The men give their names, pass at once to another room where their uniforms are taken away to be disinfected, thence to the bathroom, then into clean clothes and to bed.  It is a city of the sick—­of healing, rather—­and on a bright day, with crowds of convalescents sitting about in their linen pajamas in the sun, stretcher-bearers going back and forth, the capable-looking surgeons with their strong, kind faces, pretty nurses in nun-like white, it all has the brisk, rather jolly air of any vigorous organism, going full blast ahead.

We had been through it, seen the wards of strapping, handsome, childlike Russians, as carefully looked after by the Hungarians as if they were their own, when our officer guide remarked that in an hour or two a transport of four hundred new wounded would be coming in.  We waited in the receiving-room, where a young convalescent had been brought out on a stretcher to see his peasant family—­a weather-beaten father, a mother with a kerchief over her head, two solemn, little, round-faced brothers with Tyrolean feathers in their caps.  Benches were arranged for those able to sit up, clerks prepared three writing-desks, orderlies laid a row of stretchers side by side for fifty yards or so along the railroad track.

The transport was late, the sun going, and I went down to the other end of the yard to get a picture of some Russians I had seen two days before.  We had walked through their ward then, and I remembered one very sick boy, to whom one of the nurses with us had given a flower she was wearing, and how he had smiled as he put it to his face with his gaunt, white hand.  “It doesn’t take long,” she had said, “when they get like that.  They have so little vitality to go on, and some morning between two and five”—­and sure enough his bed was empty now.

A troop-train was rushing by, as I came back, covered with green branches and flowers.  They went by with a cheer—­that cheer which sounds like a cheer sometimes, and sometimes, when two trains pass on adjoining tracks so fast that you only catch a blur of faces, like the windy shriek of lost souls.

Then came a sound of band music, and down the road, outside the high wire fence, a little procession led by soldiers in gray-blue, playing Chopin’s “Funeral March.”  Behind them came the hospital hearse, priests, and a weeping peasant family.  The little procession moved slowly behind the wailing trumpets—­it was an honor given to all who died here, except the enemy—­and must have seemed almost a sort of extravagance to the convalescents crowding up to the fence who had seen scores of their comrades buried in a common trench.  Opposite us the drums rolled and the band began the Austrian national hymn.  Then they stopped; the soldier escort fired their rules in the air.  That ended the ceremony, and the hearse moved on alone.

Then the convalescents drifted back toward us.  Most of them would soon be ready for the front again, and many glad of it, if only to be men in a man’s world again.  One of the nurses spoke of some of the others she had known.  One man slashed his hand with his knife in the hope of staying behind.  Even the bravest must gather themselves together before the leap.  Only those who have seen what modern guns can do know how much to fear them.