Surgeons being scantier than men at Ypres, one with a compound fracture
of the thigh had himself propped up, and thus all day worked on the
wounded at the front. He knew it meant death for him. The day over, he
let them carry him to the rear, and there, from blood-poisoning, he died.
Thus through four frightful years, the British met their duty and their
death.

There is the great story of the little penny steamers of the Thames--a
story lost amid the gigantic whole. Who will tell it right? Who will make
this drop of perfect valor shine in prose or verse for future eyes to
see? Imagine a Hoboken ferry boat, because her country needed her,
starting for San Francisco around Cape Horn, and getting there. Some ten
or eleven penny steamers under their own steam started from the Thames
down the Channel, across the Bay of Biscay, past Gibraltar, and through
the submarined Mediterranean for the River Tigris. Boats of shallow
draught were urgently needed on the River Tigris. Four or five reached
their destination. Where are the rest?

What did England do in the war, anyhow?

During 1917-1918 Britain's armies held the enemy in three continents and
on six fronts, and cooperated with her Allies on two more fronts. Her
dead, those six hundred and fifty-eight thousand dead, lay by the Tigris,
the Zambesi, the AEgean, and across the world to Flanders' fields. Between
March 21st and April 17th, 1918, the Huns in their drive used 127
divisions, and of these 102 were concentrated against the British. That
was in Flanders. Britain, at the same time she was fighting in Flanders,
had also at various times shared in the fighting in Russia, Kiaochau, New
Guinea, Samoa, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, the Sudan, Cameroons,
Togoland, East Africa, South West Africa, Saloniki, Aden, Persia, and