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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11086 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 11086-h.htm or 11086-h.zip:
+      (http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/1/1/0/8/11086/11086-h/11086-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/1/1/0/8/11086/11086-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+A SURGEON IN BELGIUM
+
+by H. S. Souttar, F.R.C.S.
+Assistant Surgeon, West London Hospital
+Late Surgeon-in-Chief, Belgian Field Hospital
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+To write the true story of three months' work in a hospital is a task
+before which the boldest man might quail. Let my very dear friends of
+the Belgian Field Hospital breathe again, for I have attempted nothing
+of the sort. I would sooner throw aside my last claim to self-respect,
+and write my autobiography. It would at least be safer. But there were
+events which happened around us, there was an atmosphere in which
+we lived, so different from those of our lives at home that one felt
+compelled to try to picture them before they merged into the shadowy
+memories of the past. And this is all that I have attempted. To all who
+worked with me through those months I owe a deep debt of gratitude.
+That they would do everything in their power to make the hospital a
+success went without saying, but it was quite another matter that they
+should all have conspired to make the time for me one of the happiest
+upon which I shall ever look back. Where all have been so kind, it is
+almost invidious to mention names, and yet there are two which must
+stand by themselves. To the genius and the invincible resource of
+Madame Sindici the hospital owes an incalculable debt. Her
+friendship is one of my most delightful memories. The sterling powers
+of Dr. Beavis brought us safely many a time through deep water, and
+but for his enterprise the hospital would have come to an abrupt
+conclusion with Antwerp. There could have been no more delightful
+colleague, and without his aid much of this book would never have
+been written.
+
+For the Belgian Field Hospital I can wish nothing better than that its
+star may continue to shine in the future as it has always done in the
+past, and that a sensible British public may generously support the
+most enterprising hospital in the war.
+
+H. S. S.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+To Antwerp
+The Hospital
+The Day's Work
+Antwerp
+Termonde
+The Chateau
+Malines
+Lierre
+A Pause
+The Siege
+Contich
+The Bombardment--Night
+The Bombardment--Day
+The Night Journey
+Furnes
+Poperinghe
+Furnes Again
+Work At Furnes
+Furnes--The Town
+A Journey
+The Ambulance Corps
+Pervyse--The Trenches
+Ypres
+Some Conclusions
+
+
+
+
+
+A SURGEON IN BELGIUM
+
+
+I. To Antwerp
+
+
+
+When, one Saturday afternoon in September, we stepped on board
+the boat for Ostend, it was with a thrill of expectation. For weeks we
+had read and spoken of one thing only--the War--and now we
+were to see it for ourselves, we were even in some way to be a part of
+it. The curtain was rising for us upon the greatest drama in all the
+lurid history of strife. We should see the armies as they went out to
+fight, and we should care for the wounded when their work was done.
+We might hear the roar of the guns and the scream of the shells. To
+us, that was War.
+
+And, indeed, we have seen more of war in these few weeks than has
+fallen to the lot of many an old campaigner. We have been through
+the siege of Antwerp, we have lived and worked always close to the
+firing-line, and I have seen a great cruiser roll over and sink, the
+victim of a submarine. But these are not the things which will live in
+our minds. These things are the mere framing of the grim picture. The
+cruiser has been blotted out by the weary faces of an endless stream
+of fugitives, and the scream of the shells has been drowned by the cry
+of a child. For, though the soldiers may fight, it is the people who
+suffer, and the toll of war is not the life which it takes, but the life
+which it destroys.
+
+I suppose, and I hope, that there is not a man amongst us who has
+not in his heart wished to go to the front, and to do what he could.
+The thought may have been only transitory, and may soon have been
+blotted out by self-interest; and there is many a strong man who has
+thrust it from him because he knew that his duty lay at home. But to
+everyone the wish must have come, though only to a few can come
+the opportunity. We all want to do our share, but it is only human that
+we should at the same time long to be there in the great business of
+the hour, to see war as it really is, to feel the thrill of its supreme
+moments, perhaps in our heart of hearts to make quite certain that we
+are not cowards. And when we return, what do we bring with us? We
+all bring a few bits of shell, pictures of ruined churches, perhaps a
+German helmet--and our friends are full of envy. And some of us
+return with scenes burnt into our brain of horror and of pathos such as
+no human pen can describe. Yet it is only when we sit down in the
+quiet of our homes that we realize the deeper meaning of all that we
+have seen, that we grasp the secret of the strange aspects of
+humanity which have passed before us. What we have seen is a
+world in which the social conventions under which we live, and which
+form a great part or the whole of most of our lives, have been torn
+down. Men and women are no longer limited by the close barriers of
+convention. They must think and act for themselves, and for once it is
+the men and women that we see, and not the mere symbols which
+pass as coin in a world at peace. To the student of men and women,
+the field of war is the greatest opportunity in the world. It is a
+veritable dissecting-room, where all the queer machinery that
+goes to the making of us lies open to our view. On the whole,
+I am very glad that I am a mere surgeon, and that I can limit my
+dissections to men's bodies. Human Anatomy is bad enough,
+but after the last three months the mere thought of an analysis
+of Human Motives fills me with terror.
+
+Our boat was one of the older paddle steamers. We were so fortunate
+as to have a friend at Court, and the best cabins on the ship were
+placed at our disposal. I was very grateful to that friend, for it was
+very rough, and our paddle-boxes were often under water. We
+consoled ourselves by the thought that at least in a rough sea we
+were safe from submarines, but the consolation became somewhat
+threadbare as time went on. Gradually the tall white cliffs of Dover
+sank behind us, splendid symbols of the quiet power which guards
+them. But for those great white cliffs, and the waves which wash their
+base, how different the history of England would have been! They
+broke the power of Spain in her proudest days, Napoleon gazed at
+them in vain as at the walls of a fortress beyond his grasp, and
+against them Germany will fling herself to her own destruction.
+Germany has yet to learn the strength which lies concealed behind
+those cliffs, the energy and resource which have earned for England
+the command of the sea. It was a bad day for Germany when she
+ventured to question that command. She will receive a convincing
+answer to her question.
+
+We reached Ostend, and put up for the night at the Hotel Terminus.
+Ostend was empty, and many of the hotels were closed. A few bombs
+had been dropped upon the town some days before, and caused
+considerable excitement--about all that most bombs ever succeed
+in doing, as we afterwards discovered. But it had been enough to
+cause an exodus. No one dreamt that in less than three weeks' time
+the town would be packed with refugees, and that to get either a bed
+or a meal would be for many of them almost impossible. Everywhere
+we found an absolute confidence as to the course of the war, and the
+general opinion was that the Germans would be driven out of Belgium
+in less than six weeks.
+
+Two of our friends in Antwerp had come down to meet us by motor,
+and we decided to go back with them by road, as trains, though still
+running, were slow and uncertain. It was a terrible day, pouring in
+torrents and blowing a hurricane. Our route lay through Bruges and
+Ghent, but the direct road to Bruges was in a bad condition, and we
+chose the indirect road through Blankenberghe. We left Ostend by
+the magnificent bridge, with its four tall columns, which opens the way
+towards the north-east, and as we crossed it I met the first symbol of
+war. A soldier stepped forward, and held his rifle across our path. My
+companion leaned forward and murmured, "Namur," the soldier
+saluted, and we passed on. It was all very simple, and, but for the one
+word, silent; but it was the first time I had heard a password, and it
+made an immense impression on my mind. We had crossed the
+threshold of War. I very soon had other things to think about. The
+road from Ostend to Blankenberghe is about the one good motor road
+in Belgium, and my companion evidently intended to demonstrate the
+fact to me beyond all possibility of doubt. We were driving into the
+teeth of a squall, but there seemed to be no limits to the power of his
+engine. I watched the hand of his speedometer rise till it touched sixty
+miles per hour. On the splendid asphalt surface of the road there was
+no vibration, but a north-east wind across the sand-dunes is no trifle,
+and I was grateful when we turned south-eastwards at Blankenberghe,
+and I could breathe again.
+
+As I said, that road by the dunes is unique. The roads of Belgium, for
+the most part, conform to one regular pattern. In the centre is a paved
+causeway, set with small stone blocks, whilst on each side is a couple
+of yards of loose sand, or in wet weather of deep mud. The causeway
+is usually only just wide enough for the passing of two motors, and on
+the smaller roads it is not sufficient even for this. As there is no speed
+limit, and everyone drives at the top power of his engine, the skill
+required to drive without mishap is considerable. After a little rain the
+stone is covered with a layer of greasy mud, and to keep a car upon it
+at a high speed is positively a gymnastic feat. In spite of every
+precaution, an occasional descent into the mud at the roadside is
+inevitable, and from that only a very powerful car can extricate itself
+with any ease. A small car will often have to slowly push its way out
+backwards. In dry weather the conditions are almost as bad, for often
+the roadside is merely loose sand, which gives no hold for a wheel.
+For a country so damp and low-lying as Belgium, there is probably
+nothing to equal a paved road, but it is a pity that the paving was not
+made a little wider. Every now and then we met one of the huge,
+unwieldy carts which seem to be relics of a prehistoric age--rough
+plank affairs of enormous strength and a design so primitive as to be
+a constant source of wonder. They could only be pulled along at a
+slow walk and with vast effort by a couple of huge horses, and the
+load the cart was carrying never seemed to bear any proportion to the
+mechanism of its transport. The roads are bad, but they will not
+account for those carts. The little front wheels are a stroke of
+mechanical ineptitude positively amounting to genius, and when they
+are replaced by a single wheel, and the whole affair resembles a
+huge tricycle, one instinctively looks round for a Dinosaur. Time after
+time we met them stuck in the mud or partially overturned, but the
+drivers seemed in no way disconcerted; it was evidently all part of the
+regular business of the day. When one thinks of the Brussels
+coachwork which adorns our most expensive motors, and of the great
+engineering works of Liege, those carts are a really wonderful
+example of persistence of type.
+
+We passed through Bruges at a pace positively disrespectful to that
+fine old town. There is no town in Belgium so uniform in the
+magnificence of its antiquity, and it is good to think that--so far, at
+any rate--it has escaped destruction. As we crossed the square, the
+clock in the belfry struck the hour, and began to play its chimes. It is a
+wonderful old clock, and every quarter of an hour it plays a tune--a
+very attractive performance, unless you happen to live opposite. I
+remember once thinking very hard things about the maker of that
+clock, but perhaps it was not his fault that one of the bells was a
+quarter of a tone flat. At the gates our passports were examined, and
+we travelled on to Ghent by the Ecloo Road, one of the main
+thoroughfares of Belgium. Beyond an occasional sentry, there was
+nothing to indicate that we were passing through a country at war,
+except that we rarely saw a man of military age. All were women, old
+men, or children. Certainly the men of Belgium had risen to the
+occasion. The women were doing everything--working in the fields,
+tending the cattle, driving the market-carts and the milk-carts with
+their polished brass cans. After leaving Ghent, the men came into
+view, for at Lokeren and St. Nicholas were important military stations,
+whilst nearer to Antwerp very extensive entrenchments and wire
+entanglements were being constructed. The trenches were most
+elaborate, carefully constructed and covered in; and I believe that all
+the main approaches to the city were defended in the same way.
+Antwerp could never have been taken by assault, but with modern
+artillery it would have been quite easy to destroy it over the heads of
+its defenders. The Germans have probably by now rendered it
+impregnable, for though in modern war it is impossible to defend
+one's own cities, the same does not apply to the enemy. In future,
+forts will presumably be placed at points of strategic importance only,
+and as far as possible from towns.
+
+Passing through the western fortifications, we came upon the long
+bridge of boats which had been thrown across the Scheldt. The river
+is here more than a quarter of a mile wide, and the long row of sailing
+barges was most picturesque. The roadway was of wooden planks,
+and only just wide enough to allow one vehicle to pass at a time, the
+tall spars of the barges rising on each side. It is strange that a city of
+such wealth as Antwerp should not have bridged a river which, after
+all, is not wider than the Thames. We were told that a tunnel was in
+contemplation. The bridge of boats was only a tribute to the
+necessities of war. We did not dream that a fortnight later it would be
+our one hope of escape.
+
+
+
+
+II. The Hospital
+
+
+
+Antwerp is one of the richest cities in Europe, and our hospital was
+placed in its wealthiest quarter. The Boulevard Leopold is a
+magnificent avenue, with a wide roadway in the centre flanked by
+broad paths planted with trees. Beyond these, again, on each side is
+a paved road with a tram-line, whilst a wide pavement runs along the
+houses. There are many such boulevards in Antwerp, and they give
+to the city an air of spaciousness and opulence in striking contrast to
+the more utilitarian plan of London or of most of our large towns. We
+talk a great deal about fresh air, but we are not always ready to pay
+for it.
+
+Our hospital occupied one of the largest houses on the south-east
+side. A huge doorway led into an outer hall through which the garden
+was directly reached behind the house. On the right-hand side of this
+outer hall a wide flight of steps led to inner glass doors and the great
+central hall of the building. As a private house it must have been
+magnificent; as a hospital it was as spacious and airy as one could
+desire. The hall was paved with marble, and on either side opened
+lofty reception rooms, whilst in front wide marble staircases led to the
+first floor. This first floor and another above it were occupied entirely
+by wards, each containing from six to twelve beds. On the ground
+floor on the right-hand side were two large wards, really magnificent
+rooms, and one smaller, all these overlooking the Boulevard. On the
+left were the office, the common room, and the operating theatre.
+Behind the house was a large paved courtyard, flanked on the right
+by a garden border and on the left by a wide glass-roofed corridor.
+The house had previously been used as a school, and on the
+opposite side of the courtyard was the gymnasium, with dormitories
+above. The gymnasium furnished our dining-hall, whilst several of the
+staff slept in the rooms above.
+
+It will be seen that the building was in many ways well adapted to the
+needs of a hospital and to the accommodation of the large staff
+required. We had in all 150 beds, and a staff of about 50. The latter
+included 8 doctors, 20 nurses, 5 dressers, lay assistants, and motor
+drivers. In addition to these there was a kitchen staff of Belgians, so
+that the management of the whole was quite a large undertaking,
+especially in a town where ordinary provisions were becoming more
+and more difficult to obtain. In the later days of the siege, when milk
+was not to be had and the only available water was salt, the lot of our
+housekeeper was anything but happy. Providing meals for over 200
+people in a besieged town is no small matter. But it was managed
+somehow, and our cuisine was positively astonishing, to which I think
+we largely owe the fact that none of the staff was ever ill. Soldiers are
+not the only people who fight on their stomachs.
+
+The management of the hospital centred in the office, and it was so
+typical of Belgium as to be really worth a few words of description. It
+was quite a small room, and it was always crowded. Four of us had
+seats round a table in the centre, and at another table in the window
+sat our Belgian secretary, Monsieur Herman, and his two clerks. But
+that was only the beginning of it. All day long there was a constant
+stream of men, women, and children pouring into that room, bringing
+letters, asking questions, always talking volubly to us and amongst
+themselves. At first we thought that this extraordinary turmoil was due
+to our want of space, but we soon found that it was one of the
+institutions of the country. In England an official's room is the very
+home of silence, and is by no means easy of access. If he is a high
+official, a series of ante-rooms is interposed between his sacred
+person and an inquisitive world. But in Belgium everyone walks
+straight in without removing his cigar. The great man sits at his desk
+surrounded by a perfect Babel, but he is always polite, always ready
+to hear what you have to say and to do what he can to help. He
+appears to be able to deal with half a dozen different problems at the
+same time without ever being ruffled or confused. There is an
+immense amount of talking and shaking of hands, and at first the
+brain of a mere Englishman is apt to whirl; but the business is done
+rapidly and completely. Belgium is above all things democratic, and
+our office was a good introduction to it.
+
+The common room was large and airy, overlooking the courtyard, and
+a few rugs and armchairs made it a very comfortable place when the
+work of the day was done. Anyone who has worked in a hospital will
+know what a difference such a room makes to the work--work that
+must be carried on at all hours of the day or night; nor will he need to
+be told of the constant supply of tea and coffee that will be found
+there. We go about telling our patients of the evils of excessive tea-
+drinking, and we set them an example they would find it hard to
+follow. We do not mention how often tea and a hot bath have been
+our substitute for a night's sleep.' A good common room and an
+unlimited supply of tea will do much to oil the wheels of hospital life.
+
+But to myself the all-important room was the operating theatre, for
+upon its resources depended entirely our opportunities for surgical
+work. It was in every way admirable, and I know plenty of hospitals in
+London whose theatres would not bear comparison with ours. Three
+long windows faced the courtyard; there was a great bunch of electric
+lights in the ceiling, and there was a constant supply of boiling water.
+What more could the heart of surgeon desire? There were two
+operating tables and an equipment of instruments to vie with any in a
+London hospital. Somebody must have been very extravagant over
+those instruments, I thought as I looked at them; but he was right and
+I was wrong, for there were very few of those instruments for which I
+was not grateful before long. The surgery of war is a very different
+thing from the surgery of home.
+
+The wards were full when we arrived, and I had a wonderful
+opportunity of studying the effects of rifle and shell fire. Most of the
+wounds were fortunately slight, but some of them were terrible, and,
+indeed, in some cases it seemed little short of miraculous that the
+men had survived. But on every side one saw nothing but cheerful
+faces, and one would never have dreamt what some of those men
+had gone through. They were all smoking cigarettes, laughing, and
+chatting, as cheery a set of fellows as one could meet. You would
+never have suspected that a few days before those same men had
+been carried into the hospital in most cases at their last gasp from
+loss of blood and exposure, for none but serious cases were
+admitted. The cheeriest man in the place was called Rasquinet, a
+wounded officer who had been christened "Ragtime" for short, and for
+affection. A week before he had been struck by a shell in the left side,
+and a large piece of the shell had gone clean through, wounding the
+kidney behind and the bowel in front. That man crawled across
+several fields, a distance of nearly a mile, on his hands and knees,
+dragging with him to a place of safety a wounded companion. When
+from loss of blood he could drag him along no longer, he left him
+under a hedge, and dragged himself another half-mile till he could get
+help. When he was brought into the hospital, he was so exhausted
+from pain and loss of blood that no one thought that he could live for
+more than a few hours, but by sheer pluck he had pulled through.
+Even now he was desperately ill with as horrible a wound as a man
+could have, but nothing was going to depress him. I am glad to say
+that what is known in surgery as a short circuit was an immediate
+success, and when we left him three weeks later in Ghent he was to
+all intents perfectly well.
+
+There were plenty of other serious cases, some of them with ghastly
+injuries, and many of them must have suffered agonizing pain; but
+they were all doing their best to make light of their troubles, whilst
+their gratitude for what was done for them was extraordinary. The
+Belgians are by nature a cheerful race, but these were brave men,
+and we felt glad that we had come out to do what we could for them.
+
+But if we give them credit for their courage and cheerfulness, we must
+not forget how largely they owed it to the devoted attention--yes,
+and to the courage and cheerfulness--of the nurses. I wonder how
+many of us realize what Britain owes to her nurses. We take them as
+a matter of course, we regard nursing as a very suitable profession
+for a woman to take up--if she can find nothing better to do; perhaps
+we may have been ill, and we were grateful for a nurse's kindness.
+But how many of us realize all the long years of drudgery that have
+given the skill we appreciated, the devotion to her work that has made
+the British nurse what she is? And how many of us realize that we
+English-speaking nations alone in the world have such nurses?
+Except in small groups, they are unknown in France, Belgium,
+Germany, Russia, or any other country in the world. In no other land
+will women leave homes of ease and often of luxury to do work that
+no servant would touch, for wages that no servant would take--work
+for which there will be very little reward but the unmeasured gratitude
+of the very few. They stand to-day as an unanswerable proof that as
+nations we have risen higher in the level of civilization than any of our
+neighbours. To their influence on medicine and surgery I shall refer
+again. Here I only wish to acknowledge our debt. As a mere patient I
+would rather have a good nurse than a good physician, if I were so
+unfortunate as to have to make the choice. A surgeon is a dangerous
+fellow, and must be treated with respect. But as a rule the physician
+gives his blessing, the surgeon does his operation, but it is the nurse
+who does the work.
+
+
+
+
+III. The Day's Work
+
+
+
+In any hospital at home or abroad there is a large amount of routine
+work, which must be carried on in an orderly and systematic manner,
+and upon the thoroughness with which this is done will largely depend
+the effectiveness of the hospital. Patients must be fed and washed,
+beds must be made and the wards swept and tidied, wounds must be
+dressed and splints adjusted. In an English hospital everything is
+arranged to facilitate this routine work. Close to every ward is a sink-
+room with an adequate supply of hot and cold water, dinner arrives in
+hot tins from the kitchens as if by magic, whilst each ward has its own
+arrangements for preparing the smaller meals. The beds are of a
+convenient height, and there is an ample supply of sheets and pillow-
+cases, and of dressing materials of all kinds arranged on tables which
+run noiselessly up and down the wards. At home all these things are
+a matter of course; abroad they simply did not exist. Four or five gas-
+rings represented our hot-water supply and our ward-kitchens for our
+150 patients, and the dinners had to be carried up from the large
+kitchens in the basement. The beds were so low as to break one's
+back, and had iron sides which were always in the way; and when we
+came to the end of our sheets--well, we came to the end of them,
+and that was all. In every way the work was heavier and more difficult
+than at home, for all our patients were heavy men, and every wound
+was septic, and had, in many cases, to be dressed several times a
+day. Everyone had to work hard, sometimes very hard; but as a rule
+we got through the drudgery in the morning, and in the afternoon
+everything was in order, and we should, I think, have compared very
+favourably in appearance with most hospitals at home.
+
+But we had to meet one set of conditions which would, I think, baffle
+many hospitals at home. Every now and then, without any warning,
+from 50 to 100, even in one case 150, wounded would be brought to
+our door. There was no use in putting up a notice "House Full"; the
+men were wounded and they must be attended to. In such a case our
+arrangement was a simple one: all who could walk went straight
+upstairs, the gravest cases went straight to the theatre or waited their
+turn in the great hall, the others were accommodated on the ground
+floor. We had a number of folding beds for emergency, and we had
+no rules as to overcrowding. In the morning the authorities would
+clear out as many patients as we wished. Sometimes we were hard
+put to it to find room for them all, but we always managed somehow,
+and we never refused admission to a single patient on the score of
+want of room. The authorities soon discovered the capacity of the
+hospital for dealing with really serious cases, and as a result our beds
+were crowded with injuries of the gravest kind. What appealed to us
+far more was the appreciation of the men themselves. We felt that we
+had not worked in vain when we heard that the soldiers in the
+trenches begged to be taken "a l'Hopital Anglais."
+
+The condition of the men when they reached us was often pitiable in
+the extreme. Most of them had been living in the trenches for weeks
+exposed to all kinds of weather, their clothes were often sodden and
+caked with dirt, and the men themselves showed clear traces of
+exposure and insecure sleep. In most cases they had lain in the
+trenches for hours after being wounded, for as a rule it is impossible
+to remove the wounded at once with any degree of safety. Indeed,
+when the fighting is at all severe they must lie till dark before it is
+safe for the stretcher-bearers to go for them. This was so at Furnes,
+but at Antwerp we were usually able to get them in within a few hours.
+Even a few hours' delay with a bad wound may be a serious matter,
+and in every serious case our attention was first directed to the
+condition of the patient himself and not to his wound. Probably
+he had lost blood, his injury had produced more or less shock,
+he had certainly been lying for hours in pain. He had to be got
+warm, his circulation had to be restored, he had to be saved
+from pain and protected from further shock. Hot bottles, blankets,
+brandy, and morphia worked wonders in a very short time, and
+one could then proceed to deal with wounds. Our patients
+were young and vigorous, and their rate of recovery was extraordinary.
+
+When a rush came we all had to work our hardest, and the scenes in
+any part of the hospital required steady nerves; but perhaps the
+centre of interest was the theatre. Here all the worst cases were
+brought--men with ghastly injuries from which the most hardened
+might well turn away in horror; men almost dead from loss of blood,
+or, worst of all, with a tiny puncture in the wall of the abdomen which
+looks so innocent, but which, in this war at least, means, apart from a
+difficult and dangerous operation, a terrible death. With all these we
+had to deal as rapidly and completely as possible, reducing each
+case to a form which it would be practicable to nurse, where the
+patient would be free from unnecessary pain, and where he would
+have the greatest possible chance of ultimate recovery. Of course, all
+this was done under anaesthesia. What a field hospital must have
+been before the days of anaesthesia is too horrible to contemplate.
+Even in civil hospitals the surgeons must have reached a degree of
+"Kultur" beside which its present exponents are mere children. It is
+not so many years since a famous surgeon, who was fond of walking
+back from his work at the London Hospital along the Whitechapel
+Road, used to be pointed to with horror by the Aldgate butchers,
+whose opinion on such a subject was probably worth consideration.
+But now all that is changed. The surgeon can be a human being
+again, and indeed, except when he goes round his wards, his patients
+may never know, of his existence. They go to sleep in a quiet
+anteroom, and they waken up in the ward. Of the operation and all its
+difficulties they know no more than their friends at home. Perhaps
+even more wonderful is the newer method of spinal anaesthesia,
+which we used largely for the difficult abdominal cases. With the
+injection of a minute quantity of fluid into the spine all sensation
+disappears up to the level of the arms, and, provided he cannot see
+what is going on, any operation below that level can be carried out
+without the patient knowing anything about it at all. It is rather
+uncanny at first to see a patient lying smoking a cigarette and reading
+the paper whilst on the other side of a screen a big operation is in
+progress. But for many cases this method is unsuitable, and without
+chloroform we should indeed have been at a loss. The Belgians are
+an abstemious race, and they took it beautifully. I am afraid they were
+a striking contrast to their brothers on this side of the water.
+Chloroform does not mix well with alcohol in the human body, and the
+British working man is rather fond of demonstrating the fact.
+
+With surgery on rather bold lines it was extraordinary how much could
+be done, especially in the way of saving limbs. During the whole of
+our stay in Antwerp we never once had to resort to an amputation.
+We were dealing with healthy and vigorous men, and once they had
+got over the shock of injury they had wonderful powers of recovery.
+We very soon found that we were dealing with cases to which the
+ordinary rules of surgery did not apply. The fundamental principles of
+the art must always be the same, but here the conditions of their
+application were essentially different from those of civil practice. Two
+of these conditions were of general interest: the great destruction of
+the tissues in most wounds, and the infection of the wounds, which
+was almost universal.
+
+Where a wound has been produced by a large fragment of shell, one
+expects to see considerable damage; in fact, a whole limb may be
+torn off, or death may be instant from some terrible injury to the body.
+But where the object of the enemy is the injury of individuals, and not
+the destruction of buildings, they often use shrapnel, and the resulting
+wounds resemble those from the old smooth-bore guns of our
+ancestors. Shrapnel consists of a large number of bullets about half
+an inch in diameter packed together in a case, which carries also a
+charge of explosive timed to burst at the moment when it reaches its
+object. The balls are small and round, and if they go straight through
+soft tissues they do not do much damage. If, however, they strike a
+bone, they are so soft that their shape becomes irregular, and the
+injury they can produce in their further course is almost without limit.
+On the whole, they do not as a rule produce great damage, for in
+many cases they are nearly spent when they reach their mark. Pieces
+of the case will, of course, have much the same effect as an ordinary
+shell.
+
+The effects of rifle-fire, particularly at short ranges, have led to a
+great deal of discussion, and each side has accused the other of
+using dum-dum bullets. The ordinary bullet consists of a lead core
+with a casing of nickel, since the soft lead would soon choke rifling.
