, you cannot think how stunning they are, and too picturesque to be true. You cannot believe your eyes when you see these very things before your face suggestive of song and story and fiction, and romance, and it is almost impossible to believe that any of it has anything to do with the grim, stern horror of blood and smoke and death.

PARIS, June 7th, 1915.

I must tell you about an agreeable interview with John Lane, the celebrated publisher. I went to see him in his little old-time office in Vigo Street. It is hard to believe that such things exist unchanged, in these modern days, in the heart of a big city. There, in the room where he received me, the Saturday Review was born and lived for very many years. There, in the same room, Macaulay wrote part of the History of England. I struck a knocker instead of pushing an electric bell as I entered. . . . I had given Mr. Lane my War Letters to read, and I believe one of his readers was favourable: he hadn't heard from the other one. I imagine, though Mr. Lane did not tell me so, that the first criticism was fair.

You have often accused me of being vain, and it will amuse you vastly to imagine the blow when, after gazing at me for a few minutes, John Lane, one of the most important publishers in the world, asked me in his gentle voice: "Did you ever write anything before?" Even in that moment of fallen pride, I could not help thinking what a gleam of humour would come to your eyes if you could have seen me taken down like that. I did not tell him that I had written twenty books and done not badly at the job in a financial way for fourteen years! It turned out that he thought Bessie Le Roux was "Marie Van Vorst" and that it was a nom de guerre, and that she had married a French writer, and that I was just an unknown sister who had written a few letters home during the war! . . . I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Mr. Lane, who was charming.

DEAR MARY,

I came away from London at half-past eight on Sunday morning to attempt my fifth Channel crossing since the war began, and I came alone, leaving my maid to go down to Gloucester to see her people. The boat was crowded with soldiers and officers.

England seemed far more serious and awake than when I left, and to appreciate the situation to the fullest, as far as I could see. Of course they asked themselves and me every minute what America was going to do, and one was pretty safe in feeling that the first question a person would put to you when they met you was just that: "What is America going to do?" I'll be switched if I could tell them or make any kind of a satisfactory answer. It is all too dulling and strange, and ever since I have touched the shores here, I seem to feel with the utmost intensity the presence of those struggling, contending masses all along those far-flung lines, east and west. The whole world seems a hecatomb, a honey-comb of destruction.

I don't know what news you have of the Zeppelin raids on London, but they were serious to the extent of destroying several houses and some lives. Even the latest vanity bag has a changed aspect now, and in it are sold little "tampons" of wadding, chemically prepared to clap over the mouth as a preventive against the fumes. You can get all kinds of war insurances and risk insurances. I don't doubt that you could buy an insurance against marriage or a temptation to it, or anything you liked! They say that when the war is over polygamy will be winked at; so there will be a chance for every one. I dare say that a lot of forlorn spinsters will feel that even war has its compensations!

DEAREST BELLE,

I left London reluctantly. My week there, in those desolate lodgings, interested me, although I was so lonely that it weighed upon me like a cloud. Here, on arriving, the contrast was great between the shore I left and the shore I found. The motor ambulances at Boulogne were thick---rows and rows of them were lined up along the railroad quays, and many military motors, just driven down from the front, were covered with the dust of the road. I had thought of going to Lady Hadfield's base hospital at Boulogne, but decided to come straight through to Paris, which I did. I arrived at 7 o'clock, to be met by no one, as the train was an hour and a half too early, and I got all my luggage through alone, took a Gare du Nord omnibus, and piled on my cases with the wool and grape-fruit and the Victrola I bought myself in New York. Even if everybody goes to war, and stocks go down, and nobody buys my stories, I can sit in an attic room and listen to the old tunes!

I am sitting here in my study this afternoon, and in front of me is the big war map, where unfortunately the line does not seem to have been pushed back as far as we want it; and I really think that it is the first peaceful moment I have had since I arrived . . . . I am going to change this room, and so I look around upon it now with affection. The memories of this little study have made it peculiarly dear to me and peculiarly sacred, and I hate to give it up. Nevertheless, perhaps something more meaningful will make the new study dearer yet. I hope so. Here I wrote "Fairfax and His Pride," which I still think my best novel, without any doubt. Here I wrote the most effective part of "The Successful Wife," which I think will some day be reprinted and sold. Here I wrote my "River" articles---every one of them, with one exception. (I only mention the more important things.) Out of this window, how often you and I have watched the illuminations for the Fourteenth of July, in the heat of summer; and how often heard the ringing of the old clock, marking happy hours; and how often seen the moon rise over the opposite roofs! And now the Place below is dark at night and the lamps, like muted violins, are softened by their heavy iron shades.

I think with especial pleasure of the writing of "Big Tremaine" here, and the beginning of "Mary Moreland"---an entire short story, written one January, when, as usual, I was alone. That was a very interesting month---one of the most delightful I ever spent in my life---alone as I was; and I shall always look back upon it with peculiar pleasure. I read Dante, with Miss Casabianca, for the first time in my life; and I wrote a great deal of "Tremaine." There was a charm in those undisturbed days and a mental utility; and later in the spring, under the strongest inspiration for work I have ever had in my life ---and by far the most delightful---I wrote the close of "Big Tremaine," the most successful book I ever wrote.

Perhaps it will not bore you to read these reminiscences. I have always wanted to linger over them and bring them agreeably forth; and I am sure your eye will fall kindly upon them and that you will read them with sympathy.

