The Living Present Part 12

"The clubs for soldiers, in Paris especially, give to the convalescents and to the men on leave wholesome amus.e.m.e.nt and compensate somewhat for their absent families.

"Just now we are trying to establish an anti-tuberculosis organization to save those of our soldiers who have been infected or are menaced.

Many hospitals are already opened for them. At Mentom, on the Mediterranean, for the blind tubercular; at Hauteville, in the Department of the Aisne, for the officers and soldiers; at La Roch.e.l.le, for bone-tuberculosis; but the task is enormous.

"We seek also, and the work is under way, to educate intelligently the mutilated, so that they may work and have an occupation in the sad life which remains to them, and I a.s.sure you, chere madame, that so many useful things to be done leave very few leisure hours. If a little weariness has in spite of everything slipped into our hearts, a visit to the hospitals, to the ambulances at the Front, the sight of suffering so bravely, I will even say so cheerfully, supported by our soldiers, very quickly revives our courage, and brings us back our strength and enthusiasm...."

The Countess de Roussy de Sales (an American brought up in Paris) was one of the first of the infirmieres to be mobilized by Madame d'Haussonville on the declaration of war. She went to Rheims with the troops, standing most of the time, but too much enthralled by the spirit of the men to notice fatigue. She told me that although they were very sober, even grim, she heard not a word of complaint, but constantly the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n: "It is for France and our children. What if we die, so long as our children may live in peace?"

At Rheims, so impossible had it been to make adequate preparations with the Socialists holding up every projected budget, there were no installations in the hospitals but beds. The nurses and doctors were obliged to forage in the town for operating tables and the hundred and one other furnishings without which no hospital can be conducted. And they had little time. The wounded came pouring in at once. Madame de Roussy de Sales said they were so busy it was some time before it dawned on them, in spite of the guns, that the enemy was approaching.

But when women and children and old people began to hurry through the streets in a constant procession they knew it was only a matter of time before they were ordered out. They had no time to think, however; much less to fear.

Finally the order came to evacuate the hospitals and leave the town, which at that time was in imminent danger of capture. There was little notice. The last train leaves at three o'clock. Be there. Madame de Roussy de Sales and several other nurses begged to go with those of their wounded impossible to transfer by trains, to the civilian hospitals and make them comfortable before leaving them in the hands of the local nurses; and obtained permission. The result was that when they reached the station they saw the train retreating in the distance. But they had received orders to report at a hospital in another town that same afternoon. No vehicles were to be had. There was nothing to do but walk. They walked. The distance was twenty-three kilometres. As they had barely sat down since their arrival in Rheims it may be imagined they would have been glad to rest when they reached their destination. But this hospital too was crowded with wounded. They went on duty at once. C'est la guerre! I never heard any one complain.

XI

THE MARQUISE D'ANDIGNe

The Marquise d'Andigne, who was Madeline G.o.ddard of Providence, R.I., is President of Le Bien-etre du Blesse, an oeuvre formed by Madame d'Haussonville at the request of the Ministere de la Guerre in May, 1915. She owes this position as president of one of the most important war relief organizations (perhaps after the Red Cross the most important) to the energy, conscientiousness, and brilliant executive abilities she had demonstrated while at the Front in charge of more than one hospital. She is an infirmiere major and was decorated twice for cool courage and resource under fire.

The object of Le Bien-etre du Blesse is to provide delicacies for the dietary kitchens of the hospitals in the War Zone, as many officers and soldiers had died because unable to eat eggs, or drink milk, the only two articles furnished by the rigid military system of the most conservative country in the world. The articles supplied by Le Bien-etre du Blesse are very simple: condensed milk, sugar, cocoa, Franco-American soups, chocolate, sweet biscuits, jams, preserves, prunes, tea. Thousands of lives have been saved by Bien-etre during the past year; for men who are past caring, or wish only for the release of death, have been coaxed back to life by a bit of jam on the tip of a biscuit, or a teaspoonful of chicken soup.

Some day I shall write the full and somewhat complicated history of Le Bien-etre du Blesse, quoting from many of Madame d'Andigne's delightful letters. But there is no s.p.a.ce here and I will merely mention that my own part as the American President of Le Bien-etre du Blesse is to provide the major part of the funds with which it is run, lest any of my readers should be tempted to help me out.[E] Donations from ten cents to ten thousand are welcome, and $5 keeps a wounded man for his entire time in one of those dreary hospitals in that devastated region known as "Le Zone des Armees," where relatives nor friends ever come to visit, and there is practically no sound but the thunder of guns without and groans within. Not that the French do groan much. I went through many of these hospitals and never heard a demonstration. But I am told they do sometimes.

