iciency and humanity.

Of the vast hospital service, what can one say that has not been said
a thousand tunes already? Between the spring of 1916, when I first saw
the fighting front, and November, 1918, the hospital accommodation in
France rose from 44,000 to 175,000 persons. That is to say, we kept
our wounded in France during the height of the submarine campaign,
both to protect them from the chance of further suffering, and to
economise our dwindling tonnage, and fresh hospitals had to be built
for them. Of the doctors and nurses, the stretcher-bearers and
orderlies, whose brave and sacred work it was to gather the wounded
from the battle-line, and to bring to bear upon the suffering and
martyrdom of war all that human skill and human tenderness could
devise, Sir Douglas Haig has said many true and eloquent things in the
course of his despatches. He sums them all up in his last despatch in
the plain words: "In spite of the numbers dealt with, _there has been
no war in which the resources of science have been utilised so
generously and successfully for the quick evacuation and careful
tending of the sick and wounded, or for the prevention of disease_."

Most true--and yet? Do not let us deceive ourselves! The utmost
energy, the tenderest devotion, the noblest skill, can go but a
certain way when measured against the sum total of human suffering
caused by war. The ablest of doctors and nurses are the first to admit
it. Those of us whose wounded brothers and sons reached in safety the
haven of hospital comfort and skilled nursing, and were thereby
brought back to life, are, thank Heaven, the fortunate many. But there
are the few for whose dear ones all that wonderful hospital and
nursing science was of no avail. I think of a gallant boy lying out
all night with a broken thigh in a shell-hole amid the mud and under
the rain of Flanders. Kind hands come with the morning and carry him
to the advanced dressing station. There is still hope. But miles of
mud and broken ground lie between him and the nearest hospital.
Immediate warmth and rest and nursing might have saved him. But they
are unattainable. Brave men carry the boy tenderly, carefully, the
three miles to the casualty clearing station. The strain on the
flickering life is just too much, and in the first night of hospital,
when every care is round it, the young life slips away--lost by so
little--by no fault!

Is there any consolation? One only--the boy's own spi