We were the first American ambulance corps in the field,
and we have a record of more than four months' continuous service with
one of the French armies, but the rigor of the objection to our taking
the world into our intimate confidence is not only shown by our still
unbroken inability to report in lively installments, but receives also a
sidelight from the fact that numerous like private corps maintained by
donations on this side of the sea are working at the front without the
least commemoration of their deeds--that is, without a word of
journalistic notice.
"I hope that by the time these possibly too futile remarks of mine come
to such light as may await them Mr. Norton's report of our general case
may have been published, and nothing would give the committee greater
pleasure than that some such controlled statement on our behalf, best
proceeding from the scene of action itself, should occasionally appear.
The ideal would, of course, be that exactly the right man, at exactly
the right moment, should report exactly the right facts, in exactly the
right manner, and when that happy consummation becomes possible we shall
doubtless revel in funds."
Mr. James had expressed himself with such deliberation and hesitation
that I was reminded of what I had heard of all the verbal alterations
made by him in novels and tales long since published; to the point, we
are perhaps incorrectly told of replacing a "she answered" by a "she
indefinitely responded.
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