relief begins.  In ordinary times, this will be quite complete, and the wounded will not be carried to the rear until they are really able to stand the journey.  But while the battle is on, they must go in the greatest haste:  the worst cases are thoroughly cared for; the badly hurt who can be moved receive the attention which enables them to depart speedily; the slight cases have to be content with summary consideration.  Here one sees the devotion of the nurses and the resignation of the sufferers, and better than resignation:  the noble effort not to moan, the murmured prayer, the forgetfulness of self, eagerness to ask news of the fight.  Among the falsities of a book a thousand times too vaunted (falsities due not so much to the lie direct as to the constant dwelling on odious details, and the suppression of admirable facts), nothing is farther from the truth than the picture of a hospital at the front where one hears and sees only blaspheming and rebellious men.  With most of the wounded who have spoken to me about it in our hospital, and who certainly had the right to bear witness, we proclaim loudly that if the French army had been such as the work in question paints it in this passage and in many others, the War would have ended long ago, and history would never have known the names of the Marne, nor the Yser, nor Verdun, nor the Chemin-des-Dames.

[Sidenote:  A true picture of our Ambulance at the front.]

A true picture of an Ambulance at the front, overflowing with wounded the evening of a battle, I find in these lines by an eyewitness:  “Some moderate complaints among the crowded stretchers:  one asks for a drink, one wants relief for pain, a bed, a dressing, to be quickly attended.  But let some story be told in the group, some incident come out like a trumpet-call, all faces brighten, the men lift themselves a little, the mirage of glory gives them heart again.  I commemorate with piety the anonymous example of a little Zouave, doubled over on himself, holding his bullet-pierced abdomen in both hands, whom I heard gently asked:  ‘Well, little one, how goes it?’ Oh, very well, mon Lieutenant, our company has passed the road from B——­ to the south; we had gotten there when I was knocked out.  It’s all right; we are smashing them!”

[Sidenote:  Their first thought for victory.]

I, personally, received such answers from wounded who came to us from the Chemin-des-Dames, or from the fort of Malmaison.  When I asked for news, my mind preoccupied with their individual sufferings, their first thought was to tell me of the victory.  The ordinary French phrase for “How are you? Comment ca va-t-il?” (literally:  How goes it?) may apply to an event or to a person.  This being so, it is never of himself that the newly-wounded soldier thinks, but of what is interesting to everybody—­the common success.  I went to welcome a patient brought in October 26th and asked:  “You came tonight?”