+Such a bullet under ordinary circumstances makes a clean
+perforation, piercing the soft tissues, and sometimes the bones, with
+very little damage. In a dum-dum bullet the casing at the tip is cut or
+removed, with the result that, on striking, the casing spreads out and
+forms a rough, irregular missile, which does terrific damage. Such
+bullets were forbidden by the Geneva Convention. But the German
+bullet is much more subtle than this. It is short and pointed, and when
+it strikes it turns completely over and goes through backwards. The
+base of the bullet has no cover, and consequently spreads in a
+manner precisely similar to that in a dum-dum, with equally deadly
+results. There could be no greater contrast than that between the
+wounds with which we had to deal in South Africa, produced by
+ordinary bullets, and those which our soldiers are now receiving from
+German rifles. The former were often so slight that it was quite a
+common occurrence for a soldier to discover accidentally that he had
+been wounded some time previously. In the present war rifle wounds
+have been amongst the most deadly with which we have had to deal.
+
+It will thus be seen that in most cases the wounds were anything but
+clean-cut; with very few exceptions, they were never surgically clean.
+By surgically clean we mean that no bacteria are present which can
+interfere with the healing of the tissues, and only those who are
+familiar with surgical work can realize the importance of this condition.
+Its maintenance is implied in the term "aseptic surgery," and upon this
+depends the whole distinction between the surgery of the present and
+the surgery of the past. Without it the great advances of modern
+surgery would be entirely impossible. When we say, then, that every
+wound with which we had to deal was infected with bacteria, it will be
+realized how different were the problems which we had to face
+compared with those of work at home. But the difference was even
+more striking, for the bacteria which had infected the wounds were
+not those commonly met with in England. These wounds were for the
+most part received in the open country, and they were soiled by earth,
+manure, fragments of cloth covered with mud. They were therefore
+infected by the organisms which flourish on such soil, and not by the
+far more deadly denizens of our great cities. It is true that in soil one
+may meet with tetanus and other virulent bacteria, but in our
+experience these were rare. Now, there is one way in which all such
+infections may be defeated--by plenty of fresh air, or, better still, by
+oxygen. We had some very striking proofs of this, for in several cases
+the wounds were so horribly foul that it was impossible to tolerate
+their presence in the wards; and in these cases we made it a practice
+to put the patient in the open air, of course suitably protected, and to
+leave the wound exposed to the winds of heaven, with only a thin
+piece of gauze to protect it. The results were almost magical, for in
+two or three days the wounds lost their odour and began to look
+clean, whilst the patients lost all signs of the poisoning which had
+been so marked before. It may be partly to this that we owe the fact
+that we never had a case of tetanus. In all cases we treated our
+wounds with solutions of oxygen, and we avoided covering them up
+with heavy dressings; and we found that this plan was successful as
+well as economical.
+
+Though any detailed description of surgical treatment would be out of
+place, there was one which in these surroundings was novel, and
+which was perhaps of general interest. Amongst all the cases which
+came to us, certainly the most awkward were the fractured thighs. It
+was not a question of a broken leg in the ordinary sense of the term.
+In every case there was a large infected wound to deal with, and as a
+rule several inches of the bone had been blown clean away. At first
+we regarded these cases with horror, for anything more hopeless
+than a thigh with 6 inches missing it is difficult to imagine. Splints
+presented almost insuperable difficulties, for the wounds had to be
+dressed two or three times, and however skilfully the splint was
+arranged, the least movement meant for the patient unendurable
+agony. After some hesitation we attempted the method of fixation by
+means of steel plates, which was introduced with such success by Sir
+Arbuthnot Lane in the case of simple fractures. The missing portion of
+the bone is replaced by a long steel plate, screwed by means of small
+steel screws to the portions which remain, "demonstrating," as a
+colleague put it, "the triumph of mind over the absence of matter."
+The result was a brilliant success, for not only could the limb now be
+handled as if there were no fracture at all, to the infinite comfort of
+the patient, but the wounds themselves cleared up with great rapidity.
+We were told that the plates would break loose, that the screws would
+come out, that the patient would come to a bad end through the
+violent sepsis induced by the presence of a "foreign body" in the
+shape of the steel plate. But none of these disasters happened, the
+cases did extremely well, and one of our most indignant critics
+returned to his own hospital after seeing them with his pockets full of
+plates. The only difficulty with some of them was to induce them to
+stop in bed, and it is a fact that on the night of our bombardment I met
+one of them walking downstairs, leaning on a dresser's arm, ten days
+after the operation.
+
+And this brings me to a subject on which I feel very strongly, the folly
+of removing bullets. If a bullet is doing any harm, pressing on some
+nerve, interfering with a joint, or in any way causing pain or
+inconvenience, by all means let it be removed, though even then it
+should in most cases never be touched until the wound is completely
+healed. But the mere presence of a bullet inside the body will of itself
+do no harm at all. The old idea that it will cause infection died long
+ago. It may have brought infection with it; but the removal of the bullet
+will not remove the infection, but rather in most cases make it fire up.
+We now know that, provided they are clean, we can introduce steel
+plates, silver wires, silver nets, into the body without causing any
+trouble at all, and a bullet is no worse than any of these. It is a matter
+in which the public are very largely to blame, for they consider that
+unless the bullet has been removed the surgeon has not done his job.
+Unless he has some specific reason for it, I know that the surgeon
+who removes a bullet does not know his work. It may be the mark of a
+Scotch ancestry, but if I ever get a bullet in my own anatomy, I shall
+keep it.
+
+
+
+
+IV. Antwerp
+
+
+
+There is no port in Europe which holds such a dominant position as
+Antwerp, and there is none whose history has involved such amazing
+changes of fortune. In the middle of the sixteenth century she was the
+foremost city in Europe, at its close she was ruined. For two hundred
+years she lay prostrate under the blighting influence of Spain and
+Austria, and throttled by the commercial jealousy of England and
+Holland. A few weeks ago she was the foremost port on the
+Continent, the third in the world; now her wharves stand idle, and she
+herself is a prisoner in the hands of the enemy. Who can tell what the
+next turn of the wheel will bring?
+
+Placed centrally between north and south, on a deep and wide river,
+Antwerp is the natural outlet of Central Europe towards the West, and
+it is no wonder that four hundred years ago she gathered to herself
+the commerce of the Netherlands, in which Ypres, Bruges, and Ghent
+had been her forerunners. For fifty years she was the Queen of the
+North, and the centre of a vast ocean trade with England, France,
+Spain, Portugal, and Italy, till the religious bigotry of Philip II of
+Spain and the awful scenes of the Spanish Fury reduced her to
+ruin. For two hundred years the Scheldt was blocked by Holland,
+and the ocean trade of Antwerp obliterated. Her population disappeared,
+her wharves rotted, and her canals were choked with mud. It is
+hard to apportion the share of wickedness between a monarch
+who destroys men and women to satisfy his own religious lust,
+and a nation which drains the life-blood of another to satisfy its
+lust for gold. One wonders  in what category the instigator of the
+present war should appear.
+
+At the very beginning of last century Napoleon visited Antwerp, and
+asserted that it was "little better than a heap of ruins." He recognized
+its incomparable position as a port and as a fortress, and he
+determined to raise it to its former prosperity, and to make it the
+strongest fortress in Europe. He spent large sums of money upon it,
+and his refusal to part with Antwerp is said to have broken off the
+negotiations of Chatillon, and to have been the chief cause of his
+exile to St. Helena. Alas his enemies did not profit by his genius. We
+are the allies of his armies now, but we have lost Antwerp. Germany
+will be utterly and completely crushed before she parts with that
+incomparable prize. A mere glance at the map of Europe is sufficient
+to convince anyone that in a war between England and Germany it is
+a point of the first strategical importance. That our access to it should
+be hampered by the control of Holland over the Scheldt is one of the
+eccentricities of diplomacy which are unintelligible to the plain man.
+The blame for its loss must rest equally between Britain and Belgium,
+for Belgium, the richest country in Europe for her size, attempted to
+defend her greatest stronghold with obsolete guns; whilst we, who
+claim the mastery of the seas, sacrificed the greatest seaport in
+Europe to the arrangements of an obsolete diplomacy. If we are to
+retain our great position on the seas, Antwerp must be regained. She
+is the European outpost of Britain, and, as has so often been pointed
+out, the mouth of the Scheldt is opposite to the mouth of the Thames.
+
+In Antwerp, as we saw her, it was almost impossible to realize the
+vicissitudes through which she had passed, or to remember that her
+present prosperity was of little more than fifty years' growth. On all
+sides we were surrounded by wide boulevards, lined by magnificent
+houses and public buildings. There are few streets in Europe to
+eclipse the great Avenue des Arts, which, with its continuations,
+extends the whole length of the city from north to south. The theatres,
+the Central Station, the banks, would adorn any city, and the shops
+everywhere spoke of a wealth not restricted to the few. The wide
+streets, the trees, the roomy white houses, many of them great
+palaces, made a deep impression upon us after the darkness and dirt
+of London. Even in the poorer quarters there was plenty of light and
+air, and on no occasion did we find the slums which surround the
+wealthiest streets all over London. In the older parts of the city the
+streets were, of course, narrower; but even here one had the
+compensation of wonderful bits of architecture at unexpected corners,
+splendid relics of an illustrious past. They are only remnants, but they
+speak of a time when men worked for love rather than for wages, and
+when an artisan took a pride in the labour of his hands. If it had not
+been for the hand of the destroyer, what a marvellous city Antwerp
+would have been! One likes to think that the great creations of the
+past are not all lost, and that in the land to which the souls of the
+Masters have passed we may find still living the mighty thoughts to
+which their love gave birth. Are our cathedrals only stones and
+mortar, and are our paintings only dust and oil?
+
+The inhabitants of Antwerp were as delightful as their city. On all
+sides we were welcomed with a kindness and a consideration not
+always accorded to those who are so bold as to wish to help their
+fellow-men. Everywhere we met with a courtesy and a generosity by
+which, in the tragedy of their country, we were deeply touched. They
+all seemed genuinely delighted to see us, from the Queen herself to
+the children in the streets. Our medical confreres treated us royally,
+and the mere thought of professional jealousy with such men is simply
+ludicrous. They constantly visited our hospital, and they always
+showed the keenest interest in our work and in any novelties in
+treatment we were able to show them; and when we went to see
+them, we were shown all the best that they had, and we brought away
+many an ingenious idea which it was worth while going far to obtain.
+Wherever we moved amongst the Belgians, we always found the
+same simplicity of purpose, the same generosity of impulse.
+Everywhere we met the same gratitude for what England was doing
+for Belgium; no one ever referred to the sacrifices which Belgium has
+made for England.
+
+The one thing which so impressed us in the character of the Belgians
+whom we met was its simplicity, and the men who had risen to high
+rank did not seem to have lost it in their climb to fame. But it was just
+this, the most delightful of their characteristics, which must have
+made war for them supremely difficult. For strict discipline and
+simplicity are almost incompatible. None of us tower so far above our
+fellows that we can command instant obedience for our own sakes.
+We have to cover ourselves with gold lace, to entrench ourselves in
+rank, and to provide ourselves with all sorts of artificial aids before we
+can rely on being obeyed. These things are foreign to the Belgian
+mind, and as a result one noticed in their soldiers a certain lack of the
+stern discipline which war demands. Individually they are brave men
+and magnificent fighters. They only lacked the organization which has
+made the little British Army the envy of the world. The fact is that they
+are in no sense a warlike nation, in spite of their turbulent history of
+the past, and, indeed, few things could be more incompatible than
+turbulence and modern warfare. It demands on the part of the masses
+of combatants an obedience and a disregard of life which are
+repellent to human nature, and the Belgians are above all things
+human. Germany is governed by soldiers, and France by officials.
+Unlike the frogs in the fable, the Belgians are content to govern
+themselves.
+
+It was our great regret that we had so little time in which to see the
+work of the Antwerp hospitals, but we made use of what opportunities
+we had. There are many of them, and those we saw were magnificent
+buildings, equipped in a way which filled us with envy. The great city
+hospital, the Stuivenberg, was a model of what a modern hospital
+ought to be. The wards were large and airy and spotlessly clean, and
+the nurses seemed to be extremely competent. The kitchens were
+equipped with all the latest appliances, steam boilers, and gas and
+electric cookers. But the show part of the hospital was the suite of
+operating theatres. I have always felt the pardonable pride of a son in
+the theatres of the London Hospital, but they were certainly eclipsed
+here. Each theatre was equipped with its own anaesthetizing room, its
+own surgeon's room, and its own sterilizing rooms and stores, all
+furnished with a lavishness beyond the financial capacity of any
+hospital in London. Perhaps some of the equipment was unnecessary,
+but it was abundantly evident that the State appreciated
+the value of first-class surgery, and that it was prepared to pay for it.
+I have never heard the same accusation levelled at Great Britain.
+
+At St. Camille we had the good fortune to see M. Xambotte at work.
+His reputation as a surgeon is worldwide, and it was pleasant to find
+that his dexterity as an operator was equal to his reputation. It is not
+always the case. He is an expert mechanic, and himself makes most
+of the very ingenious instruments which he uses. He was fixing a
+fractured femur with silver wires, and one could see the skilled
+workman in all that he did. There is no training-ground for one's
+hands like a carpenter's bench, and the embryo surgeon might do
+much worse with his time than spend six months of it in a workshop.
+When medical training emerges from its medieval traditions, manual
+training will certainly form a part, and no one will be allowed to
+attempt to mend a bone till he has shown his capacity to mend a
+chair-leg. Here, again, the surgeon was surrounded by all the
+appliances, and even the luxuries, that he could desire. The lot of the
+great surgeon abroad is indeed a happy one.
+
+But there is one thing in which we in England are far better off--in
+our nursing staffs. In most of the hospitals we visited the nursing was
+carried on by Sisterhoods, and though some of them were evidently
+good nurses, most of them had no idea whatever of nursing as it is
+practised in our country. Fresh air, for example, is to them full of
+dangers. One would almost think that it savoured of the powers of
+evil. We went into one huge hospital of the most modern type, and
+equipped lavishly, and such wag the atmosphere that in ten minutes I
+had to make a rush for the door. One large ward was full of wounded
+soldiers, many of them with terrible wounds, gangrenous and horrible,
+and every window was tightly shut. How they could live in such an
+atmosphere is beyond my comprehension, but the Sisters did not
+seem to notice it at all.
+
+Some of the surgeons have their specially trained nurses, but nursing
+as a profession for the classes who are alone competent to undertake
+it is a conception which has yet to dawn upon the Continent, for only
+a woman of education and refinement can really be a nurse.
+
+The absence on the Continent of a nursing profession such as ours is
+not without its influence on medicine and surgery abroad. The
+individual patient meets with far less consideration than would be the
+case in this country, and is apt to be regarded as so much raw
+material. In Belgium this tendency is counteracted by the natural
+kindliness of the Belgian, but in other countries patients are often
+treated with a callousness which is amazing. There is in many of the
+great clinics a disregard of the patient's feelings, of his sufferings,
+and even of his life, which would be impossible in an English hospital.
+The contact of a surgeon with his hospital patients as individuals is
+largely through the nursing staff, and his point of view will be largely
+influenced by them. There is no one in our profession, from the
+youngest dresser to the oldest physician, who does not owe a great
+part of his education to Sister.
+
+
+
+
+V. Termonde
+
+
+
+Anyone who has worked in hospitals will realize how important it is for
+the health of the staff, nurses and doctors, that they should get out
+into the fresh air for at least some part of every day. It is still more
+necessary in a war hospital, for not only is the work more exacting,
+but the cases themselves involve certain risks which can only be
+safely taken in perfect health. Practically every one is septic, and to
+anyone in the least run down the danger of infection is considerable;
+and infection with some of the organisms with which one meets in war
+is a very serious thing indeed. We had four large motors in Antwerp
+belonging to the members of our hospital, and always at its service,
+and every afternoon parties were made up to drive out into the
+country. As a rule calls were made at various Croix Rouge posts on
+the way, and in that way we kept in contact with the medical service of
+the army in the field, and gave them what help we could. We were
+always provided with the password, and the whole country was open
+to us--a privilege we very greatly appreciated; for after a hard
+morning's work in the wards there are few things more delightful than
+a motor drive. And it gave us an opportunity of seeing war as very few
+but staff officers ever can see it. We learnt more about the condition
+of the country and of the results of German methods in one afternoon
+than all the literature in the world could ever teach. If only it were
+possible to bring home to the people of Britain one-hundredth part of
+what we saw with our own eyes, stringent laws would have to be
+passed to stop men and women from enlisting. No man who deserved
+the name of man, and no woman who deserved to be the mother of a
+child, would rest day or night till the earth had been freed from the
+fiends who have ravaged Belgium and made the name of German
+vile.
+
+One afternoon towards the end of September we visited Termonde.
+We heard that the Germans, having burnt the town, had retired,
+leaving it in the hands of the Belgian troops. It was a rare opportunity
+to see the handiwork of the enemy at close quarters, and we did not
+wish to miss it. Termonde is about twenty-two miles from Antwerp,
+and a powerful car made short work of the distance. Starting directly
+southwards through Boom, we reached Willebroeck and the road
+which runs east and west from Malines through Termonde to Ghent,
+and along it we turned to the right. We were now running parallel to
+the German lines, which at some points were only a couple of miles
+away on the other side of the Termonde-Malines railway. We passed
+numerous Belgian outposts along the road, and for a few miles
+between Lippeloo and Baesrode they begged us to travel as fast as
+possible, as at this point we came within a mile of the railway. We did
+travel, and it would have taken a smart marksman to hit us at fifty
+miles an hour; but we felt much happier when we passed under the
+railway bridge of a loop line at Briel and placed it between ourselves
+and the enemy. The entrance to Termonde was blocked by a rough
+barricade of bricks and branches guarded by a squad of soldiers.
+They told us that no one was allowed to pass, and we were about to
+return disappointed, when one of us happened to mention the
+password. As without it we could not possibly have got so far, it had
+never occurred to us that they might think we had not got it; and as
+we had no possible business in the town, we had no arguments to
+oppose to their refusal to let us in. However, all was now open to us,
+and the cheery fellows ran forward to remove the barrier they had put
+up.
+
+Termonde is, or rather was, a well-to-do town of 10,000 inhabitants
+lying on the Scheldt at the point where the Dendre, coming up from
+the south, runs into it. A river in Belgium means a route for traffic, and
+the town must have derived some advantage from its position as a
+trade junction. But it possesses an even greater one in the bridge
+which here crosses the Scheldt, the first road bridge above the mouth
+of the river, for there is none at Antwerp. At least six main roads
+converge upon this bridge, and they must have brought a great deal
+of traffic through the town. When we mention that a corresponding
+number of railways meet at the same spot, it will be seen Termonde
+was an important centre, and that it must have been a wealthy town.
+The Dendre runs right through the centre of the town to the point
+where it joins the Scheldt, and on each side runs a long stone quay
+planted with trees, with old-fashioned houses facing the river. With
+the little wooden bridges and the barges on the river it must have
+been a very pretty picture. Now it was little better than a heap of
+ruins.
+
+The destruction of the town was extraordinarily complete, and
+evidently carefully organized. The whole thing had been arranged
+beforehand at headquarters, and these particular troops supplied with
+special incendiary apparatus. There is strong evidence to show that
+the destruction of Louvain, Termonde, and of several smaller towns,
+was all part of a definite plan of "frightfulness," the real object
+being to terrorize Holland and Denmark, and to prevent any
+possibility of their joining with the Allies. It is strictly scientific
+warfare, it produces a strictly scientific hell upon this world,
+and I think that one may have every reasonable hope that it
+leads to a strictly scientific hell in the next. After a town has
+been shelled, its occupants driven out, and its buildings to a
+large extent broken down, the soldiers enter, each provided
+with a number of incendiary bombs, filled with a very inflammable
+ compound. They set light to these and throw them into
+the houses, and in a very few minutes each house is blazing. In half
+an hour the town is a roaring furnace, and by the next day nothing is
+left but the bare walls. And that is almost all that there was left of
+Termonde. We walked along the quay beside a row of charred and
+blackened ruins, a twisted iron bedstead or a battered lamp being all
+there was to tell of the homes which these had been. A few houses
+were still standing untouched, and on the door of each of these was
+scrawled in chalk the inscription:
+
+
+   "GUTE LEUTE,
+    NICHT ANZUNDEN,
+    BREITFUSS, Lt."
+
+
+One wondered at what cost the approval of Lieutenant Breitfuss had
+been obtained. His request to the soldiers not to set fire to the houses
+of these "good people" had been respected, but I think that if the
+Belgians ever return to Termonde those houses are likely to be
+empty. There are things worse than having your house burnt down,
+and one would be to win the approval of Lieutenant Breitfuss.
+
+We crossed the Dendre and wandered up the town towards the
+Square. For a few moments I stood alone in a long curving street with
+not a soul in sight, and the utter desolation of the whole thing made
+me shiver. Houses, shops, banks, churches, all gutted by the flames
+and destroyed. The smell of burning from the smouldering ruins was
+sickening. Every now and then the silence was broken by the fall of
+bricks or plaster. Except a very few houses with that ominous
+inscription on their doors, there was nothing left; everything was
+destroyed. A little farther on I went into the remains of a large factory
+equipped with elaborate machinery, but so complete was the
+destruction that I could not discover what had been made there.
+There was a large gas engine and extensive shafting, all hanging in
+dismal chaos, and I recognized the remains of machines for making
+tin boxes, in which the products of the factory had, I suppose, been
+packed. A large pile of glass stoppers in one corner was fused up into
+a solid mass, and I chipped a bit off as a memento.
+
+In the Square in front of the church of Notre Dame the German
+soldiers had evidently celebrated their achievement by a revel. In the
+centre were the remains of a bonfire, and all around were broken
+bottles and packs of cheap cards in confusion. Think of the scene. A
+blazing town around them, and every now and then the crash of
+falling buildings; behind them Notre Dame in flames towering up to
+heaven; the ancient Town Hall and the Guard House burning across
+the Square; and in the centre a crowd of drunken soldiers round a
+bonfire, playing cards. And miles away across the fields ten thousand
+homeless wanderers watching the destruction of all for which they
+had spent their lives in toil.
+
+Of the ancient church of Notre Dame only the walls remained. The
+roof had fallen, all the woodwork had perished in the flames, and the
+stonework was calcined by the heat. Above the arch of a door was a
+little row of angels' heads carved in stone, but when we touched them
+they fell to powder. The heat inside must have been terrific, for all the
+features of the church had disappeared, and we were surrounded by
+merely a mass of debris. In the apse a few fragments of old gold
+brocade buried beneath masses of brick and mortar were all that
+remained to show where the altar had been.
+
+The Town Hall was once a beautiful gabled building with a tall square
+tower ending in four little turrets. I have a drawing of it, and it must
+have formed quite a pleasing picture, the entrance reached by the
+double flight of steps of which Belgium is so fond, and from which
+public proclamations were read. It had been only recently restored,
+and it was now to all intents and purposes a heap of smoking bricks.
+The upper part of the tower had fallen into the roof, and the whole
+place was burnt out.
+
+But no words can ever convey any idea of the utter destruction of the
+whole town, or of the awful loneliness by which one was surrounded.
+One felt that one was in the presence of wickedness such as the
+world has rarely seen, that the powers of darkness were very near,
+and that behind those blackened walls there lurked evil forms.
+Twilight was coming on as we turned back to our car, and a cold mist
+was slowly rising from the river. I am not superstitious, and in broad
+daylight I will scoff at ghosts with anyone, but I should not care to
+spend a night alone in Termonde. One could almost hear the Devil
+laughing at the handiwork of his children.
+
+
+
+
+VI. The Chateau
+
+
+
+One of the most astounding features of the war is the way in which
+the Germans, from the highest to the lowest, have given themselves
+up to loot. In all previous wars between civilized countries anything in
+the nature of loot has been checked with a stern hand, and there are
+cases on record when a soldier has been shot for stealing a pair of
+boots. But now the Crown Prince of the German Empire sends back
+to his palaces all the loot that he can collect, on innumerable
+transport waggons, amid the applause of his proud father's subjects.
+He is of course carrying out the new gospel of the Fatherland that
+everyone has a perfect right to whatever he is strong enough to take.
+But some day that doctrine may spread from the exalted and sacred
+circle in which it is now the guiding star to the "cannon fodder." Some
+day the common people will have learnt the lesson which is being so
+sedulously taught to them both by example and by precept, and then
+the day of reckoning will have come.
+
+Loot and destruction have always gone hand in hand. The private
+soldier cannot carry loot, and it is one of the most primitive
+instincts of animal nature to destroy rather than to leave that by
+which others may profit. Even the pavement artist will destroy
+his work rather than allow some poor wretch to sit beside his
+pictures and collect an alms. And there is great joy in destroying
+that which men are too coarse to appreciate, in feeling that
+they have in their power that which, something tells them,
+belongs to a refinement they cannot attain. That was the keynote
+ of the excesses of the French Revolution, for nothing
+arouses the fury of the unclean so much as cleanliness, and a man
+has been killed before now for daring to wash his hands. And it is this
+elemental love of destroying that has raged through Belgium in the
+last few months, for though destruction has been the policy of their
+commanders, the German soldier has done it for love. No order could
+ever comprehend the ingenious detail of much that we saw, for it bore
+at every turn the marks of individuality. It is interesting to ponder on a
+future Germany of which these men, or rather these wild beasts, will
+be the sons. Germany has destroyed more than the cities of Belgium;
+she has destroyed her own soul.
+
+It is not in the ruined towns or the battered cathedrals of Belgium that
+one sees most clearly the wholehearted way in which the German
+soldiers have carried out the commands of their lord and made his
+desires their own. Louvain, Termonde, Dinant, and a hundred other
+towns have been uprooted by order. If you wish to see what the
+German soldier can do for love, you have to visit the chateaux which
+are dotted so thickly all over the Belgian countryside. Here he has
+had a free hand, and the destruction he1 wrought had no political
+object and served no mere utilitarian purpose. It was the work of pure
+affection, and it showed Germany at her best. One would like to have
+brought one of those chateaux over to England, to be kept for all time
+as an example of German culture, that our children might turn from it
+in horror, and that our country might be saved from the hypocrisy and
+the selfishness of which this is the fruit.
+
+Among our many good friends in Antwerp there were few whom we
+valued more than the Baron d'O. He was always ready to undertake
+any service for us, from the most difficult to the most trivial. A man of
+birth and of fortune, he stood high in the service of the Belgian
+Government, and he was often able to do much to facilitate our
+arrangements with them. So when he asked us to take him out in one
+of our cars to see the chateau of one of his greatest friends, we were
+glad to be in a position to repay him in a small way for his kindness.
+The chateau had been occupied by the Germans, who had now
+retired--though only temporarily, alas!--and he was anxious to see
+what damage had been done and to make arrangements for putting it
+in order again if it should be possible.
+
+A perfect autumn afternoon found us tearing southwards on the road
+to Boom in Mrs. W.'s powerful Minerva. We were going to a point
+rather close to the German lines, and our safety might depend on a
+fast car and a cool hand on the wheel. We had both, for though the
+hand was a lady's, its owner had earned the reputation of being the
+most dangerous and the safest driver in Antwerp, and that is no mean
+achievement. We called, as was our custom, at the Croix Rouge
+stations we passed, and at one of them we were told that there were
+some wounded in Termonde, and that, as the Germans were
+attacking it, they were in great danger. So we turned off to the right,
+and jolted for the next twenty minutes over a deplorable paved road.
