conclusion with Antwerp. There could have been no more delightful
colleague, and without his aid much of this book would never have
been written.

For the Belgian Field Hospital I can wish nothing better than that its
star may continue to shine in the future as it has always done in the
past, and that a sensible British public may generously support the
most enterprising hospital in the war.

H. S. S.

Contents

To Antwerp
The Hospital
The Day's Work
Antwerp
Termonde
The Chateau
Malines
Lierre
A Pause
The Siege
Contich
The Bombardment--Night
The Bombardment--Day
The Night Journey
Furnes
Poperinghe
Furnes Again
Work At Furnes
Furnes--The Town
A Journey
The Ambulance Corps
Pervyse--The Trenches
Ypres
Some Conclusions

A SURGEON IN BELGIUM

I. To Antwerp

When, one Saturday afternoon in September, we stepped on board
the boat for Ostend, it was with a thrill of expectation. For weeks we
had read and spoken of one thing only--the War--and now we
were to see it for ourselves, we were even in some way to be a part of
it. The curtain was rising for us upon the greatest drama in all the
lurid history of strife. We should see the armies as they went out to
fight, and we should care for the wounded when their work was done.
We might hear the roar of the guns and the scream of the shells. To
us, that was War.

And, indeed, we have seen more of war in these few weeks than has
fallen to the lot of many an old campaigner. We have been through
the siege of Antwerp, we have lived and worked always close to the
firing-line, and I have seen a great cruiser roll over and sink, the
victim of a submarine. But these are not the things which will live in
our minds. These things are the mere framing of the grim picture. The
cruiser has been blotted out by the weary faces of an endless stream
of fugitives, and the scream of the shells has been drowned by the cry
of a child. For, though the soldiers may fight, it is the people who
suffer, and the toll of war is not the life which it takes, but the life
which it destroys.

I suppose, and I hope, that there is not a man amongst us who has
not in his heart wished to go to the front, and to do what he could.
The thought may have been only transitory, and may soon have been
blotted out by self-interest; and there is many a strong man who has
thrust it from him because he knew that his duty lay at home. But to
everyone the wish must have come, though