As my own corrective I have at hand certain letters from a very able
woman doctor who returned last week from Calais. Lockjaw, gangrene, men
tied with filthy rags and lying bitterly cold in coaly sheds; men
unwounded, but so broken by the chill horrors of the Yser trenches as to
be near demented--such things make the substance of her picture. One
young officer talked to her rather dryly of the operations, of the
ruined towns and villages, of the stench of dead men and horses, of the
losses and wounds and mutilations among his men, of the list of pals he
had lost. "Suddenly he began to cry. He broke down just like an
overtaxed child. And he could not stop crying. He cried and cried, and I
could do nothing to help him." He was a strong man and a brave man, and
to that three months of war had brought him.

And then this again:

There were a fair number of Belgian doctors, but no nurses
except the usual untrained French girls, almost no equipment,
and no place for clean surgery. We heard of a house containing
sixty-one men with no doctor or nurses--several died without
having received any medical aid at all. Mrs. ---- and I even
on the following Wednesday found four men lying on straw in a
shop with leg and foot wounds who had not been dressed since
Friday and had never been seen by a doctor. In addition there
were hundreds and hundreds of wounded who could walk trying to
find shelter in some corner, besides the many unwounded French
and Belgian soldiers quartered in the town.

As if this inferno of misery were not enough, there were added
the refugees! These were not Belgians, as I had imagined, but
French. It appears that both English and French armies have