+
+The roar of artillery fire gradually grew louder and louder, and we
+were soon watching an interesting little duel between the forts of
+Termonde, under whose shelter we were creeping along, on the one
+side, and the Germans on the other. The latter were endeavouring to
+destroy one of the bridges which span the Scheldt at this point, one
+for the railway and one for the road; but so far they had not
+succeeded in hitting either. It was a week since our last visit to
+Termonde, and it seemed even more desolate and forsaken than
+before. The Germans had shelled it again, and most of the remaining
+walls had been knocked down, so that the streets were blocked at
+many points and the whole town was little more than a heap of bricks
+and mortar. There was not a living creature to be seen, and even the
+birds had gone. The only sound that broke the utter silence was the
+shriek of the shells and the crash of their explosion. We were
+constantly checked by piles of fallen debris, and from one street we
+had to back the car out and go round by another way. At the end of a
+long street of ruined houses, many bearing the inscription of some
+braggart, "I did this," we found our wounded men. They were in a
+monastery near the bridge at which the Germans were directing their
+shells, several of which had already fallen into the building. There
+had been four wounded men there, but two of them, badly hurt, were
+so terrified at the bombardment that they had crawled away in the
+night. The priest thought that they were probably dead. Think of the
+poor wounded wretches, unable to stand, crawling away in the
+darkness to find some spot where they could die in peace. Two
+remained, and these we took with us on the car. The priest and the
+two nuns, the sole occupants of the monastery, absolutely refused to
+leave. They wished to protect the monastery from sacrilege, and in
+that cause they held their lives of small account. I have often thought
+of those gentle nuns and the fearless priest standing in the doorway
+as our car moved away. I hope that it went well with them, and that
+they did not stay at their post in vain.
+
+By the bridge stood a company of Belgian soldiers, on guard in case,
+under cover of the fire of their artillery, the Germans might attempt to
+capture it. There was very little shelter for them, and it was positively
+raining shells; but they had been told to hold the bridge, and they did
+so until there was no longer a bridge to hold. It was as fine a piece of
+quiet heroism as I shall ever see, and it was typical of the Belgian
+soldier wherever we saw him. They never made any fuss about it,
+they were always quiet and self-contained, and always cheerful. But if
+they were given a position to hold, they held it. And that is the secret
+of the wonderful losing battle they have fought across Belgium. Some
+day they will advance and not retreat, and then I think that the Belgian
+Army will astonish their opponents, and perhaps their friends too.
+
+We were soon out of Termonde and on the open road again, to our
+very great relief, and at the nearest dressing-station we handed over
+our patients, who were not badly wounded, to the surgeon, who was
+hard at work in a little cottage about a mile back along the road. We
+drove on due east, and forty minutes later found ourselves at the
+entrance of the lodge of our friend's house. It lay on the very edge of
+the Belgian front, and would have been unapproachable had there
+been any activity in this section of the line. Fortunately for us, the
+Germans were concentrating their energies around Termonde, and
+the mitrailleuse standing on the path amongst the trees at the end of
+the garden seemed to have gone asleep. We turned the car in the
+drive, and, in case things should happen, pointed its nose
+homewards. That is always a wise precaution, for turning a car under
+fire in a narrow road is one of the most trying experiences imaginable.
+The coolest hand may fumble with the gears at such a moment, and it
+is surprising how difficult it is to work them neatly when every second
+may be a matter of life or death, when a stopped engine may settle
+the fate of everyone in the car. It is foolish to take unnecessary risks,
+and we left the car pointing the right way, with its engine running,
+ready to start on the instant, while we went to have a look at the
+house.
+
+It was a large country-house standing in well-timbered grounds,
+evidently the home of a man of wealth and taste. The front-door stood
+wide open, as if inviting us to enter, and as we passed into the large
+hall I could not help glancing at our friend's face to see what he was
+thinking as the obvious destruction met us on the very threshold. So
+thorough was it that it was impossible to believe that it had not been
+carried out under definite orders. Chairs, sofas, settees lay scattered
+about in every conceivable attitude, and in every case as far as I can
+recollect minus legs and backs. In a small room at the end of the hall
+a table had been overturned, and on the floor and around lay broken
+glass, crockery, knives and forks, mixed up in utter confusion, while
+the wall was freely splashed with ink. One fact was very striking and
+very suggestive: none of the pictures had been defaced, and there
+were many fine oil-paintings and engravings hanging on the walls of
+the reception-rooms. After the destruction of the treasures of Louvain,
+it is absurd to imagine that the controlling motive could have been any
+reverence for works of art. The explanation was obvious enough. The
+pictures were of value, and were the loot of some superior officer. A
+large cabinet had evidently been smashed with the butt-end of a
+musket, but the beautiful china it contained was intact. The grand
+piano stood uninjured, presumably because it afforded entertainment.
+The floor was thick with playing cards.
+
+But it was upstairs that real chaos reigned. Every wardrobe and
+receptacle had been burst open and the contents dragged out. Piles
+of dresses and clothing of every kind lay heaped upon the floor, many
+of them torn, as though the harsh note produced by the mere act of
+tearing appealed to the passion for destruction which seemed to
+animate these fighting men. In the housekeeper's room a sewing-
+machine stood on the table, its needle threaded, and a strip of cloth in
+position, waiting for the stitch it was destined never to receive. There
+were many other things to which one cannot refer, but it would have
+been better to have had one's house occupied by a crowd of wild
+beasts than by these apostles of culture.
+
+Our friend had said very little while we walked through the deserted
+rooms in this splendid country-house in which he had so often stayed.
+Inside the house he could not speak, and it was not until we got out
+into the sunshine that he could relieve his overwrought feelings. Deep
+and bitter were the curses which he poured upon those vandals; but I
+stood beside him, and I did not hear half that he said, for my eyes
+were fixed on the mitrailleuse standing on the garden path under the
+trees. My fingers itched to pull the lever and to scatter withering death
+among them. It slowly came into my mind how good it would be to kill
+these defilers. I suppose that somewhere deep down in us there
+remains an elemental lust for blood, and though in the protected lives
+we live it rarely sees the light, when the bonds of civilization are
+broken it rises up and dominates. And who shall say that it is not right?
+There are things in Belgium for which blood alone can atone. Woe
+to us if when our interests are satisfied we sheath the sword, and
+forget the ruined homes, the murdered children of Belgium, the
+desecrated altars of the God in whose name we fight! He has placed
+the sword in our hands for vengeance, and not for peace.
+
+I no longer wonder at the dogged courage of the Belgian soldiers, at
+their steady disregard of their lives, when I think of the many such
+pictures of wanton outrage which are burned into their memories, and
+which can never be effaced so long as a single German remains in
+their beloved land. I no longer wonder, but I do not cease to admire.
+Let anyone who from the depths of an armchair at home thinks that I
+have spoken too strongly, stimulate his imagination to the pitch of
+visualizing the town in which he lives destroyed, his own house a
+smoking heap, his wife profaned, his children murdered, and himself
+ruined, for these are the things of which we know. Then, and then
+only, will he be able to judge the bravery of the nation which,
+preferring death to dishonour, has in all likelihood saved both France
+and ourselves from sharing its terrible but glorious fate.
+
+
+
+
+VII. Malines
+
+
+
+We were frequently requested by the Belgian doctors to assist them
+in the various Red Cross dressing-stations around Antwerp, and it
+was our custom to visit several of these stations each day to give
+what assistance we could. One of the most important of the stations
+was at Malines, and one of our cars called there every day. I went out
+there myself on an afternoon late in September. It was a glorious day,
+and after a heavy morning in the wards the fresh breeze and the
+brilliant sunshine were delightful. Our road led almost straight south
+through Vieux Dieu and Contich, crossing the little River Nethe at
+Waelhem. The Nethe encircles Antwerp on the south and south-east,
+and it was here that the Belgians, and in the end the British, made
+their chief stand against the Germans. We crossed the bridge, and
+passed on to Malines under the guns of Fort Waelhem, with the great
+fortress of Wavre St. Catharine standing away to the left, impregnable
+to anything but the huge guns of to-day.
+
+Malines is a large town of 60,000 inhabitants, and is the cathedral city
+of the Archbishop of Belgium, the brave Cardinal Mercier. To-day it is
+important as a railway centre, and for its extensive railway workshops,
+but the interest of the town lies in the past. It was of importance as
+early as the eighth century, and since then it has changed hands on
+an amazing number of occasions. Yet it is said that few of the cities of
+Europe contain so many fine old houses in such good preservation.
+The cathedral church of St. Rombold dates back to the thirteenth
+century, and in the fifteenth century was begun the huge tower which
+can be seen for many miles around. It was intended that it should be
+550 feet high--the highest in the world--and though it has reached
+little more than half that height, it is a very conspicuous landmark.
+The Germans evidently found it a very tempting mark, for they began
+shelling it at an early stage. When we were there the tower had not
+been damaged, but a large hole in the roof of the church showed
+where a shell had entered. Inside everything was in chaos. Every
+window was broken, and of the fine stained glass hardly a fragment
+was left. A large portion of the roof was destroyed, and the floor was a
+confusion of chairs and debris. The wonderful carved wooden pulpit,
+with its almost life-size figures, was damaged. When the shell
+entered, the preacher's notes from the previous Sunday lay on the
+desk, and they were perforated by a fragment.
+
+The Croix Rouge was established in a large school on the south side
+of the town. We drove into the large courtyard, and went in to see if
+there was anything for us to do. The doctor in charge, a distinguished
+oculist, was an old friend and was very cordial, but he said there was
+no fighting near, and that no cases had come in. We stood talking for
+a few minutes, and were just going, when one of our other cars came
+in with a man very badly wounded. He was a cyclist scout, and had
+been shot while crossing a field a few miles away. He had been
+picked up at considerable risk by our people:--for the Germans
+rarely respected a Red Cross--and brought in on the ambulance.
+He was wounded in the abdomen, and his right arm was shattered.
+He was in a desperate state, but the doctor begged me to do what I
+could for him, and, indeed, the power of recovery of these fellows was
+so remarkable that it was always worth a trial. As rapidly as possible
+we got ready stimulants and hot saline solution to inject into his veins.
+We had not come prepared for actual operating, and the local
+equipment was meagre, but we succeeded in improvising a
+transfusion apparatus out of various odds and ends. It did not take
+long to get it to work, and in a few minutes he began to respond to the
+hot salt and water running into his vessels. Alas it was only for a
+moment. He was bleeding internally, and nothing could be done. I
+went over to the priest, who had just come, and said: "C'est a vous,
+monsieur." He bowed, and came forward holding in his hands the holy
+oil. A few murmured words were spoken, the priest's finger traced the
+sign of the Cross, a few moments of silence, and all was over. Death
+is always impressive, but I shall never forget that scene. The large
+schoolroom, with its improvised equipment, ourselves, a crowd of
+nurses and doctors standing round, in the centre the sandalled priest
+bending downwards in his brown mantle, and the dying man, his lips
+moving to frame the last words he would speak on earth. It was in
+silence that we stole out into the sunlight of the courtyard.
+
+We went on to Sempst, a small village at the extreme limit of the
+Belgian lines. A little stream ran under the road beside a farm, and a
+rough breastwork had been thrown across the road to defend the
+bridge. German soldiers could be seen a mile down the road moving
+behind the trees. It was only a small Belgian outpost, but it was a
+good enough position to hold, so long as the enemy did not bring up
+artillery. A machine gun was hidden beside the bridge, and would
+have made short work of anyone advancing up the road. My friends
+were talking to the men, whom we knew quite well; and for a moment I
+was standing alone, when one of the soldiers came up and asked
+about the man whom we had just left, and who had come from near
+by. I told him what had happened, and for a moment he did not speak.
+At last he looked up at me with tears in his eyes, and said simply: "He
+was my brother, and this morning we were laughing together." I held
+his hand for a moment, and then he turned away and went back to his
+post.
+
+Our way home led past a villa where an encounter had taken place
+three days before between the Belgians and an advanced detachment
+of German troops, and we stopped to see the scene of the fighting.
+It was a large country-house standing back in its own grounds,
+and during the night a party of Germans had succeeded in concealing
+themselves inside. In the morning, by a ruse, they induced a
+Belgian detachment to come up the drive towards the house, never
+suspecting that it was not empty. Suddenly the Germans opened fire,
+and I believe that scarcely a single Belgian escaped. Next day,
+however, having surrounded the villa, the Belgians opened fire upon
+it with their 3-inch guns. The Germans made a bolt for it, and the
+whole of them were killed. As we walked up the drive we saw on the
+left-hand side a little row of graves with fresh flowers laid on them.
+They were the graves of the Belgian soldiers who had been
+entrapped. An officer was standing by them with bared head, and,
+seeing us, he came over and walked on with us to the house, which
+he was then occupying with his soldiers. It was a fine house, with
+polished parquet floors and wide staircases. The dining-room was
+ornamented with delicate frescoes in gilt frames. In the drawing-room
+stood a new grand pianoforte, and light gilt chairs and sofas, looking
+strangely out of place on the field of war. By the front-door, sticking in
+the wall, was a shell which had failed to burst. I wonder if it is still
+there, or if anyone has ventured to shift it. It was half inside and half
+outside, and if it had exploded there would not have been much of the
+entrance of the house left. Upstairs the rooms were in glorious
+confusion. Apparently the Germans had opened all the drawers, and
+flung their contents on the floor, with the idea, I suppose, of taking
+anything they wanted. One room was plainly the nursery, for the floor
+was covered with children's toys of all descriptions, all broken. It may
+be very unreasonable, but that room made me more angry than all the
+rest of the house. There is something so utterly wanton in trampling
+on a child's toys. They may be of no value, but I have a small opinion
+of a man who does not treat them with respect. They are the symbols
+of an innocence that once was ours, the tokens of a contact with the
+unseen world for which we in our blindness grope longingly in vain.
+
+
+
+
+VIII. Lierre
+
+
+
+When, years hence, some historian looks back upon the present war,
+and from the confusion of its battles tries to frame before his mind a
+picture of the whole, one grim conclusion will be forced upon his
+mind. He will note, perhaps, vast alterations in the map of Europe; he
+will lament a loss of life such as only the hand of Heaven has dealt
+before; he will point to the folly of the wealth destroyed. But beneath
+all these he will hear one insistent note from which he cannot escape,
+the deep keynote of the whole, the note on which the war was based,
+the secret of its ghastly chords, and the foundation of its dark
+conclusion. And he will write that in the year 1914 one of the great
+nations of civilized Europe relapsed into barbarism.
+
+In the large sense a nation becomes civilized as its members
+recognize the advantages of sinking their personal desires and gain
+in the general good of the State. The fact that an individual can read
+and write and play the piano has nothing at all to do with the degree
+of his civilization, an elementary axiom of which some of our rulers
+seem strangely ignorant. To be of use to the State, and to train others
+to be of use to the State (and not only of use to themselves), should
+be, and indeed is, the aim of every truly civilized man. Unless it be so,
+his civilization is a mere veneer, ready to wear off at the first rub, and
+he himself a parasite upon the civilized world.
+
+As time has gone on, the State has laid down certain rules by means
+of which the men who formed it could serve it better, and these are
+our laws which we obey not for our own good directly, but for the
+good of the State. From the point of view of the plain man in the
+street, it is all utterly illogical, for it would be logical to go and take
+from your neighbour whatever you wished, so long as you were
+strong enough to hold it. But, let us thank Heaven, no sane man is
+logical, and only a Professor would dare to make the claim. It is one
+of the prerogatives of his office, and should be treated with tolerance.
+
+And as our views of life are small and limited by our surroundings,
+when States grew large they took from the shoulders of the individual
+his responsibilities in the great State which the world has now
+become; and the States of which the world was composed agreed
+together on certain rules which should control their relations to one
+another, not for the good of each, but for the good of the greater State
+of which they were members. They are not so accurately laid down as
+the laws of our separate States, but they are broad, general principles
+for the use of statesmen and not of legalists. They are the Charter of
+Civilization among the nations of the world, and the nation which
+disregards them does so at her peril, and has handed in the
+abnegation of her position as a civilized State. Like the laws of each
+State, they are utterly illogical--at least, to those who have made up
+their minds that they are strong enough to hold what they can take
+from their neighbours.
+
+I am often told, in half-defence of what they have done, that the
+Germans are conducting the war in a strictly logical manner. At first, I
+must admit, I was rather taken with the idea, and, indeed, one felt
+almost sorry for a noble nation sacrificing its feelings on the
+uncompromising altar of Logic. For the object of war is obviously to
+defeat your enemy, and it may be argued that anything which will
+accelerate that result is not only justifiable, but almost humane, for it
+will shorten the unavoidable horrors of war. I should like to mention a
+few of the features of logical warfare, all of which have at one time or
+another been adopted by our opponents, and I shall then describe as
+far as I can an example which I myself saw.
+
+When an army wishes to pass through a country, the civil population
+is in the way. To get rid of them, the best plan, and the quickest, is to
+annihilate the first town of a suitable size to which the army comes. If
+the town is wiped out, and men, women, and children slaughtered
+indiscriminately, it will make such an impression in the rest of the
+country that the whole population will clear out and there will be no
+further trouble. The country will then be free for the passage of
+troops, and there will be no troublesome civil population to feed or
+govern. The conduct of the war will be greatly facilitated. Of course, it
+will be necessary at intervals to repeat the process, but this presents
+the further advantage that it advertises to other nations what they may
+expect if war enters their borders. This, one of the most elementary
+rules of logical warfare, has been strictly observed by Germany. The
+sack of Louvain and the slaughter of its inhabitants met with an
+immediate success. Wherever the German army arrived, they entered
+with few exceptions empty towns. Termonde, Malines, Antwerp, had
+everything swept and garnished for their reception. It would, of
+course, be absurdly illogical to confine one's attack to persons
+capable of defence. To kill a hundred women and children makes far
+more impression than to kill a thousand men, and it is far safer,
+unless, of course, it is preferred to use them as a screen to protect
+your own advancing troops from the enemy's fire.
+
+It is a mistake to burden your transport with the enemy's wounded, or,
+indeed--low be it spoken--with your own. The former should
+always be killed, and the latter so far as the degree of culture of your
+country will allow. It is one of the regrettable points, logically, of
+Germany's warfare that she appears to pay some attention to her
+wounded, but our information on this point is deficient, and it is
+possible that she limits it to those who may again be useful.
+
+To kill the Medical Staff of the enemy is obviously most desirable.
+Without them a large number of the wounded would die. If, therefore,
+it is possible to kill both the doctors and the wounded together, it is a
+great advantage, and of all possible objectives for artillery a hospital
+is the most valuable. So complete was our confidence in the German
+observance of this rule that when we heard that they were likely to
+bombard Antwerp, we were strongly advised to remove our Red
+Cross from the sight of prying aeroplanes, and we took the advice.
+Several other hospitals were hit, but we escaped.
+
+There are many other rules of logical warfare, such as ignoring
+treaties, engagements, and, indeed, the truth in any form. But these
+are those with which I myself came in contact, and which therefore
+interested me the most. There is only one unfortunate objection to
+logical warfare, and that is that it is the duty of the whole civilized
+world, as it values its eternal salvation, to blot out from the face of the
+earth they have defiled the nation which practises it.
+
+I do not wish to be unfair to those with whom we are fighting, or to
+arouse against them an unjust resentment. I am merely attempting to
+express succinctly the doctrines which have been proclaimed
+throughout Germany for years, of which this war is the logical
+outcome, and in the light of which alone its incidents can be
+understood. She is the home of logic, the temple where material
+progress is worshipped as a god. For her there is no meaning in
+those dim yearnings of the human mind, in which logic has no part,
+since their foundations are hidden in depths beneath our ken, but
+which alone separate us from the beasts that perish. And, above all
+things, I would not be thought to include in such a sweeping
+statement all those who call themselves German. There are many in
+Germany who are not of this Germany, and in the end it may be for
+them as much as for ourselves that we shall have fought this war.
+
+It is only when viewed in this setting that a scene such as that we saw
+at Lierre can be understood. By itself it would stand naked,
+meaningless, and merely horrible. Clothed in these thoughts, it is
+pregnant with meaning, and forms a real epitome of the whole
+German conception of war; for horror is their dearest ally, and that
+scene has left on my mind a feeling of horror which I do not think that
+time will ever eradicate.
+
+Lierre is an old-world town on the River Nethe, nine miles south of
+Antwerp, prosperous, and thoroughly Flemish. Its 20,000 inhabitants
+weave silk and brew beer, as they did when London was a village.
+Without the physical advantages of Antwerp, and without the
+turbulence of Ghent, Lierre has escaped their strange vicissitudes,
+and for hundreds of years has enjoyed the prosperity of a quiet and
+industrious town. Its church of St. Gommarius is renowned for its
+magnificent proportions, its superb window tracery, and its wonderful
+rood-loft--features in which it has eclipsed in glory even the great
+cathedrals of Belgium, and which place it alone as a unique
+achievement of the art of the fifteenth century. It is in no sense a
+military town, and has no defences, though there is a fort of the same
+name at no great distance from it.
+
+Into this town, without warning of any kind, the Germans one morning
+dropped two of their largest shells. One fell near the church, but
+fortunately did no harm. One fell in the Hospital of St. Elizabeth. We
+heard in Antwerp that several people had been wounded, and in the
+afternoon two of us went out in one of our cars to see if we could be
+of any service. We found the town in the greatest excitement, and the
+streets crowded with families preparing to leave, for they rightly
+regarded these shells as the prelude of others. In the square was
+drawn up a large body of recruits just called up--rather late in the
+day, it seemed to us. We slowly made our way through the crowds,
+and, turning to the right along the Malines road, we drew up in front of
+the hospital on our right-hand side. The shell had fallen almost
+vertically on to a large wing, and as we walked across the garden we
+could see that all the windows had been broken, and that most of the
+roof had been blown off. The nuns met us, and took us down into the
+cellars to see the patients. It was an infirmary, and crowded together
+in those cellars lay a strange medley of people. There were bedridden
+old women huddled up on mattresses, almost dead with terror.
+Wounded soldiers lay propped up against the walls; and women and
+little children, wounded in the fighting around, lay on straw and
+sacking. Apparently it is not enough to wound women and children; it
+is even necessary to destroy the harbour of refuge into which they
+have crept. The nuns were doing for them everything that was
+possible, under conditions of indescribable difficulty. They may not be
+trained nurses, but in the records of this war the names of the nuns of
+Belgium ought to be written in gold. Utterly careless of their own lives,
+absolutely without fear, they have cared for the sick, the wounded,
+and the dying, and they have faced any hardship and any danger
+rather than abandon those who turned to them for help.
+
+The nuns led us upstairs to the wards where the shell had burst. The
+dead had been removed, but the scene that morning must have been
+horrible beyond description. In the upper ward six wounded soldiers
+had been killed, and in the lower two old women. As we stood in the
+upper ward, it was difficult to believe that so much damage could
+have been caused by a single shell. It had struck almost vertically on
+the tiled roof, and, exploding in the attic, had blown in the ceiling into
+the upper ward. I had not realized before the explosion of a large
+shell is not absolutely instantaneous, but, in consequence of the
+speed of the shell, is spread over a certain distance. Here the shell
+had continued to explode as it passed down through the building,
+blowing the floor of the upper ward down into the ward below. A great
+oak beam, a foot square, was cut clean in two, the walls of both wards
+were pitted and pierced by fragments, and the tiled floor of the lower
+ward was broken up. The beds lay as they were when the dead were
+taken from them, the mattresses riddled with fragments and soaked
+with blood. Obviously no living thing could have survived in that awful
+hail. When the shell came the soldiers were eating walnuts, and on
+the bed of one lay a walnut half opened and the little penknife he was
+using, and both were stained. We turned away sickened at the sight,
+and retraced the passage with the nuns. As we walked along, they
+pointed out to us marks we had not noticed before--red finger-marks
+and splashes of blood on the pale blue distemper of the wall. All down
+the passage and the staircase we could trace them, and even in the
+hall below. Four men had been standing in the doorway of the upper
+ward. Two were killed; the others, bleeding and blinded by the
+explosion, had groped their way along that wall and down the stair. I
+have seen many terrible sights, but for utter and concentrated horror I
+have never seen anything to equal those finger-marks, the very sign-
+manual of Death. When I think of them, I see, in the dim light of the
+early autumn morning, the four men talking; I hear the wild shriek of
+the shell and the deafening crash of its explosion; and then silence,
+and two bleeding men groping in darkness and terror for the air.
+
+
+
+
+IX. A Pause
+
+
+
+The life of a hospital at the front is a curious mixture of excitement
+and dullness. One week cases will be pouring in, the operating theatre
+will be working day and night, and everyone will have to do their
+utmost to keep abreast of the rush; next week there will be nothing to
+do, and everyone will mope about the building, and wonder why they
+were ever so foolish as to embark on such a futile undertaking. For it
+is all emergency work, and there is none of the dull routine of the
+ordinary hospital waiting list, which we are always trying to clear off,
+but which is in reality the backbone of the hospital's work.
+
+When we first started in Antwerp, the rush of cases was so great as to
+be positively overwhelming. For more than twenty-four hours the
+surgeons in the theatre were doing double work, two tables being
+kept going at the same time. During that time a hundred and fifty
+wounded were admitted, all of them serious cases, and the hospital
+was full to overflowing. For the next ten days we were kept busy, but
+then our patients began to recover, and many of them had to go away
+to military convalescent hospitals. The wards began to look deserted,
+and yet no more patients arrived. We began to think that it was all a
+mistake that we had come, that there would be no more fighting round
+Antwerp, and that we were not wanted. Indeed, we canvassed the
+possibilities of work in other directions, and in the meantime we drew
+up elaborate arrangements to occupy our time. There were to be
+courses of lectures and demonstrations in the wards, and supplies of
+books and papers were to be obtained. Alas for the vanity of human
+schemes, the wounded began to pour in again, and not a lecture was
+given.
+
+During that slack week we took the opportunity to see a certain
+amount of Antwerp, and to call on many officials and the many friends
+who did so much to make our work there a success and our stay a
+pleasure. To one lady we can never be sufficiently grateful. She
+placed at our disposal her magnificent house, a perfect palace in the
+finest quarter of the city. Several of our nurses lived there, we had a
+standing invitation to dinner, and, what we valued still more, there
+were five bathrooms ready for our use at any hour of the day. Their
+drawing-room had been converted into a ward for wounded officers,
+and held about twenty beds. One of the daughters had trained as a
+nurse, and under her charge it was being run in thoroughly up-to-date
+style. The superb tapestries with which the walls were decorated had
+been covered with linen, and but for the gilded panelling it might have
+been a ward in a particularly finished hospital. I often wonder what
+has happened to that house. The family had to fly to England, and
+unless it was destroyed by the shells, it is occupied by the Germans.
+
+Calling in Antwerp on our professional brethren was very delightful for
+one's mind, but not a little trying for one's body. Their ideas of
+entertainment were so lavish, and it was so difficult to refuse their
+generosity, that it was a decided mistake to attempt two calls in the
+same afternoon. To be greeted at one house with claret of a rare
+vintage, and at the next with sweet champagne, especially when it is
+plain that your host will be deeply pained if a drop is left, is rather
+trying to a tea-drinking Briton. They were very good to us, and we
+owed a great deal to their help. Most of all we owed to Dr. Morlet, for
+he had taken radiographs of all our fractures, and of many others of
+our cases. We went to see him one Sunday afternoon at his beautiful
+house in the Avenue Plantin. He also had partly converted his house
+into a hospital for the wounded, and we saw twenty or thirty of them in
+a large drawing-room. The rest of the house was given up to the most
+magnificent electro-therapeutical equipment I have ever seen or
+heard of. We wandered through room after room filled with superb
+apparatus for X-ray examinations, X-ray treatment, diathermy, and
+electrical treatment of every known kind. It was not merely that
+apparatus for all these methods was there. Whole rooms full of
+apparatus were given up to each subject. It was the home of a genius
+and an enthusiast, who thought no sum too great if it were to advance
+his science. Little did we think that ten days later we should pick its
+owner up upon the road from Antwerp, a homeless wanderer,
+struggling along with his wife and his family, leaving behind
+everything he possessed in the world, in the hope that he might save
+them from the Germans. We heard from him not long ago that they
+had carried off to Germany all the wonderful machinery on which he
+had spent his life.
