hat follows loss of blood; people
who, by the turning of a tap, may have all the water they want.
Perhaps among them there are some who will face this problem of water
as America has faced Belgium's problem of food. For the Belgian Army
has no money at all for sterilisers, for pocket filters; has not the
means to inoculate the army against typhoid; has little of anything.
The revenues that would normally support the army are being
collected--in addition to a war indemnity--by Germany.

Any hope that conditions would be improved by a general spring
movement into uncontaminated territory has been dispelled. The war has
become a gigantic siege, varied only by sorties and assaults. As long
ago as November, 1914, the situation as to drinking water was
intolerable. I quote again from the diary taken from the body of a
German officer after the battle of the Yser--a diary published in full
in an earlier chapter.

"The water is bad, quite green, indeed; but all the same we drink
it--we can get nothing else. Man is brought down to the level of the
brute beast."

There is little or no typhoid among the British troops. They, too, no
doubt, have realised the value of conservation, and to inoculation
have added careful supervision of wells and of watercourses. But when
I was at the front the Belgian Army of fifty thousand trained soldiers
and two hundred thousand recruits was dependent on springs oozing from
fields that were vast graveyards; on sluggish canals in which lay the
bodies of men and horses; and on a few tank wagons that carried fresh
water daily to the front.

A quarter of a million dollars would be needed to install a water
supply for the Belgian Army and for the civilians--residents and
refugees--gathered behind the lines. To ask the American people to
shoulder this additional burden is out of the question. But perhaps,
somewhere among the people who will read this, there is one
great-hearted and wealthy American who would sleep better of nights
for having lifted to the lips of a wounded soldier the cup of pure
water that he craves; for having furnished to ten thousand wounds a
sterile and soothing wet compress.

Dunkirk was full of hospitals when I was there. Probably the
subsequent shelling of the town destroyed some of them. I do not know.
A letter from Calais, dated May 21st, 1915, says:

"I went through Dunkirk again. Last time I was there it was a
flourishing and busy market day. This time the only two liv