To Family, 31 August 1919

     digitized, transcribed, encoded, and annotated by Elle Kowal

Vic_sur_Aisne, August 31, 1919.

Delectable People,

Since I last wrote I learn that Eleanor is at the Brackens
qnd Katherine Gardner expected and this letter is to everyone to receive
rowings and ramblings! If I had spare moments I would love to spend them
with you above all things, and as a matter of fact I do since my only
spare memoneomentsoments are Sundaayys and I write you during the greater part of the
mornings.

Last Monday afternoon I think, or some other afternoon
lately, I was seiitting in my office working over my records when I heard
a substantial step behind me and in strode the Duchess of Albufera, look_
ing more like an Englishwoman than ever in a brisk sort of suit. She
was charmed with everything in the barrack, the posters, the toys, the
technical equipment, the records and we strolled on back across the
little bridge to the living barracks and the store and my big storage
barrack for where my supplies for feeding debilitated children are kept
And finally to the house for tea which is always served between four and
six to those of us who get in and want it. I heard voices in the dining
room and found when we came in that Barney and Garney were sitting there
with Mademoiselle Bonnell, the daughter of the wealthy railroad and
indsuusustrial man whose delectable shattered summer home had housed us
for many months. Of course the Duchess and Mlle. Bonnell had never met
and I was afraid things mightened be cosy eseppepecially as the latter got sort
of rigid and stiff.Barney in her motor clothes, her serious nose
cleaving the air, her short hair and jolly countenance of some forty
summers looked as delightfully different as ever and Garney
so much like an exquisite embodiment of youth itself that even the Duchess
looked twice at her. But she had to run out after the dogs and Barney
went to find Miss Parsons superintending a demonstration of American
canners at the Chateau barrack and haul her in. So I was left with
the traditions of Napoleon and the modern industrial world, which I
placed one on each side of me, and to whom I served tea, and since both
arewere are very well bred mutual topics of conversation were quickly found
and we sprawled over them. When Miss Parsons came in, and some of the
others dribbled in after her, and theDuchess had consumed all the bread
and jam that were reasonably good for her, we took her over the rest of
the place and up to the Barrack where the canning demonstration was
taking place and finally left her at the Chateau to call on the de Reisets
while a Frenchman got up like an d English groom and an English trap
waited to trot her home. But not before she had invited Miss Parsons
and me to lunch with her Saturday a wekeek and expressed the appreciation I
sincerely hope she felt for all we had done for Montgobert.

The de Reisetshave had a most delightful guest, a Mlle, de
Canasie, a graceful woman somewhere in her thirtyiies with slightly gray
hair and a tired young face. Like every body else she has been working
through the war, as a war nurse although she in not really a nurse, and
her experiences have been particularly thrilling. She has English deco-
rations was well as the Croix de Guerre and she was captured in 1914 by
the Germans in the Somme with her hospital, but well treated because in
those days the officers of the German army were Junkers and she said they
had a slavish desire to classify and treat well those of their own class
in other counceistrietries, and some of them she had known before. While she was
at Roye the place was taken and retaken several times by the French and
for a long while she hid British soldiers in the lofts above the barn
where many of her German wounded were housed and carried food to them
under the sruururgical dressings which she was allowed by the German guard
to take to the barn for her daily ministrations to their sick. Onvcce a

2.

German officer carried the whole thing for her, French officers in the
clothes of the local peasants with their uniforms underneath sometimseeses
slipped through somehow and conferred with her and she found the body
of one she had talked with in the morning short through the heart in the
afternoon and got it burial, but not before a little detachment of
french troops within a few hundreds yards of German guards had paid it
military honors. That was before the day of the settled trench war fare
while the German armies were surging forward and then back with much rear_
guard action, and anything was possible.

