The Living Present | Page 8

the face mutilations, and
although the first room we visited at Chaptal was a witness to the
marvelous restorative work the surgeons are able to
accomplish--sometimes--many weeks and even months must elapse
while the face is not only red and swollen, but twisted, the mouth
almost parallel with the nose--and often there is no nose--a whole cheek
missing, an eye gone, or both; sometimes the whole mouth and chin
have been blown away; and I saw one face that had nothing on its flat
surface but a pipe inserted where the nose had been. Another was so
terrible that I did not dare to take a second look, and I have only a
vague and mercifully fading impression of a hideousness never before
seen in this world.
On the other hand I saw a man propped up in bed, with one entire side
of his face bandaged, his mouth twisted almost into his right ear, and a
mere remnant of nose, reading a newspaper with his remaining eye and
apparently quite happy.
The infirmière told me that sometimes the poor fellows would cry--they
are almost all very young--and lament that no girl would have them
now; but she always consoled them by the assurance that men would be
so scarce after the war that girls would take anything they could get.
In one of the wards a young soldier was sitting on the edge of his cot,
receiving his family, two women of middle age and a girl of about
seventeen. His face was bandaged down to the bridge of his nose, but
the lower part was uninjured. He may or may not have been
permanently blind. The two older women--his mother and aunt, no

doubt--looked stolid, as women of that class always do, but the girl sat
staring straight before her with an expression of bitter resentment I
shall never forget. She looked as if she were giving up every youthful
illusion, and realized that Life is the enemy of man, and more
particularly of woman. Possibly her own lover was in the trenches. Or
perhaps this mutilated boy beside her was the first lover of her youth.
One feels far too impersonal for curiosity in these hospitals and it did
not occur to me to ask.
Madame Balli had also brought several boxes of delicacies for the
private kitchen of the infirmières, where fine dishes may be concocted
for appetites still too weak to be tempted by ordinary hospital fare:
soup extract, jellies, compotes, cocoa, preserves, etc. Mr.
Holman-Black came staggering after us with one of these boxes, I
remember, down the long corridor that led to the private quarters of the
nurses. One walks miles in these hospitals.
A number of American men in Paris are working untiringly for Paris,
notably those in our War Relief Clearing House--H.O. Beatty,
Randolph Mordecai, James R. Barbour, M.P. Peixotto, Ralph Preston,
Whitney Warren, Hugh R. Griffen, James Hazen Hyde, Walter Abbott,
Charles R. Scott, J.J. Hoff, Rev. Dr. S.N. Watson, George Munroe,
Charles Carroll, J. Ridgeley Carter, H. Herman Harges--but I never
received from any the same sense of consecration, of absolute
selflessness as I did from Mr. Holman-Black. He and his brother have a
beautiful little hôtel, and for many years before the war were among the
most brilliant contributors to the musical life of the great capital; but
there has been no entertaining in those charming rooms since August,
1914. Mr. Holman-Black is parrain (godfather) to three hundred and
twenty soldiers at the Front, not only providing them with winter and
summer underclothing, bedding, sleeping-suits, socks, and all the
lighter articles they have the privilege of asking for, but also writing
from fifteen to twenty letters to his filleuls daily. He, too, has not taken
a day's vacation since the outbreak of the war, nor read a book. He
wears the uniform of a Red Cross officer, and is associated with several
of Madame Balli's oeuvres.

VI
A few days later Madame Balli took me to another hospital--Hôpital
Militaire Villemin--where she gives a concert once a week. Practically
all the men that gathered in the large room to hear the music, or
crowded before the windows, were well and would leave shortly for the
front, but a few were brought in on stretchers and lay just below the
platform. This hospital seemed less dreary to me than most of those I
had visited, and the yard was full of fine trees. It was also an extremely
cheerful afternoon, for not only was the sun shining, but the four artists
Madame Balli had brought gave of their best and their efforts to amuse
were greeted with shouts of laughter.
Lyse Berty--the most distinguished vaudeville artist in France and who
is certainly funnier than any woman on earth--had got herself up in