d frequently had to
hunt out new problems to work upon. In travelling about in the course
of our work we saw things more or less from the spectator's
standpoint, and there were few things going on that escaped us.

Many sad and depressing sights were witnessed, and one received many
vivid impressions of what war means to an invaded country,--impressions
which can only be attained by actual experience.

Accompanied by the sanitary officer of the 19th division one morning I
saw a very sad example of what ignorance of the essentials of hygiene
can bring about. Down in a swampy spot on a branch of the canal was a
little hamlet, and one of the tiny houses was occupied by a family of
refugees from La Bassee.

When we entered the house swarms of flies flew up from the table and
buzzed about while we did our best to prevent them from settling upon
us. The father of the family was in bed unconscious, with typhoid
fever. The mother, dead from the disease, had been buried the day
before.

During the funeral the eldest daughter, a pretty girl of sixteen, sat
up in a chair trying to look after the visitors. When we called she
also was in bed delirious with the disease in the same room as her
father.

The baby in the carriage had had typhoid. A little two year old boy
was just recovering, and was thought to have been the original case.
Two other boys of seven and nine years of age were getting some bread
and milk for their dinner, one of them being probably a mild case; and
a girl of eleven, evidently coming down with the disease, was going
about looking after the household.

With that swarm of disease-carrying flies in the house there was no
possibility of any of the children escaping the infection. It was with
the greatest difficulty that the sanitary officer of the division
succeeded in getting the French civilian authorities to move in the
matter and remove the cases to the French civilian hospital. The
father died a week later, and the sanitary officer himself was
subsequently killed during the battle of the Somme.

The French refugees do not complain; they are not that kind. They
told their stories simply and invariably finished with a shrug of the
shoulders and the phrase "c'est la guerre n'est ce pas?" (That is war,
is it not?) But if the French army ever gets on German soil I would
hate to be a German.

One night we found that our first Canadian brigade was going into the
trenches at Festubert without the chemical