ators using
long-handled instruments and gloves that are soaked in a solution of
lead and thus become impervious to the rays so destructive to the
tissues.

Later on I watched Doctor DePage operate at this hospital. I was put
into a uniform, and watched a piece of shell taken from a man's brain
and a great blood clot evacuated. Except for the red cross on each
window and the rattle of the sash under the guns, I might have been in
one of the leading American hospitals and war a century away. There
were the same white uniforms on the surgeons; the same white gauze
covering their heads and swathing their faces to the eyes; the same
silence, the same care as to sterilisation; the same orderly rows of
instruments on a glass stand; the same nurses, alert and quiet; the
same clear white electric light overhead; the same rubber gloves, the
same anaesthetists and assistants.

It was twelve minutes from the time the operating surgeon took the
knife until the wound was closed. The head had been previously shaved
by one of the assistants, and painted with iodine. In twelve minutes
the piece of shell lay in my hand. The stertorous breathing was
easier, bandages were being adjusted, the next case was being
anaesthetised and prepared.

I wish I could go further. I wish I could follow that peasant-soldier
to recovery and health. I wish I could follow him back to his wife and
children, to his little farm in Belgium. I wish I could even say he
recovered. But I cannot. I do not know. The war is a series of
incidents with no beginning and no end. The veil lifts for a moment
and drops again.

I saw other cases brought down for operation at the Ambulance Ocean.
One I shall never forget. Here was a boy again, looking up with
hopeful, fully conscious eyes at the surgeons. He had been shot
through the spine. From his waist down he was inert, helpless. He
smiled. He had come to be operated on. Now all would be well. The
great surgeons would work over him, and he would walk again.

When after a long consultation they had to tell him they could not
operate, I dared not look at his eyes.

Again, what is he to do? Where is he to go? He is helpless, in a
strange land. He has no country, no people, no money. And he will
live, think of it!

I wish I could leaven all this with something cheerful. I wish I could
smile over the phonograph playing again and again A Wee
Deoch-an'-Doris in that room for convalescents that overlooks the sea.
I wish