dings while the troop trains from home sped down the
cleared main line to the smoking front; that was the merciless but
necessary rule. The man who got himself crippled became an obstacle to
further progress, a drag upon the wheels of the machine; whereas the man
who was yet whole and fit was the man whom the generals wanted. So the
fresh grist for the mill, the raw material, if you will, was expedited
upon its way to the hoppers; that which already had been ground up was
relatively of the smallest consequence.

Because of this law, which might not be broken or amended, these wounded
men would, perforce, spend several days aboard train before they could
expect to reach the base hospitals upon German soil, Maubeuge being at
considerably less than midway of the distance between starting point and
probable destination. Altogether the trip might last a week or even two
weeks--a trip that ordinarily would have lasted less than twelve hours.
Through it these men, who were messed and mangled in every imaginable
fashion, would wallow in the dirty matted straw, with nothing except
that thin layer of covering between them and the car floors that jolted
and jerked beneath them. We knew it and they knew it, and there was
nothing to be done. Their wounds would fester and be hot with fever.
Their clotted bandages would clot still more and grow stiffer and harder
with each dragging hour. Those who lacked overcoats and blankets--and
some there were who lacked both--would half freeze at night. For food
they would have slops dished up for them at such stopping places as this
present one, and they would slake their thirst on water drawn from
contaminated wayside wells and be glad of the chance. Gangrene would
come, and blood poison, and all manner of corruption. Tetanus would
assuredly claim its toll. Indeed, these horrors were already at work
among them. I do not tell it to sicken my reader, but because I think I
should tell it that he may have a fuller conception of what this
fashionable institution of war means--we could smell this train as we
could smell all the trains which followed after it, when it was yet
fifty yards away from us.

Be it remembered, furthermore, that no surgeon accompanied this
afflicted living freightage, that not even a qualified nurse traveled
with it. According to the classifying processes of those in authority
on the battle lines these men were lightly wounded men, and it was
presumed that while e