st the bare fact--in last night's 'Globe.' R. will
have an exciting time. We're longing to get back for to-day's 'Daily
Mail.'

There has been a lot of fighting in our advance south-east of Ypres
since Sunday.

The Gordons made a great bayonet charge, but lost heavily in officers
and men in half an hour; we have some on the train. The French also lost
heavily, and lie unburied in hundreds; but the men say the Germans were
still more badly "punished." They tell us that in the base hospitals
they never get a clean wound; even the emergency amputations and
trephinings and operations done in the Clearing Hospitals are septic,
and no one who knew the conditions would wonder at it. We shall all
forget what aseptic work is by the time we get home. The anti-tetanus
serum injection that every wounded man gets with his first dressing has
done a great deal to keep the tetanus under, and the spreading gangrene
is less fatal than it was. It is treated with incisions and injections
of H_{2}O_{2}, or, when necessary, amputation in case of limbs. You
suspect it by the grey colour of the face and by another sense, before
you look at the dressing.

At B. a man at the station greeted me, and it was my old theatre orderly
at No. 7 Pretoria. We were very pleased to see each other. I fitted him
out with a pack of cards, post-cards, acid drops, and a nice grey pair
of socks.

A wounded officer told us he was giving out the mail in his trench the
night before last, and nearly every man had either a letter or a parcel.
Just as he finished a shell came and killed his sergeant and corporal;
if they hadn't had their heads out of the trench at that moment for the
mail, neither of them would have been hit. The officer could hardly get
through the story for the tears in his eyes.

VI.

On No.-- Ambulance Train (4)

CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR ON THE TRAIN

_December 18, 1914, to January 3, 1915_

"Judge of the passionate hearts of men,
God of the wintry wind and snow,
Take back the blood-stained year again,
Give us the Christmas that we know."

--F.G. SCOTT,
_Chaplain with the Canadians_.

VI.

On No.-- Ambulance Train (4).

CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR ON THE TRAIN.

_December 18, 1914, to January 3, 1915._

The Army and the King--Mufflers--Christmas Eve--Christmas on the
train--Princess Mary's present--The trenches in winter--"A typical
example"--New Year's Eve at R