Another very charming feature is the care taken of the permanently crippled. At Lyons, M. Herriot, the mayor, worked hard in this direction, and established schools where the mutilated could be taught useful trades. M. Maurice Barrès in Paris, chiefly by making use of columns in the _Écho de Paris_, worked for the same holy cause. One of the prettiest things is to go into a French hospital and see the semi-convalescents at work upon ingenious and charming little objects wherein they show their taste and inexhaustible ingenuity. They are never at a loss, these sons of France: a cunningly carved flower, an amusing caricature, a doll with articulated limbs, dainty little baskets—all these bear witness to the inherent culture and good taste that are theirs by right of birth, in virtue of having been born on the fruitful soil of France. I have spoken of the bravery of the soldier as he lies under the surgeon’s knife; but let us not forget the signal heroism of the surgeons themselves, and their staffs. They have given proof of a super-human courage and self-forgetfulness, and surgeons and doctors, stretcher-bearers and nurses, have frequently figured in the Army Orders for their absolute devotion to duty. In many cases the enemy granted no truce for the recovery of the wounded, and it was necessary to seek them under a hail of bullets and shell fire. Wounds were dressed on the field of battle during the fight or in ambulances, which the Red Cross flag did not always protect from the bombardment of the Huns. In many cases it was perfectly evident that the building was the positive target of the enemy. The trained nurse, as we understand her in England, hardly existed at the outbreak of the war, but the women of the Red Cross worked in the hospitals and made up for a lack of professional training by a devotion without limits, and a whole-hearted willingness to learn and adapt themselves to the new conditions. It is true that no amount of good-will can supply the want of professional knowledge, but I have the testimony of many doctors that the better-educated Frenchwoman speedily acquired the essential part of hospital practice. The ladies who belonged to the various societies under the Red Cross were unpaid, and had gained their certificates after six-months’ service in a hospital. Three societies form the Red Cross organisation in France: the Sociètè de la Croix Rouge, the Sociètè de Secours aux Blessès, and Union des Femmes de France. There is a religious basis to the French Red Cross, and before the war, before every woman who had leisure, rushed to offer her services to her beloved country, nursing in France was almost entirely in the hands of the Sisters of Mercy. True, in late years, in the course of the terrible struggle between Church and State, many of these splendid women had been driven from France, banished to carry their beneficence and charity to foreign climes. But when the