Grand Forks herald. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1916-1955, 1917-04-21
SPRING DAYS IN A
PARIS HOSPITAL
Hanford Henderson in North Ameri-
can Review.

can Review. lM
When the wounds are dressed, as
they must be, every day, I have seen
scores of men stuff towels into their
own mouths, so that they may not
groan aloud. It is hard to endure the
groans of men in anguish. Of strong
mon who faced death in trenches and
m battlefelds. Generally It u . heart
rending wail-sometimes Q repeated
m~onosyllable whose varying cadence
|nierces the very ENTHUSIASTICALLY
Il ia articulate: Mon Dieu, Monsieur
lie Docteur, have pity, have pity!" And
the odorS Of wounded flesh Is a terrible
thing. l waken in the night and smell
il. smell 1t as I write. It will be
months before I can get 1t out OF my
nostrils.
The men who best endure suffering
are the Breton folk, for the Bretons
are mystcs. and more conscious than
ordinary people Of the immediate
presence Of God. As an old French
monk once put it, they have the prac-
tice of the Presence. There 10 n
Breton boy here who has lost one arm
and both legs. and as I passed his
bed the other day he smiled at me SO
divinely that the old physician. who
was making his rounds, said to me
twice, II love that boy. I love that
boy"
Hideous, atrocious, criminal a. tho
present war is it has re-emphasized
one fact of large consoling power
And this Is the reason that France,
hardpressed as she may be at times.
will v be beaten. She has h
power of the Spirit.
To work In a hospital in wartime,
one must have oneself we'll in hand
emotionally, or one could not do the
work . The first few days I wat gasp
ing. Now I have gained the needed
discipline. But it Is curious that one
can go along rather stolidly for days,
and then quite suddenly, without a
way inside, the eyes fill with tears.
and for the sake of appearance. one
turns a sob into the pretense Of a
cough. 1t is not the big things that
unman you so, not the groans of men
in anguish as their wounds are being
dressed. or the faraway look In the
eyes Of those who you know are going
to die. 1t is the little things that are
so melting, often a mere smile, often
some droll awkwardness on the part
Of the mutiles. Last Sunday. it was
q smile. He was q neWly-arrived
blesse-he had come in during the
night-one of my favorite cultivateurs.
He was only Is and 1t was the fifth
time that he had been wounded. IT
must have been very painful. for he
had five or six separate wounds, In
arm and leg and hand and thigh
all from n shell burst. Had he
WINGED or complained, I could doubt
less have taken my notes stolidly
enough. But he did neither. He told
me the story Of his Wounds with un-
affected simplicity, and with a smile
so radiant, so brilliant. that always
I shall think Of him.. not as a fallen
hero, but as a glorious figure of vic
tory-for the moment lying down.
The haunting tragedy here is not
death-it is the hideous, multiform,
disabling mutilation, the loss of vision
Of hearing, OF speech. the loss OF
hands and feet and arms and legs, the
monstrous repulsive disagreement. In
summer, on my own plantation, my
little boys play in the open sunshine
in all the happy freedom Of entire
~nakedness. and I know Of nothing
more beautiful than the naked. sun
tanned bodies of healthy boys. But
the naked bodies Of mutilated men
such as we see here every day by
the hundred. are simply CHASTITY, q
more gripping argument against the
brutal, unforgivable cruelty of wa,
than n amour Of academic reason
ing. And each day adds its gruesoms
toll. When the war ends. there. will
be 10000 900 cripples in Europe.