[E] All donations in money are sent to the bankers, Messers John Munroe & Co., _Eighth Floor_, 360 Madison Avenue, New York.

To Madame d'Andigne belongs all the credit of building up Le Bien-etre du Blesse from almost nothing (for we were nearly two years behind the other great war-relief organizations in starting). Although many give her temporary a.s.sistance no one will take charge of any one department and she runs every side and phase of the work. Last winter she was cold, and hungry, and always anxious about her husband, but she was never absent from the office for a day except when she could not get coal to warm it; and then she conducted the business of the oeuvre in her own apartment, where one room was warmed with wood she had sawed herself.

To-day Le Bien-etre du Blesse is not only one of the most famous of all the war-relief organizations of the fighting powers but it has been run with such systematic and increasing success that the War Office has installed Bien-etre kitchens in the hospitals (before, the nurses had to cook our donations over their own spirit lamp) and delegated special cooks to relieve the hard-worked infirmieres of a very considerable tax on their energies. This is a tremendous bit of radicalism on the part of the Military Department of France, and one that hardly can be appreciated by citizens of a land always in a state of flux. There is even talk of making these Bien-etre kitchens a part of the regular military system after the war is over, and if they do commit themselves to so revolutionary an act no doubt the name of the young American Marquise will go down to posterity--as it deserves to do, in any case.

XII

MADAME CAMILLE LYON

Madame Lyon committed on my behalf what for her was a tremendous breach of the proprieties: she called upon me without the formality of a letter of introduction. No American can appreciate what such a violation of the formalities of all the ages must have meant to a pillar of the French Bourgeoisie. But she set her teeth and did it.

Her excuse was that she had read all my books, and that she was a friend of Mlle. Thompson, at whose ecole Hoteliere I was lodging.

I was so impressed at the unusualness of this proceeding that, being out when she first called, and unable to receive her explanations, I was filled with dark suspicion and sought an explanation of Mlle.

Jacquier. Madame Lyon? Was she a newspaper woman? A secret service agent? Between the police round the corner and Mlle. Jacquier, under whose eagle eye I conformed to all the laws of France in war time, I felt in no further need of supervision.

Mlle. Jacquier was very much amused. Madame Lyon was a very important person. Her husband had been a.s.sociated with the Government for fourteen years until he had died, leaving a fortune behind him, a year before; and Madame Lyon was not only on intimate terms with the Government but made herself useful in every way possible to them. She was one of the two ladies asked to cooperate with the Government in their great enterprise to wage war on tuberculosis--Le Comite Central d'a.s.sistance aux Militaires Tuberculeux; and was to open ateliers to teach the men how to learn new trades by which they might sit at home in comfort and support themselves.

And she had her own ouvroir--"L'Aide Immediate"--for providing things for the permissionnaires, who came to the door and asked for them. She ran, with a committee of other ladies, a cafe in Paris, where the permissionnaires or the reformes could go and have their afternoon coffee and smoke all the cigarettes that their devoted patrons provided. One hundred poilus came here a day, and her ouvroir had already a.s.sisted eighteen thousand. And----

But by this time I was more interested to meet Madame Lyon than any one in Paris. As I have said before, a letter or two will open the doors of the n.o.blesse or the "Intellectuals" to any stranger who knows how to behave himself and is no bore, but to get a letter to a member of the bourgeoisie--I hadn't even made the attempt, knowing how futile it would be. If one of them was doing a great work, like Mlle. Javal, I could meet her quite easily through some member of her committee; but when Frenchwomen of this cla.s.s, which in its almost terrified exclusiveness reminds me only of our own social groups balancing on the very tip of the pyramid and clutching one another lest some intruder topple them off, or cast the faintest shadow on their hard-won prestige, are working in small groups composed of their own friends, I could not meet one of them if I pitched my tent under her windows.

Madame Lyon gave me a nave explanation of her audacity when we finally did meet. "I am a Jewess," she said, "and therefore not so bound down by conventions. You see, we of the Jewish race were suppressed so long that now we have our freedom reaction makes us almost adventurous."

Besides hastening to tell me of her race she promptly, as if it were a matter of honor, informed me that she was sixty years old! She looked about forty, her complexion was white and smooth, her nose little and straight, her eyes brilliant. She dressed in the smartest possible mourning, and with that white ruff across her placid brow--Oh la la!

