WORK OF THE UNION 
pensable articles. Such was the general situation as regards the 
transport of casualties from the front during the first month of the 
War. At this time, the Zemstvo Union was busily preparing trains 
for evacuations to the interior, that is to say, for the transfer of the 
sick and wounded from the clearing stations to zemstvo hospitals 
far in the rear. 
67 
Hospital Trains. 
For the future, however, work at the front was also contemplated. 
The intention was to maintain, not regular trains, but convoys of 
six or seven freight cars which, traveling in one direction as parts 
of troop trains and therefore taking up the least possible space, 
could, upon arrival at destination, unload and within an hour clean 
and equip with bedding the unloaded cars of the whole train, place 
the wounded on board, and return with them to the hospitals. After 
unloading the wounded at their destination, the whole equipment 
was to be packed up again and put on board that special convoy of 
six or seven freight cars, and these would thus be ready again to be 
attached to the next troop or freight train going to the front. It 
was important to discover some equipment that would make even the 
convenient and cold freight car sufficiently comfortable and warm, 
and the work had to be organized in such a way that the equipment 
should be packed and unpacked quickly. 
The division of hospital trains began to function in August, 1914, 
and on September 1 the first train was dispatched. It had cost 
14,000 rubles and could transport four hundred wounded soldiers. 
Three days after the first train was completed, the Zemstvo Union 
received a telegraphic order from the head of the evacuation service 
to send a completely equipped freight car to Petrograd. The officer 
in charge of the department of hospital trains and his assistant took 
their places on their cots, the car was attached to the night express 
train, and on the following morning it reached Petrograd. A few 
hours later a special commission of generals, surgeons, and engi- 
neers of the War Department made a careful examination of the 
car. Explanations were given by the officer in charge. Three days 
later the Zemstvo Union was ordered to send immediately to the 
front five trains composed of such cars. On September 17 these 
trains left for Belostok, passed the boundary line which had origi- 
nally been set up for the zemstvo by Prince Oldenburg, and thus