s neglect of a welcome seemed sadly to
discount the value of the great hysterical demonstrations made when the
troops departed. They were men who were perhaps going to suffer for
their country. These invalids had suffered for it, and no one came to
cheer them up. Of course some of the men's own friends were there, and
the few strangers who were present shook hands with the men as they came
limping and hopping and stumbling down the gangway. But it was all very
quiet, very sad, very tame from a spectator's point of view, but deeply
significant. One could hardly imagine a greater contrast than was
presented by the same shed on a day of departure and on a day of arrival
like this. In the one case great crowds hurrahing and shouting and
cheering, bands playing, and bottles going busily round. In the other a
great quietness, a few people standing in little knots and speaking
almost in undertones. And the men themselves were very different. No
excitement, of course; no drunkenness; no yelling for "Kroojer's
whiskers." Oh, no!--something very different from that. About a hundred
men with pain-worn faces, bandaged arms and legs, slings and splints
everywhere, and talking, when they talked at all, of the horrors of the
war, of the death of comrades, and of the seriousness of the news we
gave them, in the light of their own experiences at the front. The men
were speedily disembarked and taken into the dock shed where a train
with some ambulance coaches was waiting, but they preferred to stand and
talk for a little while before taking their seats. A really kind and
useful work was done by members of the Southampton branch of the
"Absent-minded Beggars" relief corps, who provided hot coffee and buns
for the men, and in addition provided each with a stamped telegraph
form, so that he might reassure his friends at home.

Of course there was another beside the serious aspect of this scene.
Nothing could exceed the interest in their ailments displayed by the men
who had partly recovered from them, and those whose wounds had healed
could not tire of giving demonstrations to their friends and relations,
or even to strangers. An illness or a wound is often the first view an
ignorant man gets of Nature's ingenuity displayed in the construction of
his own person, and when one of these invalids got hold of some medical
or surgical word he would cherish and roll it on his tongue like a man
tasting wine. One of them--a man who looked as strong