As Madame Waddington's is not one of the picturesque ouvroirs she has found it difficult to keep it going, and no doubt contributes all she can spare of what the war has left of her own income. Moreover, she is on practically every important war relief committee, sometimes as honorary president, for her name carries great weight, often as vice-president or as a member of the "conseil." After her ouvroirs the most important organization of which she is president is the Comité International de Pansements Chirurgicaux des Etats Unis—in other words, surgical dressings—started by Mrs. Willard, and run actively in Paris by Mrs. Austin, the vice-president. When I visited it they were serving about seven hundred hospitals, and no doubt by this time are supplying twice that number. Two floors of a new apartment house had been put at their disposal near the Bois, and the activity and shining whiteness were the last word in modern proficiency (I shall never use that black-sheep among words, efficiency, again).
One of Madame Waddington's more personal oeuvres is the amusement she, in company with her daughter-in-law, provides for the poilus in the village near her son's estate. Regiments are quartered there, either to hold themselves in readiness, or to cut down trees for the army. They wandered about, desolate and bored, until the two Madame Waddingtons furnished a reading-room, provided with letter paper and post-cards, books and, I hope, by this time a gramophone. Here they sit and smoke, read, or get up little plays. As the château is now occupied by the staff the two patronesses are obliged to go back and forth from Paris, and this they do once a week at least.
V
Madame Waddington, knowing that I was very anxious to see one of the cantines at the railway stations about which so much was said, took me late one afternoon to St. Lazare. Into this great station, as into all the others, train after train hourly gives up its load of permissionnaires—men home on their six days' leave—; men for the éclopé stations; men from shattered regiments, to be held at Le Bourget until the time comes to be sent to fill other gaps made by the German guns; men who merely arrive by one train to take another out, but who must frequently remain for several hours in the dépôt.
I have never entered one of these gares to take a train that I have not seen hundreds of soldiers entering, leaving, waiting; sometimes lying asleep on the hard floor, always on the benches. It is for all who choose to take advantage of them that these cantines are run, and they are open day and night.
The one in St. Lazare had been organized in February, 1915, by the Baronne de Berckheim (born Pourtales) and was still run by her in person when I visited it in June, 1916. During that time she and her staff had taken care of over two hundred thousand soldiers. From 8 to 11 A.M. café-au-lait, or café noir, or bouillon, paté de foie or cheese is served. From 11 to 2 and from 6 to 9, bouillon, a plate of meat and vegetables, salad, cheese, fruits or compote, coffee, a quart of wine or beer, cigarettes. From 2 to 6 and after 9 P.M., bouillon, coffee, tea, paté, cheese, milk, lemonade, cocoa.
The rooms in the station are a donation by the officials, of course. The dining-room of the St. Lazare cantine was fitted up with several long tables, before which, when we arrived, every square inch of the benches was occupied by poilus enjoying an excellent meal of which beef à la mode was the pièce de résistance. The Baroness Berckheim and the young girls helping her wore the Red Cross uniform, and they served the needs of the tired and hungry soldiers with a humble devotion that nothing but war and its awful possibilities can inspire. It was these nameless men who were saving not only France from the most brutal enemy of modern times but the honor of thousands of such beautiful and fastidious young women as these. No wonder they were willing and grateful to stand until they dropped.
