As my own corrective I have at hand certain letters from a very able woman doctor who returned last week from Calais.  Lockjaw, gangrene, men tied with filthy rags and lying bitterly cold in coaly sheds; men unwounded, but so broken by the chill horrors of the Yser trenches as to be near demented—­such things make the substance of her picture.  One young officer talked to her rather dryly of the operations, of the ruined towns and villages, of the stench of dead men and horses, of the losses and wounds and mutilations among his men, of the list of pals he had lost.  “Suddenly he began to cry.  He broke down just like an overtaxed child.  And he could not stop crying.  He cried and cried, and I could do nothing to help him.”  He was a strong man and a brave man, and to that three months of war had brought him.

And then this again: 

There were a fair number of Belgian doctors, but no nurses except the usual untrained French girls, almost no equipment, and no place for clean surgery.  We heard of a house containing sixty-one men with no doctor or nurses—­several died without having received any medical aid at all.  Mrs. ——­ and I even on the following Wednesday found four men lying on straw in a shop with leg and foot wounds who had not been dressed since Friday and had never been seen by a doctor.  In addition there were hundreds and hundreds of wounded who could walk trying to find shelter in some corner, besides the many unwounded French and Belgian soldiers quartered in the town.

As if this inferno of misery were not enough, there were added the refugees!  These were not Belgians, as I had imagined, but French.  It appears that both English and French armies have to clear the civil population out of the whole fighting area—­partly to prevent spying and treachery, (which has been a curse to both armies,) and partly because they would starve.  They are sent to Calais, and then by boat to Havre.

That first Sunday evening an endless procession flowed from the station to the quays in the drenching rain.  Each family had a perambulator, (a surprisingly handsome one, too,) piled with sticks of bread, a few bundles of goods, and, when we peered inside, a couple of crying babies.  There were few young people; mostly it was whimpering, frightened-looking children and wretched, bent old men and women.  It seemed too bad to be true; even when they brushed past us in the rain we could not believe that their sodden figures were real.  They were dematerialized by misery in some odd way.

Some of them slept in skating rinks, trucks, some in the Amiral Ganteaume. (One’s senses could not realize that to the horrors of exile these people had added those of shipwreck next day.) Some certainly stood in the Booking Hall outside our hotel all night through.  This sort of thing went on all the week, and was going on when we left.

Nevertheless, I was stirred agreeably by the imagination