In a hideous little room at the back the dead are prepared for their last resting place—­prepared in a manner which is shocking, but is the best that can be done.  I cannot describe it.  In the cool of the evening, when perhaps the enemy’s fire has slackened a little, and the bullets only sob very faintly overhead, and the shells have ceased their brutal attentions, stretcher parties come quietly and carry out the corpses.  That is the worst sight of all.

There are no coffins, and the dead, shrouded in white cloth, have sometimes their booted feet pushing through the coarse fabric in which they are sewn.  Never shall I forget the sight of one man, a great, long fellow, who seemed immense in his white shroud.  A movement of the bearers struggling under his unaccustomed weight burst his winding sheet and his feet shot out as if he were making a last effort to escape from the pitiless grasp of Mother Earth extending her arms towards him in the form of a narrow trench.  There was something hideous and terrible in these booted feet.  One man, unnerved at the sight, gave a short cry, as if he had been struck.  That is the brutal side of life—­death.

There is also no room and not time to give each one a separate grave, these our dead; and so, strapped to a plank, they are lowered into the ground, a few shovelfuls of earth are hastily dropped in on top, and then another corpse is laid down.  Sometimes there are three or four in a single grave, and when the grave is filled up the dead men’s order is written on rough crosses.  That is all.

At such burials you may see the real truth which is hidden by the mask of every-day life.  Men you thought were good fellows turn out to be hearts of stone; the true hearts of gold are generally those who are devil-may-care and indifferently regarded when there is no Sturm und Drang. I, who have never been religious, begin to understand what such phrases mean—­“that many are called, but few are chosen.”  It is not possible that the final valuation can be that of the every-day world.  Then when I think of these things, I long to get away from this imprisonment; to revalue things in a new light; to see and to understand.

But as you pass away from this torture room and this execution ground a sullen anger seizes you.  Why should so many be called—­why should we die thus in a hole?...

VIII

THE FAILURE

6th July, 1900.

* * * * *

I have always found that there is a corrective for everything in this world.  Action is the best one of all, people say.  It is not always so.

The little Japanese colonel stood this morning pulling his thin moustaches very thoughtfully and looking earnestly ahead of him when I came on duty with a dozen others.  In front was a great mass of ruins, concealing a couple of entrenched posts of our own men, where I was going, and farther on, half masked by the ruins, some of the enemy’s advanced barricades lay.