bidding him risk it, and the call of the blood drove
him on. Creeping out of the far end of the trench, as dusk fell, he
crawled through the grass on hands and knees, in spite of shells and
snipers, dropping flat on the ground as the flares shot up from the
German trenches. At last he found what he sought. He could stroke
with his hand the fair young head that he knew so well; he could feel
for the pocket-book and prayer-book, the badge and the whistle. He
could breathe a prayer of benediction and then crawl back on his
perilous way in the night."

The writer has just come from visiting a group of a dozen British and
American military hospitals in one French town, with from one to four
thousand patients in each, where at this moment the trains are arriving
in almost a steady stream, bearing the wounded from the front in the
great drive in Flanders. He has stood by the operating tables and
passed down those long, unending rows of cots. Some of these tragic
hospital wards are filled with men, every one of whom is blinded for
life by poison gas or shrapnel. They, like all the other wounded, are
brave and cheerful, but it will take great courage to maintain this
cheer, groping a long lifetime in the dark. One man counted 151 trains
of twenty cars each, or 3,000 carriages, filled with German wounded
passing back in a steady stream through Belgium. Behind all the active
fronts these train loads of wounded are daily bearing their burden of
suffering humanity. The cities and towns of Europe are filled with
limping or crippled or wounded men today.

Opposite the writer at the ship's table sat a young man with the lower
part of his face carried away. His chin and jaw were gone, yet he must
live on for a lifetime deformed. Another young fellow had spent seven
long weary months in training. The moment his regiment reached the
front it was ordered immediately into action. He sprang to the top of
the trench, but never got over it. He fell back wounded. Within three
days he was back in England again, but with only one leg. Seven months
of training, five minutes in action, then crippled for life! The
writer saw one young fellow whose face was left contorted by shrapnel,
which had carried away one eye and the bridge of his nose. He was a
quiet, earnest Christian. He said, "Of course, they cannot send me
back again into the line or compel me to go with only one eye, but I am
going just the same. I am going to give