I know that at first one could not find a place; that there was
available only a building in course of construction, intended to be the
Pasteur School at Neuilly. This building was far from completion; it
lacked doors and there were no stairs. I know that in three weeks your
generosity, your energy, and your quick intelligence has made of this
uncertain shell a modern military hospital, with white walls, electric
light, baths, rooms for administering anaesthetics, operating rooms,
sterilizing plants, apparatus for X-rays, and a dental clinic. I know
that automobiles, admirably adapted to the service, carried the wounded.
And yet I do not know all. I know only by instinct of the devotion of
your young girls, of your women, and of your young men, belonging often
to prominent families, who served as stretcher bearers and orderlies.
I am not ignorant of the fact that they count by the hundreds those who
have been cured at the American Ambulance at Neuilly, nor of the further
fact that the rate of mortality is extremely low, although they have
sent you those most gravely injured. I know that it is all free; that
there are no charges made for the expenses of administration; that for
the service rendered by your people there is no claim, and that every
cent of every dollar subscribed goes entirely and directly to the care
of the wounded.
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