ithout some
personal acquaintance with shell-shock cases. They are, especially for
non-combatants, the most instructive of all the fruits of war, much more
instructive than dead bodies or men without limbs. And then, having
watched and talked or tried to talk with a variety of these still living
creatures, let any man, even a profiteer or a theologian, look into his
heart and ask himself whether he really agrees with the Chaplain, whom I
have already quoted, that "three or four years of war may be
tremendously worth while."

It needs a greater pen than mine to do justice to all we saw that
afternoon, for we went through all the wards and saw all the sights
there were to see. We saw a young Lieutenant, with large staring eyes,
sitting up in bed. When we approached him, he jumped round in his bed
very violently, as though his body had been shot out of a gun, and went
on staring at us, speechless and with eyes full of wild terror. We saw
two soldiers in the corner of a ward, their heads wobbling in perfect
rhythm, ceaselessly from side to side, like the pendulum of a clock,
with dead expressionless faces. We saw men cowering beneath their bed
clothes, trembling with an endless terror. We saw a man who for months
had quite lost his speech, and was now just able to whisper, almost
inaudibly, "papa" and "mama," a middle-aged man with a beard. We saw a
man with frightened eyes, like a child in a nightmare, with many of the
outward signs of having been gassed, struggling for breath,
gesticulating feebly, trying to ward off some imaginary blow. He had not
been gassed, but wounded in the head. He was alone in a blue ward, where
all our faces looked yellow. We saw a youth lying asleep, white as a
sheet and with hardly any flesh left on his bones. He had been asleep
for two months without ever waking. We saw a splendid, tall, bearded
man, a Cavalry Captain, with a deep voice and a firm handgrip, who could
realise the present, but had forgotten all the past. We saw a multitude
of minor "tremblers," and men undergoing electrical treatment for
paralysis and stiffness of various limbs. One little man, another
University Professor, who was almost paralysed in both legs, tried to
advance to meet us and nearly fell forward on the ground at our feet. I
spoke also to a young man with a paralysed back and left arm. I said I
hoped he would soon be better. "Yes," he said, "I hope soon to go back
to the Front." For a moment I thought this was i