north-west of Le Mans. Conlie was the first place which I decided to visit on quitting Saint Servan. The most appalling rumours were current throughout Brittany respecting the new camp. It was said to be grossly mismanaged and to be a hotbed of disease. I visited it, collected a quantity of information, and prepared an article which was printed by the _Daily News_ and attracted considerable attention, being quoted by several other London papers and taken in two instances as the text for leading articles. So far as the camp's defences and the arming of the men assembled within it were concerned, my strictures were fully justified, but certain official documents, subsequently published, indicate that I was in error on some points. The whole question having given rise to a good deal of controversy among writers on the Franco-German War--some of them regarding Conlie as a flagrant proof of Gambetta's mismanagement of military affairs--I will here set down what I believe to be strictly the truth respecting it. The camp was established near the site of an old Roman one, located between Conlie and Domfront, the principal part occupying some rising ground in the centre of an extensive valley. It was intended to be a training camp rather than an entrenched and fortified one, though a redoubt was erected on the south, and some works were begun on the northern and the north-eastern sides. When the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg reached Conlie after the battle of Le Mans, he expressed his surprise that the French had not fortified so good a position more seriously, and defended it with vigour. Both the railway line and the high-road between Laval and Le Mans were near at hand, and only a few miles away there was the old town of Sille-le-Guillaume, one of the chief grain and cattle markets of the region. There was considerable forest-land in the vicinity, and wood was abundant. But there was no watercourse, and the wells of the various adjacent little farms yielded but a very inadequate supply of water for a camp in which at one moment some 40,000 men were assembled. Thus, at the outset, the camp lacked one great essential, and such was the case when I visited it in November. But I am bound to add that a source was soon afterwards found in the very centre of the camp, and tapped so successfully by means of a steam-pumping arrangement that it ended by yielding over 300,000 litres of water per diem. The critics of the camp have said that the spot was very damp and muddy, and therefore necessarily unhealthy, and there is truth in that assertion; but the same might be remarked of all the camps of the period, notably that of D'Aurelle de Paladines in front of Orleans. Moreover, when a week's snow was followed by a fortnight's thaw, matters could scarcely be different. [From first to last (November 12 to January 7) 1942 cases of illness were treated in the five ambulances of the camp. Among them were 264 cases of small-pox. There