st difference between the warning and the preparatory
exposure to the gas by your guide and the deadly surprise of the enemy.
The former is a trial to prepare you, the latter is an effort to
destroy you. The whole experience was so obviously parallel to the
deadly moral dangers which surround the soldier in war time that it
needs no comment. The one and only safety in the time of temptation is
to put on the whole armor of God, especially the "helmet of salvation,"
then to trust and obey and stand fast.

The writer has just come from a ward in the hospital filled with
patients suffering from the new gas which the enemy has lately put
over. It is, as we have said, invisible and odorless, so the men
receive no warning, and consequently do not put on their masks. They
do not know that they are being gassed until hours afterwards, when
they find they are burned from head to foot. Here are twenty men lying
in this tent, suffering from this new torture. This first boy, with a
wan smile that goes right to your heart, can only whisper from his
burnt-out lungs and cannot tell us his story. The next man was taken
with vomiting five hours after the gas shells exploded. Seven of his
fourteen companions sleeping in the dugout were killed outright, the
others were gassed. He does not know where they are. He lay
unconscious for several days, and now his eyes and skin are burned as
though he had passed through a fire. The next boy is badly burned in
his eyes and chest. Half the men of his battery were killed by gas
while asleep at night. On the next cot is a boy who has been suffering
for seventeen days; the burns on his body have been improving, his
lungs also are better, but he is still blind and fears he may lose his
sight. He asks me to write a letter for him to his mother. "Only," he
says, "don't tell her about my eyes." Together we make up a cheerful
letter, and the boy rests back on his cot to pray for his returning
eyesight. The next two beds are empty. Both the men died in the
night, falling an easy prey to pneumonia in their weakened condition.
The next boy is from the infantry. Out of his squad nine were killed
by the explosion of the shell, eight wounded, and the rest badly
burned. The neck, chest, arms, and legs of this boy are burned and
blistered. The deadly gas fumes have burned right through his clothing.

Such is the effect of this new and latest triumph of modern science,
which will shatter the h