us proving that the
scientific writer who says that the louse is a delicate creature and
only lives a few hours off the body can know little of the Serbian
breed.

The town, when we arrived, was a bouquet of assorted and nasty smells,
of which the authorities seemed proud. We cleaned up the streets by
running a little artificial river down the gutter. Mr. Berry had the
chief of the police sacked and instituted a sort of sanitary vigilance
committee. We took over the local but very primitive sewage works--a
field into which all the filth of the town was drained.

The slaughter-house was discovered. It was an old wooden shed built
over the lower end of the stream which washed the village from end to
end, draining successively the typhus barracks, the baths, and all the
hospitals. The shed itself was old and worm-eaten. The walls were caked
with the blood of years, yet the meat was always hung against them after
having been well soused in the filthy water. Mr. Berry decided to build
a new one: some of the money was subscribed through Mr. Blease by the
Liverpool Liberal Club; the rest Mr. Berry paid himself. At once the
state began to quarrel with the commune as to the ownership of the
proposed treasure. So the smells disappeared and the town engineer was
furious, saying he would "Put all right" when we left.

Luckily one of the chief men in the town had lived in America and knew
the value of cleanliness. Mr. Berry was offered an honorary Colonelcy;
but he refused, saying he would prefer to be made sanitary officer for
the town.

[Illustration: IN-PATIENTS.]

The spring came, bringing with it no fighting. A great offensive was
expected, had been ordered, in fact, but we heard later that the army
refused to advance. The work was very much lighter. Very few men were
entirely helpless. The hospitals, which were still emptying themselves
and whose men were coming to us, sent the survival of the fittest. Most
of the beds were carried out under the trees after the morning
dressings were done, and the men lay gossiping and smoking when they
could get tobacco. Outside visitors were rare. The Serbian ladies do not
go round the hospitals with cigarettes and sweets, and to find a Serbian
woman nursing is an anomaly.

Report says that many flung themselves into it with energy during the
first Balkan War, but that four years of it, ending with typhus, had
dulled their enthusiasm. It is not fair to blame them. To nurse from
morni