Now we creep past a long hospital train, full this time, which has turned out on a siding to give us the right of way—­perhaps thirty all-steel cars—­each fitted with two tiers of berths, eight to a side, sixteen to a car.  Every berth is taken.  One car is fitted up as an operating room, but fortunately no one is on the operating table as we crawl past.  Another car is the private office of the surgeon in charge of the train.  He is sitting at a big desk receiving reports form the orderlies.  During the day we pass six of these splendidly appointed new all-steel hospital trains, all full of wounded.  Some of them are able to sit up in their bunks and take a mild interest in us.  Once, by a queer coincidence, we simultaneously pass the wounded going one way and cheering fresh troops going the other.

How the Belgians Fight

[By a Correspondent of The London Daily News.]

LONDON, Oct. 28.—­Writing from an unnamed place in Belgium a correspondent of The Daily News says: 

“The regiment I am concerned with was fifteen days and nights in the Antwerp trenches in countless engagements.  It withdrew at dawn, hoping then to rest.  It marched forty-five kilometers with shouldered rifles.  In the next five days it marched nearly 200 kilometers until it reached the Nieuport and Dixmude line.  By an error of judgment it got two days of drill and inspection in place of resting, then took its place in the front line on the Yser to face the most desperate of the German efforts.”

The correspondent quotes a young volunteer in this regiment as follows: 

“——­ was evacuated by the Germans, and we were sent in at nightfall.  As soon as they saw our lights they began shelling us.  We lost terribly.  A number of the men ran up the streets, but we got them together.  I had about twenty and retired in order.  We were 600 who went in, and must have left a third there.

“In the morning we moved down to reinforce a network of trenches on our bank of the Yser.  There was a farm on our right, and some of our men were firing at it, but the door opened and three officers in Belgian uniform came out shouting to us to cease fire, so we sent a detachment to the farm, and they were swept away by machine gun fire from the windows.  No, I don’t know what happened afterward about the farm.  I lost sight of it.

“We got into the trenches.  They lay longways behind a raised artificial bank on our side of the river.  At the northern end of them were mazes of cross trenches protecting them in case the Germans got across the bridge there and started to enfilade us.  They were full of water.  I was firing for six hours myself thigh deep in muddy water.

“The Germans got across the bridge.  We could not show head or hand over our bank.  German machine guns shot us from crevices in their raised bank across the river only a few yards away.  I was hours and hours dragging our wounded out of the cross trenches at the northern end of the bank southward and behind a mound till there was no more room for them there, and bringing up new men singly and two or three at a time from further down the trenches to take their places.  We lost our officers, but I got the men to listen to me.