The de Reisets had to go away for a few days leaving Mlle. De
Canasie at the Chateau and she came in on us to lunch and then to dinner__
for we had gotten very freiieiendly and like her immensely. Miss Bonnell
dorropped in after noon dinner that same veevening for some musicc, and of
course they had not met. So Modern Industrial France and one old aristocracy
met Royalism under our roof and sand Lamertine's Lac and other charming
things to her really beautiful accompaniment. The whole thing was curiously
unreal to an American. These two girls are both beautiful and well bred
and one is of an old house and one is very ewwealthy and what they could
do for their country if they combined and put the energy and intelligence
they gave so freely to the war into modern social and health problems
passes belief. Perhaps the meeting in America's house may bear future fruit-
who can say? But it seems to me just now as tiif the men and women of their
class and the men too of the de Canasie callalass are dfrrifting helplessly and
unhappily, longing for something to fill their soutllsls and hearts as the
war did and not knowing that theirs too is the great prolem of readjustment
and progress. I have never seen people who got together less than the
French. It is socially impossible in nearly every village to have the Curé
and the mayor meet even at a public function as they are usually at
daggers point. At Ressons the mayor, one of the Ferté s, farmers, is a
strong churchman and they go hand in glove, but usually one is forever
opposing the other. None of the aristocratic families in France buckle down
to the modern problems of the state and Mlle. De Canasie says it is because
nobody could be elected on a royalist platform, but that anyone might
perhaps seek newer issues occcurs rarely to them and when it does occur
they go to extremes k like the Baron de Pelletier and become radical
socilaalists and then, says Mlle. De Canasie, "they get bad manners." But
the Baron de Pelletier's manners are excellent, it is only his views that
one finds a bit unsound.

Speaking of Mcurés we have a real affection for the one at Vic
who is not only delightful and sweet natured but exceptionally intelligent
and progressive as well and he and M. Breaux, the mayor, are on such terms
that is was possible for both of them to take part together in a memorial
service for the dead. We call the Curé here, whose name I don't know, M.
Le Doyen, because that is the rather higher title he has, indicating he
is a sort of superior in the church supervising other village cures in his
territory. He had set his heart on having a picture painted as a frame
for the names of the thirty four men of Vic who died in the war and he
wanted an angel weeping over a tomb. No one could paint it he said but the
Americans and he came to me personally about it while Miss Parsons was
away. She paints and so did Rose Clark and Miss Smith, the driver of the
Jardin d e' Enfants camion. But all of them were away, Miss P. for her two
weeks "permission", Miss Clark for good and Miss Smith for a few days in
Paris. So I sent word over to Soissons to ask if Lady And Smith said she
couldn't do angels and tombs anyway although she had done a head of the
Kaiser for the boys to throw balls at during our fete, which M. de Reiset
characterized as "énormément chic ." So I told M. le Doyen that we couldnt
produce the painting. Then a few days later Mlle. De Reiset came over and
said that the Doyen had set his heart on the paingtting but would compromise

3.

and renounce all aspirations to the angel and tomb if someone would only
paint for him a shield, to heoold the names, with a background of flags and
laurel wreaths. Not a human being who could wield a brush was on hand
in Vicand I despaired, especially after I had sent word over to Soissons
to ask if Lady Helena could do it and gotten back kesword that she was
just off to Paris herself for several days but had hastily scratched out
a design for me before leaving "which anyone could execute." Then luckily
Smith returned, just the day before the da Sunday on which the Doyen had
to have the painting and she sat up until ten in her pajamas paiting
painting away with the result that at ten that night Patsyand I, bearing
the card board like a tray, because it was still wet, tramped over theto
the Doyen's little house by the river and presented it, to the instant
irradiatiuoon of his kindly face. It was black columns surmounted by a
gold cross, with the wreaths above and corrossed flags over them, and the
center ofnn the whole containedss the sheiieield on which the DoyenDoyen has now
pairirinted the names of the thirty four dead soldiers in a way that makes
them look like an engraving. And Patsy is going to have the thing framed
for him, Mrs. Dike taking it up to Paris in her limouusine so that no
harm can reach it en route. Now just stop for a moment and imagine
any little American town half the size of Eureka Springs giving up to
death thirty four of its best citizens, the youngest and most vital, and
haveiining a proportion of the others maimed and struck with tuberculosis and
then imagine it starting life over like that ___ with in addition half its
houses ruined and nearly all of its children subnormal. But Vic havssn't sufferedd
anything like as heavily as most of ourr villages.

