of 1916 was recalled from the front to be made medecin-en-chef of the new Hôpital Militaire Edith Cavell in the Rue Desnouettes, Paris. It is a group of low white buildings with red roofs. The white walls inside are ornamented above the patients' beds with garlands of red and blue and yellow flowers. And the commanding officer's own gay little office has curtains of pink flowered calico. Grey haired French scientists in the laboratories here are taking their orders from Madame la petite Major. Soldiers in the corridors are giving her the military salute. One day there came a celebrated French general: "When I heard about you at Verdun," he said, "I could not believe it. I insisted, she cannot be a surgeon. She is only a nurse. I have made the journey all the way to Paris," he smiled in candour, "to find out if you are real."
The records of the War Office show how real. Dr. Gerard-Mangin did her two years' service at the front without a day off for illness and never so much as an hour's absence from her post of duty. She is the only surgeon with the French army who has such a record. Her right to a place in the profession in which no man has been able to equal, let alone surpass, her achievement, would seem to be assured beyond question. Let us write high on the waving banners carried by the cohorts of the woman's cause the name of Nicole Gerard-Mangin. It was not a simple or an easy thing that she has done. You would know if you heard her voice tremulous yet with the agony on which she has looked. "I shall