She has one son, who was wounded so terribly in the first year of the war, and was so long getting to a hospital where he could receive proper attention, that he was gangrened. In consequence his recovery was very slow, and he was not permitted to go again to the trenches, but was, after his recovery, sent up north to act as interpreter between the British and French troops. He stood this for a few months, and Madame Lyon breathed freely, but there came a time when M. Lyon, although a lawyer in times of peace, could not stand the tame life of interpreter. He might be still delicate, but, he argued, there were officers at the front who had only one arm. At the present moment he is in the stiffest fighting on the Somme.

I saw a great deal of Madame Lyon and enjoyed no one more, she was so independent, so lively of mind, and so ready for anything. She went with me on two of my trips in the War Zone, being only too glad of mental distraction; for like all the mothers of France she dreads the ring of the door-bell. She told me that several times the ladies who worked in her ouvroir would come down with beaming faces and read extracts from letters just received from their sons at the Front, then go home and find a telegram announcing death or shattered limbs.

Madame Lyon has a hotel on the Boulevard Berthier and before her husband's death was famous for her political breakfasts, which were also graced by men and women distinguishing themselves in the arts.

These breakfasts have not been renewed, but I met at tea there a number of the political women. One of these was Madame Ribot, wife of the present Premier. She is a very tall, thin, fashionable looking woman, and before she had finished the formalities with her hostess (and these formalities do take so long!) I knew her to be an American.

She spoke French as fluently as Madame Lyon, but the accent, however faint--or was it a mere intonation,--was unmistakable. She told me afterward that she had come to France as a child and had not been in the United States for fifty-two years!

One day Madame Lyon took me to see the ateliers of Madame Viviani--in other words, the workshops where the convalescents who must become reformes are learning new trades and industries under the patronage of the wife of the cabinet minister now best known to us. Madame Viviani has something like ten or twelve of these ateliers, but after I had seen one or two of the same sort of anything in Paris, and listened to long conscientious explanations, and walked miles in those enormous hospitals (originally, for the most part, Lycees) I felt that duplication could not enhance my knowledge, and might, indeed, have the sad effect of blunting it.

Madame Lyon said to me more than once: "Ma chere, you are without exception, the most impatient woman I have ever seen in my life. You no sooner enter a place than you want to leave it." She was referring at the moment to the hospitals in the War Zone, where she would lean on the foot of every bed and have a long gossip with the delighted inmate, extract the history of his wound, and relate the tale of similar wounds, healed by surgery, time and patience--while I, having made the tour of the cots, either opened and shut the door significantly, or walked up and down impatiently, occasionally muttering in her ear.

The truth of the matter was that I had long since cultivated the habit of registering definite impressions in a flash, and after a tour of the cots, which took about seven minutes, could have told her the nature of every wound. Moreover, I knew the men did not want to talk to me, and I felt impertinent hanging round.

But all this was incomprehensible to a Frenchwoman, to whom time is nothing, and who knows how the French in any conditions love to talk.

However, to return to Madame Viviani.

After one futile attempt, when I got lost, I met Madame Lyon and her distinguished but patient friend out in one of the purlieus of Paris where the Lycee of Arts and Crafts has been turned into a hospital for convalescents.

Under the direction of a doctor each convalescent was working at what his affected muscles most needed or could stand. Those that ran sewing-machines exercised their legs. Those that made toys and cut wood with the electric machines got a certain amount of arm exercise.

The sewing-machine experts had already made fifty thousand sacks for sand fortifications and breastworks.

From this enormous Lycee (which cost, I was told, five million francs) we drove to the Salpetriere, which in the remote ages before the war, was an old people's home. Its extent, comprising, as it does, court after court, gardens, ma.s.ses of buildings which loom beyond and yet beyond, not only inspired awed reflections of the number of old that must need charity in Paris but made one wonder where they were at the present moment, now that the Salpetriere had been turned into a hospital. Perhaps, being very old, they had conveniently died.

Here the men made wooden shoes with leather tops for the trenches, cigarette packages, ingenious toys--the airships and motor ambulances were the most striking; baskets, chairs, lace.

The rooms I visited were in charge of an English infirmiere and were fairly well aired. Some of the men would soon be well enough to go back to the Front and were merely given occupation during their convalescence. But in the main the object is to prepare the unfortunates known as reformes for the future.

Since the fighting on the Somme began Madame Lyon has gone several times a month to the recaptured towns, in charge of train-loads of installations for the looted homes of the wretched people. In one entire village the Germans had left just one saucepan. Nothing else whatever.

XIII

BRIEF ACCOUNTS OF GREAT WORK

THE d.u.c.h.eSSE D'UZeS