The Living Present

I went with her one day to one of the éclopé stations and to the Dép?t des Isolés, outside of Paris, to help her distribute comfort packages-which, by the way, covered the top of the automobile and were piled so high inside that we disposed ourselves with some difficulty. These packages, all neatly tied, and of varying sizes, were in the nature of surprise bags of an extremely practical order.

Tobacco, pipes, cigarettes, chocolate, toothbrushes, soap, pocket-knives, combs, safety-pins, handkerchiefs, needles-and-thread, buttons, pocket mirrors, post-cards, pencils, are a few of the articles I recall. The members of the Committee meet at her house twice a week to do up the bundles, and her servants, also, do a great deal of the practical work.

It was a long drive through Paris and to the dép?ts beyond. A year before we should have been held up at the point of the bayonet every few yards, but in 1916 we rolled on unhindered. Paris is no longer in the War Zone, although as we passed the fortifications we saw men standing beside the upward pointing guns, and I was told that this vigilance does not relax day or night.

Later, I shall have much to say about the éclopés, but it is enough to explain here that "éclopé," in the new adaptation of the word, stands for a man who is not wounded, or ill enough for a military hospital, but for whom a brief rest in comfortable quarters is imperative. The stations provided for them, principally through the instrumentality of another remarkable Frenchwoman, Mlle. Javal, now number about one hundred and thirty, and are either behind the lines or in the neighborhood of Paris or other large cities. The one we visited, Le Bourget, is among the largest and most important, and the Commandant, M. de L'Horme, is as interested as a father in his children. The yard when we arrived was full of soldiers, some about to march out and entrain for the front, others still loafing, and M. de L'Horme seemed to know each by name.

The comfort packages are always given to the men returning to their regiments on that particular day. They are piled high on a long table at one side of the barrack yard, and behind it on the day of my visit stood Madame Balli, Mrs. Allen, Mr. Holman-Black and myself, and we handed out packages with a "Bonne chance" as the men filed by. Some were sullen and unresponsive, but many more looked as pleased as children and no doubt were as excited over their "grabs," which they were not to open until in the train. They would face death on the morrow, but for the moment at least they were personal and titillated.

Close by was a small munition factory, and a large loft had been turned into a rest-room for such of the éclopés as it was thought advisable to put to bed for a few days under medical supervision. To each of these we gave several of the black cigarettes dear to the tobacco-proof heart of the Frenchman, a piece of soap, three picture post-cards, and chocolate. I think they were as glad of the visits as of the presents, for most of them were too far from home to receive any personal attention from family or friends. The beds looked comfortable and all the windows were open.

From there we went to the Dép?t des Isolés, an immense enclosure where men from shattered regiments are sent for a day or two until they can be returned to the front to fill gaps in other regiments. Nowhere, not even in the War Zone, did war show to me a grimmer face than here. As these men are in good health and tarry barely forty-eight hours, little is done for their comfort. Soldiers in good condition are not encouraged to expect comforts in war time, and no doubt the discipline is good for them-although, heaven knows, the French as a race know little about comfort at any time.

There were cots in some of the barracks, but there were also large spaces covered with straw, and here men had flung themselves down as they entered, without unstrapping the heavy loads they carried on their backs. They were sleeping soundly. Every bed was occupied by a sprawling figure in his stained, faded, muddy uniform. I saw one superb and turbaned Algerian sitting upright in an attitude of extreme dignity, and as oblivious to war and angels of mercy as a dead man in the trenches.

Two English girls, the Miss Gracies, had opened a cantine at this dép?t. Women have these cantines in all the éclopé and isolé stations where permission of the War Office can be obtained, and not only give freely of hot coffee and cocoa, bread, cakes and lemonade, to those weary men as they come in, but also have made their little sheds look gaily hospitable with flags and pictures. The Miss Gracies had even induced some one to build an open air theater in the great barrack yard where the men could amuse themselves and one another if they felt inclined. A more practical gift by Mrs. Allen was a bath house in which were six showers and soap and towels.

