"
Some of the men were wounded, in addition to the fever. She told me
that it was impossible to keep things in proper order with the help
they had.
"And food!" she said. "We cannot have eggs. They are prohibitive at
twenty-five centimes--five cents--each; nor many broths. Meat is dear
and scarce, and there are no chickens. We give them stewed macaroni
and farinaceous things. It's a terrible problem."
The charts bore out what she had said about the type of the disease.
They showed incredible temperatures, with the sudden drop that is
perforation or hemorrhage.
The odour was heavy. Men lay there, far from home, babbling in
delirium or, with fixed eyes, picking at the bed clothes. One was
going to die that day. Others would last hardly longer.
"They are all Belgians here," she said. "The British and French troops
have been inoculated against typhoid."
So here again the Belgians were playing a losing game. Perhaps they
are being inoculated now. I do not know. To inoculate an army means
much money, and where is the Belgian Government to get it? ft seems
the tragic irony of fate that that heroic little army should have been
stationed in the infested territory. Are there any blows left to rain
on Belgium?
In a letter from the Belgian lines the writer says:
"This is just a race for life.
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