ut ten o'clock in the morning, and was
unconscious from then till the time the nurse went to lunch. She went
to lunch reluctantly, but it is necessary to eat. She instructed
Fouquet, the orderly, to watch Rochard carefully, and to call her if
there was any change.

After a short time she came back from lunch, and hurried to see Rochard,
hurried behind the flamboyant, red, cheerful screens that shut him off
from the rest of the ward. Rochard was dead.

At the other end of the ward sat the two orderlies, drinking wine.

PARIS,
April 15, 1915.

A BELGIAN CIVILIAN

A big English ambulance drove along the high road from Ypres, going in
the direction of a French field hospital, some ten miles from Ypres.
Ordinarily, it could have had no business with this French hospital,
since all English wounded are conveyed back to their own bases,
therefore an exceptional case must have determined its route. It was an
exceptional case--for the patient lying quietly within its yawning body,
sheltered by its brown canvas wings, was not an English soldier, but
only a small Belgian boy, a civilian, and Belgian civilians belong
neither to the French nor English services. It is true that there was a
hospital for Belgian civilians at the English base at Hazebrouck, and it
would have seemed reasonable to have taken the patient there, but it
was more reasonable to dump him at this French hospital, which was
nearer. Not from any humanitarian motives, but just to get rid of him
the sooner. In war, civilians are cheap things at best, and an immature
civilian, Belgian at that, is very cheap. So the heavy English ambulance
churned its way up a muddy hill, mashed through much mud at the entrance
gates of the hospital, and crunched to a halt on the cinders before the
_Salle d'Attente_, where it discharged its burden and drove off again.

The surgeon of the French hospital said: "What have we to do with this?"
yet he regarded the patient thoughtfully. It was a very small patient.
Moreover, the big English ambulance had driven off again, so there was
no appeal. The small patient had been deposited upon one of the beds in
the _Salle d'Attente_, and the French surgeon looked at him and wondered
what he should do. The patient, now that he was here, belonged as much
to the French field hospital as to any other, and as the big English
ambulance from Ypres had driven off again, there was not much use in
protesting. The French surgeon was annoy