+
+The very next morning, while we were still at breakfast, the wounded
+began to arrive, and we never had another day in Antwerp that was
+not crowded with incident. The wounded almost always came in large
+batches, and the reason of this was the method of distribution
+adopted by the authorities. All the injured out at the front were
+collected as far as possible to one centre, where a train was waiting
+to receive them. There they remained until the train was sufficiently
+filled, when it brought them into the Central Station of Antwerp. At this
+point was established the distributing station, with a staff of medical
+officers, who arranged the destination of each man. Antwerp has a
+very complete system of electric trams, scarcely a street being without
+one, and of these full use was made for the transport of the wounded.
+Those who could sit went in ordinary cars, but for the stretcher cases
+there were cars specially fitted to take ordinary stretchers. A car was
+filled up with cases for one hospital, and in most cases it could
+deposit them at the door. It was an admirable method of dealing with
+them, simple and expeditious, and it involved far less pain and injury
+to the men than a long journey on an ambulance. In fact, we were
+only allowed in exceptional circumstances to bring in wounded on our
+cars, and it is obvious that it was a wise plan, for endless confusion
+would have been the result if anyone could have picked up the
+wounded and carried them off where they liked. Our cars were limited
+for the most part to carrying the injured to the various dressing-
+stations and to the train, and for these purposes they were always
+welcomed. They were soon well known at the trenches, and wherever
+the fighting was heaviest you might be sure to find one of them. Many
+were the hairbreadth escapes of which they had to tell, for if there
+were wounded they brought them out of danger, shells or no shells.
+And it says as much for the coolness of the drivers as for their good
+luck that no one was ever injured; for danger is halved by cool
+judgment, and a bold driver will come safely through where timidity
+would fail.
+
+
+
+
+X. The Siege
+
+
+
+It is difficult to say exactly when the Siege of Antwerp began. For
+weeks we heard the distant boom of the guns steadily drawing nearer
+day by day, and all night the sky was lit up by distant flashes. But so
+peculiar was the position of Antwerp that it was not till the last ten
+days that our life was seriously affected, and not till the very end that
+communication with our friends and the getting of supplies became
+difficult. Our first real domestic tragedy was the destruction of the
+waterworks on the 30th of September. They lay just behind Waelhem,
+some six miles south of Antwerp, and into them the Germans poured
+from the other side of Malines a stream of 28-centimetre shells, with
+the result that the great reservoir burst. Until one has had to do
+without a water-supply in a large city it is impossible to realize to what
+a degree we are dependent upon it. In Antwerp, fortunately, a water-
+supply has been regarded as somewhat of an innovation, and almost
+every house, in the better class quarters at least, has its own wells
+and pumps. It was, however, the end of the summer, and the wells
+were low; our own pumps would give us barely enough water for
+drinking purposes. The authorities did all they could, and pumped up
+water from the Scheldt for a few hours each day, enabling us, with
+considerable difficulty, to keep the drainage system clear. But this
+water was tidal and brackish, whilst as to the number of bacteria it
+contained it was better not to inquire. We boiled and drank it when we
+could get nothing else, but of all the nauseous draughts I have ever
+consumed, not excluding certain hospital mixtures of high repute, tea
+made with really salt water is the worst. Coffee was a little better,
+though not much, and upon that we chiefly relied. But I really think
+that that was one of the most unpleasant of our experiences. A more
+serious matter from the point of view of our work was the absence of
+water in the operating theatre. We stored it as well as we could in
+jugs, but in a rush that was inadequate, and we began to realize what
+the difficulties were with which surgeons had to contend in South
+Africa.
+
+We were really driven out of Antwerp at a very fortunate moment, and
+I have often wondered what we should have done if we had stopped
+there for another week. Such a very large proportion of the
+inhabitants of Antwerp had already disappeared that there was never
+any great shortage of supplies. Milk and butter were the first things to
+go, and fresh vegetables followed soon after. It was always a mystery
+to me that with the country in such a condition they went on for as
+long as they did. The peasants must have worked their farms until
+they were absolutely driven out, and indeed in our expeditions into
+the country we often saw fields being ploughed and cattle being fed
+when shells were falling only a few fields away. However, margarine
+and condensed milk are not bad substitutes for the real articles, and
+the supply of bread held out to the very end. A greater difficulty was
+with our kitchen staff of Belgian women, for a good many of them took
+fright and left us, and it was not at all easy to get their places filled.
+As the week went on the pressure of the enemy became steadily
+greater. On Tuesday, the 29th of September, the great fortress of
+Wavre St. Catherine fell, blown up, it is believed, by the accidental
+explosion of a shell inside the galleries. It had been seriously
+battered by the big German howitzers, and it could not in any
+case have held out for another day. But the results of the
+explosion were terrible. Many of the wounded came to us,
+and they were the worst cases we had so far seen.
+
+On Thursday Fort Waelhem succumbed after a magnificent
+resistance. The garrison held it until it was a mere heap of ruins, and,
+indeed, they had the greatest difficulty in making their way out. I think
+that there is very little doubt that the Germans were using against
+these forts their largest guns, the great 42-centimetre howitzers. It is
+known that two of these were brought northwards past Brussels after
+the fall of Maubeuge, and a fragment which was given to us was
+almost conclusive. It was brought to us one morning as an offering by
+a grateful patient, and it came from the neighbourhood of Fort
+Waelhem. It was a mass of polished steel two feet long, a foot wide,
+and three inches thick, and it weighed about fifty pounds. It was very
+irregular in shape, with edges sharp as razors, without a particle of
+rust upon it. It had been picked up where it fell still hot, and it was by
+far the finest fragment of shell I have ever seen. Alas we had to
+leave it behind, and it lies buried in a back-garden beside our
+hospital. Some day it will be dug up, and will be exhibited as
+conclusive evidence that the Germans did use their big guns in
+shelling the town.
+
+The destruction produced by such a shell is almost past belief. I have
+seen a large house struck by a single shell of a much smaller size
+than this, and it simply crumpled up like a pack of cards. As a house it
+disappeared, and all that was left was a heap of bricks and mortar.
+When one considers that these guns have a range of some ten miles,
+giving Mont Blanc considerable clearance on the way, and that one of
+them out at Harrow could drop shells neatly into Charing Cross, some
+idea of their power can be obtained.
+
+Every day we had visits from the enemy's aeroplanes, dropping
+bombs or literature, or merely giving the range of hospitals and other
+suitable objectives to the German gunners. From the roof of the
+hospital one could get a magnificent view of their evolutions, and a
+few kindred spirits always made a rush for a door on to the roof, the
+secret of which was carefully preserved, as the accommodation was
+limited. It was a very pretty sight to watch the Taube soaring
+overhead, followed by the puffs of smoke from the explosion of shells
+fired from the forts. The puffs would come nearer and nearer as the
+gunners found the range, until one felt that the next must bring the
+Taube down. Then suddenly the airman would turn his machine off in
+another direction, and the shells would fall wider than ever. One's
+feelings were torn between admiration for the airman's daring and an
+unholy desire to see him fall.
+
+It was evident that Antwerp could not withstand much longer the
+pressure of the enemy's guns, and we were not surprised when on
+Friday we received an official notice from the British Consul-General,
+Sir Cecil Herstlet, that the Government were about to leave for
+Ostend, and advising all British subjects to leave by a boat which had
+been provided for them on Saturday. On Saturday morning came an
+order from the Belgian Army Medical Service instructing us to place
+on tramcars all our wounded, and to send them to the railway station.
+It appeared evident that Antwerp was to be evacuated, and we took
+the order to clear out our wounded as an intimation that our services
+would be no longer required. We got all our men ready for transport,
+and proceeded to pack up the hospital. The tramcars arrived, and we
+bade good-bye to our patients, and saw them off, some in ordinary
+trams and some in specially equipped stretcher-cars. It was a dismal
+scene.
+
+The hall of the hospital was still covered with stretchers on which lay
+patients waiting their turn for the cars to take them, and the whole
+hospital was in process of being dismantled, when tramcars began to
+arrive back from the station with the patients we had just packed off.
+They told us that the whole of Antwerp was covered with tramloads of
+wounded soldiers, that there were five thousand in the square in front
+of the railway station, and that two trains had been provided to take
+them away! It was evident that some extraordinary blunder had been
+made; and while we were in doubt as to what to do, a second order
+came to us cancelling entirely the evacuation order which we and all
+the other hospitals in Antwerp had received a few hours before. It was
+all so perplexing that we felt that the only satisfactory plan was to go
+round to the British Consul and find out what it all meant. We came
+back with the great news that British Marines were coming to hold
+Antwerp. That was good enough for us. In less than an hour the
+hospital was in working order again, and the patients were back in
+their beds, and a more jubilant set of patients I have never seen. It
+was the most joyful day in the history of the hospital, and if we had
+had a case of champagne, it should have been opened. As it was, we
+had to be content with salt coffee.
+
+But there was one dreadful tragedy. Some of our patients had not
+returned. In the confusion at the station one tramcar loaded with our
+patients had been sent off to another hospital by mistake. And the
+worst of it was that some of these were our favourite patients. There
+was nothing for it but to start next morning and make a tour of the
+hospitals in search of them. We were not long in finding them, for
+most of them were in a large hospital close by. I do not think we shall
+ever forget the reception we got when we found them. They had left
+us on stretchers, but they tried to get out of bed to come away with
+us, and one of them was a septic factured thigh with a hole in his leg
+into which you could put your fist, and another had recently had a
+serious abdominal operation.
+
+They seized our hands and would scarcely let us go until we had
+promised that as soon as we had arranged with the authorities they
+should come back to our hospital. It was managed after a little
+diplomacy, and they all came back next day, and we were again a
+united family.
+
+
+
+
+XI. Contich
+
+
+
+Sunday, the 4th of October, dawned with an extraordinary feeling of
+relief and expectancy in the air. The invincible British had arrived,
+huge guns were on their way, a vast body of French and British
+troops was advancing by forced marches, and would attack our
+besiegers in the rear, and beyond all possibility of doubt crush them
+utterly. But perhaps the most convincing proof of all was the round
+head of the First Lord of the Admiralty calmly having his lunch in the
+Hotel St. Antoine. Surely nothing can inspire such confidence as the
+sight of an Englishman eating. It is one of the most substantial
+phenomena in nature, and certainly on this occasion I found the sight
+more convincing than a political speech. Obviously we were saved,
+and one felt a momentary pang of pity for the misguided Germans
+who had taken on such an impossible task. The sight of British troops
+in the streets and of three armoured cars carrying machine guns
+settled the question, and we went home to spread the good news and
+to follow the noble example of the First Lord.
+
+In the afternoon three of us went off in one of the motors for a short
+run, partly to see if we could be of any use at the front with the
+wounded, and partly to see, if possible, the British troops. We took a
+stretcher with us, in case there should be any wounded to bring in
+from outlying posts. Everywhere we found signs of the confidence
+which the British had brought. It was visible in the face of every
+Belgian soldier, and even the children cheered our khaki uniforms as
+we passed. Everywhere there were signs of a new activity and of a
+new hope. The trenches and wire entanglements around the town,
+already very extensive, were being perfected, and to our eyes they
+looked impregnable. We did not then realize how useless it is to
+attempt to defend a town, and, unfortunately, our ignorance was not
+limited to civilians. It is a curious freak of modern war that a ploughed
+field should be stronger than any citadel. But, as I say, these things
+were hidden from us, and our allies gave the finishing touches to their
+trenches, to the high entertainment of the Angels, as Stevenson
+would have told us. If only those miles of trench and acres of barbed
+wire had been placed ten miles away, and backed by British guns, the
+story of Antwerp might have been a very different one.
+
+The road to Boom is like all the main roads of Belgium. The central
+causeway was becoming worn by the constant passage of heavy
+motor lorries tearing backwards and forwards at racing speed. The
+sides were deep in dust, for there had been little rain. On each side
+rose poplars in ordered succession, and the long, straight stretches of
+the road were framed in the endless vista of their tall trunks. And in
+that frame moved a picture too utterly piteous for any words to
+describe--a whole country fleeing before the Huns. The huge
+unwieldy carts of the Belgian farmer crept slowly along, drawn by
+great Flemish horses. In front walked the men, plodding along beside
+the splendid animals, with whose help they had ploughed their fields
+--fields they would never see again. In the carts was piled up all that
+they possessed in the world, all that they could carry of their homes
+wrecked and blasted by the Vandals, a tawdry ornament or a child's
+toy looking out pitifully from the heap of clothes and bedding. And
+seated on the top of the heap were the woman and the children.
+
+But these were the well-to-do. There were other little groups who had
+no cart and no horse. The father and a son would walk in front
+carrying all that a man could lift on their strong backs; then came the
+children, boys and girls, each with a little white bundle over their
+shoulder done up in a towel or a pillowslip, tiny mites of four or five
+doing all they could to save the home; and last came the mother with
+a baby at her breast, trudging wearily through the dust. They came in
+an endless stream, over and over again, for mile after mile, always in
+the same pathetic little groups, going away, only going away.
+
+At last, with a sigh of relief, we reached Boom, and the end of the
+lines of refugees, for the Germans themselves were not far beyond.
+At the Croix Rouge we asked for instructions as to where we were
+likely to be useful. Boom had been shelled in the morning, but it was
+now quiet, and there was no fighting in the neighbourhood. We could
+hear the roar of guns in the distance on the east, and we were told
+that severe fighting was in progress in that direction. The British had
+reinforced the Belgian troops in the trenches at Duffel, and the
+Germans were attacking the position in force. Taking the road to the
+left, we passed the great brick-fields which provide one of the chief
+industries of Boom, and we drove through the poorer portion of the
+town which lies amongst them. It was utterly deserted. It was in this
+part of the town that the shelling had been most severe, but a large
+number of the shells must have fallen harmlessly in the brickfields, as
+only a house here and there was damaged. If, however, the object of
+the Germans was to clear the town of inhabitants, they had certainly
+succeeded, for there was not a man, woman, or child to be seen
+anywhere. It is a strange and uncanny thing to drive through a
+deserted town. Only a few days before we had driven the same way,
+and we had to go quite slowly to avoid the crowd in the streets. This
+time we crept along slowly, but for a very different reason. We
+distrusted those empty houses. We never knew what might be hiding
+round the next corner, but we did know that a false turning would take
+us straight into the German lines. It was the only way by which we
+could reach our destination, but we were beyond the main Belgian
+lines, and our road was only held by a few isolated outposts. After a
+mile or so we came upon a small outpost, and they told us that we
+should be safe as far as Rumps, about three miles farther, where their
+main outpost was placed. An occasional shell sailed over our heads
+to reassure us, some from our own batteries, and some from the
+enemy's. We only hoped that neither side would fire short.
+
+At Rumps we found the headquarters of the regiment, and several
+hundred troops. At the sight of our khaki uniforms they at once raised
+a cheer, and we had quite an ovation as we passed down the street.
+At the Etat Majeur the Colonel himself came out to see us, and his
+officers crowded round as he asked us anxiously about the British
+arrivals. He pulled out his orders for the day, and told us the general
+disposition of the British and Belgian troops. He told us that the road
+to Duffel was too dangerous, and that we must turn northwards to
+Contich, but that there might be some wounded in the Croix Rouge
+station there. He and his men were typical of the Belgian Army--
+brave, simple men, defending their country as best they could, without
+fuss or show. I hope they have come to no harm. If only that army had
+been trained and equipped like ours, the Germans would have had a
+hard struggle to get through Belgium.
+
+We turned away from the German lines northwards towards Contich.
+Our road lay across the open country, between the farms which mean
+so much of Belgium's wealth. In one field a man was ploughing with
+three big horses. He was too old to fight, but he could do this much
+for his country. Surely that man deserves a place in his country's Roll
+of Honour. Shells were falling not four fields away, but he never even
+looked up. It must take more nerve to plough a straight furrow when
+the shells are falling than to aim a gun. I like to think of that man, and
+I hope that he will be left to reap his harvest in peace. A little farther
+on we came upon the objective of the German shells--a battery so
+skilfully concealed that it was only when we were close to it that we
+realized where it was. The ammunition-carts were drawn up in a long
+line behind a hedge, while the guns themselves were buried in piles
+of brushwood. They must have been invisible from the captive balloon
+which hung over the German lines in the distance. They were not
+firing when we passed, and we were not sorry, as we had no desire to
+be there when the replies came. An occasional shell gives a certain
+spice to the situation, but in quantity they are better avoided.
+
+As we approached Contich a soldier came running up and told us that
+two people had just been injured by a shell, and begged us to come to
+see them. He stood on the step of the car, and directed us to a little
+row of cottages half a mile farther on. At the roadside was a large
+hole in the ground where a shell had fallen some minutes before, and
+beside it an unfortunate cow with its hind-quarters shattered. In the
+garden of the first cottage a poor woman lay on her back. She was
+dead, and her worn hands were already cold. As I rose from my knees
+a young soldier flung himself down beside her, sobbing as though his
+heart would break. She was his mother.
+
+Behind the cottage we found a soldier with his left leg torn to
+fragments. He had lost a great deal of blood, and he was still bleeding
+from a large artery, in spite of the efforts of a number of soldiers
+round who were applying tourniquets without much success. The
+ordinary tourniquet is probably the most inefficient instrument that the
+mind of man could devise--at least, for dealing with wounds of the
+thigh out in the field. It might stop haemorrhage in an infant, but for a
+burly soldier it is absurd. I tried two of the most approved patterns,
+and both broke in my hands. In the end I managed to stop it with a
+handkerchief and a stick. I would suggest the elimination of all
+tourniquets, and the substitution of the humble pocket-handkerchief.
+It, at least, does not pretend to be what it is not. Between shock and
+loss of blood our soldier was pretty bad, and we did not lose much
+time in transferring him to our car on a stretcher. The Croix Rouge
+dressing-station was more than a mile farther on, established in a
+large villa in its own grounds. We carried our man in, and laid him on
+a table with the object of dressing his leg properly, and of getting the
+man himself into such condition as would enable him to stand the
+journey back to Antwerp.
+
+Alas! the dressing-station was destitute of any of the most elementary
+appliances for the treatment of a seriously wounded man. There was
+not even a fire, and the room was icy cold. There was no hot water,
+no brandy, no morphia, no splints, and only a minute quantity of
+dressing material. A cupboard with some prehistoric instruments in it
+was the only evidence of surgery that we could find. The Belgian
+doctor in charge was doing the best he could, but what he could be
+expected to do in such surroundings I do not know. He seemed
+greatly relieved to hear that I was a surgeon, and he was most kind in
+trying to find me everything for which I asked. From somewhere we
+managed to raise some brandy and hot water, and a couple of
+blankets, and with the dressings we had brought with us we made the
+best of a bad job, and started for home with our patient. Antwerp was
+eight miles away. It was a bitterly cold evening, and darkness was
+coming on. It seemed improbable that we could get our patient home
+alive, but it was perfectly certain that he would die if we left him where
+he was. It seemed such a pity that a little more forethought and
+common sense could not have been expended on that dressing-
+station, and yet we found that with rare exceptions this was the
+regular state of affairs, whether in. Belgium or France. It seems to be
+impossible for our professional brethren on the Continent to imagine
+any treatment apart from a completely equipped hospital. Their one
+idea seems to be to get the wounded back to a base hospital, and if
+they die on the way it cannot be helped. The dressing-stations are
+mere offices for their redirection, where they are carefully ticketed, but
+where little else is done. Of course, it is true that the combatant forces
+are the first consideration, and that from their point of view the
+wounded are simply in the way, and the sooner they are carried
+beyond the region of the fighting the better; but if this argument were
+carried to its logical conclusion, there should be no medical services
+at the front at all, except what might be absolutely necessary for the
+actual transport of the wounded. I am glad to say that our later
+experiences showed that the British influence was beginning to make
+itself felt, and that the idea of the wounded as a mere useless
+encumbrance was being modified by more humanitarian considerations.
+And in a long war it must be obvious to the most hardened militarist
+that by the early treatment of a wound many of its more severe
+consequences may be averted, and that many a man may thus
+be saved for further service. In a war of exhaustion, the ultimate
+result might well depend on how the wounded were treated in the field.
+
+The road was crowded with traffic, and it was quite dark before we
+reached Antwerp. Our patient did not seem much the worse for his
+journey, though that is perhaps faint praise. We soon had him in our
+theatre, which was always warm and ready for cases such as this.
+With energetic treatment his condition rapidly improved, and when we
+left him to go to dinner we felt that our afternoon had not been entirely
+wasted.
+
+
+
+
+XII. The Bombardment--Night
+
+
+
+We had had plenty of notice that we might expect a bombardment. On
+Saturday a boat had left with most of the English Colony. On Tuesday
+morning the Germans sent in official notice that they intended to
+bombard the city, and in the evening the Government and the
+Legations left by boat with the remainder of our countrymen who lived
+in Antwerp. We had faced the prospect and made every preparation
+for it, and yet when it did come it came upon us as a surprise. It is
+sometimes fortunate that our capacities for anticipation are so limited.
+
+It was almost midnight on Wednesday, the 7th of October, and two of
+us were sitting in the office writing despatches home. The whole
+building was in absolute silence, and lit only by the subdued light of
+an occasional candle. In the distance we could hear the dull booming
+of the guns. Suddenly above our heads sounded a soft whistle, which
+was not the wind, followed by a dull thud in the distance. We looked
+at one another.
+
+Again it came, this time a little louder. We ran up to the roof and
+stood there for some moments, fascinated by the scene. From the dull
+grey sky came just sufficient light to show the city laying in darkness
+around us, its tall spires outlined as dim shadows against the clouds.
+Not a sound arose from streets and houses around, but every few
+seconds there came from the south-east a distant boom, followed by
+the whistle of a shell overhead and the dull thud of its explosion. The
+whole scene was eerie and uncanny in the extreme. The whistle
+changed to a shriek and the dull thud to a crash close at hand,
+followed by the clatter of falling bricks cutting sharply into the
+stillness of the night. Plainly this was going to be a serious business,
+and we must take instant measures for the safety of our patients.
+At any moment a shell might enter one of the wards, and--well,
+we had seen the hospital at Lierre. We ran downstairs and told
+the night nurses to get the patients ready for removal, whilst
+we went across to the gymnasium to arouse those of the staff
+who slept there. We collected all our stretchers, and began
+the methodical removal of all our patients to the basement.
+In a few minutes there was a clang at the front-door bell, and our
+nurses and assistants who lived outside began to arrive. Two of
+the dressers had to come half a mile along the Malines road,
+where the shells were falling thickest, and every few yards they
+had had to shelter in doorways from the flying shrapnel. The
+bombardment had begun in earnest now, and shells were fairly
+pouring over our heads. We started with the top floor, helping
+down those patients who could walk, and carrying the rest on
+stretchers. When that was cleared we took the second, and I think we
+all breathed a sigh of relief when we heard that the top floor was
+empty. We were fortunate in having a basement large enough to
+accommodate all our patients, and wide staircases down which the
+stretchers could be carried without difficulty; but the patients were all
+full-grown men, and as most of them had to be carried it was hard
+work.
+
+
+I shall never forget the scene on the great staircase, crowded with a
+long train of nurses, doctors, and dressers carrying the wounded
+down as gently and as carefully as if they were in a London hospital. I
+saw no sign of fear in any face, only smiles and laughter. And yet
+overhead was a large glass roof, and there was no one there who did
+not realize that a shell might come through that roof at any moment,
+and that it would not leave a single living person beneath it. It made
+one proud to have English blood running in one's veins. We had 113
+wounded, and within an hour they were all in places of safety;
+mattresses and blankets were brought, and they were all made as
+comfortable as possible for the night. Four were grave intestinal
+cases. Seven had terrible fractures of the thigh, but fortunately five of
+these had been already repaired with steel plates, and their transport
+was easy; in fact, I met one of them on the staircase, walking with the
+support of a dresser's arm, a week after the operation! Some of the
+patients must have suffered excruciating pain in being moved, but
+one never heard a murmur, and if a groan could not be kept back, it
+was passed over with a jest for fear we should notice it. It was a
+magnificent basement, with heavy arched roofs everywhere, and
+practically shell-proof. The long passages and the large kitchens
+were all tiled and painted white, and as the electric light was still
+running and the whole building was well warmed, it would have been
+difficult to find a more cheerful and comfortable place. Coffee was
+provided for everyone, and when I took a last look round the night
+nurses were taking charge as if nothing had happened, and the whole
+place was in the regular routine of an ordinary everyday hospital.
+
+Upstairs there was an improvised meal in progress in the office, and
+after our two hours' hard work we were glad of it. It is really wonderful
+how cheerful a thing a meal is in the middle of the night, with plenty of
+hot coffee and a borrowed cake. It is one of the compensations of our
+life in hospital, and even shells are powerless to disturb it. After that,
+as we knew we should have a heavy day before us, we all settled
+down in the safest corners we could find to get what rest we could.
+The staircase leading up to the entrance hall was probably the safest
+spot in the building, covered as it was by a heavy arch, and it was
+soon packed with people in attitudes more or less restful. A ward with
+a comfortable bed seemed to me quite safe enough, and I spent the
+night with three equally hedonistic companions. At first we lay
+listening to the shells as they passed overhead, sometimes with the
+soft whistle of distance, and sometimes with the angry shriek of a
+shell passing near. Occasionally the shriek would drop to a low howl,
+the note of a steam siren as it stops, and then a deafening crash and
+the clatter of falling bricks and glass would warn us that we had only
+escaped by a few yards. But even listening to shells becomes
+monotonous, and my eyes gradually glued together, and I fell asleep.
+
+When I awoke it was early morning, and daylight had just come. The
+shells were still arriving, but not so fast, and mostly at a much greater
+distance. But another sound came at intervals, and we had much
+discussion as to what it might mean. Every three and a half minutes
+exactly there came two distant booms, but louder than usual, and
+then two terrific shrieks one after the other, exactly like the tearing of
+a giant sheet of calico, reminding us strongly of the famous scene in
+"Peter Pan." Away they went in the distance, and if we ever heard the
+explosion it was a long way off. They certainly sounded like shells
+fired over our heads from quite close, and at a very low elevation, and
+we soon evolved the comforting theory that they were from a pair of
+big British guns planted up the river, and firing over the town at the
+German trenches beyond. We even saw a British gunboat lying in the
+Scheldt, and unlimited reinforcements pouring up the river. Alas! it
+was only a couple of big German guns shelling the harbour and the
+arsenal; at least, that is the conclusion at which we have since
+arrived. But for some hours those shells were a source of great
+satisfaction and comfort. One can lie in bed with great contentment, I
+find, when it is the other people who are being shelled.
+
+
+
+
+XIII. The Bombardment--Day
+
+
+
+We were up early in the morning, and our first business was to go
+round to the British Headquarters to find out what they intended to do,
+and what they expected of us as a British base hospital. If they
+intended to stay, and wished us to do likewise, we were quite
+prepared to do so, but we did not feel equal to the responsibility of
+keeping more than a hundred wounded in a position so obviously
+perilous. From shrapnel they were fairly safe in the basement, but
+from large shells or from incendiary bombs there is no protection. It is
+not much use being in a cellar if the house is burnt down over your
+head. So two of us started off in our motor to get news.
