must have been so
numerous and the ordeal withstood at the front so terrible that
punishment became impracticable. In extenuation it may be pointed out
that the French army, like any conscript army, contains every
able-bodied man of the nation, a certain proportion of whom are
inevitably mentally below par and have been sent to war against their
will or inclination. The British are the only ones who have fought
night and day from the beginning without relays and seem to thrive on
it, a fact chiefly due to their being picked volunteers all of whom
are soldiers by choice.

After the first train arrived a number of very desperate cases were
immediately sorted out and given to our ambulances. The ambulance
upon which I served was the last to leave. We departed at seven
o'clock, carrying a lieutenant of Chasseurs Alpins who had had his
hand shot off and who showed symptoms of lockjaw, and a little private
of infantry, a boy with a delicate refined face, who had a bad
gangrenous shell wound in the right thigh. His leg was rotting away in
a most frightful manner. He was delirious and as weak as a kitten. He
imagined he was a little child again and that his mother was causing
him all the pain he suffered. He moaned to her reproachfully. We
picked our way as slowly and carefully as possible, never making more
than four miles an hour and actually avoiding every projecting stone
and cobble. In spite of our efforts, our charges suffered frightfully
and the delirious boy made this evident in a way which cast a silent
spell upon the streets through which we passed. We went up over
Montmartre and along the Boulevard Clichy, famous "wicked" street of
Paris, because the road surfaces happened to be somewhat smoother. As
we went we left behind us a trail of the intangible, all-permeating,
sickly-sweetish odor of gangrene.

It is very curious to see how virtually all fatally wounded men know
that they are going to die and how they grasp it with a certainty
which exceeds the certainty of anything else in life. They often
realize it sooner than the surgeons. It is most uncanny. Perhaps it is
because their nervous system senses that its foundation has suddenly
crumbled. It is very impressive to see the quiet, optimistic calm with
which they face the end, and the bigness of it. It makes one feel
confident that there is an after-life, or that it is at least right to
die for an ideal.

* * * * *

_Monday, No