The work among the wounded is frequently trying almost beyond human endurance. Many a time I have felt how thankful I should have been for the relief of tears. I remember especially a day when an orderly said to me, "Oh, padre! this is a sad day in this tent." That meant far more than the mere words conveyed; there were so many young brave lives there, in anguish, maimed, and stricken, swept in, as though upon a tide of sorrow, from the valley of the shadow. And so little could be done. Words were futile. "Hold my hand, padre," begged one fine fellow, "and I'll try to bear it till the doctor comes round.' And it was a hand like flame that he put into mine.

Their patience is perhaps more heartbreaking to look upon than their pain. One, with his leg torn off, said, "I must not complain. You see, there

are

so many really worse off than myself." Once, in a hospital train, where a crowd of helpless men were being loaded up at a siding, I saw one man, groaning in agony from rheumatism, carried in. "Where are you wounded, old chap?" asked the orderly. "Hoots!" he replied, "I'm no wounded at a'. Fling me onywhere. Look after the rest."

Sorrow and suffering are verily big angels of God. We are learning, in a mystery. And we shall yet have worse -great sorrow for the nation, and empty firesides for thousands, in this crucifixion hour of the Empire. And for us, trying to help and uphold, the greater need for the grace of God.

Every day you saw the tragedy of it. I recall a tent in which I was sitting beside a dying bed. And there was a screen up around the next one. The man there had a very severe head wound, and was incessantly talking

as though giving quick orders to fellows near him. Now and again he would lift his clasped hands to his parched lips, and drink feverishly from an invisible water-bottle, resuming thereafter the exhausting trench drama in his dying delirium.

In another tent were two chums from the same town and the same regiment, both dying. Jack's subconsciousness was busy, going again through the fight which had cost him his life; and as he would fall back, worn out, he would cry for his chum. "Bill! Come on, Bill. Help! They're in!" But poor Bill was passing away at the other end of the tent, utterly unconscious, the tide of life ebbing far out, in silence, towards the main ocean, with no returning flood for these shores.

I remember also, at this time, another, who suddenly slipped hold on life, and went over the watershed. And he insisted on sitting up in bed, talking to invisibilities, whom he was showing out somewhere. "Good-byethank you!" he kept saying, with a wan smile. He looked at you with eyes that seemed to see you, while yet looking through you at the unseen. And his "Good-bye-thank you!" almost broke your heart.

The wounded were always keen on souvenirs, and these were of great variety. The New Testament, that had stopped a bullet just above the heart, was a frequent one, and perfectly genuine. A South African had been carrying in his Testament a photograph of his sweetheart, and the bullet stopped just in front of her face. It had made a bruise there, as though she had stepped in between him and death. He had been severely wounded as it was already; and the New Testament

was wrapped up in a bloody rag. He will not let that souvenir lightly go. It is, of course, true that any book would prove as efficient as a life-protector; but it is this book that the soldier prefers to carry there, and, more frequently than people think, he reads it, and carries much of it in his heart also.

The passion for souvenirs sometimes seemed to mean more than the mere craze for collecting. I remember one grim fellow who insisted on having beside him a blood-encrusted German bayonet. I imagine it had a story of its own, with some import to himself. Others would sit, dreamily caressing German helmets, which they had brought with them from the field.

Sometimes this passion led to curious adventure. A Gordon Highlander had crept back to No Man's Land for souvenirs, and was coming back with a German helmet slung on his shoulderstrap. But he lost his bearings, and encountered two men of the Devons who had been out on some scouting duty. He very naturally crouched down as they approached; and they, crouching also, saw in the dark, outlined against the sky, the German helmet. At that moment he asked, in his own dialect, tentatively, "D'ye ken faur the Gordons is?" Immediately they jumped to the conclusion that he was a Hun. One of them hit out at him with a rifle, and then both fled, but not before the Scot got in on them with his fists, thereafter he also making speedy tracks for his very life, as it seemed to him. In the morning he reported to the doctor, at the Ambulance, that he thought his arm must have been broken in the night by "twa German deevils." And the Devons also had an interview with the same functionary, with a tale of a fierce onslaught made upon them by a terrible enemy, who had cursed them very volubly in a LIVING AGE, VOL. VIII, No. 387.

strange tongue. None of the three discovered the truth, though to an outsider it was perfectly clear; another proof that it is the bystander and not the actor himself who sees history in its true light.