I do not want to change my study, nor even write this letter, without marking its tribute to you. I think you will understand the dedication of "Mary Moreland"; and also that you realise that I can never forget your entrance and advent here, as you used to come, day after day, evening after evening, expected and unexpected, and open the study door and disturb my work; and cross the Place, expected and unexpected, turning the corner of the Rue de Bourgogne and waving up to me a white-gloved hand. How many times I have stood here and watched you come and watched you go, in the yellow motor that now is driving to and fro in Paris with a Red Cross flag flying from it, at the behest of the French Government! The motor always came too soon then, whenever it came; and I can see now how you used to put up the curtain of the back window and wave to me again. It would not be fair not to say what an impulse your friendship and companionship gave during all those months to all I did and was. I do not dwell upon my debt to you, for I think you must know . . . . Now, in returning to this almost deserted city, where the boulevards are like country streets, where cabs and taxis are sparse in comparison with the crowded old days; where, in spite of courage and cheer, the place seems sad and changed---here there is no one to come and either inspire or disturb. So why not, since any change is good, they say---why not change the study?

DEAR VIOLET,

The night I came home, I sent my luggage to the house by the bus and took a taxi and came along later. Everything was in apple-pie order; I can't tell you how sweet it all looked.

Among my ornaments, here and there, were scattered Belle and Mollie's things from the Hotel du Rhin, and it gave me pleasure to see them there. I want to mention especially the beauty and grace of the flowers everywhere---sweet peas and a frail, delicate little white flower, a sort of meadowsweet, very ethereal and lovely, and all arranged with great taste and charm. They were wonderfully appealing to me, for some reason or other, after that long strain of the sea and the return these frail, beautiful things, which although speechless, were living. I shall remember them always.

Word met me here that I was not to go to my mother, as she was too tired to see me at that time of night; and as you can imagine, I could not go to bed, or even remain at rest. So I took a taxi and drove immediately to Madame de S. Many times, when I have gone there, I have driven up just behind the taxi of Henry Dadvisard and seen him spring out and go in, gaily, quickly, with the energy and vitality which characterised him, in his bright uniform of the Cuirassiers, with his high boots and jingling spurs. How often have I seen him there! He seemed an integral part of the place. Now I realised that he would never come there any more---never---and that all he meant of strength and manly courage and life was gone for ever. Wasted? Spilled? Lost? Dispersed? Who can say? Qui vive? Oh, how devoutly I pray that we may be able to answer: "La France---quand même"!  . . . . For some reason or other, I was not loth to go in, because I know my friend so well, her courage and her great soul and her great heart; but it was with very deep feeling that I mounted those stairs, my dear---past the clock marking the eternal hours, the clock that on that first of August night had marked his coming and whose sightless face had seen him go out of the door for ever. Over and over again, I have mounted those stairs, Mme. de S. between Henry and myself, going up slowly, leaning on him---all three of us gaily talking, as we went to the salon after dinner. From henceforth she goes up them and on into life more completely alone than ever.

I found her sitting, as I have found her sitting countless times, in the dimly lighted room, her knitting in her hands, and close to her knee the Vicomtesse de Bresson, pale as death, in her deep widow's weeds, her eyes full of unshed tears, knitting too for the soldiers . . . . Well, I shall never forget it. Both women were perfectly quiet and perfectly controlled, and we sat talking together about general things for an hour and no personalities were mentioned; but Mme- de Bresson's face was a tragedy.

The Vicomte de Bresson, though a brilliant soldier, hated war. He was an eminently peaceful man, born and bred to the soldier's profession, with a high commission which he had filled for years. He had resigned from the Army because he hated army life and war; but the moment that war was declared he volunteered and led a whole brigade. Advantage was taken, I believe, of his very unusual courage, because it seems that the orders given him were to perform a feat which he himself knew was impossible, and he said so. He. said to his superior officer: "On ne peut pas le faire. J'irai, mais la tâche est impossible." So he went, and he fell in the enemy's lines, and there lay two days, his soldiers being able to see the body from a little eminence. Can you vaguely think what that means to a woman, to know that her husband lay upon a battlefield, in the enemy's lines, and that his body, under the circumstances, could be a prey to whatever mutilations those horrible creatures chose to practice---for they do! That's all that Anna knows---that's all.

With Henry Dadvisard the case is quite different. Of his own accord, he left the cavalry and joined the infantry and went into the most dangerous part of the fight. Five captains had been killed successively, and he was the sixth. Mme. de S. says---and I assure you that the way she told it to me that night was one of the most beautiful things I ever heard in my life---she says that for days before his letters to her had been extraordinarily spiritual, and that she knew that little by little he was detaching himself from life. He seemed to have left it all, and its interests completely behind. It is a great grief to her to feel that he was surrounded, those last days, not by his own regiment, in which he was adored, but by comparative strangers. She believes that the day he went out, he knew he was going out to die. The ground was full of holes torn up by the shells, and the sortie which he had been ordered to make was full of the most dreadful danger. They say he led his charge brilliantly, springing like a flame from place to place, where he could find a foothold. Finally, he led his men on his hands and knees, as it was unsafe to stand erect; and he was kneeling on one knee, with his sword raised, when he was shot through the heart. He was picked up by his men and carried away, and she has the joy of knowing that he was buried in a private vault in some little cemetery. That joy is hers . . . . She told me that she was sitting in her bedroom quietly at her desk---she hadn't heard from him for several days---and the mail was brought to her. She had given him some envelopes in her own handwriting, addressed to herself and stamped, in which a slip was to be put if he were wounded---she never dared think of anything else---and one of these came to her. Well, it was a shock, but she tore it open, without dreaming what its news might be, and there she read the calm announcement from a priest that he was dead. She told me that it was days before she shed a tear, and she went on calmly about her affairs, telling his family, as she was the only one who knew anything about it. But she never speaks of him, and the fact that she could tell me all this was a very great tribute to our love and friendship. . . . I can't imagine him dead. He was one of the most vital and brilliant men I ever knew, and he was only one of many of the flower of France that have been cut down in this hellish harvest.