+
+The Headquarters were in the Hotel St. Antoine, at the corner of the
+Place Verte opposite to the Cathedral, so we had to go right across
+the town. We went by the Rue d'Argile and the Rue Leopold, and we
+had a fair opportunity of estimating the results of the night's
+bombardment. In the streets through which we passed it was really
+astonishingly small. Cornices had been knocked off, and the
+fragments lay in the streets; a good many windows were broken, and
+in a few cases a shell had entered an attic and blown up the roof.
+Plainly only small shells had been used. We did not realize that many
+of the houses we passed were just beginning to get comfortably
+alight, and that there was no one to put out the fires that had only
+begun so far to smoulder. A few people were about, evidently on their
+way out of Antwerp, but the vast bulk of the population had already
+gone. It is said that the population of half a million numbered by the
+evening only a few hundreds. We passed a small fox terrier lying on
+the pavement dead, and somehow it has remained in my mind as a
+most pathetic sight. He had evidently been killed by a piece of
+shrapnel, and it seemed very unfair. But probably his people had left
+him, and he was better out of it.
+
+We turned into the Marche aux Souliers, and drew up at the Hotel St.
+Antoine, and as we stepped down from the car a shell passed close to
+us with a shriek, and exploded with a terrific crash in the house
+opposite across the narrow street. We dived into the door of the hotel
+to escape the falling debris. So far the shells had been whistling
+comfortably over our heads, but it was evident that the Germans were
+aiming at the British Headquarters, and that we had put our heads
+into the thick of it, for it was now positively raining shells all round
+us. But we scarcely noticed them in our consternation at what we
+found, for the British Staff had disappeared. We wandered through
+the deserted rooms which had been so crowded a few days before,
+but there was not a soul to be seen. They had gone, and left
+no address. At last an elderly man appeared, whom I took to be
+the proprietor, and all he could tell us was that there was no one
+but himself in the building. Of all the desolate spots in the world
+I think that an empty hotel is the most desolate, and when you have
+very fair reason to believe that a considerable number of guns are
+having a competition as to which can drop a shell into it first, it
+becomes positively depressing. We got into our car and drove
+down the Place de Meir to the Belgian Croix Rouge, where we
+hoped to get news of our countrymen, and there we were told
+that they had gone to the Belgian Etat Majeur near by. We had
+a few minutes' conversation with the President of the Croix Rouge,
+a very good friend of ours, tall and of striking appearance, with
+a heavy grey moustache. We asked him what the Croix Rouge
+would do. "Ah," he said, "we will stay to the last!" At that very
+moment a shell exploded with a deafening crash just outside
+in the Place de Meir. I looked at the President, and he threw
+up his hands in despair and led the way out of the building. The
+Belgian Red Cross had finished its work.
+
+At last at the Etat Majeur we found our Headquarters, and I sincerely
+hope that wherever General Paris, Colonel Bridges, and Colonel
+Seely go, they will always find people as pleased to see them as we
+were. They very kindly told us something of the situation, and said
+that, though they had every intention of holding Antwerp, they advised
+us to clear out, and they placed at our disposal four motor omnibuses
+for the transport of the wounded. So off we drove back to the hospital
+to make arrangements for evacuating. It was a lively drive, for I
+suppose that the Germans had had breakfast and had got to work
+again; at any rate, shells were coming in pretty freely, and we were
+happier when we could run along under the lee of the houses.
+However, we got back to the hospital safely enough, and there we
+held a council of war.
+
+It was in the office, of course--the most risky room we could have
+chosen, I suppose--but somehow that did not seem to occur to
+anyone. It is curious how soon one grows accustomed to shells. At
+that moment a barrel-organ would have caused us far more
+annoyance. We sat round the table and discussed the situation. It
+was by no means straightforward. In the first place several members
+of the community did not wish to leave at all; in the second, we could
+not leave any of our wounded behind unattended; and in the third, it
+seemed unlikely that we could get them all on to four buses. After a
+long discussion we decided to go again and see General Paris, to ask
+for absolute instructions as a hospital under his control, and if he told
+us to go, to get sufficient transport. And then arose a scene which will
+always live in my mind. We had impressed into consultation a retired
+officer of distinction to whose help we owed much, and now owe far
+more, and whom I shall call our Friend. Perhaps he wished to give us
+confidence--I have always suspected that he had an ulterior motive
+--but he concluded the discussion by saying that he felt hungry and
+would have something to eat before he started, and from his
+haversack he produced an enormous German sausage and a large
+loaf of bread, which he offered to us all round, and he said he would
+like a cup of tea! The shells could do what they liked outside, and if
+one of them was rude enough to intrude, it could not be helped. We
+must show them that we could pay no attention to anything so vulgar
+and noisy. At any rate, the effect on us was electrical. The contrast
+between the German shells and the German sausage was too much
+for us, and the meeting broke up in positive confusion. Alas that
+sausage, the unparalleled trophy of an incomparable moment, was
+left behind on the table, and I fear the Germans got it.
+
+General Paris had been obliged to shift his headquarters to the
+Pilotage, on the docks and at the farthest end of the city from us. He
+was very considerate, and after some discussion said that we had
+better leave Antwerp, and sent Colonel Farquharson with us to get six
+buses. The Pilotage is at the extreme north end of the Avenue des
+Arts, which extends the whole length of Antwerp, and the buses were
+on the quay by the Arsenal at the extreme south end, so that we had
+to drive the whole length of this, the most magnificent street of
+Antwerp, and a distance of about three miles. It was an extraordinary
+drive. In the whole length of that Avenue I do not think that we passed
+a single individual. It was utterly deserted. All around were signs of
+the bombardment--tops of houses blown off, and scattered about
+the street, trees knocked down, holes in the roadway where shells
+had struck. On the left stood the great Palais de Justice, with most of
+its windows broken and part of the roof blown away, and just beyond
+this three houses in a row blazing from cellar to chimney, the front
+wall gone, and all that remained of the rooms exposed. As I said, only
+small shells had been used, and the damage was nothing at all to that
+which we afterwards saw at Ypres; but it gave one an impression of
+dreariness and utter desolation that could scarcely be surpassed.
+Think of driving from Hyde Park Corner down the Strand to the Bank,
+not meeting a soul on the way, passing a few clubs in Piccadilly
+burning comfortably, the Cecil a blazing furnace, and the Law Courts
+lying in little bits about the street, and you will get some idea of
+what it looked like. The scream of the shells and the crash when
+they fell near by formed quite a suitable if somewhat Futurist
+accompaniment.
+
+But the climax of the entertainment, the bonne bouche of the
+afternoon, was reserved for the end of our drive, when we reached
+the wharf by the Arsenal, where the British stores and transport were
+collected. Here was a long row of motor-buses, about sixty of them,
+all drawn up in line along the river. Beside them was a long row of
+heavily loaded ammunition lorries, and on the other side of the road
+was the Arsenal, on our left, blazing away, with a vast column of
+smoke towering up to the sky. "It may blow up any minute," said
+Colonel Farquharson cheerily, "I had better move that ammunition." I
+have never seen an arsenal blow up, and I imagine it is a
+phenomenon requiring distance to get it into proper perspective; but I
+have some recollection of an arsenal blowing up in Antwerp a few
+years ago and taking a considerable part of the town with it. However,
+it was not our arsenal, so we waited and enjoyed the view till the
+ammunition had been moved, and the Colonel had done his best to
+get us the motor-buses. He could only get us four, so we had to make
+the best of a bad job. But. meanwhile the Germans had evidently
+determined to give us a really good show while they were about it, for
+while we waited a Taube came overhead and hovered for a moment,
+apparently uncertain as to whether a bomb or a shell would look
+better just there. A flash of tinsel falling in the sunlight showed us that
+she had made up her mind and was giving the range. But we could
+not stay, and were a quarter of a mile away when we looked back and
+saw the first shells falling close to where we had been two minutes
+before. They had come six miles.
+
+The bombardment was increasing in violence, and large numbers of
+incendiary shells were being used, whilst in addition the houses set
+on fire during the night were now beginning to blaze. As we drove
+back we passed several houses in flames, and the passage of the
+narrow streets we traversed was by no means free from risk. At last
+we turned into our own street, the Boulevard Leopold, and there we
+met a sight which our eyes could scarcely credit. Three motor-buses
+stood before our door and patients were being crowded into them.
+Those buses and our own lives we owe to the kindness of Major
+Gordon. Without them some at least must have remained behind. The
+three were already well filled, for our friends thought that we had
+certainly been killed and that they must act for themselves. We sent
+them off under the escort of one of our cars, as it seemed foolish to
+keep them waiting in a position of danger. On our own four we packed
+all our remaining patients and all the hospital equipment we could
+remove. One does not waste time when one packs under shell fire,
+and at the end of three-quarters of an hour there was not a patient
+and very little of value in the hospital. I took charge of the theatre as I
+knew where the things went, and I think the British working man
+would have been rather astonished to see how fast the big sterilizers
+fell apart and the operating-tables slid into their cases. The windows
+faced shellwards, and I must confess that once or twice when one of
+them seemed to be coming unpleasantly near I took the opportunity to
+remove my parcels outside. How the patients were got ready and
+carried out and into the buses in that time is beyond my
+comprehension. But somehow it was managed. I took a last look
+round and drove out the last nurse who was trying to rescue some
+last "hospital comfort" for a patient, and in the end I was myself driven
+out by two indignant dressers who caught me trying to save the
+instrument sterilizer. The buses were a wonderful sight. Inside were
+some sixty patients, our share of the whole hundred and thirteen, and
+on top about thirty of our staff, and the strangest collection of
+equipment imaginable. The largest steam sterilizer mounted guard in
+front, hoisted there by two sailormen of huge strength, who turned up
+from somewhere. Great bundles of blankets, crockery, and
+instruments were wedged in everywhere, with the luggage of the staff.
+At the door of each bus was seated a nurse, like a conductor, to give
+what little attention was possible to the patients. It was a marvellous
+sight, but no cheerier crowd of medical students ever left the doors of
+a hospital for a Cup-tie.
+
+
+
+
+XIV. The Night Journey
+
+
+
+There was only one way out--by the bridge of boats across the
+Scheldt. It was a narrow plank road, and as vehicles had to go across
+in single file at some distance apart, the pressure can be imagined.
+For an hour and a half we stood in the densely packed Cathedral
+square watching the hands of the great clock go round and wondering
+when a shell would drop among us. We had seen enough of churches
+to know what an irresistible attraction they have for German artillery,
+and we knew that, whatever may be the state of affairs in Scotland,
+here at any rate the nearer the church the nearer was heaven. But no
+shells fell near, we only heard them whistling overhead.
+
+The scene around us was extraordinary, and indeed these were the
+remains of the entire population of Antwerp. The whole city had
+emptied itself either by this road or by the road northwards into
+Holland. Crowds of people of every class--the poor in their working-
+clothes, the well-to-do in their Sunday best--all carrying in bundles
+all they could carry away of their property, and wedged in amongst
+them every kind of vehicle imaginable, from a luxurious limousine to
+coster's carts and wheelbarrows. In front of us lay the Scheldt, and
+pouring down towards it was on the left an endless stream of
+fugitives, crossing by the ferry-boats, and on the right an interminable
+train of artillery and troops, crossing by the only bridge. At last there
+was a movement forwards; we crept down the slope and on to the
+bridge, and slowly moved over to the other side. Perhaps we should
+not have felt quite so happy about it had we known that two men had
+just been caught on the point of blowing up the boats in the centre,
+and that very shortly after the Germans were to get the range and
+drop a shell on to the bridge. At five o'clock we were across the
+bridge and on the road to Ghent.
+
+Of all the pitiful sights I have ever seen, that road was the most utterly
+pitiful. We moved on slowly through a dense throng of fugitives--
+men, women, and little children--all with bundles over their
+shoulders, in which was all that they possessed. A woman with three
+babies clinging to her skirts, a small boy wheeling his grandmother in
+a wheelbarrow, family after family, all moving away from the horror
+that lay behind to the misery that lay in front. We had heard of
+Louvain, and we had seen Termonde, and we understood. As
+darkness came down we lit our lamps, and there along the roadside
+sat rows of fugitives, resting before recommencing their long journey
+through the night. There was one row of little children which will live
+for ever in my memory, tiny mites sitting together on a bank by the
+roadside. We only saw them for an instant as our lights fell on them,
+and they disappeared in the darkness. Germany will have to pay for
+Louvain and Termonde. It is not with man that she will have to settle
+for that row of little children.
+
+We had a few vacant seats when we left Antwerp, but they were soon
+filled by fugitives whom we picked up on the road. Strangely enough,
+we picked up two of our friends in Antwerp with their families. One
+was the doctor who had taken all our radiographs for us, and to whom
+we owed a great deal in many ways. He had left his beautiful house,
+with X-ray apparatus on which he had spent his fortune, incomparably
+superior to any other that I have ever seen, and here he was trudging
+along the road, with his wife, his two children, and their nurse. They
+were going to St. Nicholas, on their way to Holland, and were
+delighted to get a lift. Unfortunately, by some mistake, the nurse and
+children left the bus at Zwyndrecht, a few miles from Antwerp, the
+doctor came on to St. Nicholas, and his wife went right through with
+us to Ghent. It took him three days to find the children, and when we
+last heard from him he was in Holland, having lost everything he had
+in the world, and after two months he had not yet found his wife. And
+this is only an instance of what has happened all over Belgium.
+
+We reached St. Nicholas about eight o'clock, having covered thirteen
+miles in three hours. It was quite dark, and as we had a long night
+before us we decided to stop and get some food for ourselves and
+our patients. There was not much to be had, but, considering the
+stream of fugitives, it was wonderful that there was anything. We
+hoped now to be able to push on faster, and to reach Ghent before
+midnight, for it is only a little over twenty miles by the direct road. To
+our dismay, we found that Lokeren, half-way to Ghent, was in the
+hands of the Germans, and that we must make a detour, taking us
+close to the Dutch border, and nearly doubling the distance. Without
+a guide, and in the dark, we could never have reached our
+destination; but we were fortunate enough to get a guide, and we set
+out on our long drive through the night. Twenty minutes later a
+German scouting party entered St. Nicholas. It was a narrow margin,
+but it was sufficient.
+
+We were rather a downhearted party when we set out northwards
+towards the Dutch frontier, for we had been told that the three buses
+we had sent on in advance had gone straight on to Lokeren, and had
+undoubtedly fallen into the hands of the Germans, who had made
+certain of holding the road by destroying the bridge. We hoped that
+they might have discovered this in time, and turned back, but we
+could not wait to find out. We knew that the enemy were quite close.
+At first we used our lights, but a shrapnel whistling overhead warned
+us that we were seen, and for the remainder of the night we travelled
+in darkness. These were minor roads, with a narrow paved causeway
+in the centre, and loose sand on each side. Long avenues of trees
+kept us in inky darkness, and how the drivers succeeded in keeping
+on the causeway I really do not know. Every now and then one of the
+buses would get into the sand; then all the men would collect, dig the
+wheels clear, and by sheer brute force drag the bus back to safety.
+Twice it seemed absolutely hopeless. The wheels were in the loose
+sand within a foot of a deep ditch, and the least thing would have sent
+the bus flying over on to its side into the field beyond; and on both
+occasions, while we looked at one another in despair, a team of huge
+Flemish horses appeared from nowhere in the darkness and dragged
+us clear. Think of an inky night, the Germans close at hand, and
+every half-hour or so a desperate struggle to shoulder a heavily
+loaded London bus out of a ditch, and you may have some faint idea
+of the nightmare we passed through.
+
+As we crept along the dark avenues, the sky behind us was lit by an
+ever-increasing glare. Away to the south-east, at no great distance, a
+village was blazing, but behind us was a vast column of flame and
+smoke towering up to heaven. It was in the direction of Antwerp, and
+at first we thought that the vandals had fired the town; but though the
+sky was lit by many blazing houses, that tall pillar came from the great
+oil-tanks, set on fire by the Belgians lest they should fall into German
+hands. A more awful and terrifying spectacle it is hard to conceive.
+The sky was lit up as if by the sunrise of the day of doom, and thirty
+miles away our road was lighted by the lurid glare. Our way led
+through woods, and amongst the trees we could hear the crack and
+see the flash of rifle-fire. More than once the whiz of a bullet urged us
+to hurry on.
+
+At Selsaete, only a mile from the Dutch frontier, we turned southwards
+towards Ghent, and for an interminable distance we followed the bank
+of a large canal. A few miles from Ghent we met Commander
+Samson, of the Flying Corps, and three of his armoured cars. The
+blaze of their headlights quite blinded us after the darkness in which
+we had travelled, but the sight of the British uniforms and the machine
+guns was a great encouragement. The road was so narrow that they
+had to turn their cars into a field to let us pass. We had just come up
+with a number of farm waggons, and the clumsy Flemish carts, with
+their huge horses, the grey armoured cars, with their blazing
+headlights, and our four red motor-buses, made a strange scene in
+the darkness of the night. At last we reached Ghent utterly tired out,
+though personally I had slept a sort of nightmare sleep on the top
+step of a bus which boldly announced its destination as Hendon. It
+was five o'clock, and day was breaking as we got our patients out of
+the buses and deposited them in the various hospitals as we could
+find room for them. To our unspeakable relief, we found that the rest
+of our party had come through by much the same road as we had
+taken ourselves, but they had reached Ghent quite early the night
+before. Their earlier start had given them the advantage of clearer
+roads and daylight. With good fortune little short of miraculous, we
+had all come so far in safety, and we hoped that our troubles were
+over. Alas, we were told that though Germans were expected to enter
+Ghent that very day, and that all British wounded must be removed
+from the hospitals before ten o'clock. There was nothing for it but to
+collect them again, and to take them on to Ostend. One had died in
+the night, and two were too ill to be moved. We left them behind in
+skilled hands, and the others we re-embarked on our buses en route
+for Bruges and Ostend.
+
+The First Act in the story of the British Field Hospital for Belgium was
+drawing to an end. Our hospital, to which we had given so much
+labour, was gone, and the patients, for whom we had grown to care,
+were scattered. Yet there was in our hearts only a deep gratitude that
+we had come unharmed, almost by a miracle, through so many
+dangers, and a firm confidence that in some other place we should
+find a home for our hospital, where we could again help the brave
+soldiers whose cause had become so much our own.
+
+
+
+
+XV. Furnes
+
+
+
+A week after we had reached London, we were off again to the
+front. This time our objective was Furnes, a little town fifteen
+miles east of Dunkirk, and about five miles from the fighting-line.
+The line of the Belgian trenches ran in a circle, following the
+course of the River Yser, the little stream which has proved
+such an insuperable barrier to the German advance. Furnes
+lies at the centre of the circle, and is thus an ideal position for
+an advanced base, such as we intended to establish. It is easy
+of access from Dunkirk by a fine main road which runs alongside
+an important canal, and as Dunkirk was our port, and the only
+source of our supplies, this was a great consideration. From
+Furnes a number of roads lead in various directions to Ypres,
+Dixmude, Nieuport, and the coast, making it a convenient
+centre for an organization such as ours, requiring, as we
+did, ready means of reaching the front in any direction, and
+open communication with our base of supplies.
+
+We crossed from Dover in the Government transport, and
+arrived at Dunkirk about ten o'clock on Tuesday morning. There
+we met Dr. Munro's party, the famous Flying Ambulance Corps,
+with whom we were to enter on our new venture. They had not
+come over to England at all, but had come down the coast in
+their cars, and had spent the last few days in Malo, the seaside
+suburb of Dunkirk. The Belgian Government very kindly lent us
+a couple of big motor-lorries in which to take out our stores, and
+with our own motors we made quite a procession as we started
+off from the wharf of Dunkirk on our fifteen-mile drive to Furnes.
+It was late in the afternoon when we reached our new home. It
+was a large school, partly occupied by the priests connected
+with it, partly by officers quartered there, and one of the larger
+classrooms had been used as a dressing-station by some Belgian
+doctors in Furnes. For ourselves, the only accommodation
+consisted of a few empty classrooms and a huge dormitory
+divided into cubicles, but otherwise destitute of the necessaries
+for sleep. Several hours' hard work made some change in the
+scene, mattresses and blankets being hauled up to the dormitory,
+where the nursing staff was accommodated, while straw laid
+down in one of the classrooms made comfortable if somewhat
+primitive beds for the male members. Meanwhile, in the kitchen
+department miracles had been accomplished, and we all sat down
+to dinner with an appetite such as one rarely feels at home, and for
+which many of our patients over in England would be willing to pay
+quite large sums. The large room was lit by two candles and a
+melancholy lamp, there was no tablecloth, the spoons were of
+pewter, with the bowls half gone, and the knives were in their
+dotage. But the scales had fallen from our eyes, and we realized
+what trifles these things are. Madame, the genius who presided
+over our domestic affairs, and many other affairs as well, and
+her assistants, had produced from somewhere food, good food,
+and plenty of it; and what in the world can a hungry man want more?
+Truly there are many people who require a moral operation
+for cataract, that they might see how good is the world in which they live.
+
+Next day we proceeded to unpack our stores, and to try to
+make a hospital out of these empty rooms, and then only did
+we discover that an overwhelming misfortune had overtaken
+us. By some extraordinary circumstance which has never been
+explained, we had lost practically the whole of the surgical
+instruments which we had brought out of Antwerp with such
+trouble and risk. They were tied up in sheets, and my own
+impression is that they were stolen. However that may be, here
+we were in as ludicrous a position as it is possible for even a
+hospital to occupy, for not only had we none of the ordinary
+instruments, but, as if Fate meant to have a good laugh at us,
+we had a whole series of rare and expensive tools. We had no
+knives, and no artery forceps, and not a stitch of catgut; but we
+had an oesophagoscope, and the very latest possible pattern of
+cystoscope, and a marvellous set of tools for plating fractures. It
+reminded one of the costume of an African savage--a silk hat,
+and nothing else. Some Belgian doctors who had been working
+there lent us a little case of elementary instruments, and that
+was absolutely all we had.
+
+Scarcely had we made this terrible discovery, when an
+ambulance arrived with two wounded officers, and asked if we
+were ready to admit patients. We said, "No," and I almost think
+that we were justified. The men in charge of the ambulance
+seemed very disappointed, and said that in that case there was
+nothing for it but to leave the wounded men on their stretchers
+till an ambulance train should come to take them to Calais,
+which they might ultimately reach in two or three days' time.
+They were badly wounded, and we thought that at least we
+could do better than that; so we made up a couple of beds in
+one of the empty rooms, and took them in. Little did we dream
+of what we were in for. An hour later another ambulance
+arrived, and as we had started, we thought that we might as
+well fill up the ward we had begun. That did it. The sluice-gates
+were opened, and the wounded poured in. In four days we
+admitted three hundred and fifty patients, all of them with
+injuries of the most terrible nature. The cases we had seen at
+Antwerp were nothing to these. Arms and legs were torn right
+off or hanging by the merest shreds, ghastly wounds of the
+head left the brain exposed. Many of the poor fellows were
+taken from the ambulances dead, and of the others at least half
+must have died.
+
+For four days and four nights the operating theatre was at work
+continuously, till one sickened at the sight of blood and at the
+thought of an operation. Three operating tables were in almost
+continuous use, and often three major operations were going
+on at the same time; and all the instruments we had were two
+scalpels, six artery forceps, two dissecting forceps, and a finger-
+saw. Think of doing amputations through the thigh with that
+equipment! There was nothing else for it. Either the work had to
+be done or the patients had to die. And there was certainly no
+one else to do it. The rapid advance of the Germans had swept
+away all the admirable arrangements which the Belgian Army
+had made for dealing with its wounded. The splendid hospitals
+of Ghent and Ostend were now in German hands, and there
+had not yet been time to get new ones established. The cases
+could be sent to Calais, it was true, but there the accommodation
+was so far totally inadequate, and skilled surgical assistance
+was not to be obtained. For the moment our hospital, with its
+ludicrous equipment, was the only hope of the badly wounded.
+By the mercy of Heaven, we had plenty of chloroform and
+morphia, and a fair supply of dressings, and we knew by
+experience that at this stage it is safer to be content with the
+minimum of actual operative work, so that I think it was we,
+rather than our patients, who suffered from the want of the
+ordinary aids of surgery. In the wards there was a shortage,
+almost as serious, of all the ordinary equipment of nursing, for
+much of this had been too cumbrous to bring from Antwerp;
+and though we had brought out a fair supply of ordinary
+requirements, we had never dreamt of having to deal with such
+a rush as this. Ward equipment cannot be got at a moment's
+notice, and the bulk of it had not yet arrived. We only
+possessed a dozen folding beds, in which some of the worst
+cases were placed. The others had to lie on straw on the floor,
+and so closely were they packed that it was only with the
+greatest care that one could thread one's way across the ward.
+How the nurses ever managed to look after their patients is
+beyond my comprehension, but they were magnificent. They
+rose to the emergency as only Englishwomen can, and there is
+not one of those unfortunate men who will not remember with
+gratitude their sympathy and their skill.
+
+During these first days a terrific fight was going on around
+Dixmude and Nieuport, and it was a very doubtful question how
+long it would be possible for the Belgian and French troops to
+withstand the tremendous attacks to which they were being
+subjected. The matter was so doubtful that we had to hold
+ourselves in readiness to clear out from the hospital at two
+hours' notice, whilst our wounded were taken away as fast as
+we could get them into what one can only describe as a portable
+condition. It was a physical impossibility for our wards to hold
+more than a hundred and fifty patients, even when packed
+close together side by side on the floor, and as I have said,
+three hundred and fifty were dealt with in the first four days.
+This meant that most of them spent only twenty-four hours
+in the hospital, and as we were only sent cases which could
+not, as they stood, survive the long train journey to Calais,
+this meant that they were often taken on almost immediately
+after serious operations. Several amputations of the thigh,
+for example, were taken away next day, and many of them
+must have spent the next twenty-four hours in the train, for
+the trains were very tardy in reaching their destination. It is not
+good treatment, but good surgery is not the primary object of
+war. The fighting troops are the first consideration, and the
+surgeon has to manage the best way he can.
+
+One of the most extraordinary cases we took in was that of the
+editor of a well-known sporting journal in England. He had
+shown his appreciation of the true sporting instinct by going out
+to Belgium and joining the army as a mitrailleuse man. If there
+is one place where one may hope for excitement, it is in an
+armoured car with a mitrailleuse. The mitrailleuse men are
+picked dare-devils, and their work takes them constantly into
+situations which require a trained taste for their enjoyment. Our
+friend the editor was out with his car, and had got out to
+reconnoitre, when suddenly some Germans in hiding opened
+fire. Their first shot went through both his legs, fracturing both
+tibiae, and he fell down, of course absolutely incapable of
+standing, just behind the armoured car. Owing to some mistake,
+an officer in the car gave the order to start, and away went the
+car. He would have been left to his fate, but suddenly realizing
+how desperate his position was, he threw up his hand and caught
+hold of one of the rear springs. Lying on his back and holding
+on to the spring, he was dragged along the ground, with both
+his legs broken, for a distance of about half a mile.
+
+The car was going at about twenty-five miles an hour, and how
+he ever maintained his hold Heaven only knows. At last they
+pulled up, and there they found him, practically unconscious,
+his clothes torn to ribbons, his back a mass of bruises, but still
+holding on. It was one of the most splendid examples of real
+British grit of which I have ever heard. They brought him to the
+hospital, and we fixed him up as well as we could. One would
+have thought that he might have been a little downhearted, but
+not a bit of it. He arrived in the operating theatre smiling and
+smoking a cigar, and gave us a vivid account of his experiences.
