our nurses, who had but one idea, to run
to their wounded and reassure them.

"I visited at Nancy a very beautiful hospital, the Malgrange, which is
almost unique; it is the Red Cross which houses the military hospital.
At the instant of bombardment, most of the hospitals were vacated;
ours, situated outside of the city, gathered in the wounded and all
the personnel of the military hospital, and it goes very well.

"I finished my journey with the Vosges, Epinal, Belfort, Gerardmer,
Bussang, Morvillars; all these hospitals which were filled for a long
time with the wounded from the battles of the Vosges (especially our
brave Alpines) are quiet now.

"If I congratulated the nurses of the region of Verdun upon their
endurance, I do not congratulate less those of the Vosges upon their
constancy; Gerardmer has had very full days--days when one could not
take a thought to one's self. There is something painful, in a way, in
seeing great happenings receding from you. We do not hear the cannon
any longer, the wounded arrive more rarely, we have no longer enough
to do, we are easily discouraged, we should like to be elsewhere and
yet one must remain there at his post ready in case of need, which may
come perhaps when it is least expected.

"I shall have many things still to tell you, but I am going to resume
my impressions of this little trip in a few words.

"I have been filled with admiration. The word has, I believe, fallen
many times from my pen, and it will fall again and again. I have
admired our dear wounded, so courageous in their suffering, so
gracious to all those who visit them; I have admired the doctors who
are making and have made every day, such great efforts to organize and
to better conditions; and our nurses I have never ceased to admire.
When I see them I find them just as I hoped, very courageous and also
very simple. They speak very little of themselves, and a great deal of
their wounded; they complain very little of their fatigue, sometimes
of not having enough to do. They always meet cheerfully the material
difficulties of their existence as they do almost always the moral
difficulties which are even more difficult. Self-abnegation, attention
to their duty, seem to them so natural that one scarcely dares to
praise them.

"There is one thing that I must praise them for particularly--that
they always seem to keep the beautiful charming coquetry that belongs
to every woman. I often arrived without war