Yesterday I went into Rollet's to buy a few caramels to take to Mother, and that handsome young blonde girl that used to wait on us served me. I noticed that she was in black and I hardly dared to ask her, but she said her husband---and stopped, holding the box of caramels in her hand. She was perfectly beautiful as she stood there---one of the prettiest women, I think, I have ever seen---with that pallor that comes to those that have watched with the greatest grief, and those quiet, courageous, pathetic eyes of women who control their tears because they are the wives of soldiers. "Only twenty-seven, madame," she said, "and such a lovely boy." And then she said with the deepest feeling: "It simply means that I shall mourn all my life." She has a little son; so has Anna de Bresson; and the children must be a great consolation. You see it everywhere---the same, and yet eternally different, as each woman bears her peculiar burden.

I think I have written you all my news and up to the present everything that has impressed me.

I went up to the American Ambulance to-day (Tuesday). It is very beautiful and more luxurious and more like a picture-book than ever. Mrs. Munroe, who has stood on her feet, with I don't believe much respite, for ten months, has a varicose vein and is now doing her work lying in an invalid's chair. And Vera Arkwright is assistant to Dr. Blake and doing, I believe, magnificent work.

PARIS, June 15th, 1915.

DEAR BESSIE,

Coming down to-day from the Arc de Triomphe home, I counted 36 women in widows' weeds, and then stopped, as it made me too sad to go on. With two exceptions, they were all very young; several had little children with them, and most of them were pretty. One of the popular posters is la République sowing from her apron with a full hand into the furrows of the land. Many springs will have to come, and many summers, and many harvests, before France can fill her lists again.

The son of the concierge is back for seven days. He was injured, by a grenade explosion, in the liver; but in spite of that injury and his six weeks in the hospital, he is sun-browned and a man. He went away a puny little clerk from the "Samaritaine"; he has come back a strong, sturdy soldier. Those who come bark will have learnt much, will have broadened and deepened and strengthened; but the streets are full of mutilated and maimed men, of sightless and disfigured men, witnesses to the horrible sequence of war.

Lady K. told such a beautiful thing, out at Bridget's, that I forgot to tell you before. She said that it was bruited in England that there had been a miracle wrought when von Kluck's army so unexpectedly turned back from Paris, which without doubt they could have taken. She said that it was rumoured---and not only in the ranks, but among higher men---that there appeared in the sky a singular phenomenon, and that the German prisoners bore witness that a cavalcade like heavenly archers suddenly filled the heavens and shot down upon the Germans a rain of deadly darts. As you know, this was long before the use of any asphyxiating gas or turpinite; but on the field were found hundreds of Germans, stone dead, immovable, who had fallen without any apparent cause. You remember the armies of the old Scriptures that "the breath of the Lord withered away."

Lady K. said that the rumour that the woods of Compiègne were full of troops when the Germans made that famous retreat was absolutely untrue. There were no troops in the forest, and what they saw were, again, celestial soldiers.

No doubt these tales come always in the history of war. But, my dear, how beautiful they are---how much more heavenly and inspired than the beatings on the slavish backs of the German Uhlans, of the half-drunken, brutish hordes! Everywhere is the same uplifting spirit. When I speak of Paris being sad, it is; but it is not depressing. There is a difference. If it were not for the absence of those I love, I would rather be here than anywhere. In church on Sunday, the Bishop said that at one of the services near the firing line, when he asked the question: "How many of the men here have felt, since they came out, a stirring in their hearts, an awakening of the spirit?" as far as he could see, every hand was raised. And men have gone home to England, without arms and without legs, maimed for life, and have been heard to say that in spite of their material anguish they regretted nothing, for they had found their souls.

Well, it's impossible, with stories such as these, to think of anything but ultimate victory on our side. Contrast it with the German spirit, with the hymns of hate, with the yellings and screamings of that press, calling for more Lusitanias, calling for the wreck of the Orduna, demanding more innocent sacrifice. Take the faces of Joffre and the other generals and put them alongside von Hindenburg and the Crown Prince.

The French Army has now got its new uniform. It is called bleu d'horizon. It is a light, delicate blue, the colour of Faith, the colour of the sky that is so beautiful in tone over France always; and its advantage is that after nightfall not one man can be seen at 150 yards. This is the only army of which that can be said. There is something particularly agreeable to me in the thought of that blue army---the colour of the Sacred Maid. I ought to tell you that all credulous and believing France thinks that the country is being saved by Jeanne d'Arc. You hear them say it everywhere. Just think of it, in the twentieth century, my dear, when the war is being fought in the air and under the sea, by machines so modern that only the latest invention can triumph! Think of it, and then consider that there remains enough of spiritual faith to believe that the salvation of a country comes through prayer.

Yesterday I wrote for some time and rough-hewed a plan for "Carmichel," up to the very last chapter. I hope that it will be helpful.

Extraordinary things happen in war time. The wife of one of the officers of General F.'s état major was allowed to visit him at the front occasionally. On one of these occasions, one of her husband's fellow officers said to her: "Ah, madame, howl wish I had a wife or at least a sweetheart---some one that I could write to and who would take an interest in me !"---"Well, why don't you get engaged?" the lady asked.---"I don't know any one to get engaged to!"---"What sort of a girl would you like to marry?" asked Mme. B sympathetically.---"Well," replied the officer, "she should be tall, a brunette, intelligent, and a Dreyfusarde."---"I know the very girl!" exclaimed the lady; "she's a friend of mine and I shall bring her photo to show you next time I come." She kept her word and the young officer was enchanted with the picture and promptly fell in love with the girl it represented. The latter, on the other hand, had heard all about the forlorn officer from her friend and conceived a great interest in him. They began a correspondence. Everything went beautifully, and after a time Captain asked the General for two days' leave to go to Paris and get engaged! The young people had never previously set eyes on each other; but they both fell madly in love when they met and the formal betrothal took place, after which the happy officer returned to his duties at the front!

