There was no way to sterilise them, of course. Once a week a
surgeon comes. When he goes away he takes his instruments with him.
This is not an isolated case, nor an exaggerated one. There are things
I do not care to publish. Three hundred and more such hospitals are
known. The French Government pays, or will pay, twenty-five cents a
day to keep these men. Black bread and _pot-a-feu_ is all that can be
managed on that amount.
Convalescents sit up in bed and painfully unravel their tattered socks
for wool. They tie the bits together, often two or three inches in
length, and knit new feet in old socks, or--when they secure
enough--new socks. For the Germans hold the wool cities of France.
Ordinarily worsted costs eighteen and nineteen francs in Dinard and
Saint Malo, or from three dollars and sixty cents to three dollars and
eighty cents a pound. Much of the government reserves of woollen
underwear for the soldiers was in the captured towns, and German
prisoners have been found wearing woollens with the French Government
stamp.
Every sort of building is being used for these isolated
hospitals--garages, town halls, private dwellings, schools. At first
they had no chloroform, no instruments. There are cases on record
where automobile tools were used in emergency, kitchen knives, saws,
anything.
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