Upon entering the service of the Ambulance all volunteers, no matter what their ultimate position is to be, are required to attain a certain efficiency and practical knowledge in the actual handling of wounded. I am now taking my turn at this service. One train of ambulances is always stationed in Paris and carries wounded from the Aubervilliers station to the various city hospitals. This train is manned by the latest recruits, who there undergo training, being meanwhile carefully observed by the staff officers. The majority of them prove to be good material, and in from two to six weeks are sent to the front, while those who are not judged to be reliable are replaced by new volunteers. Candidates are not required to agree to any definite length of enlistment but are at liberty to leave whenever they so elect. On the other hand, the chiefs of the Ambulance Corps make no promises to send any volunteer to the front but reserve the right to select only those men who have first proved themselves fit for such great responsibility. Field ambulances are virtually all alike and as a rule hold four stretchers in two tiers. In front are seats for the driver and his orderly, and behind is a boxlike body eight feet long with wooden roof and floor and canvas sides. From the back of the ambulance a wounded man on his stretcher is slid into place as a bread pan is slid into an oven, the feet of the stretcher running on wooden rails. In starting out to collect the wounded an ambulance carries its full quota of stretchers. When a man is picked up from the field of battle one of these is taken out and he is carefully lifted on it; if he is already lying on a stretcher he is not changed but, in order to save unnecessary suffering, put into the ambulance with the one on which he is already resting,--an empty one being left behind in exchange. In order that this process may always be feasible it is necessary that all stretchers should be interchangeable; the Minister of War has, therefore, decreed that a standard stretcher called "Branquard réglementaire," and no other, must be used throughout the French armies. As the number of casualties has been overwhelmingly and unexpectedly large, the French have not up to date been able to give proper care to their wounded. It is not uncommon for wounded men _en route_ from the front to be on trains for three and four days, virtually uncared for, and usually without anything to eat. Such trains finally arrive in Paris freighted with death and madness, with gangrene and lockjaw. I today saw two men who had been wounded a month ago and were still in the clothes in which they had fought.