ing souls I
saw were the soldiers who let us in at one gate and out at the other.
In the interval, as you know, the town had been shelled by
fifteen-inch guns from a distance of twenty-three miles. Many
buildings in the main streets had been reduced to ruins, and nearly
all the windows in the town had been smashed."

There is, or was, a converted Channel steamer at Dunkirk that is now a
hospital. Men in all stages of mutilation are there. The salt winds of
the Channel blow in through the open ports. The boat rises and falls
to the swell of the sea. The deck cabins are occupied by wounded
officers, and below, in the long saloon, are rows of cots.

I went there on a bright day in February. There was a young officer on
the deck. He had lost a leg at the hip, and he was standing supported
by a crutch and looking out to sea. He did not even turn his head when
we approached.

General M----, the head of the Belgian Army medical service, who had
escorted me, touched him on the arm, and he looked round without
interest.

"For conspicuous bravery!" said the General, and showed me the medal
he wore on his breast.

However, the young officer's face did not lighten, and very soon he
turned again to the sea. The time will come, of course, when the
tragedy of his mutilation will be less fresh and poignant, when the
Order of Leopold on his breast will help to compensate for many
things; but that sunny morning, on the deck of the hospital ship, it
held small comfort for him.

We went below. At our appearance at the top of the stairs those who
were convalescent below rose and stood at attention. They stood in a
line at the foot of their beds, boys and grizzled veterans, clad in
motley garments, supported by crutches, by sticks, by a hand on the
supporting back of a chair. Men without a country, where were they to
go when the hospital ship had finished with them? Those who were able
would go back to the army, of course. But what of that large
percentage who will never be whole again? The machinery of mercy can
go so far, and no farther. France cannot support them. Occupied with
her own burden, she has persistently discouraged Belgian refugees.
They will go to England probably--a kindly land but of an alien
tongue. And there again they will wait.

The waiting of the hospital will become the waiting of the refugee.
The Channel coast towns of England are full of human derelicts who
stand or sit for hours, looking wistfully back tow