ought in the ranks with the soldiers. Women ambushed in coverts shot
the Russians as they rummaged the captured trains for much-needed food.
Little children, thrown into the snow by the flying parents, died of
cold and starvation, or were trampled to death by passing cavalry. Such
a useless waste of human life has not been recorded since the
indiscriminate massacres of the Middle Ages.

The sight of human suffering soon blunts the sensibilities of any one
who lives with it, so that he is at last able to look upon it with no
stronger feeling than that of helplessness. Resigned to the inevitable,
he is no longer impressed by the woes of the individual. He looks upon
the illness, wounds, and death of the soldier as a part of the lot of
all combatants, and comes to consider him an insignificant unit of the
great mass of men. At last only novelties in horrors will excite his
feelings.

I was riding back from the Stanimaka battle-field sufficiently elated at
the prospect of a speedy termination of the war--now made certain by the
breaking up of Suleiman's army--to forget where I was, and to imagine
myself back in my comfortable apartments in Paris. I only awoke from my
dream at the station where the highway from Stanimaka crosses the
railway line about a mile south of Philippopolis. The great wooden
barracks had been used as a hospital for wounded Turks, and as I drew
up my horse at the door the last of the lot of four hundred, who had
been starving there nearly a week, were being placed upon carts to be
transported to the town. The road to Philippopolis was crowded with
wounded and refugees. Peasant families struggled along with all their
household goods piled upon a single cart. Ammunition wagons and droves
of cattle, rushing along against the tide of human beings, toward the
distant bivouacs, made the confusion hopeless. Night was fast coming on,
and in company with a Cossack, who was, like myself, seeking the
headquarters of General Gourko, I made my way through the tangle of men,
beasts, and wagons toward the town. It was one of those chill, wet days
of winter when there is little comfort away from a blazing fire, and
when good shelter for the night is an absolute necessity. The drizzle
had drenched my garments, and the snow-mud had soaked my boots. Sharp
gusts of piercing wind drove the cold mist along, and as the temperature
fell in the late afternoon the slush of the roads began to stiffen, and
the fog froze where it