f Belgium will be one of the most
serious to be faced when the war is over. There will be a great
number of orphans, whilst many more will be simply lost. They
must not be adopted in England, for to them Belgium will look
for her future population. There could be few finer ways in which
we could show our gratitude to the people of Belgium than by
establishing colonies over there where they could be brought
up in their own country, to be its future citizens. It would form a
bond between the two countries such as no treaty could ever
establish, and Belgium would never forget the country which
had been the foster-mother of her children.

But Ypres gave us yet another example of German methods of
war. On the western side of the town, some distance from the
farthest houses, stood the Asylum. It was a fine building
arranged in several wings, and at present it was being used for
the accommodation of a few wounded, mostly women and children,
and several old people of the workhouse infirmary type. It made
a magnificent hospital, and as it was far away from the town and
was not used for any but the purposes of a hospital, we considered
that it was safe enough, and that it would be a pity to disturb the
poor old people collected there. We might have known better.
The very next night the Germans shelled it to pieces, and all
those unfortunate creatures had to be removed in a hurry.
There is a senseless barbarity about such an act which could
only appeal to a Prussian.

XXIV. Some Conclusions

To draw conclusions from a limited experience is a difficult
matter, and the attempt holds many pitfalls for the unwary. Yet
every experience must leave on the mind of any thinking man
certain impressions, and the sum of these only he himself can
give. To others he can give but blurred images of all he may
have seen, distorted in the curving mirrors of his mind, but from
these they can at least form some estimate of the truth of the
conclusions he ventures to draw. For myself, these conclusions
seem to fall naturally into three separate groups, for I have met
the experiences of the past three months in three separate
ways--as a surgeon, as a Briton, and as, I hope, a civilized
man. It is from these three aspects that I shall try to sum up
what I have seen.

As a surgeon it has been my good fortune to have charge of a
hospital whose position was almost ideal. Always close to the
front, we received our cases at the earliest pos