A week or two ago I was travelling up North.  The stations we passed through were many of them full of troops, the trains were crammed with soldiers, and very healthy and happy they looked.  I was struck by their friendliness and kindness; they were civil and modest; they did not behave as if they were in possession of the line, as actually I suppose they were, but as if they were ordinary travellers, and anxious not to incommode other people.  I saw soldiers doing kind little offices, helping an old frail woman carefully out of the train and handing out her baggage, giving chocolates to children, interesting themselves in their fellow-travellers.  At one place I saw a proud and anxious father, himself an old soldier, I think, seeing off a jolly young subaltern to the front, with hardly suppressed tears; the young man was full of excitement and delight, but did his best to cheer up the spirits of “Daddy,” as he fondly called him.  I felt very proud of our soldiers, their simplicity and kindness and real goodness.  I was glad to belong to the nation which had bred them, and half forgot the grim business on which they were bent.  We stopped at a junction.  And here I caught sight of a strange little group.  There was a young man, an officer, who had evidently been wounded; one of his legs was encased in a surgical contrivance, and he had a bandage round his head.  He sat on a bench between two stalwart and cheerful-looking soldiers, who had their arms round him, and were each holding one of his hands.  I could not see the officer clearly at first, as a third soldier was standing close in front of him and speaking encouragingly to him, while at the same time he sheltered him from the crowd.  But he moved away, and at the same moment the young officer lifted his head, displaying a drawn and sunken face, a brow compressed with pain, and looked wildly and in a terrified way round him, with large melancholy eyes.  Then he began to beat his foot on the ground, and struggled to extricate himself from his companions; and then he buried his head in his chest and sank down in an attitude of angry despair.  It was a sight that I cannot forget.

Just before the train went off an officer got into my carriage, and as we started, said to me, “That’s a sad business there—­it is a young officer who was taken prisoner by the Germans—­one of our best men; he escaped, and after enduring awful hardships he got into our lines, was wounded, and sent home to hospital; but the shock and the anxiety preyed on his mind, and he has become, they fear, hopelessly insane—­he is being sent to a sanatorium, but I fear there is very little chance of his recovery; he is wounded in the head as well as the foot.  He is a wealthy man, devoted to soldiering, and he is just engaged to a charming girl . . .”

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