My God, what does it all mean?  Are men so mad?  And why are they killing all our best and bravest?  Our first army is gone, and surely such a company never before took the field!  Outmatched by twenty to one, they stuck it at Mons and on the Aisne, and saved Paris by a miracle.  All my old friends fell then—­men near my own age, whom I have known in many climes—­Eustace Crawley, Victor Brooke, the Goughs, and other splendid men.  Now the sons of my friends are falling fast—­Duncan Sim’s boy, young Wilson, Neville Strutt, and scores of others.  I know one case in which four brothers have fallen; another, where twins of nineteen died side by side; and this one has his eyes blown out, and that one has his leg torn off, and another goes mad; and boys, creeping back to the base holding an arm on, or bewildered by a bullet through the brain, wander out of their way till a piece of shrapnel or torn edge of shell finds them, and they fall again, with their poor boyish faces buried in the mud!

Mr. ——­ dined with us last night.  He had been talking of his brother who was killed, and he said:  “I think it makes a difference if you belong to a family which has always given its lives to the country.  We are accustomed to make these sacrifices.”

Thus bravely in the light of day, but when evening came and we sat together, then we knew just what the life of the boy had cost him.  They tell us—­these defrauded broken-hearted ones—­just how tall the lad was, and how good to look at!  That seems to me so sad—­as if one reckoned one’s love by inches!  And yet it is the beauty of youth that I mourn also, and its horribly lonely death.

“They never got him further than the dressing-station,” Mr. ——­ said; “but—­he would always put up a fight, you know—­he lived for four days.  No, there was never any hope.  Half the back of his head was shattered.  But he put up a fight.  My brother would always do that.”

PART III

RUSSIA AND THE PERSIAN FRONT

CHAPTER I

PETROGRAD

Mrs. Wynne, Mr. Bevan, and I left London for Russia on October 16, 1915.  We are attached provisionally to the Anglo-Russian hospital, with a stipulation that we are at liberty to proceed to the front with our ambulances as soon as we can get permission to do so.  We understand that the Russian wounded are suffering terribly, and getting no doctors, nurses, or field ambulances.  We crossed from Newcastle to Christiania in a Norwegian boat, the Bessheim.  It was supposed that in this ship there was less chance of being stopped, torpedoed, or otherwise inconvenienced.

We reached Christiania after a wonderfully calm crossing, and went to the Grand Hotel at 1 a.m.  No rooms to be had, so we went on to the Victoria—­a good old house, not fashionable, but with a nice air about it, and some solid comforts.  We left on Wednesday, the 20th, at 7 a.m.  This was something of a feat, as we have twenty-four boxes with us.  I only claim four, and feel as if I might have brought more, but everyone has a different way of travelling, and luggage is often objected to.