+We sent him over to England, and I heard that he was doing well.
+There is one sporting paper in England which is edited by a
+real sportsman. May he long live to inspire in others the courage
+of which he has given such a splendid example!
+
+
+
+
+XVI. Poperinghe
+
+
+
+For a long week the roar of guns had echoed incessantly in our
+corridors and wards, and a continuous stream of motor-lorries,
+guns, and ammunition waggons had rumbled past our doors;
+whilst at night the flash of the guns lit up the horizon with an
+angry glare. The flood of wounded had abated, and we were
+just beginning to get the hospital into some sort of shape when
+the order came to evacuate.
+
+It had been no easy task transforming bare rooms into
+comfortable wards, arranging for supplies of food and stores,
+and fitting a large staff into a cubic space totally inadequate to
+hold them. But wonderful things can be accomplished when
+everyone is anxious to do their share, and the most hopeless
+sybarite will welcome shelter however humble, and roll himself
+up in a blanket in any corner, when he is dead tired. For the first
+few days the rush of wounded had been so tremendous that all
+we could do was to try to keep our heads above water and not
+be drowned by the flood.
+
+But towards the end of the week the numbers diminished, not
+because there were not as many wounded, but because the
+situation was so critical that the Belgian authorities did not dare
+to leave any large number of wounded in Furnes. Supplies
+were coming out from England in response to urgent telegrams,
+and, through the kind offices of the Queen of the Belgians, we
+had been able to obtain a number of beds from the town, in
+addition to twenty which she had generously given to us herself.
+So that we were gradually beginning to take on the appearance
+of an ordinary hospital, and work was settling down into a
+regular routine. The sleepy little town of Furnes had been for
+some weeks in a state of feverish activity. After the evacuation
+of Antwerp and the retirement of the Belgian Army from Ostend,
+it had become the advanced base of the Belgian troops, and it
+was very gay with Staff officers, and of course packed with
+soldiers. The immense Grand Place lined with buildings, in
+many cases bearing unmistakable signs of a birth in Spanish
+times, was a permanent garage of gigantic dimensions, and the
+streets were thronged day and night with hurrying cars. We in
+the hospital hoped that the passage of the Yser would prove
+too much for the Germans, and that we should be left in peace,
+for we could not bear to think that all our labour could be thrown
+to the winds, and that we might have to start afresh in some
+other place. But one of the massed attacks which have formed
+such a prominent feature of this terrible war had temporarily
+rolled back the defence in the Dixmude district, and it was
+deemed unwise to submit the hospital to the risk of possible
+disaster.
+
+We were fortunate in having Dr. Munro's ambulance at our
+disposal, and in rather over two hours more than a hundred
+wounded had been transferred to the Red Cross train which lay
+at the station waiting to take them to Calais. An evacuation is
+always a sad business, for the relations between a hospital and
+its patients are far more than professional. But with us it was
+tragic, for we knew that for many of our patients the long
+journey could have only one conclusion. Only the worst cases
+were ever brought to us, in fact only those whose condition
+rendered the long journey to Calais a dangerous proceeding,
+and we felt that for many of them the evacuation order was a
+death warrant, and that we should never see them again. They
+were brave fellows, and made the best of it as they shook
+hands with smiling faces and wished us "Au revoir," for though
+they might die on the way they preferred that to the danger of
+falling into the hands of the Germans. And they were right. They
+knew as well as we did that we are not fighting against a
+civilized nation, but against a gang of organized savages.
+
+Three hours later we were mingling with the crowds who
+thronged the road, wondering with them where our heads would
+rest that night, and filled with pity at the terrible tragedy which
+surrounded us. Carts, wheelbarrows, perambulators, and in fact
+any vehicle which could be rolled along, were piled to overflowing
+with household goods. Little children and old men and women
+struggled along under loads almost beyond their powers, none
+of them knowing whither they went or what the curtain of fate
+would reveal when next it was drawn aside. It was a blind flight
+into the darkness of the unknown.
+
+Our orders were to make for Poperinghe, a little town lying
+about fifteen miles due south of Furnes, in the direction of
+Ypres. For the first ten miles we travelled along the main road to
+Ypres, a fine avenue running between glorious trees, and one
+of the chief thoroughfares of Belgium. Here we made our first
+acquaintance with the African troops, who added a touch of
+colour in their bright robes to the otherwise grey surroundings.
+They were encamped in the fields by the side of the road, and
+seemed to be lazily enjoying themselves seated round their
+camp-fires. At Oostvleteren we parted company with the main
+road and its fine surface, and for the next six miles we bumped
+and jolted along on a bad cross-road till our very bones rattled
+and groaned.
+
+There was no suggestion now of the horrors of war. Peaceful
+villages as sleepy as any in our own country districts appeared
+at frequent intervals, and easy prosperity was the obvious
+keynote of the well-wooded and undulating countryside. We
+were in one of the great hop districts, and the contrast with the
+flat and unprotected country round Furnes was striking. One
+might Almost have been in the sheltered hopfields of Kent. Little
+children looked up from their games in astonishment as we
+rolled by, and our response to their greetings was mingled with
+a silent prayer that they might be spared the terrible fate which
+had befallen their brothers and sisters in far-off Lou vain. The
+contrasts of war are amazing. Here were the children playing by
+the roadside, and the cattle slowly wending their way home, and
+ten miles away we could hear the roar of the guns, and knew
+that on those wasted fields men were struggling with savage
+fury in one of the bloodiest battles of the war.
+
+In the great square of Poperinghe the scene was brilliant in the
+extreme. Uniforms of every conceivable cut and colour rubbed
+shoulder to shoulder; ambulance waggons, guns, ammunition
+trains, and picketed horses all seemed to be mixed in inextricable
+confusion; while a squadron of French cavalry in their bright
+blue and silver uniforms was drawn up on one side of the
+square, waiting patiently for the orders which would permit
+them to go to the help of their hard-pressed comrades. It seemed
+impossible that we could find shelter here, for obviously every
+corner must have been filled by the throng of soldiers who
+crowded in the square. But we were quite happy, for had we
+not got Madame with us, and had her genius ever been known
+to fail, especially in the face of the impossible? Others might
+go without a roof, but not we, and others might go to bed
+supperless, but in some miraculous way we knew that we should
+sit down to a hot dinner. We were not deceived. The whole nursing
+staff was soon comfortably housed in a girls' school, while the men
+were allotted the outhouse of a convent, and there, rolled up in our
+blankets and with our bags for pillows, we slept that night as soundly
+as we should have done in our own comfortable beds in England.
+
+There was ample room in the courtyard for our heavily laden
+ambulances, for we had brought all our stores with us; and a
+big pump was a welcome sight, for grime had accumulated
+during the preceding twelve hours. By the side of the friendly
+pump, in a railed-off recess, a life-size image of Our Lady of
+Lourdes, resplendent in blue and gold, looked down with a
+pitying smile on a group of pilgrims, one of whom bore a little
+child in her arms; whilst a well-worn stone step spoke of the
+number of suppliants who had sought her aid.
+
+We had fasted for many hours, and while we were doing our
+part in unpacking the small store of food which we had brought
+with us, Madame, with her usual genius, had discovered on the
+outskirts of Poperinghe an obscure cafe, where for a small sum
+the proprietor allowed us to use his kitchen. There we were
+presently all seated round three tables, drinking coffee such as
+we had rarely tasted, and eating a curiously nondescript, but
+altogether delightful, meal. There were two little rooms, one
+containing a bar and a stove, the other only a table. Over the
+stove presided a lady whose novels we have all read, cooking
+bacon, and when I say that she writes novels as well as she
+cooks bacon it is very high praise indeed--at least we thought
+so at the time. Some genius had discovered a naval store in the
+town, and had persuaded the officer in charge to give us
+cheese and jam and a whole side of bacon, so that we fed like
+the gods. There was one cloud over the scene, for the terrible
+discovery was made that we had left behind in Furnes a large
+box of sausages, over the fate of which it is well to draw a veil;
+but Madame was not to be defeated even by that, and a wonderful
+salad made of biscuits and vinegar and oil went far to console
+us. And that reminds me of a curious episode in Furnes. For
+several days the huge store bottle of castor oil was lost. It was
+ultimately discovered in the kitchen, where, as the label was
+in English, it had done duty for days as salad oil! What is
+there in a name after all?
+
+We had not been able to bring with us all our stores, and as
+some of these were wanted two of us started back to Furnes
+late at night to fetch them. It was a glorious night, and one had
+the advantage of a clear road. We were driving northwards, and
+the sky was lit up by the flashes of the guns at Nieuport and
+Dixmude, whilst we could hear their dull roar in the distance. All
+along the road were encamped the Turcos, and their camp-
+fires, with the dark forms huddled around them, gave a picturesque
+touch to the scene. Half-way to Furnes the road was lit up
+by a motor-car which had caught fire, and which stood blazing
+in the middle of the road. We had some little difficulty in passing
+it, but when we returned it was only a mass of twisted iron by
+the roadside. There was no moon, but the stars shone out
+all the more brilliantly as we spun along on the great Ypres
+road. It was long after midnight when we reached the hospital,
+and it was not a little uncanny groping through its wards in the
+darkness. There is some influence which seems to haunt the
+empty places where men once lived, but it broods in redoubled
+force over the places where men have died. In those wards,
+now so dark and silent, we had worked for all the past days amid
+sights which human eyes should never have seen, and the
+groans of suffering we had heard seemed to echo through the
+darkness. We were glad when we had collected the stores
+we required and were again in the car on our way back to Poperinghe.
+
+Next morning we called at the Hotel de Ville in Poperinghe, and
+there we learnt that the Queen, with her usual thoughtfulness,
+was interesting herself on our behalf to find us a building in
+which we could make a fresh start. She had sent the Viscomtesse
+de S. to tell us that she hoped to shortly place at our disposal
+either a school or a convent. On the following day, however,
+we heard that the situation had somewhat settled, and an order
+came from General Mellis, the Chief of the Medical Staff,
+instructing us to return to Furnes. A few hours later found
+us hard at work again, putting in order our old home.
+
+There was one rather pathetic incident of our expedition to
+Poperinghe. Five nuns who had fled from Eastern Belgium--
+they had come, I think, from a convent near Louvain--had
+taken refuge in the school in Furnes in which we were established.
+When we were ordered to go to Poperinghe, they begged to
+be allowed to accompany us, and we took them with us in the
+ambulances. On our return they were so grateful that they asked
+to be allowed to show their gratitude by working for us in the
+kitchen, and for all the time we were at Furnes they were our
+devoted helpers. They only made one request, that if we left
+Furnes we would take them with us, and we promised that we
+would never desert them.
+
+
+
+
+XVII. Furnes Again
+
+
+
+The position of the hospital at Furnes was very different from
+that which it had held at Antwerp. There we were in a modern
+city, with a water-supply and modern sanitary arrangements.
+Here we were in an old Continental country town, or, in other
+words, in medieval times, as far as water and sanitation were
+concerned. For it is only where the English tourist has
+penetrated that one can possibly expect such luxuries. One
+does not usually regard him as an apostle of civilization, but he
+ought certainly to be canonized as the patron saint of continental
+sanitary engineering. As a matter of fact, in a country as flat as
+Belgium the science must be fraught with extraordinary difficulties,
+and they certainly seem to thrive very well without it. We were
+established in the Episcopal College of St. Joseph, a large
+boys' school, and not badly adapted to the needs of a hospital
+but for the exceptions I have mentioned. Our water-supply
+came, on a truly hygienic plan, from wells beneath the building,
+whilst we were entirely free from any worry about drains. There
+were none. However, it did not seem to affect either ourselves
+or our patients, and we all had the best of health, though we took
+the precaution of sterilizing our water.
+
+We were now the official advanced base hospital of the Belgian
+Army, and not merely, as in Antwerp, a free organization
+working by itself. The advantage of this arrangement was that
+we had a constant supply of wounded sent to us whenever
+there was any fighting going on, and that the evacuation of our
+patients was greatly facilitated. Every morning at ten o'clock
+Colonel Maestrio made the tour of our wards, and arranged for
+the removal to the base hospital at Dunkirk of all whom we
+wished to send away. It gave us the further advantage of
+special privileges for our cars and ambulances, which were
+allowed to go practically anywhere in search of the wounded
+with absolute freedom. Formerly we had owed a great deal to
+the assistance of the Belgian Croix Rouge, who had been very
+good in supplementing our supply of dressings, as well as in
+getting us army rations for the patients. This, of course, had all
+come to an end, and we now had to rely on our own resources.
+
+Our personnel had undergone considerable alteration, for while
+several of our original members had dropped out, we had
+joined forces with Dr. Hector Munro's Ambulance Corps, and
+four of their doctors had joined our medical staff. Dr. Munro and
+his party had worked in connection with the hospitals of Ghent
+till the German advance forced both them and ourselves to
+retreat to Ostend. There we met and arranged to carry on our
+work together at Furnes. The arrangement was of the greatest
+possible advantage to both of us, for it gave us the service of
+their splendid fleet of ambulances, and it gave them a base to
+which to bring their wounded. We were thus able to get the
+wounded into hospital in an unusually short space of time, and
+to deal effectively with many cases which would otherwise have
+been hopeless. Smooth coordination with an ambulance party
+is, in fact, the first essential for the satisfactory working of an
+advanced hospital. If full use is to be made of its advantages,
+the wounded must be collected and brought in with the minimum
+of delay, whilst it must be possible to evacuate at once all who
+are fit to be moved back to the base. In both respects we were
+at Furnes exceptionally well placed.
+
+We were established in a large straggling building of no
+attraction whatever except its cubic capacity. It was fairly new,
+and devoid of any of the interest of antiquity, but it presented
+none of the advantages of modern architecture. In fact, it was
+extremely ugly and extremely inconvenient, but it was large.
+Two of the largest classrooms and the refectory were converted
+into wards. At first the question of beds was a serious difficulty,
+but by the kind intervention of the Queen we were able to
+collect a number from houses in the town, whilst Her Majesty
+herself gave us twenty first-class beds with box-spring
+mattresses. Later on we got our supplies from England, and we
+could then find beds for a hundred patients. Even then we were
+not at the end of our capacity, for we had two empty classrooms,
+the floors of which we covered with straw, on which another fifty
+patients could lie in comfort until we could find better accommodation
+for them. We could not, of course, have fires in these rooms,
+as it would have been dangerous, but we warmed them by the
+simple plan of filling them with patients and shutting all the windows and
+doors. For the first few nights, as a matter of fact, we had to sleep
+in these rooms on straw ourselves, and in the greatest luxury. No
+one who has slept all his life in a bed would ever realize how
+comfortable straw is, and for picturesqueness has it an equal?
+
+I went into the Straw Ward on my round one wild and stormy
+night. Outside the wind was raging and the rain fell in torrents,
+and it was so dark that one had to feel for the door. Inside a
+dozen men lay covered up with blankets on a thick bed of
+straw, most of them fast asleep, while beside one knelt a nurse
+with a stable lantern, holding a cup to his lips. It was a picture
+that an artist might have come far to see--the wounded soldiers
+in their heavy coats, covered by the brown blankets; the nurse
+in her blue uniform and her white cap, the stable lantern throwing
+flickering shadows on the walls. It was something more than
+art, and as I glanced up at the crucifix hanging on the wall
+I felt that the picture was complete.
+
+Above the two larger wards was a huge dormitory, divided up
+by wooden partitions into some sixty cubicles, which provided
+sleeping accommodation for the bulk of our staff. They were
+arranged in four ranks, with passages between and washing
+arrangements in the passages, and the cubicles themselves
+were large and comfortable. It was really quite well planned,
+and was most useful to us, though ventilation had evidently not
+appealed to its architect. Two rows were reserved for the
+nurses, and in the others slept our chauffeurs and stretcher-bearers,
+with a few of the priests. Our friends were at first much shocked
+at the idea of this mixed crowd, but as a matter of fact it worked
+very well, and there was very little to grumble at. The only real
+disadvantage was the noise made by early risers in the morning,
+convincing us more than ever of the essential selfishness of
+the early bird. A few of us occupied separate rooms over in
+the wing which the priests had for the most part reserved for
+themselves, and these we used in the daytime as our offices.
+
+But the real sights of our establishment were our kitchen and
+our chef; we might almost have been an Oxford college. Maurice
+had come to us in quite a romantic way. One night we took in a soldier
+with a bullet wound of the throat. For some days he was pretty
+bad, but he won all our hearts by his cheerfulness and pluck.
+When at last he improved sufficiently to be able to speak, he
+told us that he was the assistant chef at the Hotel Metropole
+in Brussels. We decided that he ought to be kept in a warm,
+moist atmosphere for a long time, and he was installed in the
+kitchen. He was a genius at making miracles out of nothing,
+and his soups made out of bacon rind and old bones, followed
+by entrees constructed from bully beef, were a dream. He was
+assisted by the nuns from Louvain who had accompanied us
+to Poperinghe, and who now worked for us on the sole condition
+that we should not desert them. They were very picturesque
+working in the kitchen in their black cloaks and coifs. At meal-times
+the scene was a most animated one, for, as we had no one
+to wait on us, we all came in one after the other, plate in hand,
+while Maurice stood with his ladle and presided over the
+ceremonies, with a cheery word for everyone, assisted by the silent nuns.
+
+The getting of supplies became at times a very serious
+question. Needless to say, Furnes was destitute of anything to
+eat, drink, burn, or wear, and Dunkirk was soon in a similar
+case. We had to get most of our provisions over from England,
+and our milk came every morning on the Government transport,
+from Aylesbury. For some weeks we were very hard up, but the
+officer in charge of the naval stores at Dunkirk was very good to
+us, and supplied us with bully beef, condensed milk, cheese,
+soap, and many other luxuries till we could get further supplies
+from home. We used a considerable quantity of coal, and on
+one occasion we were faced by the prospect of an early famine,
+for Furnes and Dunkirk were empty. But nothing was ever too
+great a strain for the resources of our housekeeper. She
+discovered that there was a coal-heap at Ramscapelle, five
+miles away, and in a few hours an order had been obtained
+from the Juge d'Instruction empowering us to take the coal if we
+could get it, and the loan of a Government lorry had been
+coaxed out of the War Lords. The only difficulty was that for the
+moment the Germans were shelling the place, and it was too
+dangerous to go near even for coal; so the expedition had to be
+postponed until they desisted. It seemed to me the most
+original method of filling one's coal-cellar of which I had ever
+heard. And it was typical of a large number of our arrangements.
+There is something of the Oriental about the Belgians and the
+French. If we wanted any special favour, the very last thing we
+thought of doing was to go and ask for it. It was not that they
+were not willing to give us what we asked for, but they did
+not understand that method of approach. What we did was
+to go to breakfast with the Juge, or to lunch with the Minister,
+or to invite the Colonel to dinner. In the course of conversation
+the subject would be brought up in some indirect way till the
+interest of the great man had been gained; then everything
+was easy. And surely there is something very attractive about
+a system where everything is done as an act of friendship, and
+not as the soulless reflex of some official machine. It is easier
+to drink red wine than to eat red tape, and not nearly so wearing
+to one's digestion.
+
+As we were fifteen miles from Dunkirk, and as everything had to
+be brought out from there, transport was a serious problem.
+Every morning one of our lorries started for our seaport soon
+after nine, carrying the hospital mailbag and as many messages
+as a village carrier. The life of the driver was far more exciting
+than his occupation would suggest, and it was always a moot
+point whether or not he would succeed in getting back the
+same night. The road was of the usual Belgian type, with a
+paved causeway in the middle just capable of allowing two
+motors to pass, and on each side was a morass, flanked on
+the right by a canal and on the left by a field. The slightest
+deviation from the greasy cobbles landed the car in the mud,
+with quite a chance of a plunge into the canal. A constant
+stream of heavy army lorries tore along the road at thirty or
+more miles an hour, and as a rule absolutely refused to give
+way. It took a steady nerve to face them, encouraged as one
+was by numbers of derelicts in the field on the one side and half
+in the canal on the other. On one bridge a car hung for some
+days between heaven and earth, its front wheels caught over
+the parapet, and the car hanging from them over the canal--a
+heartening sight for a nervous driver. It was rarely that our lorry
+returned without some tale of adventure. The daily round, the
+common task, gave quite enough occupation to one member of
+the community.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII. Work At Furnes
+
+
+
+Our work at Furnes differed in many ways from that at Antwerp.
+All its conditions were rougher, and, as we had to deal with a
+number of patients out of all proportion to our size, it was
+impossible to keep any but a few special cases for any length of
+time. We admitted none but the most serious cases, such as
+would be instantly admitted to any London hospital, and when I
+mention that in five weeks we had just a thousand cases in our
+hundred beds, the pressure at which the work was carried on
+will be realized. There is no hospital in England, with ten times
+the number of beds, that has ever admitted to its wards
+anything like this number of serious surgical cases. We were
+essentially a clearing hospital, with this important proviso, that
+we could, when it was required, carry out at once the heaviest
+operative work, and retain special cases as long as we thought
+fit. Our object was always to get each patient into such a
+condition that he could be transferred back to the base without
+injury to his chances of recovery, and without undue pain, and I
+believe we saved the life of many a patient by giving him a
+night's rest in the Straw Ward, and sending him on next day
+with his wound properly dressed and supported. The cases
+themselves were of a far more severe type than those we had
+at Antwerp. There, indeed, I was astonished at the small
+amount of injury that had in many cases resulted from both
+shrapnel and bullet wounds, and it was certainly worthy of note
+that we had never once in our work there had to perform an
+amputation. At Furnes, we drew our patients from the line
+between Nieuport and Dixmude, where the fighting was for the
+most part at close range and of a most murderous nature.
+There were no forts, and the soldiers had little or no protection
+from the hail of high-explosive shells which the enemy poured
+upon them. In Nieuport and Dixmude themselves the fighting
+was frequently from house to house, the most deadly form of
+fighting known. The wounds we had to treat were correspondingly
+severe--limbs sometimes almost completely torn off, terrible
+wounds of the skull, and bullet wounds where large masses of
+the tissues had been completely torn away. It was difficult to
+see how human beings could survive such awful injuries, and,
+indeed, our death-roll was a long one. Added to this, the men
+had been working in the wet and the mud for weeks past. Their
+clothes were stiff with it, and such a thing as a clean wound was
+not to be thought of. Simple cases at Antwerp were here tedious
+and dangerous, and they required all the resources of nursing
+and of surgery that we could bring to bear upon them. Still,
+it was extraordinary what good results followed on common-sense
+lines of treatment, and we soon learnt to give up no case as
+hopeless. But each involved a great amount of work, first in
+operating and trying to reduce chaos to reason, and then in
+dressing and nursing. For everyone all round--surgeons,
+dressers, and nurses--it was real hard physical labour.
+
+Our rapid turnover of patients involved a large amount of
+manual labour in stretcher work, clearing up wards, and so on,
+but all this was done for us by our brancardiers, or stretcher-bearers.
+These were Belgians who for one reason or another could not
+serve with the army, and who were therefore utilized by the
+Government for purposes such as these. We had some eight
+of them attached to our hospital, and they were of the greatest
+use to us, acting as hospital orderlies. They were mostly
+educated men--schoolmasters and University teachers--but
+they were quite ready to do any work we might require at
+any hour of the day or night. They carried the patients to the
+theatre and to the wards, they cleaned the stretchers--a very
+difficult and unpleasant job--they tidied up the wards and scrubbed
+the floors, and they carried away all the soiled dressings and
+burned them. They were a fine set of men, and I do not know
+what we should have done without them.
+
+Work began at an early hour, for every case in the hospital
+required dressing, and, as we never knew what we should have
+to deal with at night, we always tried to get through the routine
+before lunch. At ten o'clock Colonel Maestrio arrived, with two of
+his medical officers, and made a complete round of the hospital
+with the surgeons in charge of the various cases. They took the
+greatest interest in the patients, and in our attempts to cure
+them. They would constantly spend an hour with me in the
+operating theatre, and after any exceptional operation they
+would follow the progress of the patient with the keenest
+interest. Many of the cases with which we had to deal required
+a certain amount of ingenuity in the reconstruction of what had
+been destroyed, so that surgery had often to be on rather
+original lines. What interested them most was the fixation of
+fractures by means of steel plates, which we adopted in all our
+serious cases. Apparently the method is very little used abroad,
+and as an operation it is distinctly spectacular, for in a few
+minutes a shapeless mass which the patient cannot bear to be
+touched is transformed into a limb almost as strong as the
+other, which can be moved about in any direction without fear of
+breaking, and, when the patient recovers consciousness,
+almost without discomfort. We almost always had an interested
+audience, professional, clerical, or lay, for the chauffeurs found
+much amusement in these feats of engineering.
+
+In the afternoon we almost always had some distinguished
+visitor to entertain, and it is one of my chief regrets that we
+never kept a visitors' book. Its pages would one day have been
+of the greatest interest. Twice every week the Queen of the
+Belgians came round our wards. She came quite simply, with
+one of her ladies and one of the Belgian medical officers, and
+no one could possibly have taken a deeper interest in the
+patients. Her father studied medicine as a hobby, and had,
+indeed, become a very distinguished physician, and she herself
+has had considerable training in medicine, so that her interest
+was a great deal more than that of an ordinary lay visitor. She
+was quite able to criticize and to appreciate details of nursing
+and of treatment. She always spoke to every patient, and she
+had a kind word for every one of them, Belgian, French, or even
+German, for we had a few Germans. There was something deeply
+touching in the scene. The dimly lit ward, with its crude furniture,
+the slim figure in black, bending in compassion over the rough
+fellows who would gladly have given their lives for her, and
+who now lay wounded in the cause in which she herself had
+suffered. The Germans may destroy Belgium, but they will never
+destroy the kingdom of its Queen. Sometimes the King came
+to see his soldiers--a tall, silent man, with the face of one who
+has suffered much, and as simple, as gentle, and as kindly as
+his Queen. It was good to see the faces light up as he entered
+a ward, to see heads painfully raised to gaze after no splendid
+uniform, but a man.
+
+One of our most distinguished and most welcome visitors was
+Madame Curie, the discoverer of radium. She brought her large
+X-ray equipment to Furnes for work amongst the wounded, and
+we persuaded her to stay with us for a week. One of our
+storerooms was rapidly fitted up as an impromptu radiographic
+department, the windows painted over and covered with thick
+paper, a stove introduced, and a dark-room contrived with the
+aid of a cupboard and two curtains. Electric current was
+obtained from a dynamo bolted on to the step of a twenty-horse-power
+car, and driven by a belt from the flywheel of the engine. The
+car stood out in the courtyard and snorted away, whilst we
+worked in the storeroom alongside. The coil and mercury
+break were combined in one piece, and the whole apparatus
+was skilfully contrived with a view to portability. Madame Curie
+was an indefatigable worker, and in a very short time had taken
+radiographs of all the cases which we could place at her
+disposal, and, indeed, we ransacked all the hospitals in Furnes,
+for when they heard of her arrival, they were only too glad to
+make use of the opportunity. Mademoiselle Curie developed
+the plates, and between them they produced photographs of
+the greatest utility to us.
+
+Considering its obvious utility, whether in war or in civil practice,
+it has always been a source of wonder to me that there is no
+such thing as a car designed and built with a view to radiography.
+Perhaps it exists, but if so, I have never met It only means the
+building into the frame of suitable dynamo, and the provision of
+means for storing the rest of the equipment. It would place an
+X-ray equipment at the disposal of ever cottage hospital, or
+even of a country-house, and it would place the cottage hospital,
+not to mention the country-house, at the disposal of the
+enterprising radiographer.
+
+As soon as our patients could be moved, we had to send them
+on to their base hospitals--the Belgians to Calais and the
+French to Dunkirk.