The charm ovff the Doyen, who is frequently our guest, ioss marred
for us by the awfulness of the widowAed sister who keesppsps house for him
and with her grasping manners and black clothes suggests and pale face
suggests a bird of prey. She descends upon us frequently and always to
beg for something we can't possibly let her have, as for instance a goat.
I told her they were only for homes where there were children and that if
she would adopt two little orphan children we would give her a goat with
pleasure. She said she needed goats milk for her delicate stomach, so I
explained frankly that the condition of her stomach and its needs was not
of any moment whatever to the American nation.

Now how I wish you could see the way in which my little ones are
gaining in weight as a result of what I am doing for them. My records for
Vic comprise today 75 babies, 178 children from two to six, and 534 school
children. A number of these, a large number, have goats and chickens and
rabbits or are being supplies reguarllarlary with Powdered or Malted milk or
condensed milk and cocoa, or other portable supplies, and their mothers
follow with eagerness the gains in their weights, comparing them with
the standard weights on the big card and praying for the day when their
child's weight will reach that standard. There is the little Coret boy
at Ressonswho was four and a half years under the Germans and is sixteen
pounds below normal. I am trying to fatten him up as I would a little pig.
And he says( he is eight years old although you would never guess it to
look at him) that he would be thinner yet isff his mother had not shown him
how to hide the little potatoes of the field where the Germans had his
mother digging, in his clothes when the guard wasn't looking and slip
hioome with them and back for more, and no one e ver--found out that he did itt.
There is Jeanne Boucher of Vic whose mother died of tuberculosis and whose
wasfatfather was killed, so that she lives with her old grandparents, and is
on the list for one of the next goats. She is four years old and bears
on her little thin shoulders the scars of a shell wellwell which wounded her at
Soissons when she was eight months old. There is the Boulanger family

4.

of Laversine, the one with eight children under fourteen living and
two dead and a third who was ill in the civil hospital at Soissons
when it had to be evacuated and they have never had word of her since.
They are quite normal people mentally, industrious and well worth while
and the man was so tired all the time I thought perhaps he was T.B. but
Dr Fraser went over his lungs and found no reason for thinking so
and said she thought it was nothing but prolonged starvation. His wages
are seven francs a d ay when he is strong enough to work and the
fourteen year old girl also works eleven hours in the fields and their
entire diet always and forever is white bread and vegetal soup s, with
cheese once a week, never meat, never eggs, never milk. The old Pain
Bis of France had protein in it and was nourishing, but the white
flour we sent them from home, which charms them so, and is perhalpps the
only kind which can be transported, is nothing but starch and where
bread must the the staple of diet it isn't adequate. I wonder if we
can ever educate them back to the pain when their own grain is
rasied again in quantity. I wonder how long ebbefore we get their land
back into grain again. You have no idea how long it takes to clear the
land. Our canton of Coucy had fifty hectares under cultivation this
year out of the fifteen thousand of its pre_war days. Now about five
thousand has been cleared of barkbb wire entanglements and the trenches
have been filled and it will go into winter wheat, or much of it, but
only about three thousand more can possibly be ready for next spring a
planting. And Anizy will have even less.

To return to the Boulanger family. They are on their third twenty
five pound box of Powdered Milk since I found them with instructions to
drink not less than four cups of milk a day and as much more as they
want, per person, and they have had given them from lour precious Fund
a gaooaoat, of course, two chickens, and a female rabbit. Of course the
Committee has given them the extra clothes and bedding they need so
that all of their earnings can go into food. There was a three weeks old
baby and the mother had weaned it at birth because, perhaps I worrorote you
of this, she got up always on the third day and her milk dried at once.
I have worried over this baby and gone there and given evertyytything needed
in the way of nursing bottles and nippliseses, and the simplest formula and
made it up for the mother over and over, but it just doesn't thrive. At
three months it weighs less than eight pounds. And a charming baby too.
So the last time I went there, a few days ago, and found it was again
having comiting and diarrhoea I just asked her to give it to me to take
th the hospital at Blerancourt and let them keep it until it was older
and thriving. She asked if I would be sure to bring it back and I didn't
smile for I remembered the child which had been left in the hsoiospospital at
Soissons and never seen again. Well I received the baby and the gift
of six large cabbages ("all we have," said the man apologetically, "this
year in the garden, but perhaps you like them") and tore back home with
to be jouously received by the unit, which wanted to keep the baby, but
agtrreed no one had time to look after it. But Miss Parsons said: "How can
I go back to a New Yorkflat where babies and Duchesses and canners and
goats don't drop in every day!" Then after lunch, the gbbaby's as well
as ours, I carried him up to Blerancourt where is now in the care of
an English nurse, on the same modification on which I had him, but thriving
because everything is reular and roomy and quiet and rightly done. So
he is going to live. Noennene of my seventy odd babies has died this summer.

