aternised immediately; but we had
scarcely had time to exchange a few rapid queries and replies when our
men were ordered to advance to the attack.

Very soon the ambulance corps was busily employed, and I had to devote
my entire energies to the wounded who came pouring in.

Oh! it was pitiful to see the hundreds of strong and stalwart youths,
who might have been the glory of succeeding generations, brought in with
frames shattered beyond recovery, with brave lip compressed to check the
rising cry of agony, with eyes glaring in the terrible conflict between
lusty manhood and sudden death, or, with nerves utterly unstrung, giving
vent to the shrieks of the maniac.

Several surgeons and students among us had extemporised an hospital in
the shelter of a cliff.

One of the students, whose mind was in advance of his years and whose
spirit seemed roused, came suddenly to me, during a brief interval in
our labours.

"Our rulers are fools, or worse," said he, with indignation; "what is
the use of diplomacy if it cannot prevent _this_?"

I remonstrated with the youth on the impropriety of his language, but my
new friend the "special" broke in with--

"Ah! young man, you have not yet seen enough of life to understand it.
A man is a machine which regulates itself, more or less, for its own
interests. A household does the same; a town does likewise; so does a
state. No doubt a man sometimes fights with himself--so, too,
households are addicted to disagreement, and towns are often afflicted
with difference of opinion, while a state is not unacquainted with
internal commotions, but, in each and all of these cases, reason and
common sense prevent the people from degenerating into pure savages. It
is reserved for governments alone, when they come into collision with
each other, to do that. _Peoples_ don't desire war, my good sir, it is
government--in other words, the non-combatant gentlemen at the head of
the world's affairs--who thirst for blood, backed up, of course, by such
of the people as are more or less interested in the breaking out of war.
In all ordinary matters humanity is satisfied to submit its cases to
courts of law, to umpires, to individual or collective arbitrators. If
things don't go right, it is usually understood among Christian men and
women that a little touch of forbearance here, of self-sacrifice there,
of pocketing of slight affronts elsewhere, will bring things into the
best possible condition, an