It was a dirty yard we stood in this time, handing out gifts, and when I saw Mrs. Allen buying a whole wheelbarrow-load of golden-looking doughnuts, brought by a woman of the village close by, I wondered with some apprehension if she were meaning to reward us for our excessive virtue. But they were an impromptu treat for the soldiers standing in the yard-some already lined up to march-and the way they disappeared down those brown throats made me feel blasée and over-civilized.

I did not hand out during this little fête, my place being taken by Mrs. Thayer of Boston, so I was better able to appreciate the picture. All the women were pretty, and I wondered if Madame Balli had chosen them as much for their esthetic appeal to the exacting French mind as for their willingness to help. It was a strange sight, that line of charming women with kind bright eyes, and, although simply dressed, stamped with the world they moved in, while standing and lying about were the tired and dirty poilus-even those that stood were slouching as if resting their backs while they could-with their uniforms of horizon blue faded to an ugly gray, streaked and patched. They had not seen a decent woman for months, possibly not a woman at all, and it was no wonder they followed every movement of these smiling benefactresses with wondering, adoring, or cynical eyes.

But, I repeat, to me it was an ill-favored scene, and the fact that it was a warm and peaceful day, with a radiant blue sky above, merely added to the irony. Although later I visited the War Zone three times and saw towns crowded with soldiers off duty, or as empty as old gray shells, nothing induced in me the same vicious stab of hatred for war as this scene. There is only one thing more abominable than war and that is the pacificist doctrine of non-resistance when duty and honor call. Every country, no doubt, has its putrescent spots caused by premature senility, but no country so far has shown itself as wholly crumbling in an age where the world is still young.

A few days later I went with Madame Balli and Mr. Holman-Black to the military hospital, Chaptal, devoted to the men whose faces had been mutilated. The first room was an immense apartment with an open space beyond the beds filled to-day with men who crowded about Madame Balli, as much to get that personal word and smile from her, which the French soldier so pathetically places above all gifts, as to have the first choice of a pipe or knife.

After I had distributed the usual little presents of cigarettes, chocolate, soap, and post-cards among the few still in bed, I sat on the outside of Madame Balli's mob and talked to one of the infirmières. She was a Frenchwoman married to an Irishman who was serving in the British navy, and her sons were in the trenches. She made a remark to me that I was destined to hear very often:

"Oh, yes, we work hard, and we are only too glad to do what we can for France; but, my God! what would become of us if we remained idle and let our minds dwell upon our men at the Front? We should go mad. As it is, we are so tired at night that we sleep, and the moment we awaken we are on duty again. I can assure you the harder we have to work the more grateful we are."

She looked very young and pretty in her infirmière uniform of white linen with a veil of the same stiff material and the red cross on her breast, and it was odd to hear that sons of hers were in the trenches.

After that nearly all the men in the different wards we visited were in bed, and each room was worse than the last, until it was almost a relief to come to the one where the men had just been operated on and were so bandaged that any features they may have had left were indistinguishable.

For the uncovered faces were horrible. I was ill all night, not only from the memory of the sickening sights with which I had remained several hours in a certain intimacy-for I went to assist Madame Balli and took the little gifts to every bedside-but from rage against the devilish powers that unloosed this horror upon the world. One of the grim ironies of this war is that the Hohenzollerns and the junkers are so constituted mentally that they never will be haunted with awful visions like those that visited the more plastic conscience of Charles IX after St. Bartholomew; but at least it will be some compensation to picture them rending the air with lamentations over their own downfall and hurling curses at their childish folly.

It is the bursting of shrapnel that causes the face mutilations, and although the first room we visited at Chaptal was a witness to the marvelous restorative work the surgeons are able to accomplish-sometimes-many weeks and even months must elapse while the face is not only red and swollen, but twisted, the mouth almost parallel with the nose-and often there is no nose-a whole cheek missing, an eye gone, or both; sometimes the whole mouth and chin have been blown away; and I saw one face that had nothing on its flat surface but a pipe inserted where the nose had been. Another was so terrible that I did not dare to take a second look, and I have only a vague and mercifully fading impression of a hideousness never before seen in this world.