There are countless streaks of humor and gleams of laughter even amid the sorrow-clouds of war. The mysterious diseases from which the soldier thinks he suffers sometimes puzzle you. He will proudly, and with a majestic solemnity, tell you that his illness has developed into "gasteria"-perhaps a more accurately descriptive name than science recognizes. More than one is sorry for his wife, who is distracted and harrowed by the "insinuendoes" of her neighbors, a word almost worthy of a place in the dictionary. And many will tell you of chums who have broken down, and who were not really fit to serve, having been always of a "historical" tendency. One almost feels a plea for heredity there.

How grateful we were when we found occasions like these! For, though we were not down-hearted, we were often war-weary. And frequently the good cheer of those whom we were there to comfort and strengthen really strengthened and comforted us.

I remember an Irishman, quite of the type of Micky Free in Lever's novel, a rollicking, jolly child of the Emerald Isle, pretty badly battered, but with a sparkle in his eye at which you could have lit a candle. He was from Dublin. I thought I should speak cheerfully to him, so I said, “Well, now, aren't you lucky to be here, instead of home yonder, getting your head broken in a riot?" "Troth, I am, sir," said he. "Lucky to be here, anyway. And lucky is anny man if he'll only get a grave to lie in, let alone a comfortable bed like this. Glory be! it's myself that's been the lucky one all the time." Near him lay another.

"Don't spake to him, your honor," said the first man with a laugh. "Sure, he's a Sinn Feiner." But both of them were of opinion that the loyalty of the rebels might be awakened by contact with German shells. "Bring them out here, sir," said they, "and they won't be Irishmen if they don't get their dander riz with a whiz-bang flung at them. That would settle their German philandering. Sure, isn't it too bad what we've been enduring to enable the spalpeens to stay at home, upsetting the State, flinging Home Rule back maybe a generation, with their foolishness, and we as good Irishmen as themselves can be?"

The infinite variety of classes that make up our present army is astonishing. I told once of a Gordon Highlander landing in Havre with a copy of the Hebrew Psalms in the pocket of his khaki apron to read in the trenches. I saw, among our own Gordons, an Aberdeen divinity student, as a private reading in the mud the Greek Testament and the Sixth Book of Homer's Iliad. Anything, from that to the Daily Mail, represents the reading of our men. This variety is also very noticeable among our officers. We had the lumberman from the vast forests of the West beside the accountant from San Francisco; the tea-planter from Bengal; the lawyer from the quiet Fife town beside the Forth; the artist; the architect; and the journalist. And it was this mixture that made possible episodes of irresistible comicality.

For instance, to prevent waste of petrol in "joy-riding," a French barrier at one place near us had guards set upon it under a British officer. One day a young northern subaltern, entirely fresh to military work, was in charge; and the tale goes that he stopped Sir Douglas Haig's car, asking him to show his permit and declare his business. When the general did tell

who he was, the boy was so taken aback that he is said to have stammered, "So pleased to meet you!"

Again, a young officer told me that he was leading a well-known general around some trenches in the dark. They came to a traverse. "We'll go round here," said the general, and the young fellow led the way. But a watchful Gordon leaped up suddenly with fixed bayonet, and, "Who goes there?" The youth replied, "General Blank." "Ay, lad," whimsically replied the Scot, "ye'd better try again. That cock 'll no fecht wi' the Cock o' the North."

