The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend by Mrs. Humphry Ward
page 85 of 163 (52%)
page 85 of 163 (52%)
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of a good-will so strong, difficulties disappear.
Look now at this immense hangar or storehouse--the largest in the world--through which we are walking. It was completed three years before the war, partly, it is said, by German money, to house the growing cotton-trade of the port. It now houses a large proportion of the food of the British Army. The hangar is half a mile long, and is bounded on one side by the docks where the ships are discharging, and on the other by the railway lines where the trains are loading up for the front. You walk through avenues of bacon, through streets of biscuits and jam. On the quays just outside, ships from England, Canada, Norway, Argentina, Australia are pouring out their stores. Stand and watch the endless cranes at work, and think what English sea power means! And on the other side watch the packing of the trucks that are going to the front, the order and perfection with which the requisitions, large and small, of every regiment are supplied. One thinks of the Crimean scandals. The ghost of Florence Nightingale seems to move beside us, watching contentedly what has come of all that long-reforming labour, dealing with the health, the sanitation, the food and equipment of the soldier, in which she played her part; and one might fancy the great shade pausing specially beside the wired-in space labelled "Medical Comforts," and generally known as "The Cage." Medical _necessaries_ are housed elsewhere; but here are the dainties, the special foods, the easing appliances of all kinds which are to make life bearable to many a sorely-wounded man. As to the huge sheds of the Army Ordnance, which supply everything that the soldier doesn't eat, all metal stores--nails, horseshoes, oil-cans, |
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