PARIS, June 17th, 1915.

MY DEAR FREDERICK,

In regard to the trophies of war of which you speak, I bought for you yesterday a German sword from the field of battle, a German helmet, a German cartridge case, and a German service cap. Of course, Allies' things would be difficult to find. These are all picturesque. I am going to make you a little collection of souvenirs and send them over to you by express. Paris is full of pretty "documents" of the war. The big powder manufacturer, Mr. Dupont of the South, has a cousin here---one of the nurses at the Ambulance---and she has bought for him a thousand dollars' worth of trophies; but you can imagine that he wanted shells, ammunition, and so forth. I forgot to say that this little group included a "Soixante-quinze," exploded---very pretty. You can put it in the drawing-room as an ornament. Also some bits of obus, of which you can make paper weights---all in the $20. I am sorry they are German.

It may interest you to know that the other evening Mrs. Waddington---the niece of the famous Mrs. Waddington--spent the evening with me at Madame de S.'s. She had just been to the front to see her husband, who is a Colonel and a very brilliant officer. He had sent for her to come, as he had a day's leave. Think of it---she had not seen him since the 2nd of August! How she ran to him, figuratively speaking! He is in the most dangerous part of the front. The French soldiers are not given the leave that the English are, as you know. There are almost no home-comings. Few of these women have been able to see their husbands, unless they are wounded. When she got there, after rather a perilous essay, this big bronzed soldier came to meet her at the railway station, and he only had an hour. Think of it! She told us about it so quietly and so bravely, her delicate pale face---for she is a great invalid---illumined by the patriotism and the courage they all show. She had no complaint to make; she was glad of that precious hour. She said that coming back in the train a strange officer, who had a slight wound and was being sent to Paris with despatches---a perfect stranger to her---sat down by her side. He said: "Pardon, madame; vous m'excuserez si je vous parle? Je n'ai pas échangé un mot avec une femme depuis le jour de la mobilisation---pas un mot!" He had not been one single day away from his service since August. She said that he talked all the three hours to Paris---feverishly, eagerly; so glad to be human once again: and although she had never seen him before, she felt as though she had known him always by the time they got to the station. And at the end of their little trip together, he gave her a little aluminium ring that his soldiers had made in the trenches out of a bit of shell casing. He said that they grow perfectly reckless of danger in those long hours and days of trench life, and that he has to punish his men for getting up out of the trenches and walking right into the fire to pick up a bit of metal with which to work to while away the tedious hours.

One of the touching things that Madame de S. said to me about her adopted son who was killed in April was: "I am sure he knew that he was going to his death that day. I feel so sensible of his great soul-loneliness on the eve of that terrible battle, when I am certain he felt that he was to lay down his life." He was one of the most courageous and brilliant officers---a born warrior and soldier, and one of the hardest workers I ever knew. It seems that the night before the engagement, he came into his General's quarters on the plea of looking at one of the maps, and the General told Madame de S. that as he went out he lingered on the threshold, and the General said to him: "Bonne chance! mon enfant." And the General said to her: "I know that he did not come to look at the map. He came to make a silent farewell." Of course, it is peculiarly touching to a woman who loved him to feel that what he wanted was the human sympathy, the human touch, as he was going out into the unknown. The field kodaks that she has of him, which she showed me last night, show him so changed, so aged and weary after those long hard months of service, that I personally would hardly have known him.

Many touching little things have been found in the memorandum book that Henry carried always, and the following little lines he had written there the night before he was killed. His pen stopped with the last words

"I offer with all my heart to God the sacrifice of my life for my beloved country and for the protection of those I love, in order to repair by my personal sacrifice any ill I may ever have done to my neighbour. I thank without ceasing every one who has ever been good to me; I pray for them in going, and in turn beseech them to pray for me."

My dear brother, I make these quotations because they give you a little idea of the heart and soul and character of the best of young France. It speaks well for a country that she can nurture sons like this.

That's all. Best love, dear, dear Frederick.

June 25th, 1915.

MY DEAR MOLLIE,

Mme. de S. told me last night that once during the last year she had a little spray of blossoms that had been blessed by the Pope, and in writing to Henry on the field, she sent him a little bit of green---a tiny leaf pinned on a loving letter. When she looked through the uniform sent back to her, a few days ago, in his pocket was this little card, all stained with his blood. This card, with her few loving words, was all he carried on him into that sacred field. I must not forget the belt he wore around him, which she had made with her own hands, and it contained some money and in one of the folds of the chamois was a prayer that she had written out for him. The paper was so worn with reading and unfolding and folding that it was like something used by the years.

All the night before he went to that great battle, he spent in prayer. His aide told Mme. de S. that he had not closed his eyes. They say that if he could have been taken immediately from the field, he would have been saved, for he bled to death.

I only suppose that you will be interested in these details because they mark the going out of such a brilliant life, and it is the intimate story of one soldier who has laid down his life, after months and months of fighting and self-abnegation and loneliness, on that distant field.

From the time he left her in August until his death, he had never seen any of his family-not a soul. I want to tell you the way she said goodbye to him, for I never knew it until last night. She had expected him to lunch---imagine!---and received the news by telephone that he was leaving his "quartier" in an hour. She rushed there to see the cuirassiers, mounted, in their service uniform, the helmets all covered with khaki, clattering out of the yard. She sat in the motor and he came out to her, all ready to go; and they said good-bye, there in the motor, he sitting by her side, holding her hands. She said he looked then like the dead---so grave. You know he was a soldier, passionately devoted to his career. He had made all the African campaign and had an illustrious record. She says he asked her for her blessing and she lightly touched the helmet covered with khaki and gave it him. And neither shed a tear. And he kissed her good-bye. She never saw him again. . . .

