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“For a long time past women have been forced to work as road labourers.  These work in the quarries and transport wood cut down by the men in the mountain forest.  A number of women and young girls have been removed from their families and sent in the direction of Rheims and RETHEL, where it is said (although this cannot be confirmed) that they are employed in aerodromes.”

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These extracts should serve to explain the mental and physical depression of the returning exiles.  They have been bullied out of the desire to live and out of all possession of either their bodies or their souls.  They have been treated like cattle, and as cattle they have come to regard themselves.  Lazaruses—­that’s what they are!  The unmerciful Boche, having killed and buried them, drags them out from the tomb and compels them to go through the antics of life.  Le Gallienne’s poem comes to my mind: 

  “Loud mockers in the angry street
  Say Christ is crucified again—­
  Twice pierced those gospel-bearing feet,
  Twice broken that great heart in vain....”

That is all true at Evian.  But when I see the American men and girls, leaning over the Boche babies in their cots and living their hearts into the hands and feet of the spiritually maimed, the last two lines of the poem become true for me: 

  “I hear, and to myself I say,
  ‘Why, Christ walks with me every day.’”

The work of the American Red Cross at Evian is largely devoted to children.  It provides all the ambulance transportation for the repatries, to and from the station.  American doctors and nurses do all the examining of the children at the Casino.  On an average, four hundred pass through their hands daily.  The throat, nose, teeth, glands and skin of each child are inspected.  If the child is suspected or attacked by any disease, it is immediately segregated and sent to the American hospital.  If the infection is only local or necessitates further examination, the child and its family are summoned to present themselves at the American dispensary next day.  Every precaution is employed to prevent the spread of infection—­particularly the infection of tuberculosis.  Evian is the gateway from Germany through which disease and death may be carried to the furthest limits of France.  Very few of the repatries are really healthy.  It would be a wonder if they were after the privations through which they have passed.  All of them are weakened in vitality and broken down in stamina.  Many of them have no homes to go to and have to be sent to departments of the interior and the south.  If they were sent in an unhealthy condition, it would mean the spread of epidemics.