So
he and his comrades had made it the object of gaiety.
For legless men, there are a dozen trades open, if they are trained.
They can be made into tailors, typists, mechanicians. The soldiers'
schools, already established, report success in shoemaking, for
instance. The director sends us this word:--
"From the first we had foreseen for this the greatest success--the
results have surpassed our hopes. We are obliged to double the size of
the building, and increase the number of professors.
"Why?
"Because, more than any other profession, that of shoemaking is the most
feasible in the country, in the village, in the small hamlet. This is
the one desire of most of these wounded soldiers: before everything,
they wish to be able to return to their homes. And all the more if a
wife and children wait them there, in a little house with a patch of
garden. Out of our fifty men now learning shoemaking, twenty-nine were
once sturdy farm laborers. The profession is not fatiguing and, in spite
of our fears, not one of our leg-amputated men has given up his
apprenticeship on account of fatigue or physical inability."
Very many of the soldiers are maimed in hand or arm. On the broad beach
of La Panne, in front of the Ocean Hospital of Dr. Depage, a young
soldier talked with my wife one afternoon. Early in the war his right
arm had been shot through the bicep muscle.
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