Sally Macnaughtan is a gray-haired gentlewoman of independent means who writes admirable fiction. She has laid aside her art and for months conducted a soup kitchen in the railway station at Furnes. She has fed thousands of weakened wounded men, working till midnight night after night. She remained until the town was thoroughly shelled.

The order is strict that no officer's wife must be near the front. The idea is that she will divert her husband's mind from the work in hand. He will worry about her safety. But Mrs. B - - , a Belgian, joined our women in Pervyse, and did useful work, while her husband, a doctor with the rank of officer, continued his work along the front. She is a girl of twenty-one years.

Recently the Queen of the Belgians went into the trenches at a time when there was danger of artillery and rifle fire breaking loose from the enemy. She had to be besought to keep back where the air was quieter, as her life was of more value to the Belgian troops and the nation than even a gallant death.

One afternoon most of the corps were out on the road searching for wounded. Mairi Chisholm, a Scotch girl eighteen years old, and a young American woman had been left behind in the Furnes Hospital. With them was a stretcher bearer, a man of twenty-eight. A few shells fell into Furnes. The civilian population began running in dismay. The girls climbed up into the tower of the convent to watch the work of the shells. The man ordered the women to leave the town with him and go to Poperinghe. The two girls refused to go.

For weeks Furnes was under artillery fire from beyond Nieuport. One of our hospital nurses was killed as she was walking in the Grand Place.

I saw an American girl covered by the pistol of an Uhlan officer. She did not change color, but regarded the incident as a lark. I happened to be watching her when she was sitting on the front seat of an ambulance at Oudecappelle, eating luncheon. A shell fell thirty yards from her in the road. The roar was loud. The dirt flew high. The metal fragments tinkled on the house walls. The hole it dug was three feet deep. She laughed and continued with her luncheon.

I saw the same girl stand out in a field while this little drama took place: The French artillery in the field were well covered by shrubbery. They had been pounding away from their covert till the Germans grew irritated. A German Taube flew into sight, hovered high overhead and spied the hidden guns. It dropped three smoke bombs. These puffed out their little clouds into the air, and gave the far-away marksmen the location for firing. Their guns broke out and shrapnel shells came overhead, burst into trailing smoke and scattered their hundreds of bullets. The girl stood on the arena itself. Of concern for her personal safety she had none. It was all like a play on the stage to her. You watch the blow and flash but you are not a part of the action.

Each night the Furnes Hospital was full with one hundred wounded. In the morning we carried out one or two or one-half dozen dead. The wounds were severe, the air of the whole countryside was septic from the sour dead in the fields, who kept working to the surface from their shallow burial. There was a morning when we had gone early to the front on a hurry call. In our absence two girl nurses carried out ten dead from the wards into the convent lot, to the edge of the hasty graves made ready for their coming.