She said that his General told her as follows: "The night before the engagement, Henry Dadvisard came into my miserable little shack on the field. He said to me: 'Mon général, just show me on the map where the Germans are.' A map was hanging on the wall and I indicated with my finger: 'Les Allemands sont là, mon enfant.' And Dadvisard said: 'Why, is that all there is to do ---just to go out and attack them there? Why, we'll be coming back as gaily as if it were from the races!' He turned to go, saying: 'Au revoir, mon général.' But at the door he paused, and I looked up and saw him and he said: 'Adieu, mon général.' And then I saw in his eyes a singular look, something like an appeal from one human soul to another, for a word, a touch, before going out to that sacrifice. I did not dare to say anything but what I did say: 'Bon courage, mon enfant; bonne chance!' And he went. . .

After telling me this, Mme. de S. took out his watch, which she carries with her now---a gold watch, with his crest upon it---the one he had carried through all his campaigns, with the soldier's rough chain hanging from it. It had stopped at half-past ten; as he had wound it the night before, the watch had gone on after his heart had ceased to beat.

The day before Henry left his own company of Cuirassiers to go into the dangerous and terrible experiences of the trenches, to take up that duty which ended in his laying down his life, he gathered his men together and bade them goodbye. Last night dear Mme. de S. showed me his soldier's note-book, in which he had written the few words that he meant to say to his men. I begged her to let me have them: I give them to you. This address stands to me as one of the most beautiful things I have ever read.

General Foch paid him a fine tribute when he mentioned him in despatches, and this mention of him was accompanied by the bestowal of the Croix de Guerre.

"Henry Dadvisard, warm hearted and vibrant; a remarkable leader of men. He asked to be transferred to the infantry, in order to offer more fully to his country his admirable military talents. He fell gloriously on the 27th April, leading an attack at the head of his company."

PARIS, June 30th, 1915.

DEAR BESSIE,

I am sure that to-morrow I shall have a real letter from you. You must be enjoying that wonderful country to the full, and glad that you are there at last, aren't you?

It is hard for me to remember what I have told in the different letters, and I run the risk of repeating.

I went the other night to see "La Princesse Georges," at the Français. It is hard to realise that such acting and pieces are still going on. The house was crowded, I am glad to say, for the poor Sociétaires' sake.

You said once, during the spring, before you came over, that whether or not I was lonely, I should enjoy the beauty of Paris. I have never seen anything more marvellous than it has been---almost deserted, really. Sometimes I walk in streets where there is literally no one; and, of course, at night, as I often return at half-past ten or eleven, it is like walking through a deserted village-----and such darkness! Coming out of the theatre, I walked home from the Français, and I never saw anything so wonderful as that night. The moon was full; the only lights lit were here and there one, then another; and Paris was as it must have been centuries ago, left in all its beauty to the night alone. I leaned on the bridge and saw the shadows of the bridges and the reflections of the houses immovable in the calm water of the Seine, and overhead such a divine sky.

I went to call on Mrs. Walter Gay, and found her in her lovely room on the garden. She was very cordial. Last summer the Germans were within fifteen miles of her château. They buried everything of value in the garden, and with a few inhabitants of the village, who dared to remain, Mrs. Gay and her husband stood by their possessions, because, as she said: "I would not leave the few villagers who had remained." Of course you know, the miracle of the Marne took place, and the détour was made.

I found the Matin letter to-day (Monday), with its news from Harvard, thrilling and beautifully put. Julie writes: "How closely the Matin keeps us in touch with America!" I need scarcely say that it's the first thing I read---that letter from you and home.

If the girls and Violet have shared with you what I have written them, you are au courant with all the tragedy of Henry Dadvisard's death.

Isn't it charming that they call the soldiers' new uniform "bleu d'horizon"?

I am very glad that when Robert went to England he made some of the real spirit of England felt when he came back and wrote for the Matin. I don't think it has been properly noted, the amount of ammunition that England has sent to Serbia, Italy, everywhere; and if England has continued her commerce, it's fortunate that she has, isn't it? considering that she has supplied boots and clothing to France, and boots and clothing to Serbia, and that the output of the English factories to the countries at war has been perfectly tremendous. It is absolutely sickening to me to think that France and England, fighting together for the civilisation of the world, should not mutually appreciate and value each other as they ought. I am sure that it is all this petty jealousy---you know what I think about jealousy, anyway---the jealousies of us all-that has created what is going on.

1 have been in the throes of trying to decide whether or not to take the apartment downstairs and throw it into this, or to take the empty one on the fourth floor at No. 6, a nice house, clean concierges, lift, and so forth and so on. I never saw anything as sweet as the little place is to-day; it grows mellower and mellower, and dirtier and dirtier! The painter has suggested asking frs. 500 for painting the escalier de service. This is what I should call "war paint"!

PARIS, June 22nd, 1915.

DEAR VIOLET,

I went out the other day with Madame Marie to Versailles, en auto. I wanted to see the little hospital that Anne Morgan and Bessie Marbury have given out there. One of their pretty little houses is in the charge of some gentle-faced sisters of charity, and out in the garden, with the roses blooming and the sweet-scented hay being raked in great piles, were sitting a lieutenant, convalescing, and his commandant, who had come to see him, also wounded. Both men wore the Legion of Honour on their breasts. They were talking about the campaign. The lieutenant wore his képi well down over his face; he was totally blind for ever, at thirty! His interest in talking to his superior officer was so great that you can fancy I only stopped a second to speak to him. There were great scars on his hands and his face and neck were scarred too. I heard him say, as I turned to walk away: "J'aime aussi causer des jours quand nous étions collégiens à Saint-Cyr. Ces souvenirs sont plus doux.'' It was terribly touching.

