enthusiastic
books about the "Land of the Strenuous Life."

When the war broke out this large-hearted priest and busy author dropped
all his literary and other plans to minister to the wounded soldiers
brought to the war hospital established by Americans in the fine new
building of the Lycee Pasteur, which was to have received its first
medical students a few weeks later. There were 250 beds at first, and
later 500, with more than a hundred American automobiles carrying the
wounded to it, often direct from the front.

Through all these months Abbe Klein has labored day and night among
these sufferers, cheering some to recovery, easing the dying moments of
others with spiritual solace, and, hardest of all, breaking the news of
bereavement to parents.

From day to day, through those terrible weeks of fighting on the Aisne
and the Marne, with Paris itself in danger, the good abbe wrote brief
records of his hopes and fears regarding his wounded friends, and set
down in living words the more heroic or touching phases of their simple
stories. Let me translate a few of them for the reader.

Take, for instance, the case of Charles Maree, a blue-eyed, red-bearded
hero of thirty years, an only son who had taken the place of his invalid
father at the head of their factory, and who had responded to the first
call to arms. During his months of suffering his parents were held in
territory occupied by the enemy and could not be reached. The abbe goes
on to tell his story:

Let us not be deceived by the calm smile on his face. For six
weeks Charles Maree has been undergoing an almost continual
martyrdom, his pelvis fractured, with all the consequences one
divines, weakened by hemorrhage, his back broken, capable only
of moving his head and arms.... He is one of our most fervent
Christians: I bring him the communion twice a week, and he
never complains of suffering. He is also one of our bravest
soldiers; he has received the military medal, and when I asked
him how it came about he told me the following in a firm tone
and with his hand in mine, for we are great friends:

"It was given to me the 8th of October. I had to fulfill a
mission that was a little difficult. It was at Mazingarbe,
between Bethune and Lens, and 9 o'clock in the evening. Two of
the enemy's armored auto-machine guns had just been discovered
approaching our lines. I was ordered to go an