l distortion. The
record is that made by a quiet worker amidst circumstances where few
people remained sane.

THE MENTAL HAVOC WROUGHT BY THE WAR.

BY FRANCOISE LAFITTE CYON.

During the months of September, October, November, and December, 1914, I
undertook a journey in Northern France; going first to Lille, thence to
Maubeuge, and returning to England via Brussels, Malines, Antwerp, and
Holland.

I was at Lille on October 13, 1914, when the Germans took the town.
During the first three months of my stay in France I was engaged in
nursing work at the military hospital 105 at Lille. In the early part of
December I travelled as well as I could, sometimes tramping and
sometimes making use of peasants' carts and local tramways, until I
eventually reached Holland.

It is not, however, my intention to speak much of my adventures or of
the war itself, but rather to depict, to the best of my ability, the
effect which the dreadful events of our doings have had on the minds of
the men and women I have met with over there; be they French, Belgian,
or German. This article will be an attempt to give a series of short
studies in psychology, rather than a dramatic account of a perilous
journey.

I wish my readers to bear in mind at the outset that after October 13 I
was in German territory, where, from that date onwards, I met with two
kinds of people. On the one hand, the oppressors or Germans; on the
other hand, the oppressed, namely, the French, Belgian, and a few
English.

For a psychological study to be of value, such a distinction is useful
to begin with, for one seldom finds the same frame of mind in the victor
and the vanquished, in the oppressor and the oppressed.

Whilst endeavouring to give facts, I must distinguish between three
types of people whom I met during my journey. First, civilians, French
and Belgian; secondly, the hospital staff, doctors and nurses, mostly
French, with the exception of two German doctors; thirdly, the military,
officers and men, French and German, with a few British. I am obliged to
make this division in order to make myself clear, as the events of the
war do not seem to affect the people of these three divisions in the
same way.

In what follows I shall for the most part depict types.

I met first with the civilian population. When I reached Lille, I found
life there much as usual, excepting that all appeared very quiet. But a
few days after my arrival Lille began to show an ex