Then there were cases of handkerchiefs, of pens and paper, pencils, songs with and without music, knives, pipes, post-cards, razors, parasiticides, chocolate, vaseline, perfumes (many of these articles are donations from manufacturers), soap in vast quantities; books serious and diverting; pamphlets purposed to keep patriotism at fever pitch, or to give the often ignorant peasant soldier a clear idea of the designs of the enemy.

In small compartments at one end of the largest of the rooms were exhibited the complete installations of the baraques, the portable beds, kitchen and dining-room utensils and dishes, all extraordinarily neat and compact.  In another room was a staff engaged in correspondence with officers, doctors and surgeons at the Front, poilus, or the hundred and one sources that contribute to the great oeuvre.  Girls, young widows, young and middle-aged married women whose husbands and sons were fighting, all give their days freely and work far harder and more conscientiously than most women do for hire.

All of these presents, when they arrive at the depots, are given out personally by the officers, and this as much as the genuine democracy of the men in command has served to break down the suspicious or surly spirit of the French peasant on his first service, to win over the bumptious industrial, and even to subdue the militant anarchist and predatory Apache.  This was Mlle. Javal’s idea, and has solved a problem for many an anxious officer.

She said to me with a shrug:  “My brother and I are now run by our servants.  I have quite lost control.  Our home is like a bachelor apartment.  After the war is over I must turn them all out and get a new staff.”

And this is but one of the minor problems for men and women the Great War has bred.

VII

Magic lanterns and cinemas are also among the presents sent to the eclope depots in the War Zone; some of which, by the way, are charmingly situated.  I visited one just outside of a town which by a miracle had escaped the attention of the enemy during the retreat after the Battle of the Marne.  The buildings of the depot have been built in the open fields but heavily ambushed by fine old trees.  Near by is a river picturesquely winding and darkly shaded.  Here I saw a number of eclopes fishing as calmly as if the roar of the guns that came down the wind from Verdun were but the precursor of an evening storm.

In the large refectory men were writing home; reading not only books but the daily and weekly newspapers with which the depots are generously supplied by the editors of France.  Others were exercising in a gymnasium or playing games with that childish absorption that seems to be as natural to a soldier at the Front when off duty as the desire for a bath or a limbering of the muscles when he leaves the trenches.

Another of Mlle. Javal’s ideas was to send to the War Zone automobiles completely equipped with a dental apparatus in charge of a competent dentist.  These automobiles travel from depot to depot and even give their services to hospitals where there are no dental installations.