the horror and hopelessness of their situation. The nights are
particularly bad. Any one who knows hospitals well, knows the night
terrors of the wards; knows, too, the contagion of excitement that
proceeds from a hysterical or delirious patient.

In some of these lonely hospitals hell breaks loose at night. The
peasant women must sleep. Even the tireless nuns cannot labour forever
without rest. The men have come from battlefields of infinite horror.
A frenzied dream, a delirious soldier calling them to the charge, and
panic rages.

To offset these horrors of the night the peasants have, here and
there, resorted to music. It is naive, pathetic. Where there is a
piano it is moved into the school, or garage, or whatever the building
may be, and at twilight a nun or a volunteer musician plays quietly,
to soothe the men to sleep. In one or two towns a village band, or
perhaps a lone cornetist, plays in the street outside.

So the days go on, and the nights. Supplies are begged for and do not
always come. Dressings are washed, to be used again and again.

An attempt is now being made to better these conditions. A Frenchwoman
helping in one of these hospitals, and driven almost to madness by the
outcries of men and boys undergoing operations without anaesthetics,
found her appeals for help unanswered. She decided to go to England to
ask her friends there for chloroform, and to take it back on the next
boat. She was successful. She carried back with her, on numerous
journeys, dressings, chloroform, cotton, even a few instruments. She
is still doing this work. Others interested in isolated hospitals,
hearing of her success, appealed to her; and now regular, if small,
shipments of chloroform and dressings are going across the Channel.

Americans willing to take their own cars, and willing to work, will
find plenty to do in distributing such supplies over there. A request
has come to me to find such Americans. Surgeons who can spare a
scalpel, an artery clip or two, ligatures--catgut or silk--and
forceps, may be certain of having them used at once. Bandages rolled
by kindly American hands will not lie unclaimed on the quay at Havre
or Calais.

So many things about these little hospitals of France are touching,
without having any particular connection. There was a surgeon in one
of these isolated villages, with an X-ray machine but no gloves or
lead screen to protect himself. He worked on, using the deadly rays to
locate