pachydermatous hide. That the "Hymn of Hate" should be with us a cause
for jest, and "strafe" be adopted, with enthusiasm, into the English
language, he cannot understand. To him, as often to our own selves, we
shall always be incomprehensible.

Through the gauze screen on to the white operating table passed all the
flotsam of wounded humanity in the summer months. All the human wreckage
that marked the savage bush fighting from German Bridge to Morogoro came
to me upon this table. And its white cleanness, our towels and surgical
gloves and overalls, filled them with a sense of comfort and of safety
after weary and perilous journeys, that was in no way detracted from by
the gleaming instruments laid out beside the table. Even this chamber of
pain was a haven of refuge to these broken men after long jolting rides
over execrable roads.

But a particularist among surgeons would have found much to disapprove
of in this room. Cracks in the stone floor let in migrating bands of red
ants that no disinfectant would drive away. Arrow slit windows, high up
in the walls, gave ingress to the African swallow, redheaded and
red-backed, whose tuneful song was a perpetual delight. His nests
adorned the frieze, but they were full of squeaking youngsters and we
could not shut the parents out. So we banished them during operating
hours by screens of mosquito gauze; and to reward us, they sang to our
bedridden men from ward window-sills.

But despite these shortcomings of the operating theatre itself, we did
good work here, and got splendid results. For God was good, and the
clean soil took pity upon our many deficiencies. Earth, that in France
or Gallipoli hid the germs of gangrene and tetanus, here merely produced
a mild infection. Lucky for us that we did not need to inject the