I had an interesting letter from Madelon. She says: "We are on the Ypres Road, five miles from Ypres. The country is marvellous, and it seems awful that it is all being destroyed by those fiendish shells. Every once in so often they make hash of the scenery, and the guns are always banging, and the sky is all lit up with the magnesium flares. I have got no one to keep me company. Things were awfully slack for a while, and we thought there would not be any more fighting this way; but it's on again now, and we are busy day and night. We sleep on the haystacks with the rats and the bats. A cow carried off my sheets, but somebody----God knows who---sent me a tent, and I slept down by a branch of the Yser, cows grazing at my feet, and shells screaming over my head. . .

4, PLACE DU PALAIS BOURBON,
PARIS, June 22nd, 1915.

DEAR ANNA,

I have not answered your sweet letter or thanked you for your welcoming cable, but I do so now for both very sincerely. I have only been once or twice to the Ambulance since I came back---this time as a visitor; and I am more and more impressed with the organisation. You cannot think what good has been done there, or how the devotion of the women who have stayed there since the beginning has impressed me, who only remained eight weeks. Mrs. Munroe has varicose veins in her legs from standing so much, and finally had to go down to Limoges for treatment, but she is back. The work done there in the operating-rooms is marvellous. An English nurse was telling me last night that she had never in all her life dreamed of such miracles of surgery. Harvey Cushing is among the operators, as you know, from Harvard, and she told me one special incident of interest. A general had been there who, when viewing the field through his field-glasses, was struck by a bullet which drove the glass of his lorgnon right through his eye, back into his brain. Imagine the disfigurement of that man, and think of his having lived! Cushing opened the back of his head and took out tin and glass, and goodness knows what not, and except that he is blind in one eye, that general is as good as ever, and loud in his praises of the surgery.

Madame de S. told me yesterday of a young boy whom she knows, who enlisted, at fourteen, in his own father's regiment. He has been twice taken prisoner, and the last time was sentenced by the Germans to be shot as a spy---at fourteen! The little fellow tried to escape, but was caught: but the German soldier who was sent out to execute him told the boy that if he had twenty francs on him he would let him go. The little boy did happen to have frs. 20, which he gave to his executioner, and he is now here in Paris, under his mother's wing. Mme. de S. knows him well, and has talked with him. Isn't it amusing?

One of the trained nurses here---notably one who had been at Mrs. Thayer's house in Boston, when I spoke for the Ambulance, and who offered her services that week for the soldiers, told me that she had one man in her ward to save whose arm the doctors and nurses of that special part of the hospital had struggled since October. His sufferings have been terrible, poor thing, and the other day they had to amputate it after all. It was done by the surgeon of the Harvard Unit, and Miss Giles helped him. She said that he and she and the other nurses too cried, and weren't ashamed of it, when they took off that arm at last. Nobody was willing to tell his wife, who came often to see her husband. Finally, Miss Giles volunteered, and she went to tell the poor little woman that her husband had only one arm. Instead of greeting her, as she expected that she would, with tears, the little woman, with a radiant smile, exclaimed: "Oh, he's all mine now! The war will never have him again!"

PARIS, July 12th, 1915.

DEAREST BELLE,

Mme. de S. is going next week on the cruel and dreadful mission of disinterring her beloved dead. She is going down into the tomb in Belgium---if she can get through---to take her boy out of the charnel house, where he is buried under six other coffins. "God has his soul," she says; "I only ask his body" . . . if she can find it. She has told no one of her griefs, but to me; and she bears herself like a woman of twenty-five, gallantly-interested more keenly in everything that concerns me to the smallest degree than, I may say, any friend I have ever known; for even in this time of anguish, she has taken infinite pains for me, in every little detail. I shall never forget it.

The weather is too glorious for words---a succession of charming, balmy, sun-filled and breeze-lifted days; with the most wonderful skies. You have seen them in Watteau, and in the landscapes of the eighteenth century; and we see them every day! As I look out of my window, there is nothing but beauty to see---the exquisite lines of the Palais Bourbon, and of the old houses, with the glimpses of waving trees above them; and one after another over us pass these divine midsummer nights, when across the stars passes the star of an aeroplane and the night's mystery is enhanced. I never wake but I get up and go to my window, and I open it at different hours---at dawn sometimes, at midnight others---in the flushing or the paling sky, or in the mystery of midnight.

So many voices have spoken to me this time, and strangely enough, my tempestuous heart has listened to them all. It seems that this dreadful ban of lonely complaint has been lifted from me. I suppose we can learn to endure everything, or else we are brought to see it differently; but I have found friends in the very solitude itself. If I do not say I have grown to love it, it is only because I don't want to love a lonely, selfish existence. There is very great beauty now in my life. I have never said this before, but just now I feel it. There are activities all around this unshared oasis. I have what you once called my "sacred work," and it is very precious. Poor as it is and unimportant as it is, it brings into play activities that love to be exercised, and I have enjoyed it hugely. There is a fascination in the fact that nobody can say to me: "Do this or do that. Come here or Go there." That I can shut my doors and be alone. If I wanted to open them, there is no one to come; and that is not fascinating at all!

Mrs. Munroe asked me to take a little interest in the electrical treatment at the hospital. As it is given in a room all by itself, downstairs, far from the madding phantasmagoria of wounds and operations, and pretty nurses and fascinating auxiliaries---not to speak of the orderlies and the doctors---the poor little job has fallen to the ground. Nobody wants to go in and sit down all alone and give electrical treatment; so one by one the infirmières have given out. I went there at eight o'clock the day before yesterday. I don't think I ever saw anything more touching than the useless members that were brought to me for the stimulating effect---if it could stimulate---of that little electric tampon. Those arms, once so vigorous and so useful. . . .

"Qu'étiez-vous de votre métier, mon ami?"

"J'étais dans les bâtiments, madame."

