nic
disease; but there is a worse than any of these disasters to the
victim. The man without a leg can get along with a crutch. We know one
who lost both legs in Egypt who goes about on a little four-wheeled
wooden cart, propelling himself with his hands, and haunts the
precincts of a certain club, where the members, seeing the badge which
he still wears in his cap, often give him enough to get drunk on. The
man who loses his sight from the earth-scattering shell can at worst
carry a label to tell that he was blinded in the war, and his
charitable fellow-countrymen will give him enough to keep him enjoying
life through the channels of the four other senses, and he will still
admit that it is good to be alive. Blindness is bad, but war deals
worse blows than in the eyes. It deals blows under which the reason
itself staggers and is maimed. The lunatic asylum is worse than the
hospital. We are carrying back nine men who have lost their reason at
Magersfontein and other battles; two have been mercifully treated and
have lost it completely--the padded cell must mean a certain
unconsciousness; but the greatest, deepest pity of which the human
heart is capable is called forth by those who are maimed in mind. Long
lucid intervals of perfect sanity give them time to learn the meaning
of the locks and bars. "Yes, I know; I went off my head after
Magersfontein," one poor fellow tells you; another repeatedly asks,
"Will they put me into an asylum when I go home?" What a home-coming!
Sure enough it is to the asylum they are going. They will be lost to
what friends or relatives they have in that oblivion of a living
grave. When their comrades return, not the faintest echo of the
cheering will reach their cells. Men do not like to talk of madness;
they will point with pride and pity to chums and comrades bearing
honourable wounds, but these poor wretches will just disappear, lost
in the great aftermath of war. We still have the expressions
"frightened out of his senses" or "frightened out of his wits," and
here are instances of its actually occurring, the strain on nerves
being more than the brains of these men could stand. Is it that their
nervous organisation has become more highly strung and bears the
strain less sturdily than in times past, or that there is for some
minds a hidden terror in the sightless, invisible death that whistles
over them as they lie belly-pressing the earth in the face of an
unseeable foe? It is not inconce