+
+From Calais the Belgians were brought over the Channel, and
+distributed all over England and Scotland. I had a postcard from
+one of them from Perth. The French were taken on in hospital
+ships to Cherbourg and other seaports along the coast. From
+Furnes they were all carried in hospital trains, and the scene at
+the station when a large batch of wounded was going off was
+most interesting. Only the worst cases were ever brought to our
+hospital; all the others were taken straight to the station, and
+waited there until a train was ready to take them on. Often they
+would be there for twelve hours, or even twenty-four, before
+they could be got on, and the train itself would be constantly
+shunted to let troops and ammunition go by, and might take
+twelve hours to reach its destination. There were no proper
+arrangements for the feeding of these men, all of whom were
+more or less badly wounded; and at first, when we heard at the
+hospital that a train was about to be made up, we took down all
+the soup and coffee we could manage to spare in big pails and
+jugs. But this was a mere makeshift, and was superseded very
+soon by a more up-to-date arrangement. A proper soup-kitchen
+was established at the station, with huge boilers full of soup and
+coffee always ready, and after that it was never necessary for a
+wounded soldier to leave Furnes hungry. All this was due to the
+energy and resource of Miss Macnaughtan, the authoress, who
+took it up as her special charge. She had a little passage
+screened off, and in this were fitted up boilers for coffee and
+soup, tables for cutting up meat and vegetables, and even a
+machine for cutting up the bread. It was all most beautifully
+arranged, and here she worked all day long, preparing for the
+inevitable crowd of wounded which the night would bring. How it
+was all managed was a mystery to me, for there was not enough
+food in Furnes to feed a tame cat, let alone a trainload of famished
+soldiers, and I am looking anxiously for her next book in the
+hopes of finding the solution.
+
+The trains themselves were well equipped, though nothing to
+the hospital trains of England. The more severe cases were
+carried in long cars on a double row of stretchers, and they
+looked very comfortable on a cold night, with their oil-lamps and
+a coke stove in the centre of each car. A stretcher is, perhaps,
+not exactly a bed of roses for a wounded man, but when one
+considers what pain is involved in moving a man who is badly
+wounded, there is obviously a great advantage in placing him
+on a stretcher once for all on the battle-field, and never moving
+him again until he can be actually placed in bed in a hospital.
+On the train the men were looked after by the priests, splendid
+fellows who never seemed tired of doing all they could for the
+soldiers. One found the Belgian priest everywhere--in the
+trenches, in the hospitals, and in the trains--unobtrusive,
+always cheerful, always ready to help. From the brave Archbishop
+Mercier to the humblest village cure, regardless of their comfort
+and careless of their lives, they have stood by their people in
+the hour of their trial. May their honour be great in the hour of
+Belgium's triumph!
+
+
+
+
+XIX. Furnes--The Town
+
+
+
+Like so many of the cities of Belgium, Furnes is a town of the
+past. To stand in the great square, surrounded by buildings
+which would delight the heart of any artist, is to travel back
+through three centuries of time. Spain and the Renaissance
+surround us, and we look instinctively towards the Pavilion for
+the soldiers of Philip, or glance with apprehension at the door of
+the Palais de Justice for the sinister form of Peter Titelmann the
+Inquisitor. Around this very square marched the procession of
+the Holy Office, in all the insolent blasphemy of its power, and
+on these very stones were kindled the flames that were to
+destroy its victims. But all these have gone; the priest and his
+victim, the swaggering bravo and the King he served, have
+gone to their account, and Furnes is left, the record of a time
+when men built temples like angels and worshipped in them like
+devils.
+
+The immense square, with the beautiful public buildings which
+surround it, speaks of a time when Fumes was an important
+town. As early as the year 850 it is said that Baldwin of the Iron
+Arm, the first of the great Counts of Flanders, had established a
+fortress here to withstand the invasion of the Normans. After
+that Furnes appears repeatedly with varying fortunes in the
+turbulent history of the Middle Ages, until in the thirteenth
+century it was razed to the ground by Robert of Artois. In the
+next three hundred years, however, it must have entirely
+recovered its position, for in the days of the Spanish Fury it was
+one of the headquarters of the Inquisition and of the Spanish
+Army, and there is no town in Belgium upon which the Spanish
+occupation has left a greater mark. Since then, of no commercial
+or political importance, it has lived the life of a dull country town,
+and tradition says that there is plenty of solid wealth stored by
+its thrifty inhabitants behind the plain house-fronts which line
+its quiet streets.
+
+From the centre of the square one can see all that there is to be
+seen of Furnes. The four sides are lined by beautiful old houses
+whose decorated fronts and elaborate gables tell of the
+Renaissance and of Spanish days. Behind the low red roofs
+tower the churches of St. Walburga and St. Nicholas, dwarfing
+the houses which nestle at their base. In the corners of the
+square are public buildings, small when compared with those of
+Bruges and Ypres, but unsurpassed in exquisite detail of
+design. Behind one corner rises the tall belfry without which no
+Flemish town would be complete. On an autumn evening when
+the sun is setting, when the red roofs glow with a deeper
+crimson, and the tall churches catch the sun's last rays on their
+old brick walls, there can be few more perfect pictures than the
+square of Furnes.
+
+The two oldest buildings in the square stand at the ends of the
+eastern side. At the north end is the Pavilion des Officiers
+espagnols, once the Town Hall, and, in the days of the Spanish
+occupation, the headquarters of the army for the district. It is an
+old Flemish building, solidly built, with high-pitched roof, and
+windows framed in ornamental stonework, ending in a big
+square tower with battlements and little turrets at its corners. A
+short outside staircase leads up to the entrance. The whole
+building gives the impression that in the days when it was built
+the Town Hall was also the Fortress, and that the mayor had
+duties more strenuous than the eating of dinners. At the other
+end of the eastern side stands the old Halle aux Vins, where the
+night-watchmen had their quarters, a fine old gabled house with
+a loggia reached by a flight of steps in the centre, a row of plain
+stone columns supporting the floors above.
+
+Directly opposite is the north-west corner of the square, with the
+Palais de Justice on the right and the Hotel de Ville on the left.
+Both date from the Spanish occupation, but they are very
+different in their style of architecture. The first is classical and
+severe, the second has all the warmth of the Renaissance. The
+Hotel de Ville is an elaborately decorated building, with two
+exquisite gables and a steep roof surmounted by a little
+octagonal tower. The loggia below, standing out from the
+building and supporting a balcony above, is perhaps its most
+charming feature, both for the beauty of its proportions and the
+delicacy of its carved stone balustrades. Inside, the rooms are
+as they were three hundred years ago, and the wonderful
+hangings of Cordova leather in the council chamber are still
+intact. Beside the Hotel de Ville the straight lines of the Palais
+de Justice, with its pillars and its high narrow windows, form a
+striking contrast. It was here, in the large room on the first floor,
+that the Inquisition held its awful court, and here were the
+instruments of torture with which it sought to enforce its will.
+Behind the Palais rises the tall belfry, a big square tower from
+which springs an octagonal turret carrying an elaborate
+campanile. There is a quaint survival on this belfry, for upon it
+the town crier has a little hut. He is a cobbler, and from below
+one can hear the tap-tap of his hammer as he plies his trade.
+But at night he calls out the hours to the town below, together
+with any information of interest, concluding with the assurance
+that he and his wife are in good health. The office has
+descended from father to son from the earliest days of the
+history of Furnes, and its holder has always been a cobbler. Till
+early in last November the record was unbroken, but, alas the
+fear of German shells was too much for the cobbler, and he is
+gone.
+
+Furnes is a town of contrasts, and though both its churches
+were built by the wonderful architects of the fourteenth century,
+there could hardly be two buildings more diverse. Behind the
+line of red roofs on the east of the square rises the rugged
+tower of St. Nicholas, a great square mass of old and weather-
+beaten brick, unfinished like so many of the Belgian towers, but
+rough, massive, and grand, like some rude giant. On the north,
+behind the Palais de Justice and the belfry, stands St.
+Walburga, with the delicate tracery of her flying buttresses and
+her spire fine as a needle. There is something fitting in the
+rugged simplicity which commemorates the grand old Bishop,
+and in the exquisite fragility of the shrine of the virgin saint. The
+double flying buttresses of St. Walburga, intersecting in mid-air,
+and apparently defying the laws of gravity, are as delicate a
+dream as the mind of architect could conceive, and they give to
+the whole an airy grace which cannot be described. The church
+was planned six hundred years ago on a gigantic scale, in the
+days when men built for the worship of God and not for the
+accommodation of an audience, and for six hundred years the
+choir stood alone as a challenge to future generations to
+complete what had been so gloriously begun. Only seven years
+ago the transept was added, and to the credit of its builders it is
+worthy to stand beside the choir. One wonders how many hundred
+years may have passed before the vision of the first great architect
+is complete. It is built for the most part of red brick, the rich
+red brick of Belgium, which grows only more mellow with age.
+Inside, the tall pillars of a dark grey stone support at a great
+height a finely groined roof of the same red brick, lit by a
+clerestory so open that one wonders how it can carry the weight
+of the roof above. The tall windows of the transept, reaching
+almost from the floor to the roof, with their delicate tracery,
+carry on the same effect of airiness, while their light is softened
+by the really beautiful stained glass which they frame. The richly
+carved choir-stalls of dark mahogany and the fine organ furnish
+an interior of which any town in England might well be proud.
+And all this magnificence is in a little Flemish town of some
+six thousand inhabitants.
+
+One is brought suddenly face to face with the tremendous
+difference which exists between the Protestant and the Catholic
+conception of what a church is and what it is for. To the one it is
+a place where men meet for mutual support and instruction, for
+united worship; to the other it is a place where men meet God.
+To the one some organized service is necessary; the other only
+requires the stones on which to kneel. The one will only go to
+church--in fact, he will only find his church open at certain
+appointed times; for the other it is only closed with darkness. Of
+course, I am using the words Protestant and Catholic to indicate
+broad conceptions of religion, and not as defining definite
+bodies of men; but even of those who call themselves by these
+names what I have said is largely true. And this difference in
+conception is reflected in the churches which they build. For the
+one a simple building will suffice which will seat in comfort those
+who may come; the other, though he alone should ever enter it,
+will raise to heaven the mightiest temple which mortal hands
+can frame.
+
+Fumes still carries on a tradition of medieval times--the
+strange procession which passes through its streets and across
+the great square on the last Sunday in July. Its origin, in the
+twelfth century, is unknown, though many legends are woven
+around it. It is a long procession, in which are represented
+many of the episodes in the story of the Christ, some in
+sculptured groups of figures, some by living actors. Before each
+group walks a penitent, barefoot and heavily veiled in black
+gown and hood, carrying an inscription to explain the group
+which follows. Abraham appears with Isaac, Moses with the
+serpent, Joseph and Mary, the Magi, and the flight into Egypt.
+Then come incidents from the life of Jesus, and the great
+tragedy of its close. The Host and its attendant priests conclude
+the procession. It is all very primitive and bizarre, but behind it
+there is a note of reality by which one cannot but be moved. For
+the figures concealed beneath the black hoods and dragging
+along the heavy wooden crosses are not actors; they are men
+and women who have come, many of them, long distances to
+Furnes, in the hope that by this penance they may obtain the
+forgiveness they desire.
+
+
+
+
+XX. A Journey
+
+
+
+The hospital had already been established in Furnes for ten
+days, and even in that time we had once had to escape to
+Poperinghe before the German advance, when, after a short
+visit to England, I left London to rejoin my friends on the last
+Friday in October. Crossing to the Continent is not at any time
+pleasant, and the addition of submarines and mines scarcely
+adds to its charms. But Government had certainly done their
+best to make it attractive, for when we arrived at Dover on
+Friday night we found a comfortable boat waiting to take us
+over in the morning. We spent the night soundly asleep in her
+cabins, without the anxiety of feeling that we might miss her if
+we did not get up in time, and after an excellent breakfast we
+felt ready for anything. We were late in starting, for the Anglo-
+Belgian Ambulance Corps was going over, and their ambulances
+had to be got on board. We watched them being neatly picked
+up in the slings and planted side by side on deck. At half-past
+eight they were all on board, and we started off.
+
+There was a moderate sea running, but our three screws made
+light work of it, and in an hour we were half-way over to our
+destination, Dunkirk. We were sitting in our cabin talking when
+suddenly the engines stopped, and there was considerable
+commotion on deck. We looked out to see what was the matter,
+and there met our eyes a sight which we are likely to remember
+--a huge man-of-war sinking. She was down by the stern, so
+far that every now and then the waves broke over her, and it
+was evident that she would soon go under. A submarine had
+attacked her an hour before, and struck her with two torpedoes.
+The first destroyed her screws, and she was then an easy prey;
+the second entered her saloon in the stern. She was the
+Hermes, an old vessel, and of no great value at the present
+day, but it was tragic to see a great cruiser expiring, stabbed in
+the dark. Thanks to her buoyancy, she was only sinking slowly,
+and there was ample time for the whole of her crew to escape.
+Very different would be the fate of an unarmed vessel, for the
+explosion of a torpedo would probably blow such a large hole in
+the thin steel plates that she would go to the bottom like a
+stone. To torpedo a merchantman simply means the cold-blooded
+murder of the crew, for their chances of escape would be almost
+negligible, whilst it is impossible to find words to describe the
+attempts which have been made to sink hospital ships. About
+the last there is a degree of callous inhumanity remarkable even
+for Germany, for how could doctors and nurses make any efforts
+to save their own lives when it would be impossible for them to
+do anything to all at save the lives of their patients? And yet
+these things are not the unconsidered acts of a moment; they
+are all part of the .campaign of frightfulness which has been
+so carefully planned for years, the consummation of the
+doctrines which learned professors have proclaimed for so
+long and with such astonishing success.
+
+The order was given for our boats to be lowered, and down they
+went all six of them, manned partly by the crew and partly by
+the Ambulance Corps. We were surrounded by torpedo-boats,
+British and French, and most of the crew of the Hermes had
+already been transferred to them. A few minutes later there was
+a cheer, and we saw the Captain step down into one of the
+boats, the last man to leave his ship. Our boats had picked up
+twenty or so of the men, and the problem now was to get them
+on board again. A moderate sea was running, but it required all
+the skill of our sailors to haul them up without mishap. Standing
+by as we were, the ship rolled considerably, and several times
+one of the boats was within an ace of being broken up against
+her side. To get a boat out from a big liner in a heavy sea must
+be an almost miraculous feat, whilst to get her back again must
+be a sheer impossibility. As it was, it took us at least an hour to
+get those six boats on board. All this time four torpedo-boats
+were racing in circles round and round us, on the lookout for the
+submarine, and ready to cut it down if it should appear. Indeed,
+a report went round that a torpedo was actually fired at us, but
+passed underneath the ship on account of her shallow draught.
+Standing at rest, we would have been an easy target, and but
+for our friends the torpedo-boats we should very likely have
+been attacked. It is not a good plan to hang about in the
+Channel just now.
+
+Meanwhile the Hermes was steadily sinking. By the time all her
+crew were off her stern was awash, and in another half-hour
+she had a very marked list to port. She slowly, almost imperceptibly,
+listed more and more, and then the end came with startling
+suddenness. With a slow and gentle roll she heeled over till
+she was completely on her side and her great funnels under
+water; she remained there for a moment, and then slowly turned
+turtle and gradually sank stern first. For a long time about
+twenty feet of her nose remained above water, then this slowly
+sank and disappeared. It was all so quiet that it seemed like
+some queer dream. The fires must have been drawn with great
+promptness, for there was no explosion as her funnels went
+under, though we were standing some way off to be clear of
+flying fragments. She had been stabbed in the dark, and she
+passed away without a murmur.
+
+There is something very moving in the end of a great vessel. It
+is so hard to believe that a thing of such vast bulk, and with
+organs of such terrific power, should be so utterly helpless
+because of a mere hole in her side. It is like watching the death
+of a god. We make such a turmoil about the end of our puny
+lives, and that great giant slides away into darkness without a
+murmur. Ah, but you will say, a man is of far more value than a
+ship. Is he? Is any single man in this world worth as much as
+the Titanic? And if so, how? He can make wealth, but so could
+she. He could bring happiness to others, and so could she. I
+have yet to find any ground on which any man can be put up in
+competition with that vessel in sheer worth to the world, and I
+am not speaking in any low sense of values. For I suppose the
+greatest man who ever lived might feel that his life was well
+spent if he had brought two continents nearer together. It was
+for that that she was created. The hard fact is that there are
+very few indeed of us, in spite of all the noise we make, who are
+worth to the world a thousand pounds, and if she could sell the
+bulk of us for that she would be positively drunk with fortune.
+
+But, you will say, a ship has no soul. Are you quite so sure
+about that? Most people will maintain that their bodies contain a
+soul, and then they proceed to build up these same bodies with
+bread and bacon, and even beer, and in the end they possess
+bodies constructed without any shadow of doubt out of these
+ingredients. And if ten thousand men have toiled night and day,
+in blazing furnace and in dark mine, to build a mighty vessel, at
+the cost of years of labour, at the cost of pain and death, is not
+that vessel a part of them as much as their poor bodies, and do
+not their souls live in it as much as in their flesh and blood? We
+speak of the resurrection of the Body, and superior people
+smile at an idea so out-of-date and unscientific. To me the body
+is not mere flesh and blood, it is the whole complex of all that a
+man has thought and lived and done, and when it arises there
+will arise with it all that he has toiled for on earth, all that he has
+gained, and all that he has created by the sweat of his brow and
+the hunger of his soul. The world is not the dust-heap of the
+centuries, but only their storehouse.
+
+It was late when we reached Furnes after a freezing drive in the
+dark, but all our thoughts were overshadowed by the tragedy
+we had seen. We felt that we had been present at the burial of
+a god.
+
+
+
+
+XXI. The Ambulance Corps
+
+
+
+One of the most difficult problems for a medical service in war is
+the recovery of the wounded from the field of battle and their
+carriage back to hospital. In the old days men fought out a
+battle in a few hours, and the field at the end of the day was left
+to the conqueror. Then the doctors could go forward and attend
+to the wounded on the spot without any special danger to
+themselves. A man might lie out all night, but he would be
+certain to be picked up next day. But in this war everything is
+changed. It is one continuous siege, with the result that the
+removal of the wounded is a matter of extraordinary difficulty
+and danger. I have met with one officer who has been in a
+trench out at the extreme front for two and a half months.
+During the whole of that time he has never seen a German, and
+the nearest German trench is just one hundred yards away!
+Shell and shot have been pouring over his head all that time,
+and to raise one's head above the ground would be to court
+instant death.
+
+Between the trenches the ground is a quagmire, and any
+advance by either side is out of the question. But a time will
+come when the ground is just solid enough for a man to stand,
+there will be a desperate struggle for a few yards of ground,
+again both sides will subside into new trenches; but now
+between those trenches will lie perhaps some hundreds of
+wounded, and how in the world are they to be got? This is the
+problem with which an ambulance is everywhere faced--the
+recovery of the wounded from disputed ground. It was to
+grapple with difficulties like these that the rules of the Geneva
+Convention were framed, so that men wearing a Red Cross on
+their arms might be able to go where no combatant of either
+side dare venture, and succour the wounded, whether they
+were friend or foe, in safety both for themselves and for the
+wounded. It is, after all, possible to fight as gentlemen.
+
+Or at least it was until a few months ago. Since then we have
+had a demonstration of "scientific" war such as has never
+before been given to mankind. Now, to wear a Red Cross is
+simply to offer a better mark for the enemy's fire, and we only
+wore them in order that our own troops might know our business
+and make use of our aid. A hospital is a favourite mark for the
+German artillery, whilst the practice of painting Red Crosses on
+the tops of ambulance cars is by many people considered unwise,
+as it invites any passing aeroplane to drop a bomb. But the
+Germans have carried their systematic contempt of the rules of war
+so far that it is now almost impossible for our own men to
+recognize their Red Crosses. Time after time their Red Cross
+cars have been used to conceal machine-guns, their flags have
+floated over batteries, and they have actually used stretchers to
+bring up ammunition to the trenches. Whilst I was at Furnes two
+German spies were working with an ambulance, in khaki uniforms,
+bringing in the wounded. They were at it for nearly a week before
+they were discovered, and then, by a ruse, they succeeded in
+driving straight through the Belgian lines and back to their
+own, Red Cross ambulance, khaki and all. The problems, then, that
+have to be faced by an ambulance corps in the present war are
+fairly perplexing, and they demand a degree of resource and
+cool courage beyond the ordinary. That these qualities are
+possessed by the members of the ambulance corps of which
+Dr. Hector Munro and Lady Dorothie Feilding are the leading
+members is merely a matter of history. They have been in as
+many tight corners in the last few months as many an old and
+seasoned veteran, and they have invariably come out triumphant.
+
+They started in Ghent under the Belgian Red Cross with a party
+of four surgeons, five women, and three men for the stretchers,
+and two chauffeurs to drive the two ambulances. Now they have
+grown into an organization which takes on a great part of the
+ambulance work of the Belgian Army. At Ghent they were attached
+to the big Red Cross hospital in the Flandria Palace Hotel,
+and at first it was dull, for most of the fighting was around Antwerp,
+and the wounded were taken there. We were in Antwerp just then,
+and it was by no means dull. We shared Alost and Termonde
+as a common hunting-ground, and we several times had a visit from
+Dr. Munro in the Boulevard Leopold. In fact, we were discussing
+the possibility of arranging to work together when the crash came and
+Antwerp fell.
+
+For the next few days the ambulance corps had enough work
+and ran enough risks to satisfy even the members of that
+notorious organization. The Germans were coming on with
+great rapidity, and if there is one dangerous job, it is to pick up
+the wounded of a retreating army. But here the interest for an
+English ambulance was doubled, for the British Army was
+covering the retreat of the Belgians and the French. On
+Sunday, the 11th of October, they were asked to go out to
+Melle, four miles south-east of Ghent, to help with some French
+wounded, and, after spending some time there, they met the
+British Staff, and were asked to help them in their retreat
+through Zwynarde, a town on the Scheldt about four miles
+south of Ghent and the same distance from Melle. It was a
+dangerous undertaking, as the intention was to blow up the
+bridge which crosses the Scheldt at Zwynarde and to fight a
+retreating battle covering the retirement of our allies. The bridge
+was to be blown up at ten o'clock that evening, and though it
+was only four miles away, it was already dark and a mist was
+rising from the river. The main roads were in the hands of the
+Germans, and there was nothing for it but to get across by a
+small side-road. They started off in the mist, and promptly lost
+their way. It is a pleasing situation to be lost in the dark
+somewhere very close to the enemy's lines when you know that
+the only available bridge is just going to be blown up. A thick
+mist had risen all around, and they were midway between two
+batteries--British and German--engaged in an artillery duel.
+The crash of the guns and the scream of the shells overhead
+filled the darkness with terror. But there was nothing for it but to
+go straight on, and though they must have gone right through
+the German lines and out again, they reached the bridge just
+ten minutes before it was blown into the air.
+
+We all met at Ostend, and decided to join forces at Furnes, and
+it worked out as a splendid arrangement for both parties.
+Though our organizations remained entirely distinct, we worked
+together, and they had the advantage of a hospital to which
+they could always bring their patients, whilst we had the
+services of the smartest ambulance corps on the Continent.
+The qualities required for the satisfactory working of a hospital
+and the successful running of an ambulance are so distinct that
+I am sure that the ideal arrangement is to have two entirely
+distinct organizations working in harmony.
+
+The position of an ambulance up at the front is always a
+delicate one, for as it moves about from place to place its
+members have opportunities of picking up information about the
+position and movements of the troops of a very confidential
+nature. It was therefore a great advantage to Dr. Munro when
+his party was joined by M. de Broqueville, the son of the
+Minister for War; for it meant that they would have full
+information as to where wounded were likely to require their
+help, and that they possessed the full confidence of the Belgian
+authorities. Their position and our own had been very greatly
+affected by the fortunes of the war, for the Belgian Croix Rouge
+and Army Medical Services were for the moment in abeyance,
+and instead of obtaining from them the help which had hitherto
+been so generously given, we had now to undertake their work
+and to rely entirely on our own resources. We had not to wait
+long for an opportunity to show what we could do. The Belgian
+Army, supported by a certain number of French troops, made
+its final stand on the line of the Yser, the little river which runs
+from Ypres through Dixmude and Nieuport to the sea. From this
+position they have never since been shaken, but they have
+never had to withstand more desperate attacks than those
+which took place in the end of October. The centre of these was
+Dixmude, and here the Germans threw against the little remnant
+of the Belgian Army forces which might have been expected to
+shatter it at a blow. Their efforts culminated in one of the fiercest
+and bloodiest engagements of the whole war, and at the height
+of the engagement word came that there were wounded in Dixmude,
+and that ambulances were urgently required to get them out.
+Getting wounded out of a town which is being shelled is not
+exactly a joke, and when the town is in rapid process of annihilation
+it almost becomes serious. But this was what the Corps had
+come out for, and two ambulances and an open car started
+off at once. As far as Oudecappelle the road was crowded with
+motor transport waggons carrying supplies of food and ammunition
+to the troops, but beyond that it was empty, unless one counts
+the shells which were falling on it in a steady hail.
+
+Every now and then a Jack Johnson would fall and leave a hole
+in which one could bury a motor, and, apart from the shells, the
+holes made driving risky. There was over a mile of the road in
+this unhealthy state, and entirely exposed to the enemy's guns,
+before any shelter could be obtained; but the wounded must be
+fetched, and the cars pushed on as fast as they dared to drive.
+They were suddenly pulled up by an appalling obstacle. A
+Belgian battery advancing along the road to the front only
+twenty minutes before had been struck by a big shell. Several
+of the gunners were horribly mangled; ten horses lay dead,
+most of them in fragments; the gun was wrecked, and all its
+equipment scattered about the road. It was some minutes
+before the remaining soldiers could clear the road sufficiently for
+the cars to pass.
+
+Dixmude itself was a roaring furnace, and shells were pouring
+into it in all directions. Practically every house had been
+damaged, many were totally demolished, and many more were
+on fire. The wounded were in the Town Hall on the square, and
+shells were bursting all over it. The upper portion was
+completely destroyed, and the church close by was blazing
+furiously, and must have set fire to the Town Hall soon after. On
+the steps lay a dead Marine, and beside him stood a French
+surgeon, who greeted them warmly. The wounded were in a
+cellar, and if they were not got out soon, it was obvious that
+they would be burned alive. Inside the hall were piles of
+bicycles, loaves of bread, and dead soldiers, all in gruesome
+confusion. In the cellar dead and wounded were lying together.
+The wounded had all to be carried on stretchers, for everyone
+who could crawl had fled from that ghastly inferno, and only
+those who have shifted wounded on stretchers can appreciate
+the courage it requires to do it under shell fire. At last they were
+all packed into the ambulances, and even as they left the
+building with the last, a shell struck it overhead and demolished
+one of the walls. How they ever got out of Dixmude alive is
+beyond the ken of a mere mortal, but I suppose it was only
+another manifestation of the Star which shines so brightly over
+the fortunes of the Munro Ambulance.
+
+How high is the appreciation of the Belgian Government for
+their work is shown in the fact that three of the lady members of
+the Corps have just been decorated with the Order of Leopold
+--one of the highest honours which Belgium has to confer. It is
+not every honour which is so well earned.
+
+
+
+
+XXII. Pervyse--The Trenches
+
+
+
+This is indeed the strangest of all wars, for it is fought in the
+dark. Eyes are used, but they are the eyes of an aeroplane
+overhead, or of a spy in the enemy's lines. The man who fights
+lives underground, or under water, and rarely sees his foe.
