I think it was Belmont-" snap this scene. Look at the wounded all over the ground. Quick! out with your camera.”

"Oh, I can't," said he; "it's too horrible!"

"As you please," I said, "but it's what the public wants."

You read, in the writings of those who know nothing of war, about the writhing of the wounded, and the groaning on the battle-field. There is no writhing, and the groans are few and faint. There was one man who was simply cut to pieces by a shell at Maaghersfontein, and his sufferings must have been awful. He kept crying, "Doctor, can't you do anything?' Another begged to be killed, and the first wounded man I saw kept saying, poor fellow, in ever so low a voice, "Oh, dear, dear, dear! Oh, dear, dear, dear!" But there is much less groaning than you would imagine-very little in proportion to the sufferings.

Two things are so common with the wounded as to be almost like rules of behaviour. They all beg for water (it used to be cigarettes that they asked for on the Turkish side in the last war in Europe), and they seem always to be made gentle by their wounds. Men of the roughest speech, profane by second nature, cease to offend when stricken down.

"Well, mate," said one, whose leg was shattered, "you never know when your turn will come, do you?"

And another simply cried, "Oh, dear!"

Now and then you heard, "For God's sake get me taken to an ambulance," but no profanity was intended there.

Many may wonder how it feels to be wounded. All who had bones shattered by expanding bullets used nearly the same language to describe the sensation.

"You feel," they said, "exactly as if you had received a powerful shock from an electric battery, and then comes a blow as if your foot" (or arm, or whatever part it might be) "was crushed by a stroke with a tremendous mallet." It is much the same in a lesser degree if a bone is struck by a Mauser bullet; but if the smooth, slender, clean little shot merely pierces the flesh, a burning or stinging sensation is the instantaneous result.

"Lying six hours in the broiling sun was pretty bad," said one whose arm-bone was smashed; "but the really awful experience was the jolting over rocks when I was carried off in an ambulance."

Another man, an officer, whose foot was smashed by an explosive bullet, said, "Look at my pipe. That's what I did to keep from saying anything." He had bitten off an inch of the hardened rubber mouthpiece. That was before his wound was dressed. The relief that is given by the dressing of a wound must be exquisite, for you hear next to no groans or moans after a doctor has given this first attention.

In the army of Lord Methuen the great majority of wounds were in the arms and feet; but other points and experiences in war are more remarkable. The chances of receiving a wound seem not to have greatly increased with the improvements in modern death-dealing implements. There were more than a million shots fired at Modder River, and yet only about eight hundred men were hit, while the number of bullets that hit water-bottles, haversacks, rationtins, and coat-sleeves was astonishing. The damage to life and limb by the excessive artillery fire was next to nothing.

On a typical field of battle the armies oppose one another with orderly masses. Staff officers ride hither and thither. Batteries rumble to and fro at long intervals as they are ordered to take new positions, and in the same way the cavalry appear and reappear on the edges of the field. Stretcher-bearers bring the wounded out of the zone of danger, and ambulances roll up, get their loads, and roll away again, all day continually, as in a ceaseless train.

Brave privates bring out the wounded, and work their way back into fire again, now running forward, now dropping flat upon the veldt. Skulkers work back to the edge of the field in the same way—a few only—and are gathered up and sent forward in batches by the officers who come upon them. At last the cheer of British victory is heard, and the whole force

rushes forward; or darkness falls upon an unfinished fight, and we grope about the veldt seeking our camps, and the food and drink that most of us have gone without too long.

CHAPTER XXV

A HALT IN MODERN WAR METHODS

ON January 20th Lord Methuen's force was not resting, but busy enough, though not fighting.

When we all come to be judged by the work we have done in these early days of the war, it shall not be said that in the time we took to fight four battles, and in the severity of those engagements, we did not do as much as could be expected of everyday fighting

men.

A fickle public may have turned aside from us, fastening its passing interest on a Buller or a French, and saying, “It is to these new favourites that we must look for our excitement." But when we were filling the stage, what a brilliant spectacle we made! What dash we showed! What swiftness marked our progress! What sturdy blows we dealt, and how quickly we showered them down!

We were not checked! It was the methods of modern warfare that halted!

It had not fallen to any other general's lot to meet with a foe so situated as to embody the entire strength,