A house-builder---building, constructing, making for civilisation and happy homes! From shoulder to elbow ran two great red healed scars. They looked like the railroad tracks, deep laid, marking where the train of a shell had passed. From the elbow down to the vigorous hand, everything was paralysed. The man was a splendid fellow. He has a wife and two children, and he worries himself sick because the woman is ill and the children are delicate. No longer "dans les bâtiments," he has been eight months at the Ambulance, wearing out his soul. Looking down at his hand, he said to me: "Pourvu que ça marche, madame, un de ces jours!"

There is one gay officer of twenty-nine, and six feet two. I don't think you'd speak of "little insignificant Frenchmen" if you could see him! He's superb. One finger off on the left hand, and the right hand utterly useless. So we work at that for fifteen minutes, and all the little group of soldiers linger, because they love him so---he's so killing, so witty, so gay. He screams in mock agony, and laughs and makes the most outrageous jokes; and when he has gone, one of them says to me: "Il est adoré par ses hommes, madame; il est si courageux." The spirit between men and officers is so beautiful in the French army. They are all brothers. None of that lordly, arrogant oppression of the Germans. One of the soldiers said to me: "Il n'y a pas de grade, maintenant, madame. Nous sommes tous des hommes qui aiment le pays."

And Lieutenant-----, of whom I have just been speaking. I said to him: "Tell me something about the campaign, monsieur." And he answered: "Oh, madame, I would like to tell you about the men. They're superb. I have never seen anything like it. I had to lead a charge with 156 men into what we all believed was certain death. Why," he said, "they went like schoolboys-shouting, laughing, pushing each other up the parapet . . . . We came back nine strong," he said.

I immensely enjoyed seeing Mrs. Bacon and seeing Mr. Bacon's enthusiasm. It's wonderful to have such Americans living. I wish that a whole band of American women could forget everything in the world but the French and their need, and that they would come over here and work in the fields and help bring in the harvest, if nothing else.

The head of the ambulance cars at the hospital yesterday told me that there would soon be a great need for ambulance drivers and men, as the heat of the summer grows greater, and the tired ones go home.

Ellen La Motte went to the front at Dunkerque and the town where they were staying was bombarded. The shells fell all about them, and they were shut up and not allowed to go out for fourteen hours. They sat playing cards and eating chocolates, not knowing whether at any moment, right in their midst, an explosion would not end their life. She said she was frightened to death, and it was perfectly horrible. If they'd been working on the field, I suppose it would have been different.

I was sitting here the other day when my dear friend Victor Ballet, now docteur-major, came in. He has just dined with me and spent the evening, and I have enjoyed him enormously. He says---and I really suppose that you might at least take his word for it---that the French dead number 400,000, and that the Germans have hors de combat, since the beginning of the war, 4 million men.

A friend of Miss La Motte's---Mrs. Chadburne---has just received word from Berlin through Switzerland, from a woman in a high official position in Berlin, that if she values her life she should leave Paris immediately. It's awfully consoling, isn't it? This letter must have taken at least ten days to reach her, and at the time it was written things were not looking as well as they do now.

No more at present.

PARIS, July 14th, 1915.

DEAR VIOLET,

The world is so callous and so indifferent, and over here we feel very bitterly at times the indifference of America to the causes at stake. I can see it at the Ambulance, as expressed by those who have just come from America. As long as their pockets are bulging and they're making money, Americans can be slaughtered on the seas, and France can fight for her beauty and her soul, and it's all the same to the majority at home. Thank God there are Americans still that don't feel that way; but, as always, the élite are few.

It is sweet of you to say you miss me. I am very glad that you do think of me sometimes, only the past is so vague and dim compared with your busy absorbed present, with your house and its interest, and your travelling and the new people, that it's like looking into a camera obscura and seeing a picture whose tones are soft---not vivid enough to create very much impression.

This is the fourteenth of July. You remember how many, many times we've seen it come and go here together. This morning I was in the street before eight, going up to the Ambulance. I stopped to see mother, and greet her. Then I left a note at Cousin Lottie's, and then went on to the hospital. I must tell you about my electric work there.

The first day I took it on, the machine didn't go, and no one in the place seemed to understand anything about it. After having walked three or four miles, and escaped detection, I looked on the plaque of the machine and found out where it was made---Paris, fortunately, or I should have been tramping still! I wrapped it up in brown paper, took it in my arms, coralled one of the hospital ambulance motors, and went to the factory, at the back of the Observatory. The thing was put in order in no time. Moreover, they explained it to me, and taught me its intricacies, and then I fetched it home. All the following day I encountered people who kept saying to me: "It's too bad there isn't any electric treatment, isn't it? The machine doesn't work." I smiled, for I hid it under a mattress when I left, so that nobody should make it not work in my absence, if I could help it!

I didn't expect to like this department, but I do like it awfully. I am all alone at the bottom of the hospital, in a room screened off by itself. Back of me they are making plaster casts for pitiful limbs. A little further on, a locksmith hammers and bangs all day long; but somehow, I don't hear him. And there ten to sixteen men come to me every day, and I work from a little after eight till twelve. Then I go to one or two in the wards. I have come to the conclusion that all work is fascinating, for one after another, as I take up different activities, each has its charm.

Did I tell you that after Mrs. Vanderbilt left, Mrs. George Munroe took her place, and is really directress of the American Ambulance now? She has been perfectly wonderful. I don't think there are any words too strong to speak in praise of her. I surely feel it so, and I know that France will echo this. Since the day the hospital opened, in August, until to-day, she has had no holiday. From early morning until night, and sometimes all night long Mrs. Munroe has been on duty---nursing, directing, overseeing. Her health has been very much impaired and broken, and who can wonder? She came into the hospital looking like a rose, and now she looks like a lily. It is a beautiful thing to feel that she has given so completely all her forces and vitality to serve her adopted country.

On Sunday I went out to Mrs. Whitney's hospital at Juilly. There she is taking care of 256 wounded men. Mother's one-time companion, Miss Hansen, has a ward with 25 men, and she has no auxiliary!

