American Aid of France
By Eugène Brieux
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]
M. Eugène Brieux, the celebrated French poet and playwright, who is in this country as the official representative of the French Academy—the "Forty Immortals"—has written a remarkable tribute to American aid of France during the present war. The address, which is herewith presented, was read by M. Brieux at the residence of Mrs. John Henry Hammond of New York City recently before a gathering of two hundred men and women who have been interested in the work of the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris.
Miss Marie Van Vorst, who nursed the wounded at the American Ambulance in Paris, will speak to you of it as an eyewitness. From her you will receive direct news of your splendid work of humanity. While she was caring for wounded French, English, and German I was attached to another hospital at Chartres. It happens, therefore, that I have never seen the American Military Hospital created by you, but I am not in ignorance concerning it any more than any other Parisian, any more, indeed, than the majority of the French people. I know that the American Ambulance is the most remarkable hospital that the world has seen. I know that you, since the beginning of the war, have brought the aid of medical science to wounded men and that you have given not only money, but an institution, all ready, complete and of the most modern type, and, even more, that you have sent there your best surgeons and a small army of orderlies and nurses.
I know that at first one could not find a place; that there was available only a building in course of construction, intended to be the Pasteur School at Neuilly. This building was far from completion; it lacked doors and there were no stairs. I know that in three weeks your generosity, your energy, and your quick intelligence has made of this uncertain shell a modern military hospital, with white walls, electric light, baths, rooms for administering anaesthetics, operating rooms, sterilizing plants, apparatus for X-rays, and a dental clinic. I know that automobiles, admirably adapted to the service, carried the wounded. And yet I do not know all. I know only by instinct of the devotion of your young girls, of your women, and of your young men, belonging often to prominent families, who served as stretcher bearers and orderlies.
I am not ignorant of the fact that they count by the hundreds those who have been cured at the American Ambulance at Neuilly, nor of the further fact that the rate of mortality is extremely low, although they have sent you those most gravely injured. I know that it is all free; that there are no charges made for the expenses of administration; that for the service rendered by your people there is no claim, and that every cent of every dollar subscribed goes entirely and directly to the care of the wounded. I know also that the expenses at the hospital are $4,000 a day, and that ever since the beginning your charity has met this demand.
Such splendid effort has not been ignored or misunderstood. The President of the French Republic has cabled to President Wilson his appreciation and his gratitude; General Fevier, Inspector General of Hospitals of the French Army, has publicly expressed his admiration; the English physicians and public men have shared their sentiments.
As to the people of Paris, as to the French nation, they have been touched to the depths of their being. And yet in France we have found all this quite natural. I shall tell you why. We have so high a regard for you that when you do anything well no one is surprised. I believe that if a wounded soldier arriving at your hospital exclaimed, "This is wonderful!" his comrade who had been ahead of him would answer in a tone of admonition: "That surprises you? You do not know then that it is done by the Americans, by the people from the United States?" In this refusal to be astonished in the face of remarkable achievements, when they come from you, there is a tribute, a praise of high quality which your feelings and your patriotism will know how to appreciate.
I have said that all that comes from you which is good and great seems natural to us, and I have given you a reason; but there is another. In France we are accustomed to consider the Republic of the United States as an affectionate, distant sister. When one receives a gift from a stranger one is astonished and cries out his thanks, but when the gift comes from a brother or from some one who, on similar occasions, has never failed, the thanks are not so outspoken but more profound. One says: "Ah, it is you, my brother. I suffer. I expected you. I knew that you would come, for I should have gone to you had you needed me. I thank you."
And, indeed, we are closely bound together, you and we. Without doubt, common interest and an absence of possible competition helps to that end, but there is something more which unites us—it is our kindred sentiments. It is this kinship which has created our attraction for each other and which has cemented it; it is our common ground of affections, of hatreds, of hopes; our ideals rest upon the same high plane. To mention but one point, one of you has said: "The United States and France are the only two nations which have fought for an ideal." And it is that which separates us, you and us, from a certain other nation, and which has served to bring us two close together.
We love you and we are grateful for what you are doing for us. When the day came for my departure from France to represent here the French Academy I asked of Mr. Poincaré, who had visited the American Ambulance at Neuilly, if duty did not forbid me to go. "No," he said to me. "Go to the United States. Carry greetings to the great nation of America." And he gave to me, for your President, the letter with which you are familiar, where he expressed the admiration and the sympathy that he has for you.
I have been traveling North and South in the Eastern part of the United States. I have had many opportunities to admire your power and the extent of your efforts. Today, in thinking of the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris, I admire your persistence in labor. You have established this hospital. That was good. But it costs a thousand dollars a day, and yet you keep on with the work. That is doubly good. Indeed, one can understand that you have not been willing, after having created this model hospital, that some day through lack of support its doors should close and the wounded you have taken in be turned over to others; certainly those first subscribers undertook a sort of moral obligation to themselves not to permit the work to fail. But, none the less, it is admirable that it should be so. To give once is something, but it is little if one compares the value of the first gift to those which follow.
The first charity is easily understood. Suddenly war is at hand. Its horrors can be imagined and every one feels that he can in some measure lessen them, and he opens his purse. Then time passes, the war continues, and one becomes accustomed to the thoughts that were at first unbearable—it is so far away and so long. Others in this way were checked after their first impulse.
But you, you have thought that, if it is good to establish a hospital, that alone was not enough, and that each day would bring new wounded to replace those who, cured, took up their guns again and returned to the field of battle. And since at the American Ambulance the wounded are cured quickly, the very excellence of your organization, the science of your surgeons, and the greatness of your sacrifices all bring upon you other and new sacrifices to be made.
But the word "sacrifice" is badly chosen. You do not make sacrifices, for you are strong and you are good. When you decide upon some new generous act you have only to appeal to your national pride, which will never allow an American undertaking to fail. You have the knowledge of the good that you are doing, and that, for you, is sufficient. You know that, thanks to your generosity, suffering is relieved, and you know that, thanks to the science of your surgeons, this relief is not merely momentary, but that the wounded man who would have remained a cripple if he had been less ably cared for, will be, thanks to you, completely cured, and that, instead of dragging out a miserable existence, he will be able to live a normal life and support a family which will bless you. Such men will owe it all to the persistence of your generosity.
I return always to that point, and it is essential. To give once is a common impulse, common to nearly all the world. It means freeing one's self from the suffering which good souls feel when they see others suffer. But to give again after having given is a proof of reflection, of an understanding of the meaning of life; it is to work intelligently; it is to insure the value of the first effort; it means the possession of goodness which is lasting and far-seeing. That is a rare virtue. You have it. And that is why I express a three-fold thanks, for the past, for the present, and for the future—thanks that come from the bottom of the heart of a Frenchman.