e front-line. The hospital was prepared and waiting
for them. But in the last few days the military situation had changed.
A hospital so near the trenches stood a good chance of being destroyed
by shell-fire; so once again the unit was held up. It volunteered to
abandon its idea of running the hospital for children; it would run it
as a first aid hospital for the armies. The offer was refused. These
girls, whose gravest interest a year ago had been the season's dances
and the latest play, were determined to experience the thrill of
sacrifice. So here they were in the doomed city, as the Red Cross
officials said, "by luck"--the very place where they were most needed.

When I visited them, after leaving the Prefet's, they had not yet
heard that they were to be allowed to stay. They had heard nothing of
the city's sentence or of the evacuation of the civil population. All
they knew was that the hospital, which had been appointed with their
money, was only a few kilometres away and that they were forbidden
even to see it. They were gloomy with the fear that within a handful
of days they would be again walking the boulevards of Paris. When
the news was broken to them of the part they were to play, the full
significance of it did not dawn on them at once. "But we don't want
anything easy," they complained; "this isn't the Front." "It will
be soon," the official told them. When they heard that they cheered
up; then their share in the drama was explained. In all probability
the city would soon be under constant shell-fire. Refugees would be
pouring back from the forward country. The people of the city itself
had to be helped to escape before the bombardment commenced. They
would have to stay there taking care of the children, packing them
into lorries, driving ambulances, rendering first aid, taking the
wounded and decrepit out of danger and always returning to it again
themselves. As the certainty of the risk and service was impressed on
them their faces brightened. Risk and service, that was what they most
desired; they were girls, but they hungered to play a soldier's part.
They had only dreamt of serving when they had sailed from New York.
Those three months of waiting had stung their pride. It was in Paris
that the dream of risk had commenced. They would make France want
them. Their chance had come.

When I came out into the streets again the word was spreading. Carts
were being loaded in front of houses. Everything on wh