trenches. She moves down the ward; eyes follow her. When she is
absent, though others take her place, she leaves a loneliness. If she
meant much to men in days gone by, to-day she means more than
ever. Over many dying boys she stoops as the incarnation of the woman
whom, had they lived, they would have loved. To all of us, with the
blasphemy of destroying still upon us, she stands for the divinity of
womanhood.

What sights she sees and what words she hears; yet the pity she brings
to her work preserves her sweetness. In the silence of the night those
who are delirious re-fight their recent battles. You're half-asleep,
when in the darkened ward some one jumps up in bed, shouting, "Hold
your bloody hands up." He thinks he's capturing a Hun trench, taking
prisoners in a bombed in dug-out. In an instant, like a mother with a
frightened child, she's bending over him; soon she has coaxed his head
back on the pillow. Men do not die in vain when they evoke such women.
And the men--the chaps in the cots! As a patient the first sight you
have of them is a muddy stretcher. The care with which the bearers
advance is only equalled by the waiters in old-established London
Clubs when they bring in one of their choicest wines. The thing on the
stretcher looks horribly like some of the forever silent people you
have seen in No Man's Land. A pair of boots you see, a British Warm
flung across the body and an arm dragging. A screen is put round a
bed; the next sight you have of him is a weary face lying on a white
pillow. Soon the chap in the bed next to him is questioning.

"What's yours?"

"Machine-gun caught me in both legs."