On the other hand I saw a man propped up in bed, with one entire side of his face bandaged, his mouth twisted almost into his right ear, and a mere remnant of nose, reading a newspaper with his remaining eye and apparently quite happy.

The infirmière told me that sometimes the poor fellows would cry-they are almost all very young-and lament that no girl would have them now; but she always consoled them by the assurance that men would be so scarce after the war that girls would take anything they could get.

In one of the wards a young soldier was sitting on the edge of his cot, receiving his family, two women of middle age and a girl of about seventeen. His face was bandaged down to the bridge of his nose, but the lower part was uninjured. He may or may not have been permanently blind. The two older women-his mother and aunt, no doubt-looked stolid, as women of that class always do, but the girl sat staring straight before her with an expression of bitter resentment I shall never forget. She looked as if she were giving up every youthful illusion, and realized that Life is the enemy of man, and more particularly of woman. Possibly her own lover was in the trenches. Or perhaps this mutilated boy beside her was the first lover of her youth. One feels far too impersonal for curiosity in these hospitals and it did not occur to me to ask.

Madame Balli had also brought several boxes of delicacies for the private kitchen of the infirmières, where fine dishes may be concocted for appetites still too weak to be tempted by ordinary hospital fare: soup extract, jellies, compotes, cocoa, preserves, etc. Mr. Holman-Black came staggering after us with one of these boxes, I remember, down the long corridor that led to the private quarters of the nurses. One walks miles in these hospitals.

A number of American men in Paris are working untiringly for Paris, notably those in our War Relief Clearing House-H.O. Beatty, Randolph Mordecai, James R. Barbour, M.P. Peixotto, Ralph Preston, Whitney Warren, Hugh R. Griffen, James Hazen Hyde, Walter Abbott, Charles R. Scott, J.J. Hoff, Rev. Dr. S.N. Watson, George Munroe, Charles Carroll, J. Ridgeley Carter, H. Herman Harges-but I never received from any the same sense of consecration, of absolute selflessness as I did from Mr. Holman-Black. He and his brother have a beautiful little h?tel, and for many years before the war were among the most brilliant contributors to the musical life of the great capital; but there has been no entertaining in those charming rooms since August, 1914. Mr. Holman-Black is parrain (godfather) to three hundred and twenty soldiers at the Front, not only providing them with winter and summer underclothing, bedding, sleeping-suits, socks, and all the lighter articles they have the privilege of asking for, but also writing from fifteen to twenty letters to his filleuls daily. He, too, has not taken a day's vacation since the outbreak of the war, nor read a book. He wears the uniform of a Red Cross officer, and is associated with several of Madame Balli's oeuvres.

When I arrived in Paris in May (1916) a little girl had just been decorated by the President of the Republic. Her father, the village baker, had made one of those lightning changes from citizen to soldier and her mother had died a few weeks before. She was an only child. The bakery had supplied not only the village but the neighboring inn, which had been a favorite lunching place for automobilists. Traveling for pleasure stopped abruptly, but as the road that passed the inn was one of the direct routes to the Front, it still had many hasty calls upon its hospitality.

Now, bread-making in France is a science, the work of the expert, not of the casual housewife. The accomplished cook of the inn knew no more about mixing and baking bread than he did of washing clothes; and there was but this one bakery, hitherto sufficient, for the baker and his wife had been strong and industrious. The inn was in despair. The village was in despair. A Frenchman will go without meat, but life without bread is unthinkable.

No one thought of the child.

It is possible that in her double grief she did not think of herself-for twenty-four hours. But the second day after mobilization her shop window was piled high with loaves as usual. The inn was supplied. The village was supplied. This little girl worked steadily and unaided at her task, until her father, a year later, returned minus a leg to give her assistance of a sort.

