ich, by keeping troops in stationary
positions, under grilling artillery fire, has given such shells their
opportunity. Shrapnel has not been so deadly to the men in the
trenches.

The result of the vast casualty lists has been some hundreds of
isolated hospitals scattered through France, not affiliated with any
of the Red Cross societies, unorganised, poverty-stricken, frequently
having only the services of a surgeon who can come but once a week.
They have no dressings, no nurses save peasants, no bedding, no coal
to cook even the scanty food that the villagers can spare.

No coal, for France is facing a coal famine to-day. Her coal mines are
in the territory held by the Germans. Even if she had the mines, where
would she get men to labour in them, or trains to transport the coal?

There are more than three hundred such hospitals scattered through
isolated French villages, hospitals where everything is needed. For
whatever else held fast during the first year of the war, the nursing
system of France absolutely failed. Some six hundred miles of hospital
wards there are to-day in France, with cots so close together that one
can hardly step between. It is true that with the passing of time, the
first chaos is giving way to order. But France, unlike England, has
the enemy within her boundaries, on her soil. Her every resource is
taxed. And the need is still great.

The story of the town of D----, in Brittany, is very typical of what
the war has brought into many isolated communities.

D---- is a little town of two thousand inhabitants, with a
thirteenth-century church, with mediaeval houses with quaint stone
porticoes and outside staircases. There is one street, shaped like a
sickle, with a handle that is the station road.

War was declared and the men of D---- went away. The women and
children brought in the harvest, and waited for news. What little came
was discouraging.

One day in August one of the rare trains stopped at the station, and
an inspector got off and walked up the sickle-handle to the
schoolhouse. He looked about and made the comment that it would hold
eighty beds. Whereupon he went away, and D---- waited for news and
gathered the harvest.

On the fifth of September, 1914, the terrific battle of the Marne
commenced. The French strategic retreat was at an end, and with her
allies France resumed the offensive. What happened in the little
village of D----?

And remember that D---- is only one of hu