The hospital was once an old college, part of it dating from the twelfth century; and the piping, in some instances, had to be carried through walls twelve feet thick! There is a beautiful garden, with swans sailing about on the ponds; and it's a great sight altogether to see what the enterprise and generosity of one woman has done. As far as I can judge, the organisation is admirable. Dr. and Mrs. Brewer are at the head, with a fine Columbia contingent. Personally, I should think that every woman to whom France has given so much all these years would do something now to prove her unselfish devotion. We were much touched by Mrs. Bacon's coming, and it gave a great deal of courage to every one. She is a brick, and I like her awfully.

After lunch, Miss Methley and I went to the battlefield of the Marne. You call it a battlefield, but now, in the generous course of time, on all sides has grown up the season's grain. There are the rye and barley and wheat harvests, green and yellow, abundant and beautiful, their tide stemmed only here and there by white crosses and black crosses, as the soldiers' graves shine out amid the grain. Oh, the spiritual lesson here is so great!

Yes, in glory, in the making of the newer fields---his blood and his valour the seeds for a more spiritual harvest to his country and for his kin. The seed cannot be quickened until it has lain underground. So it seems, as one thinks of it, as though England and France had been obliged to sow these Fields of Time with living seed.

Here and there were ruined churches and a few broken-in houses; and further along the new entrenchments for great guns, in case of Paris being threatened again. But there was not much more to see than this. Still, over all the land and over everything we did, there was the spirit of excitement and of war. At the little station, even, as we took the train later, one man was bidding his mother and wife and little family good-bye as he went to the front. The women's faces were heart-rending, but the man was brave and gay, his face set toward là-bas.

The first-class carriage into which we tumbled was full of officers---seven of them---going home, my dear, for the first time since the war began, eleven months ago. I wish you could have been there and sat by my side during that hour's journey. To my left was a captain in the Chasseurs d'Afrique---a man of about fifty, and without doubt he would find in Paris no one to make him welcome. But the others---in the cavalry, in the artillery, in the infantry---all in different uniforms---high boots and trench boots---every one shaved clean and neat, and yet bearing upon them the marks of the campaign---weather-beaten, rugged, eager; and yet still, in the eyes of some of them, dazed bewilderment, as though they had been brought back too suddenly into the quiet and into security. It was to me a very impressive journey, and at the Gare du Nord the tide of blue seemed to surge out through the station into the Sunday streets. It flooded the cafés and Metros and taxis---everywhere, the men coming home for four days, for eight days at most, snatched from the living death, given back to caresses and tenderness, to tears and to thanksgiving---to be torn away again so soon . . .  so soon.

Of course I have become very much interested in the group of men to whom I give electricity. The patience and dignity of these soldiers is a constant lesson; and they are so polite and so grateful---such splendid fellows---and it is so dreadful to see their mutilations.

I am quite conscious that all I write now seems a repetition of an old story, probably tiresome to you. I can only, my dear, envy myself deeply. I cannot envy all of you over there---not at all. I would not have missed, for any luxurious immunity in the world, or for any family life, or for anything, the wine I have been permitted to drink at the table of France and of England too. The very trifling bit that I have been able to do, I cannot help but feel, has linked me indissolubly with these suffering countries, whose ideals and whose standards are the ones for which my own country has already fought and for which it stands. If I were a man, I should have joined the Foreign Legion long ago.

We hear with interest of the good service done by the American aviators; and nothing that has been said in America has seemed to me more beautiful than the Harvard young man's address at his graduating class, as Hugues le Roux quotes it in the Matin.

Dr. Brewer, at Mrs. Whitney's ambulance, said that all the surrounding country was dependent upon the ambulance for medical aid, as all the French doctors were at the front. So one of the young surgeons has undertaken the "santé du pays" and gallantly sets forth, when he has time from the "blessés," in a little grey motor, to do the country rounds, and to bring babies into the world, and the like and the like. As he is not a gynæcologist, he has been up against it sometimes, and finally stood blankly before a very ailing week-old baby, seemingly not at all tenacious of life. The little Frenchman didn't want to "grow up to be a soldier," born though he was in the war zone, within sound of the guns. So the young surgeon, whose French vocabulary was very limited, and whose knowledge of baby feeding was more so, said to the mother that he thought what the kid wanted was "solid food"! This, of course, being perfectly unintelligible to the peasant woman, did not pull matters along very far, and the young man bethought himself of the only French vegetable he knew by name---choufleur---and he conveyed to the mother the idea that she must give the baby cauliflower! What she did about it, I don't know, but the sick baby got well, and will be all ready for the Germans in 1935.

Dr. Brewer also at luncheon told us of an American crossing on one of the Channel boats. He said to the steward: "Where are your lifebelts, steward? I don't see them anywhere." And the steward, looking at him sarcastically, said: "Are you one of them damned fools that thinks every boat's going to sink?" And the gentleman replied: "Are you one of those damned fools that thinks no boat's going to sink? I was on the Lusitania."

Dr. Brewer told us that the British War Office had cabled to the Columbia people that the need of surgeons and nurses was very great. So many English surgeons have laid down their lives already, and, of course, the active need for them is tremendous. Dr. Brewer said that three contingents of thirty-six surgeons and seventy-five nurses had already been sent from Columbia, and that altogether there are about two hundred American surgeons, and four or five hundred nurses over here. Also that nearly all the first batch of nurses and doctors who went to Serbia had died. I think these glorious things ought to be known, and that the people should have the credit due for them.

Last year, when I wrote to you from here, I was still so personally conscious of my own solitude and of what I wanted and could not have, that a great deal of the perspective of things was lost. Now, somehow or other, I seem to have become merged in the whole to a gratifying extent. I have been disintegrated in order to be integrated---if you can understand me?