of all types and
kinds, official and voluntary; a Cinema theatre, seating 800 men, with
performances twice a day; nurses' clubs; officers' clubs; a Supply Depot
for food; an Ordnance Depot for everything that is not food; new sidings
to the railway, where 1,000 men can be entrained on the one side, while
1,000 men are detraining on the other; or two full ambulance trains can
come in and go out; a Convalescent Depot of 2,000 patients, and a
Convalescent Horse Depot of 2,000 horses, etcetera. And this is the work
accomplished since last April in one camp.

Yet, as I look back upon it, my chief impression of that long day is an
impression, first, of endless hospital huts and marquees, with their rows
of beds, in which the pale or flushed faces are generally ready--unless
pain or weariness forbid--as a visitor ventures timidly near, to turn and
smile in response to the few halting words of sympathy or inquiry which
are all one can find to say; and, next, of such a wealth of skill, and
pity, and devotion poured out upon this terrible human need, as makes one
thank God for doctors, and nurses, and bright-faced V.A.D.'s. After all,
one tremblingly asks oneself, in spite of the appalling facts of wounds,
and death, and violence in which the human world is now steeped, is it yet
possible, is it yet true, that the ultimate thing, the final power behind
the veil--to which at least this vast linked spectacle of suffering and
tenderness, here in this great camp, testifies--is _not_ Force, but Love?
Is this the mysterious message which seems to breathe from these crowded
wards--to make them _just_ bearable. Let me recollect the open door of an
operating theatre, and a young officer, quite a boy, lying there with a
bullet in his chest, which the surgeons were just about to try and
extract. The fine, pale features of the wounded man, the faces of the
surgeon and the nurses, so intent and cheerfully absorbed, the shining
surfaces and appliances of the white room--stamp themselves on memory. I
recollect, too, one John S----, a very bad case, a private. "Oh, you must
come and see John S----," says one of the Sisters. "We get all the little
distractions we can for John. Will he recover? Well, we thought
so--but"--her face changes gravely--"John himself seems to have made up
his mind lately. He knows--but he never complains." Knows what? We go to
see him, and he turns round philosophically from his tea. "Oh, I'm all
right--a bit tired--that