The business of the bakery was nearly doubled during that time. Automobiles containing officers, huge camions with soldiers packed like coffee-beans, foot-weary marching regiments, with no time to stop for a meal, halted a moment and bought the stock on hand. But with only a few hours' sleep the girl toiled on valiantly and no applicant for bread was turned empty-handed from the now famous bakery.

How she kept up her childish strength and courage without a moment's change in her routine and on insufficient sleep can only be explained by the twin facts that she came of hardy peasant stock, and, like all French children, no matter how individual, was too thoroughly imbued with the discipline of "The Family" to shirk for a moment the particular task that war had brought her. This iron discipline of The Family, one of the most salient characteristics of the French, is largely responsible for the matter-of-fact way in which every soldier of France, reservist or regular, and whatever his political convictions, has risen to this ordeal. And in him as been inculcated from birth patience and perseverance as well as loyalty to his beloved flag.

The wives of hotel and shop keepers as well as the women of the farms have by far the best of it in time of war. The former are always their husband's partners, controlling the money, consulted at ever step. When the tocsin rings and the men disappear they simply go on. Their task may be doubled and they may be forced to employ girls instead of men, but there is no mental readjusting.

The women of the farms have always worked as hard as the men. Their doubled tasks involve a greater drain on their physical energies than the petite bourgeoise suffers, especially in those districts devastated by the first German invasion-the valley of the Marne. But they are very hardy, and they too hang on, for stoicism is the fundamental characteristic of the French.

This stoicism as well as the unrivaled mental suppleness was illustrated early in the war by the highly typical case of a laundress whose business was in one of the best districts of Paris.

In France no washing is done in the house. This, no doubt, is one of the reasons why one's laundry bills, even on a brief visit, are among the major items, for les blanchisseuses are a power in the land. When I was leaving Paris the directrice of the école Feminine in Passy, which had been my home for three months, suggested delicately that I leave a tip for the laundress, for, said this practical person, herself a sufferer from many forms of imposition, "she has been extremely complaisante in coming every week for Madame's wash." I remarked that the laundress might reasonably feel some gratitude to me for adding weekly to her curtailed income; but my smiling directrice shook her head. The favor, it appeared, was all on the other side. So, although I had tipped the many girls of my unique boarding-place with pleasure I parted with the sum designated for my patronizing laundress with no grace whatever.

But to return to the heroine of the story told me by Mrs. Armstrong Whitney, one of the many American women living in Paris who are working for France.

This laundress had a very large business, in partnership with her husband. Nobody was expected to bring the family washing to her door, nor even to send a servant. The linen was called for and delivered, for this prosperous firm owned several large trucks and eight or ten strong horses.

War was declared. This woman's husband and all male employees were mobilized. Her horses were commandeered. So were her trucks. Many of her wealthier patrons were already in the country and remained there, both for economy's sake and to encourage and help the poor of their villages and farms. The less fortunate made shift to do their washing at home. Nevertheless there were patrons who still needed her services at least once a fortnight.

This good woman may have had her moments of despair. If so, the world never knew it. She began at once to adjust herself to the new conditions and examine her resources. She importuned the Government until, to be rid of her, they returned two of her horses. She rented a cart and employed girls suddenly thrown out of work, to take the place of the vanished men. The business limped on but it never ceased for a moment; and as the months passed it assumed a firmer gait. People returned from the country, finding that they could be more useful in Paris as members of one or other of a thousand oeuvres; and they were of the class that must have clean linen if the skies fall. Also, many Americans who had fled ignominiously to England returned and plunged into work. And Americans, with their characteristic extravagance in lingerie, are held in high esteem by les blanchisseuses.

Further assaults upon the amiable Government resulted in the return of more horses and one or two trucks. To-day, while the business by no means swaggers, this woman, thanks to her indomitable courage and energy, combined with the economical habit and the financial genius of the French, has ridden safely over the rocks into as snug a little harbor as may be found in any country at war.

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