No article on the work of the Red Cross can be complete without a reference to the work of these priests, not perhaps affiliated with the society, but doing yeoman work of service among the wounded.  They are everywhere, in the trenches or at the outposts, in the hospitals and hospital trains, in hundreds of small villages, where the entire community plus its burden of wounded turns to the cure for everything, from advice to the sacrament.

In prostrate Belgium the demands on the priests have been extremely heavy.  Subjected to insult, injury and even death during the German invasion, where in one diocese alone thirteen were put to death—­their churches destroyed, or used as barracks by the enemy—­that which was their world has turned to chaos about them.  Those who remained with their conquered people have done their best to keep their small communities together and to look after their material needs—­which has, indeed, been the lot of the priests of battle-scarred Flanders for many generations.

Others have attached themselves to the hospital service.  All the Belgian trains of wounded are cared for solely by these priests, who perform every necessary service for their men, and who, as I have said before, administer the sacrament and make coffee to cheer the flagging spirits of the wounded, with equal courage and resource.

Surgeons, nurses, priests, nuns, volunteer workers who substitute for lack of training both courage and zeal, these are a part of the machinery of mercy.  There is another element—­the boy scouts.

During the early days of the war the boy scouts of England, then on school holiday, did marvellous work.  Boys of fourteen made repeated trips across the Channel, bringing back from France children, invalids, timorous women.  They volunteered in the hospitals, ran errands, carried messages, were as useful as only willing boys can be.  They did scout service, too, guarding the railway lines and assisting in watching the Channel coast; but with the end of the holiday most of the English boy scouts were obliged to go back to school.  Their activities were not over, but they were largely curtailed.

There were five thousand boy scouts in Belgium at the beginning of the war.  I saw them everywhere—­behind the battle lines, on the driving seats of ambulances, at the doors of hospitals.  They were very calm.  Because I know a good deal about small boys I smothered a riotous impulse to hug them, and spoke to them as grown-up to grown-up.  Thus approached, they met my advances with dignity, but without excitement.

And after a time I learned something about them from the Chief Scout of Belgium; perhaps it will show the boy scouts of America what they will mean to the country in time of war.  Perhaps it will make them realise that being a scout is not, after all, only camping in the woods, long hikes, games in the open.  The long hikes fit a boy for dispatch carrying, the camping teaches him to care for himself when, if necessity arises, he is thrown on the country, like his older brother, the fighting man.