ajor S----, of the Royal Army Medical Corps.
It was morning, and the corridors and stairs still bore the mud of the
night, when the ambulances drive into the courtyard and the stretchers
are carried up the stairs. It had been rather a quiet night, said
Major S----. The operations were already over, and now the work of
cleaning up was going on.

He opened a door, and we entered a long ward.

I live in a great manufacturing city. Day by day its mills take their
toll in crushed bodies. The sight of broken humanity is not new to me.
In a general way, it is the price we pay for prosperity. Individually,
men so injured are the losers in life's great struggle for food and
shelter.

I had never before seen men dying of an ideal.

There is a terrible sameness in war hospitals. There are rows of beds,
and in them rows of unshaven, white-faced men. Some of them turn and
look at visitors. Others lie very still, with their eyes fixed on the
ceiling, or eternity, or God knows what. Now and then one is sleeping.

"He has slept since he came in," the nurse will say; "utter
exhaustion."

Often they die. If there is a screen, the death takes place decently
and in order, away from the eyes of the ward. But when there is no
screen, it makes little difference. What is one death to men who have
seen so many?

Once men thought in terms of a day's work, a night's sleep, of labour
and play and love. But all over Europe to-day, in hospital and out,
men are learning to think in terms of life and death. What will be the
result? A general brutalising? The loss of much that is fine? Perhaps.
There are some who think that it will scourge men's souls clean of
pettiness, teach them proportion, give them a larger outlook. But is
it petty to labour and love? Is the duty of the nation greater than
the duty of the home? Is the nation greater than the individual? Is
the whole greater than the sum of its parts?

Ward after ward. Rows of quiet men. The occasional thump of a
convalescent's crutch. The swish of a nurse's starched dress. The
strangled grunt of a man as the dressing is removed from his wound.
The hiss of coal in the fireplace at the end of the ward. Perhaps a
priest beside a bed, or a nun. Over all, the heavy odour of drugs and
disinfectants. Brisk nurses go about, cheery surgeons, but there is no
real cheer. The ward is waiting.

I saw a man who had been shot in the lungs. His lungs were filled with
jagged pieces of steel. He was inh