d the flesh above and about the wound, the quick-fingered young
nurse flushed the cavity with an antiseptic wash, then clean, dry gauze
was pushed into it and slowly pulled out again.

The man--they had nicknamed him "Pop"--breathed faster. This panting
went into a moan, which deepened into a hoarse cry, and then, as he lost
hold of himself completely, he began a hideous sort of sharp yelping
like a dog.

This is a part of war that doctors and nurses see; not rarely and in one
hospital, but in all hospitals and every morning, when the long line of
men--'"pus tanks' we called 'em last winter," muttered one of the young
doctors--are brought in to be dressed, There was such a leg that day in
the Barracken Hospital; the case described here was in the American Red
Cross Hospital in Vienna.

Such individual suffering makes no right or wrong, of course. It is a
part of war. Yet the more one sees of it and of this cannon fodder, the
people on whom the burden of war really falls, how alike they all are in
their courage, simplicity, patience, and long-suffering, whether
Hungarians or Russians, Belgians or Turks, the less simple is it to be
convinced of the complete righteousness of any of the various general
ideas in whose name these men are tortured. I suspect that only those
can hate with entire satisfaction and success who stay quietly at home
and read the papers.

I remember riding down into Surrey from London one Sunday last August
and reading an editorial on Louvain--so well written, so quivering with
noble indignation that one's blood boiled, as they say, and one could
scarcely wait to get off the train to begin the work of revenge.
Perhaps the most moving passage in this editorial was about the smoking
ruins of the Town Hall, which I later saw intact. I have thought
occasionally since of that editorial and of the thousands of sedentary
fire-eaters and hate-mongers like the writer of it--men who live forever
in a cloud of words, bounce from one nervous reaction to another without
ever touching the ground, and, rejoicing in their eloquence, go down
from their comfortable breakfasts to their comfortable offices morning
after morning and demand slaughter, annihilation, heaven knows what not
--men who could not endure for ten minutes that small part of war which
any frail girl of a trained nurse endures hour after hour every morning
as part of the day's work.

If I had stayed in London and continued to read the lies