afterwards Kirwan's
colleague as an official of the Irish constitutional organisation in
Great Britain. The company might have developed into a regiment, and
even into a brigade, had the movement started earlier to get men over to
France by various means. This could have been done, notwithstanding the
Foreign Enlistment Act; and towards the end of the war, French agents
were in this country providing for the sending over of large numbers of
men to France, when the capitulation of Paris caused the collapse of
their arrangements.

The men of the Irish Ambulance Corps did their work so well as to show
that not only did Irishmen make good soldiers, but that, possessing the
sympathetic Celtic nature, their services were highly appreciated by the
wounded who fell to their charge. Captain Kirwan's company fought
bravely, sustaining the credit of their country through the whole
campaign, and, under Bourbaki, were among those who actually struck the
last blow the Germans received on French soil.

Arthur Forrester, who joined the French Foreign Legion, was severely
wounded in the foot. After the war he came into the office of the
"Catholic Times," when I was manager and John McArdle editor of that
paper. We welcomed him, of course, not only as an old friend and brother
journalist, but as one who had been fighting for France.

In his "Camp Fires of the Legion" written for my "Irish Library," James
Lysaght Finigan tells of his adventures in the war. He found his way to
Lille, in the north of France, and, with several hundreds of other
Irishmen became enrolled in the ranks of the Foreign Legion. In
Lieutenant Elliott he was delighted to recognise Edmond O'Donovan, who
had figured so prominently in the Fenian movement, and whose
incarceration in Ireland and exile in America were fresh in his memory.
"The Legion," Finigan says, "showed itself worthy of its predecessors,
the Irish Brigades of former days, during the reverses that constantly
befel the armies of France." He gives graphic accounts of the battles
they were engaged in, and how, in the defence of Orleans, he and a
number of his comrades were taken prisoners, among those being his
friend O'Donovan, who had been wounded by a piece of shell.

The Foreign Legion must have borne the brunt of the fighting. The fourth
battalion was cut to pieces at Woerth, Gravelotte, and Sedan; the fifth
battalion was reduced from 3,000 to some 300; the sixth battalion retook
Orleans, was comp