+There is something strangely terrible, something peculiarly
+inhuman, in the silent stealth of this war of the blind. The
+General sits in a quiet room far behind the lines, planning a
+battle he will never see. The gunner aims by level and compass
+with faultless precision, and hurls his awful engines of
+destruction to destroy ten miles away a house which is to him
+only a dot on a map. And the soldier sitting in his trench hears
+the shells whistling overhead and waits, knowing well that if he
+appeared for one instant above that rampart of earth he would
+be pierced by a dozen bullets from rifles which are out of his
+sight.
+
+It is a war in the dark, and by far the most important of its
+operations are carried on, its battles are fought, in the literal
+sense of the word, underground. Perhaps the next war will be
+fought not merely underground, but deep in the bowels of the
+earth, and victory will rest, not with the finest shots or the expert
+swordsmen, but with the men who can dig a tunnel most quickly.
+The trenches may be cut by some herculean plough, deep tunnels
+may be dug by great machines, and huge pumping engines may
+keep them dry. Our engineers have conquered the air, the water,
+and the land, but it is still with picks and spades that our soldiers
+dig themselves into safety.
+
+At Furnes the nearest point to us of the fighting line was
+Pervyse, and as the Ambulance Corps had a dressing-station
+there, we often went out to see them and the soldiers in the
+trenches close by. But the Belgian line was most effectively
+protected by an agency far more powerful than any trench, for
+over miles and miles of land spread the floods with which the
+Belgians, by breaking down the dykes, had themselves flooded
+the country. The floods were a protection, but they were also a
+difficulty, since they made actual trenches an impossibility. No
+ordinary pumps could have kept them dry. So they had built
+huts of earth behind a thick earth bank, and partly sunk in the
+very low embankment, only two or three feet above the fields,
+on which the railway ran. They were roofed with boards covered
+again with earth and sods, and behind each was a little door by
+which one could crawl in. Inside, the floor was covered with a
+bed of straw, and a bucket with holes in its sides and full of red-hot
+coke did duty as a stove, while narrow loopholes served for ventilation
+and for light, and were to be used for firing from in the event of an
+attack. Of course the huts were very cramped, but they were at
+least warm, they gave protection from the weather, and above
+all they were safe. The men only occupied them as a matter of
+fact for short periods of one or two days at a time, a fresh guard
+coming out from Fumes to take their places.
+
+These huts, and all covered trenches, are only safe from
+shrapnel exploding in the air or near by. No ordinary trench is
+safe from a shell falling upon it; but this, as a matter of fact, has
+scarcely ever happened. For shells are as a rule fired from
+some considerable distance, and in most cases the opposing
+lines of trenches are so close together that there would be great
+danger of sending a shell into the back of your own trench, the
+most deadly disaster that can happen. The trenches are often
+so close together that their occupants can talk to one another,
+and a considerable amount of camaraderie may spring up.
+
+I know of one instance where a private arrangement was made
+that they would not shoot on either side. One day a man on our
+side was wounded, and there was great annoyance till a note
+was thrown across apologizing profusely, and explaining that it
+was done by a man in a trench behind who did not know of the
+compact! A few days later a message came to say that an
+important officer was coming to inspect the German trench, and
+that they would be obliged to fire, but that they would give due
+warning by three shots fired in quick succession. The shots
+were fired, and our men lay low, under a storm of bullets, till
+firing ceased, and another message arrived to say that the
+danger was past. We really are queer animals!
+
+Behind the trenches at Pervyse the fields were positively riddled
+with shot-holes. In one space, not more than twenty yards
+square, we counted the marks of over a hundred shells. The
+railway station was like a sieve, and most of the houses in the
+little town were absolutely destroyed. I do not believe that there
+was a house in the place which had not been hit, and the
+number of shells that must have rained on that small area
+would have sufficed not so many years ago for the siege of a
+large town. The church was destroyed beyond any possibility of
+repair. The roof was gone entirely, and large portions of the
+walls; a great piece of the tower had been blown clean out, and
+the tower itself was leaning dangerously. The bombardment of
+the church must have been terrific, for even the heavy pillars of
+the aisle had been snapped across. Of the altar only the solid
+stones remained, surrounded by fragments of what had once
+been the stained glass of the apse, and the twisted remains of
+the great brass candlesticks which had stood beside the altar.
+Only a few weeks ago this was an old parish church of singular
+beauty. Now even the graves in the churchyard have been torn
+open by the shells. These few battered walls, these heaps of
+stone and brick, are all that remain of a prosperous village and
+its ancient church.
+
+The dressing station of the Ambulance Corps was one of their
+most daring and successful ventures. At first it was placed
+close to the trenches and just behind the railway station, in the
+house of the village chemist. At least there were evidences in
+the existence of portions of walls, roof, and floors that it had
+once been a house, and the chemist had left a few bottles
+behind to indicate his trade. But I do not think that anyone but a
+member of the Corps would have ever thought of living there.
+There was plenty o ventilation, of course, since there were no
+windows left, part of the roof had gone, and the walls were
+riddled with holes through which shells had passed clean
+across the building. It could hardly be described as a desirable
+residence, but it had one incomparable advantage: it possessed
+a cellar. A couple of mattresses and a few blankets converted it
+into a palace, whilst the limits of luxury were reached when there
+arrived a new full-sized enamelled bath which one of the
+soldiers had discovered and hastened to present as a mark
+of gratitude. There was no water-supply, of course, and I do
+not think that there was a plug, but those were mere trifles.
+How such a white elephant ever found its way to Pervyse none
+of us will ever know. I do not believe that there was another for
+twenty miles around.
+
+In this strange residence--it could hardly be called a house--
+lived two of the lady members of the Corps. They were relieved
+from time to time, two others coming out to take their places,
+and every day they had visits from the ambulances which came
+out to pick up the wounded. A room on the ground floor was
+used during the day, partly as a living-room, partly as a surgery,
+and here were brought any soldiers wounded in this part of the
+lines. At night they retired to the cellar, as the house itself was
+far too dangerous. The Germans shelled Pervyse almost every
+night, and sometimes in the day as well, and this particular
+house was the most exposed of any in the town. But shells
+were not the only trouble, and when a few weeks later the
+cellars were filled with water, it was evident that other quarters
+must be found.
+
+Pervyse was of course entirely deserted by its inhabitants, but it
+could scarcely be called dull. We went out one afternoon to see
+what was going on, and found a party of the Corps at lunch.
+They seemed to be in particularly good spirits, and they told us
+that the house had just been struck by a shell, that the big
+Daimler ambulance had been standing outside, and that its
+bonnet had been riddled by the shrapnel bullets. We went
+outside to see for ourselves, and there we found a large hole in
+the side of the house, through which a shell had entered a room
+across the passage from that occupied by the Corps, who had
+fortunately chosen the lee-side. The big six-cylinder Daimler
+had been moved into a shed, and there it stood with twenty or
+more holes in its bonnet, but otherwise uninjured. By a stroke of
+luck the driver had gone inside the house for a moment or he
+would undoubtedly have been killed. It is fortunate that the
+Corps is possessed of such a keen sense of humour.
+
+Shells may be amusing in the daytime, but they are not a bit
+amusing at night. Only two women with real solid courage could
+have slept, night after night, in that empty house in a ruined and
+deserted village, with no sounds to be heard but the rain and
+the wind, the splutter of the mitrailleuse, and the shriek of shells.
+Courage is as infectious as fear, and I think that the soldiers,
+watching through the night in the trenches near by, must have
+blessed the women who were waiting there to help them, and
+must have felt braver men for their presence.
+
+Pervyse was protected by a wide screen of flood, and across
+this there was one way only--a slightly raised road going
+straight across six miles of water. No advance by either side
+was possible, for the road was swept by mitrailleuses, and to
+advance down it would have meant certain death. Half a mile
+down the road was a farmhouse held by a Belgian outpost, and
+beyond this, and perhaps half a mile away from it, were two
+other farms occupied by the Germans. We could see them moving
+amongst the trees. That piece of road between Pervyse and the
+Belgian farm was the scene of one of the very few lapses of the
+Germans into humanity.
+
+It was known one morning in the trenches at Pervyse that
+several of their comrades in the farm had been injured in an
+outpost engagement. It was, however, impossible to reach
+them before nightfall as the road was swept by the German
+guns. Two Belgian priests, taking their lives in their hands,
+walked out to the farm, but they found that the wounded were
+beyond their powers of carriage. Nothing daunted, they went on
+to one of the German farms and asked for help, and a few
+minutes later the astounded Belgians saw a little procession
+coming up the road. In front walked the two priests, and behind
+them came four wounded Belgians, lying on stretchers carried
+by German soldiers. They came right into the lines, and they
+had a royal welcome. They all shook hands, and the little party
+of Germans walked back down the road amid the cheers of
+their opponents.
+
+The spirit of chivalry is not dead in Germany; it is only stifled by
+her present rulers. Is it too much to hope that some day its
+voice may be heard and may command?
+
+
+
+
+XXIII. Ypres
+
+
+
+One morning early in December I was asked by Dr. Munro to
+run down with him in one of our motors to Ypres. A message
+had arrived saying that the town had been heavily shelled
+during the night, and that there were a number of children and
+of wounded there, who ought if possible to be removed to some
+less dangerous situation. So we started off to see what we
+could do for them. It was a dismal morning, and the rain was
+coming down in a steady drizzle which continued all day long,
+but fortunately we had a closed car, and we were protected
+from the elements. The road to Ypres is a broad avenue between
+long lines of tall trees, and to-day it was crowded with soldiers and
+transport motors. The French were moving up a large number of
+men to relieve and to support their lines between Dixmude and
+Ypres. Every little village seemed to be crowded with troops, for
+in this weather "the poorest village is better than the best
+bivouac," and the contrasts of the uniforms were very striking.
+Every type was represented--the smart French officer, the
+Zouave, the Turco, and the Arab, and one could not help
+wondering what the Senegalese and the Algerians thought
+of this soaking rain, or how they would fare in the rigours
+of a Belgian winter.
+
+Like so many of the towns of Belgium, Ypres is a town of the
+past, and it is only in the light of its history that the meaning of
+its wonderful buildings can be realized, or an estimate formed of
+the vandalism of its destroyers. Its records date back to the
+year 900, and in the twelfth century it was already famous for its
+cloth. By the thirteenth century it was the richest and the most
+powerful city in Flanders, and four thousand looms gave
+occupation to its two hundred thousand inhabitants. These
+great commercial cities were also great military organizations,
+and there were few wars in the turbulence of the Middle Ages in
+which Ypres did not have a share. In fact, it was almost always
+engaged in fighting either England, or France, or one of the
+other Flemish towns.
+
+After a century of wars, to which Ypres once contributed no
+fewer than five thousand troops, the town was besieged by the
+English, led by Henry Spencer, Bishop of Norwich, with the help
+of the burghers of Ghent and Bruges. The town was surrounded
+by earthen ramparts planted with thick hedges of thorn, and by
+wide ditches and wooden palisades, and these were held by
+some ten thousand men. They were attacked, in 1383, by seventeen
+thousand English and twenty thousand Flemish. For two months Ypres
+was defended against almost daily attacks in one of the fiercest and
+most bloody sieges in history. At last Spencer saw that it was
+impossible to take the town by assault, and in view of the advance
+of a large French army he withdrew. Ypres was saved, but its
+prosperity was gone, for the bulk of its population had fled.
+The suburbs, where large numbers of the weavers worked,
+had been destroyed by the besiegers and the looms had been
+burnt. The tide of trade turned to Bruges and Ghent, though they
+did not enjoy for long the prosperity they had stolen.
+
+The commercial madness of the fourteenth century gave way to
+the religious madness of the sixteenth. Men's ideas were
+changing, and it is a very dangerous thing to change the ideas
+of men. For the momentum of the change is out of all proportion
+to its importance, and the barriers of human reason may melt
+before it. It is a mere matter of historical fact that no oppression
+has half the dangers of an obvious reform. At Ypres the
+Reformers were first in the field. They had swept through
+Flanders, destroying all the beauty and wealth that the piety of
+ages had accumulated, and here was rich plunder for these
+apostles of the ugly. There is real tragedy in the thought that the
+Reformer is sometimes sincere.
+
+But at least the fanatics limited their fury to the symbols of
+religion. Philip of Spain could only be sated by flesh and blood,
+and for the next fifteen years Ypres was tossed to and fro in an
+orgy of persecution and war such as have rarely been waged
+even in the name of religion. At the end of that time only a
+miserable five thousand inhabitants remained within its broken
+ramparts.
+
+With the seventeenth century commerce and religion made way
+for politics, and the wars of Louis XIV. fell heavily on Ypres. On
+four separate occasions the town was taken by the French, and
+the dismantled fortifications which still surround it were once an
+example of the genius of Vauban. Yet with all these wars--
+commercial, religious, political--with all the violence of its
+history, Ypres had kept intact the glorious monuments of the
+days of her greatness, and it has been left for the armies of
+Culture to destroy that which even the hand of Philip spared.
+
+The centuries have handed down to us few buildings of such
+massive grandeur as the great Cloth Hall, a monument of the
+days when the Weavers of Ypres treated on equal terms with
+the Powers of England and of France. This huge fortress of the
+Guilds is about a hundred and fifty yards long. The ground floor
+was once an open loggia, but the spaces between its fifty pillars
+have been filled in. Above this are two rows of pointed windows,
+each exactly above an opening below. In the upper row every
+second window has been formed into a niche for the figure of
+some celebrity in the history of the town. A delicate turret rises
+at each end of the facade, and above it rose the high-pitched
+roof which was one of the most beautiful features of the
+building. In the centre is the great square tower, reaching to a
+height of more than two hundred feet, and ending in an elegant
+belfry, which rises between its four graceful turrets. The whole
+of this pile was finished in 1304; but in the seventeenth century
+there was added at its eastern end the Nieuwerck, an exquisite
+Renaissance structure supported entirely on a row of slim
+columns, with tiers of narrow oblong windows, and with elaborate
+gables of carved stone. The contrast between the strength and
+simplicity of the Gothic and the rich decoration of Spain is as
+delightful as it is bold. The upper part of this vast building formed
+one great hall, covered overhead by the towering roof. The walls
+were decorated by painted panels representing the history of
+the town, and so large were these that in one bay there was
+erected the entire front of an old wooden house which had
+been pulled down in the town, gable and all.
+
+And all this is a heap of ruins. Whether any portion of it can
+ever be repaired I do not know, but the cost would be fabulous.
+The roof is entirely destroyed, and with it the whole of the great
+gallery and its paintings, for fire consumed what the shells had
+left. Only the bare stone walls remain, and as we stood among
+the pillars which had supported the floors above, it was difficult
+to realize that the heap of rubbish around us was all that was
+left of what had once been the envy of Europe. The only
+building which we have at all comparable to the Cloth Hall is the
+Palace of Westminster. If it were blasted by shells and gutted
+by fire, we might regret it, but what would be our feelings if it
+were the legacy of Edward the First, and had been handed
+down to us intact through six centuries?
+
+Behind the Cloth Hall stands the Church of St. Martin, once for
+two and a half centuries the Cathedral of Ypres. It was largely
+built at the same time as the Cloth Hall, and it is a glorious
+monument of the architecture of the thirteenth century. Perhaps
+its most beautiful features are the great square tower, the lofty
+and imposing nave, and the exquisite rose window in the south
+wall of the transept, which is said to be the finest in Belgium.
+The tower was surrounded with scaffolding, and around its base
+were piles of stone, for the church was being repaired when the
+war began. I wonder if it will ever be repaired now. The
+Germans had expended on its destruction many of their largest
+shells, and they had been very successful in their efforts. There
+were three huge holes in the roof of the choir where shells had
+entered, and in the centre of the transept was a pile of bricks
+and stone six feet high. Part of the tower had been shot away,
+and its stability was uncertain. The beautiful glass of the rose
+window had been utterly destroyed, and part of the tracery was
+broken. The old Parish Chapel on the south side of the nave
+had nothing left but the altar and four bare walls. The fine old
+roof and the great bronze screen which separated it from the
+nave had perished in the flames. The screen was lying in small
+fragments amongst the rubbish on the chapel floor, and at first I
+thought they were bits of rusty iron.
+
+As I stood in the ruins of the Parish Chapel looking round on
+this amazing scene, there was a roar overhead, and one of the
+big 14-inch shells passed, to explode with a terrific crash
+amongst the houses a few hundred yards farther on. It was
+plain that the bombardment was beginning again, and that we
+must see to our business without any delay. Two more shells
+passed overhead as I came out of the church, with a roar very
+different from the soft whistle of a small shell. The destruction
+produced by one of these large shells is astonishing. One large
+house into which a shell had fallen in the previous night had
+simply crumpled up. Portions of the walls and a heap of bricks
+were all that was left, a bit of an iron bedstead and a fragment
+of staircase sticking out from the debris. The roof, the floors,
+and the greater part of the walls might never have existed. In
+the Place in front of the Cathedral were two holes where shells
+had fallen, and either of them would have comfortably held a
+motor-car. The children were all together in a little street a
+quarter of a mile west of the Cathedral, just where the last three
+shells had fallen. Fortunately they had hurt no one, though one
+had passed clean through the upper stories of a house where
+there were several children being got ready by one of our party
+for removal. By good luck through some defect it did not
+explode, or the house would have been annihilated and everyone
+in it killed. Quite a collection of people had  congregated in that
+little street, though why they considered it safer than the rest
+of the town I do not know. At first they were very unwilling to
+let any of the children go at all. But at last about twenty children
+were collected and were packed into ambulances. Some of them
+were without parents, and were being looked after by the
+neighbours, and the parents of some absolutely refused to
+leave. More children and a few adults to look after them were
+found later, and I think that in the end about a hundred were
+taken up to Fumes, to be sent on to Calais as refugees.
+
+The children were as merry as crickets, and regarded it all as a
+huge joke; sitting in the ambulances, they looked for all the
+world like a school treat. But I have often wondered whether we
+were right to take them away or whether it would not have been
+better to have left them to take their chance. War is a very
+terrible thing, and the well-meant interference of the kind-
+hearted may do far more harm than good. What is going to
+happen to those children? I suppose that they are in some
+refugee home, to remain there till the war is over. And then?
+We did our best to identify them, but what are the chances that
+many of them will ever see their parents again? From what I
+have seen of these things I do not think that they are very large.
+Perhaps you will say that the parents ought to have gone with
+them. It is easy for the well-to-do to leave their homes and to
+settle again elsewhere; but the poorer a man is the less can he
+afford to leave what little he possesses. In their own town they
+might be in danger, but at least they had not lost their homes,
+and they possessed the surroundings without which their
+individual lives would be merged in the common ocean of
+misery. The problem of the civil population, and especially of
+the children, in time of war is entirely beyond the scope of
+individual effort. It is a matter with which only a Government or a
+very powerful organization can deal, and it is a matter in which
+Governments do not take a great deal of interest. Their hands
+are quite full enough in trying to defeat the enemy.
+
+In all previous wars between civilized nations a certain regard
+has been paid to the safety of the civilian population, and
+especially of the women and children. But from the very first the
+German policy has been to utterly ignore the rights of non-
+combatants, tearing up the conventions which they themselves
+had signed for their protection. No Government could be
+expected to be prepared for such a total apostasy from the
+elementary principles of civilized society, or to anticipate
+methods at which a Zulu might blush. If they had done so, it
+should have been their first care to remove all non-combatants
+from the area of fighting, and to make provision for them
+elsewhere. It is unfair that a civilian should be left with the
+hopeless choice of leaving a child in a house where it may at
+any moment be killed by a shell or taking it away with a
+considerable probability that it will be a homeless orphan. For
+life is a matter of small moment; it is living that matters.
+
+The problem of the children of Belgium will be one of the most
+serious to be faced when the war is over. There will be a great
+number of orphans, whilst many more will be simply lost. They
+must not be adopted in England, for to them Belgium will look
+for her future population. There could be few finer ways in which
+we could show our gratitude to the people of Belgium than by
+establishing colonies over there where they could be brought
+up in their own country, to be its future citizens. It would form a
+bond between the two countries such as no treaty could ever
+establish, and Belgium would never forget the country which
+had been the foster-mother of her children.
+
+But Ypres gave us yet another example of German methods of
+war. On the western side of the town, some distance from the
+farthest houses, stood the Asylum. It was a fine building
+arranged in several wings, and at present it was being used for
+the accommodation of a few wounded, mostly women and children,
+and several old people of the workhouse infirmary type. It made
+a magnificent hospital, and as it was far away from the town and
+was not used for any but the purposes of a hospital, we considered
+that it was safe enough, and that it would be a pity to disturb the
+poor old people collected there. We might have known better.
+The very next night the Germans shelled it to pieces, and all
+those unfortunate creatures had to be removed in a hurry.
+There is a senseless barbarity about such an act which could
+only appeal to a Prussian.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV. Some Conclusions
+
+
+
+To draw conclusions from a limited experience is a difficult
+matter, and the attempt holds many pitfalls for the unwary. Yet
+every experience must leave on the mind of any thinking man
+certain impressions, and the sum of these only he himself can
+give. To others he can give but blurred images of all he may
+have seen, distorted in the curving mirrors of his mind, but from
+these they can at least form some estimate of the truth of the
+conclusions he ventures to draw. For myself, these conclusions
+seem to fall naturally into three separate groups, for I have met
+the experiences of the past three months in three separate
+ways--as a surgeon, as a Briton, and as, I hope, a civilized
+man. It is from these three aspects that I shall try to sum up
+what I have seen.
+
+As a surgeon it has been my good fortune to have charge of a
+hospital whose position was almost ideal. Always close to the
+front, we received our cases at the earliest possible moment,
+and could deal with them practically first hand. Every day I
+realized more strongly the advantages of such a hospital, and
+the importance for the wounded of the first surgical treatment
+they receive. Upon this may well depend the whole future
+course of the case. No wounded man should be sent on a long
+railway journey to the base until he has passed through the
+hands of a skilled surgeon, and has been got into such a
+condition that the journey does not involve undue risk. And no
+rough routine treatment will suffice. A surgeon is required who
+can deal with desperate emergencies and pull impossible cases
+out of the fire--a young man who does not believe in the
+impossible, and who can adapt himself to conditions of work
+that would make an older man shudder, and a man who will
+never believe what he is told until he has seen it for himself. For
+the conditions of work at the front are utterly different from those
+of civil practice, and it is impossible for any man after many
+years of regular routine to adapt himself to such changed
+environment. The long experience of the older man will be of far
+more use at the base, and he will have plenty of difficulties to
+contend with there.
+
+I have often been told that there is no opening for skilled
+surgery at the front. In my opinion there is room for the highest
+skill that the profession can produce. It is absurd to say that the
+abdominal cases should be left to die or to recover as best they
+can, that one dare not touch a fractured femur because it is
+septic. To take up such an attitude is simply to admit that these
+cases are beyond the scope of present surgery. In a sense,
+perhaps, they are, but that is all the more reason why the scope
+of surgery should be enlarged, and not that these cases should
+be left outside its pale. I am far from advising indiscriminate
+operating. There are many things in surgery besides scalpels.
+But I do urge the need for hospitals close to the front, with every
+modern equipment, and with surgeons of resource and energy.
+
+But for a surgeon this war between nations is only an incident in
+the war to which he has devoted his life--the war against
+disease. It is a curious reflection that whilst in the present war
+the base hospital has been given, if anything, an undue
+importance, in the other war it has been practically neglected.
+Our great hospitals are almost entirely field hospitals, planted
+right in the middle of the battle, and there we keep our patients
+till such time as they are to all intents and purposes cured. A
+very few convalescent homes will admit cases which still require
+treatment, but only a very few. The bulk of them expect their
+inmates to do the work of the establishment. Now, this is most
+unreasonable, for a country hospital is cheaper to build and
+should cost less to run than one in town, and in many cases the
+patients will recover in half the time. Our hospitals in London are
+always crowded, the waiting-lists mount up till it seems
+hopeless to attack them, and all the time it is because we have
+no base hospital down in the country to which our patients
+might be sent to recover. I wonder how long it will be before
+each of the great London hospitals has its own base down in
+the country, with its own motor ambulances and its own ambulance
+coaches to carry its patients in comfort by rail to surroundings
+where they could recover as can never be possible in the
+middle of the London slums? And as to getting the staff to
+look after it, there would probably be a waiting-list for week-ends.
+
+But there are more important considerations in this war than
+surgery, and one would have to be very blind not to perceive
+that this is a life-and-death struggle between Britain and
+Germany. The involvement of other nations is merely accidental.
+It is ourselves whom Germany is making this huge effort to crush,
+and but for one small circumstance she would have come within
+a measurable prospect of success. To swoop down on France
+through Belgium, to crush her in three weeks, to seize her fleet,
+and with the combined fleets of France and Germany to attack
+ours--that was the proposition, and who can say that it might not
+have succeeded? The small  circumstance which Germany overlooked
+was Belgium, and it is to the heroic resistance of Belgium that we owe
+the fact that the German advance has been stopped.
+
+At the cost of the desolation of their own country, Belgium has
+perhaps saved the flag of Britain, for where would it have flown
+on the seas if Germany had won? And at the very least she has
+saved us from a war beside which this is nothing--a war not
+now, but a few years hence, when she might have controlled
+half the Continent, and we should have stood alone. We owe
+an incalculable debt to Belgium, and we can only repay it by
+throwing into this war every resource that our country has to
+offer. For the only end which can bring peace to Europe is the
+total annihilation of Germany as a military and naval Power.
+What other terms can be made with a nation which regards its
+most solemn treaties as so much waste paper, which is bound
+by no conventions, and which delights in showing a callous
+disregard of all that forms the basis of a civilized society? The
+only guarantees that we can take are that she has no ships of
+war, and that her army is only sufficient to police her frontier.
+The building of a war vessel or the boring of a gun must be
+regarded as a casus belli. Then, and then only, shall Europe be
+safe from the madness that is tearing her asunder.
+
+But there is a wider view of this war than even that of Britain.
+We are not merely fighting to preserve the pre-eminence of our
+country; we are fighting for the civilization of the world. The
+victory of Germany would mean the establishment over the
+whole world of a military despotism such as the world has never
+seen. For if once the navy of Britain is gone, who else can stop
+her course? Canada, the United States, South America, would
+soon be vassals of her power--a power which would be used
+without scruple for her own material advantage. This is not a
+war between Germany and certain other nations; it is a war
+between Germany and civilization. The stake is not a few acres
+of land, but the freedom for which our fathers gave their lives.
+
+Is there such a thing as neutrality in this war? Germany herself
+gave the answer when she invaded Belgium. It is the undoubted
+duty of many great nations, and of one before all others, to stand
+aside and not to enter the struggle; but to be neutral at heart, not
+to care whether the battle is won or lost, is impossible for any
+nation which values honour and truth above the passing advantages
+of worldly power. We do not ask America to fight on our side.
+This is our fight, and only Britain and her Allies can see it
+through. But we do ask for a sympathy which, while obeying
+the laws of neutrality to the last letter, will support us with a
+spirit which is bound by no earthly law, which will bear with us
+when in our difficult task we seem to neglect the interests of
+our friends, and will rejoice with us when, out of toil and sorrow,
+we have won a lasting peace.
+
+This war is not of our choosing, and we shall never ask for
+peace. The sword has been thrust into our hands by a power
+beyond our own to defend from a relentless foe the flag which
+has been handed down to us unsullied through the ages, and to
+preserve for the world the freedom which is the proudest
+birthright of our race. When it is sheathed, the freedom of the
+world from the tyranny of man will have been secured.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 11086 ***