good measure, a burden of pain. So I come to the men who are revealing
human nature at a higher pitch than any others in the war. The
trench-digging, elderly chaps are patient and long-enduring, and the
fighting men are as gallant as any the ballad-mongers used to rime
about.

But it is of the wounded that one would like to speak in a way to win
respect for them rather than pity. I think some American observers have
missed the truth about the wounded. They have told of the groaning and
screaming, the heavy smells, the delays and neglect. It is a picture of
vivid horror. But the final impression left on me by caring for many
hundred wounded men is that of their patience and cheeriness. I think
they would resent having a sordid pen picture made of their suffering
and letting it go at that. After all, it is their wound: they suffered
it for a purpose, and they conquer their bodily pain by will power and
the Gallic touch of humor. Suffering borne nobly merits something more
than an emphasis on the blood and the moan. To speak of these wounded
men as of a heap of futile misery is like missing the worthiness of
motherhood in the details of obstetrics.

It was thought we moderns had gone soft, but it seems we were storing up
reserves of stoic strength and courage. This war has drawn on them more
heavily than any former test, and they have met all its demands.
Sometimes, being tired, I would drop my corner of the stretcher, a few
inches suddenly. This would draw a quick intake of the breath from the
hurt man and an "aahh"--but not once a word of blame. I should want to
curse the careless hand that wrenched my wound, but these soldiers of
France and Belgium whom I carried had passed beyond littleness.

Once we had a French Zouave officer on the stretcher. He was wounded in
the right arm and the stomach. Every careen of the ambulance over cobble
and into shell-hole was a thrust into his hurt. We had to carry him all
the way from the Nieuport cellar to Zuydcoote Hospital, ten miles. The
driver was one more of the American young men who have gone over into
France to pay back a little of what we owe her. I want to give his name,
Robert Cardell Toms, because it is good for us to know that we have
brave and tender gentlemen. On this long haul, as always, he drove with
extreme care, changing his speed without the staccato jerk, avoiding
bumps and holes of the trying road. When we reached the hospital, he
ran ahead into the ward to p