I must stop. I never write myself out but there is always so
much to do that lots has to be left unwritten. Mrs. Dike has just spent
two nights with us and gone thooroughly into every problem and given the
same brainy support one expects from her. My work will extend from now

5

on more and more into the other three counties as well as this one and
for my two Bordeaux nurses will soon be here ( the graduates of the
Florence Nightingale Training school, the only one in France modeled on
th Anglo Saxon pattern and of equivalent standing) and I will leave
much of the Vic work to my assistant and spend much time at Blerancourt
and Anizy establishing the Frneenench nurses and exercising general super_
vision. But I will keep Vic as my headquarters and here is my big
storage barrack for supplies. I wanted to run up to Blerancourt yes_
terday afternoon to take a look at the Boulanger baby and Mrs. Dike
told me to take the limousine, so I did but it seemed curious to be
driving between those war torn fields in anything but a camion. However
I have a great respect for that limousine, which has carried every conceiva
ble sort of junk. Miss Morgan was at Blerancourt when I got there wish
and said in that hearty way we all like so in her:" How are you Thompy?
How is everything over there?" Then I had half an hour with her and
alwaas always the fullest encouragcccntmentment and support. How could one
fail to get results with such an organization back of one and the
cooperation from others which I have met at every turn?

This is too lognng a letter. I must pull up and get dressed, for
it is nearly noon and I am in my dressing gown in my own bedroom. I was
tremendously interested in the articles by Basil King you cut out and
xssent to me and please be sure to send the others in the series. I am
so glad Aunt Florence found them. Please ask her to send this letter on
its carbon to Mrs. John Stovall to read. I think she should know something
of the work as it progresses since she is giving to it. I will write
her and Mrs. Howard and Miss Hannahs this week, the last in care of Aunt
Florence. Your letter and one from Mary Bendeleray about the Woodington
ball and seventy seven dollars for the Fund have gbboth come and I am
writing her this week. She wants a goat named Dixie and I shall name
one of the others Yankee and one Canada, so that will get all the
contributors to that check, and the extra money which comes from the
exchange I will put intoo chickens and rabbits. I have from Mr. Gardner
three checks, one each for ten dollars and the one for seventy seven,
all amounting to a great deal more than that because of the high exchange,
But the purchasing power is not as high now for livestock as it would
be in dollars at home. A plain hen costs three at least fifteen francs
only the committee pays everything over ten francs, so for every ten
francs I can get and give a hen, or a rabbit.

I did not go to Chateau Thierry the Sunday I planned,
but a later Sunday. I have svvisited many of the lesser battle fields of course,
in fact I work among them every day, and three of the great ones, Vimy
Ridge, Chemin des Dames, and Belleau AWWood, and each is in its own way
indescribably moving.

Warren's description of his new post on the big island sounds
interesting, but it was a shame they had to move from Old Point just
as they were assigned to such comfortable quarters and had gotten into
them. I love the bits of family letters with notes appended to them
which I have been getting at intervals lately from you, mother. One never
knows which day may bring something else, and the homee appapapers too are
satisfying. The LietTeTerary Digest comes regularly. We now have a big supply
of English and American magazines sent us by the Library Union over
here, but that doesn't happen to be among them, and I do enjoy it so much.
Caroline's and Pansy--s and Mrs. Falconer's last letters from Fort Smith
were intensely interesting to me. and I loved the one too from Mrs. Smith
and was very glad she found it possible to stop the business work and
give her time to her own people and her husband's health. Perhaps her
holiday will quite refreshen her, but she never writes of herself.