nded, when they came the
women of energy and courage turned to the work without jealousy,
without regard to red tape, without fastidiousness. I have in mind half
a dozen other women about the streets that day in uniforms of short
skirts and helmets, who belonged to a volunteer organization which
had taken some care as to its regimentals. They were types not
characteristic of the whole, of whom one practical English doctor said:
"We don't mind as long as they do not get in the way." Their criticisms
of Calais and the arrangements were outspoken; nothing was
adequate; conditions were filthy; it was shameful. They were going to
write to the English newspapers about it and appeal for money. When
they had organized a proper hospital, one should see how the thing
ought to be done. Meantime, these volunteer Frenchwomen were
doing the best they knew how and doing it now.

A fine-looking young Frenchman who had a shell-wound in the thigh
was being lifted on to the table. He shuddered with pain, as he
clenched his teeth; yet when the dressing was finished he was able to
breathe his thanks. On the seat was a Congo negro who had been
with one of the Belgian regiments, coal black and thick-lipped, with
bloodshot eyes; an unsensitized human organism, his face as
expressionless as his bare back with holes made by shell-fragments.
A young Frenchwoman--she could not have been more than nineteen
--with a face of singular refinement, sprayed his wounds with the
definiteness of one trained to such work, though two days before it
had probably never occurred to her as being within the possibilities
of her existence. Her coolness and the coolness of the other women
in their silent activity had a charm that added to one's devout respect.

The French wounded, too, were silent, as if in the presence of a crisis
which overwhelmed personal thoughts. Help was needed at the front;
they knew it. On sixty trains in one day sixty thousand French passed
through Calais. With a pass from the French commandant at Calais, I
got on board one of these trains down at the railroad yards at dawn.
This lot were Turcos, under the command of a white-haired veteran of
African campaigns. An utter change of atmosphere from the freight
shed! Perhaps it is only the wounded who have time to think. My
companions in the officers' car were as cheery as the brown devils
whom they led. They had come from the trenches on the Marne, and
their commissariat was a boiled ham, so