the same, day after day,
till one gets so tired and bored. Big things may be going on over there,
on the other side of the captive balloons that we can see from a
distance, but we are always here, on this side of them, and here, on
this side of them, it is always the same. The weariness of it--the
sameness of it! The same ambulances, and dirty men, and groans, or
silence. The same hot operating rooms, the same beds, always full, in
the wards. This is war. But it goes on and on, over and over, day after
day, till it seems like life. Life in peace time. It might be life in a
big city hospital, so alike is the routine. Only the city hospitals are
bigger, and better equipped, and the ambulances are smarter, and the
patients don't always come in ambulances--they walk in sometimes, or
come in street cars, or in limousines, and they are of both sexes, men
and women, and have ever so many things the matter with them--the
hospitals of peace time are not nearly so stupid, so monotonous, as the
hospitals of war. Bah! War's humane compared to peace! More spectacular,
I grant you, more acute,--that's what interests us,--but for the sheer
agony of life--oh, peace is way ahead!

War is so clean. Peace is so dirty. There are so many foul diseases in
peace times. They drag on over so many years, too. No, war's clean! I'd
rather see a man die in prime of life, in war time, than see him
doddering along in peace time, broken hearted, broken spirited, life
broken, and very weary, having suffered many things,--to die at last, at
a good, ripe age! How they have suffered, those who drive up to our city
hospitals in limousines, in peace time. What's been saved them, those
who die young, and clean and swiftly, here behind the guns. In the long
run it dots up just the same. Only war's spectacular, that's all.

Well, he came in like the rest, only older than most of them. A shock of
iron-grey hair, a mane of it, above heavy, black brows, and the brows
were contracted in pain. Shot, as usual, in the abdomen. He spent three
hours on the table after admission--the operating table--and when he
came over to the ward, they said, not a dog's chance for him. No more
had he. When he came out of ether, he said he didn't want to die. He
said he wanted to live. Very much. He said he wanted to see his wife
again and his children. Over and over he insisted on this, insisted on
getting well. He caught hold of the doctor's hand and said he must get
well, that th