Another, a verdantly green soldier of the King, almost freshly off the ploughed haughs of home, met an officer of high rank. He was carrying his rifle, but he huddled it under his arm, and awkwardly saluted with the open hand as though he had it not. The officer said, very kindly, "Here, my man, is the way to salute your superior with your rifle"; and he went through the proper regulation fieldofficer's salute. But Jock, after coolly watching him, as coolly replied, “Ay, ay; maybe that's your way o't; but I hae my ain way, and I'm no jist sure yet whilk's the richt gait o't."

It would be worth while seeing this man after a few months' training has brought him into the "richt gait o't." In fact, the way in which the men have fallen into the habit of discipline is as wonderful as the way they leaped into the line of service for their country's sake when they were not forced to go. I recall one, who was only a type of many. Up in the mouth of a West Highland glen is a little cottage on a croft. And the man there was the last of his race. When others passed out to the world-wide conflict, his mother, who was very old, opposed his going. But she died. And then he drew his door to, locked it, and went to share the battle for liberty which

today is shaking the earth. There are far more men of peace than men of quarrel fighting for the soul-compelling things that are of value beyond this dying world, and these are made of the true victory stuff.

None are less given to talk of what they have done than the very men whose deeds thrill others. They just saw the thing that was needed; they seized the flying moment, and did the deed that makes men's hearts stand still. They came out of it with something akin to the elation of the sportsman who has scored a goal. They saved their side in the game. That was what they aimed at, and they were satisfied.

In my last battalion were two men who, working together, did breathless things without themselves being breathless. They enjoyed them. After one "stunt" our people in the trench observed a man hanging on the enemy's wire. His hand was slowly moving to and fro. They watched carefully, and saw clearly that he was signaling to them. A little group of officers gathered and considered the matter. But it was entirely impossible, they thought, to dream of attempting a rescue before darkness. So they resolved to get together a rescue party in the night and save. Meanwhile, however, these two worthies slipped away, crawled over No Man's Land, and brought the poor fellow in. Rebuked for their temerity, their reply was, "We couldna thole the sicht o' a chum oot yonder like that." Another time, after a bitter struggle in a patch of woodland between our line and the enemy's, they came and reported that a man in khaki was to be seen moving from tree-stump to tree-stump, evidently in distress. "I think he's daft," said one. And in the gloaming over they went, found him, and brought him in to safety. He had been wounded in the head and side, and left behind. The first day he had kept himself alive by

drinking from the water-bottles of the dead; but he had lost his reason and his bearings, and was in despair when our brave fellows got him. And these men were killed later on by a slight accident down behind the lines.

It was difficult to get away from the touch of one's environment. One morning we had a weird reminder. When we opened the door of our hut, there, on the threshold, lay an unexploded "dud" shell which had fallen in the night. Had it done what had been intended, we should have been very suddenly off somewhere among the stars. It made one think a little of solemn and strange things, and feel more than a little thankful to behold again the light of the sun.

People speak a good deal about the lust for blood and the fever-passion of battle. But our boys are not bloodthirsty.

A friend of mine, after a "scrap," saw a proof of this which almost cost him his life, as he had to resist the tendency to laugh, for he had been shot through the lungs. A big Scotsman, in a muddy kilt, and with fixed bayonet, had in his cbirge a German prisoner, who was very unwilling to get a move on. And Sandy shouted out to a companion on ahead, "Hey, Jock, he winna steer. What'll I dae wi' him?" But Jock, busy driving his own man forward, just answered over his shoulder, "Bring him wi' ye." Both of these men had the sweat of conflict not dry upon them. But they never for a moment thought of driving the bayonet into that reluctant foe, as the German would have done most readily. course, one does occasionally find the old grim warrior still, quite contented under hard circumstances, finding indeed the conditions a kind of real relief after the rust of peaceful days. This same friend, going one night along the trenches, almost thigh-deep in mud, came upon a grizzled Irishman, O'Hara,

Of