In one of our hospitals was a young lad of seventeen who had managed to enlist as an "engage volontaire" by lying as to his age. His old Mother came to visit him, and she told me he was the last of her three sons; the two elder ones had died the first week of the war at Pont Mousson, and her little home had been burned to the ground. The boy had spent his time inventing new and terrible methods of dealing with the enemy, but with his Mother he became a child again and tenderly patted the old face. Seeing the lad in his Mother's arms, and forgetting for one moment the spirit of the French nation, I asked her if she would not be glad if her boy was so wounded that she might take him home. She was only an old peasant woman, but her eyes flashed, her cheeks flushed with anger and turning to me she said, "Mademoiselle, how dare you say such a thing to me? If all the Mothers, Wives and Sweethearts thought as you, what would happen to the country? Gustave has only one thing to do, get well quickly and fight for Mother France." Because these women of France have sent their men forth to die, eyes dry, with stiff lips and head erect, do not think that they do not mourn for them. When night casts her kindly mantle of darkness over all, when they are hidden from the eyes of the world, it is then that the proud heads droop and are bent upon their arms, as the women cry out in the bitterness of their souls for the men who have gone from them. Yet they realise that behind them stands the greatest Mother of all, Mother France, who sees coming towards her, from her frontiers, line on line of ambulances with their burden of suffering humanity, yet watches along other routes her sons going forth in thousands, laughter in their eyes, songs on their lips, ready and willing to die for her. France draws around her her tattered and bloodstained robe, yet what matters the outer raiment? Behind it shines forth her glorious, exultant soul, and she lifts up her head rejoicing and proclaims to the world that when she appealed man, woman, and child--the whole of the French nation-- answered to her call.