I think it was early in 1915 that Madame Waddington wrote in Scribner’s Magazine a description of her son’s chateau as it was after the Germans had evacuated it.  But the half was not told.  It never can be, in print.  Madame Huard, in her book, My Home on the Field of Honor, is franker than most of the current historians have dared to be, and the conditions which she too found when she returned after the German retreat may be regarded as the prototype of the disgraceful and disgusting state in which these lovely country homes of the French were left; not by lawless German soldiers but by officers of the first rank.  Madame Francis Waddington did not even run upstairs to snatch her jewel case, and of course she never saw it again.  Her dresses had been taken from the wardrobes and slashed from top to hem by the swords of these incomprehensible barbarians.  The most valuable books in the library were gutted.  But these outrages are almost too mild to mention.

IV

The next task after the city ouvroir was in running order was to teach the countrywomen how to sew for the soldiers and pay them for their work.  The region of the Aisne is agricultural where it is not heavily wooded.  Few of the women had any skill with the needle.  The two Madame Waddingtons concluded to show these poor women with their coarse red hands how to knit until their fingers grew more supple.  This they took to very kindly, knitting jerseys and socks; and since those early days both the Paris and country ouvroirs had sent (June, 1916) twenty thousand packages to the soldiers.  Each package contained a flannel shirt, drawers, stomach band, waistcoat or jersey, two pairs of socks, two handkerchiefs, a towel, a piece of soap.  Any donations of tobacco or rolled cigarettes were also included.

This burden in the country has been augmented heavily by refugees from the invaded districts.  Of course they come no more these days, but while I was in Paris they were still pouring down, and as the Waddington estate was often in their line of march they simply camped in the park and in the garage.  Of course they had to be clothed, fed, and generally assisted.

As Madame Waddington’s is not one of the picturesque ouvroirs she has found it difficult to keep it going, and no doubt contributes all she can spare of what the war has left of her own income.  Moreover, she is on practically every important war relief committee, sometimes as honorary president, for her name carries great weight, often as vice-president or as a member of the “conseil.”  After her ouvroirs the most important organization of which she is president is the Comite International de Pansements Chirurgicaux des Etats Unis—­in other words, surgical dressings—­started by Mrs. Willard, and run actively in Paris by Mrs. Austin, the vice-president.  When I visited it they were serving about seven hundred hospitals, and no doubt by this time are supplying twice that number.  Two floors of a new apartment house had been put at their disposal near the Bois, and the activity and shining whiteness were the last word in modern proficiency (I shall never use that black-sheep among words, efficiency, again).