“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 warning.  I never saw hair disarranged or dress neglected.  This exterior perfection is, I may say, a distinctive mark of our nurses.

“And then I like the care with which they decorate and beautify their hospital.  Everywhere flowers, pictures, bits of stuff to drape their rooms.  At Revigny in one of the baraques I saw flowers, simple flowers gathered in the neighboring field, so prettily arranged, portraits of our generals framed in green.  When I complimented a nurse, she answered:  ’Ah, no; it is not well done; but I hadn’t the time to do better.’

“At Vadelaincourt, a little room was set aside for dressings, all done in white with curtains of white and two little vases of flowers.  What a smiling welcome for the poor wounded who come there!  ’The arrangement of a room has a great deal of influence on the morale of the wounded,’ a doctor said to me.  All this delights me!

“I have finished, but I shall think for a long time of this journey which has left in my memory unforgettable sights and in my heart very tender impressions.

“In the Somme, also, our nurses have worked with indefatigable ardor, and they go on without relaxation.  The poor refugees, which the Germans return to us often sick and destitute of everything, are received and comforted by our women of the Red Cross.

“The three societies of the Red Cross—­our Society for the Relief of the Military Wounded, the Union of the Women of France, and the Association of the Ladies of France—­work side by side under the direction of the Service de Sante.

“Our Society for the Relief of the Military Wounded has actually about seven hundred hospitals, which represent sixty thousand beds, where many nurses are occupied from morning until night, and many of them serve also at the military hospital at the Front, and in the Orient (three to four thousand nurses).