ards towards Contich.
Our road lay across the open country, between the farms which mean
so much of Belgium's wealth. In one field a man was ploughing with
three big horses. He was too old to fight, but he could do this much
for his country. Surely that man deserves a place in his country's Roll
of Honour. Shells were falling not four fields away, but he never even
looked up. It must take more nerve to plough a straight furrow when
the shells are falling than to aim a gun. I like to think of that man, and
I hope that he will be left to reap his harvest in peace. A little farther
on we came upon the objective of the German shells--a battery so
skilfully concealed that it was only when we were close to it that we
realized where it was. The ammunition-carts were drawn up in a long
line behind a hedge, while the guns themselves were buried in piles
of brushwood. They must have been invisible from the captive balloon
which hung over the German lines in the distance. They were not
firing when we passed, and we were not sorry, as we had no desire to
be there when the replies came. An occasional shell gives a certain
spice to the situation, but in quantity they are better avoided.

As we approached Contich a soldier came running up and told us that
two people had just been injured by a shell, and begged us to come to
see them. He stood on the step of the car, and directed us to a little
row of cottages half a mile farther on. At the roadside was a large
hole in the ground where a shell had fallen some minutes before, and
beside it an unfortunate cow with its hind-quarters shattered. In the
garden of the first cottage a poor woman lay on her back. She was
dead, and her worn hands were already cold. As I rose from my knees
a young soldier flung himself down beside her, sobbing as though his
heart would break. She was his mother.

Behind the cottage we found a soldier with his left leg torn to
fragments. He had lost a great deal of blood, and he was still bleeding
from a large artery, in spite of the efforts of a number of soldiers
round who were applying tourniquets without much success. The
ordinary tourniquet is probably the most inefficient instrument that the
mind of man could devise--at least, for dealing with wounds of the
thigh out in the field. It might stop haemorrhage in an infant, but for a
burly soldier it is absurd. I tried two of the most approved patterns,
and both broke in my hands. In the end I managed to stop i