"I want to tell you that my little Marie is going to make her first communion privately. It is a sweet consolation for me to prepare her. She is so simple and religious that I believe her prayers must be acceptable to the Lord. She is very young, only just seven; but as you know, Pope Pius Tenth wished that children should take their first communion at that age. In these grave days we wanted her to receive this great favour that she may unite her innocent prayers with ours in order that the Lord may hear us the better." "LONDON, May 1, 1915. "It is very wearisome waiting to be sent to La Panne--but the shelling of Dunkirk does not bode well for our speedy departure. We simply have to wait from day to day, ready to start at short notice. The American Red Cross doctors and nurses--of the two new units, just arrived from America--are waiting also in London. The rules are stricter and stricter for leaving England.... No one may now leave for nursing without having been definitely engaged in a hospital over there. People are often turned back from Dover in spite of passports which are apparently perfectly correct. "You see La Panne is at present under shell fire--the King and Queen have been headquartering there, an added reason for the Germans to try to demolish it. But I hear that just now they have been too near La Panne to be able to get so short a range, and Dunkirk as you know has been the victim. Many hospitals there are being evacuated.... In the meantime I have been rather enjoying some free time here in London. I was busy for a while getting my new uniforms for La Panne--and odds and ends necessary for the 'war zone.' The uniform is of dark blue, and we wear caps with a long white veil behind. In order to get my certificate I had to take an oral medical examination--in French--before five Belgian doctors. A very trying ordeal, for it was really a stiff examination, with questions which are asked of trained nurses in their third year. But I got through somehow, and am now the proud possessor of a certificate giving me '_le droit de me mettre au service de la Croix Rouge de Belgique en qualité d'infirmière_' signed by all the doctors.