At our appearance at the top of the stairs those who
were convalescent below rose and stood at attention. They stood in a
line at the foot of their beds, boys and grizzled veterans, clad in
motley garments, supported by crutches, by sticks, by a hand on the
supporting back of a chair. Men without a country, where were they to
go when the hospital ship had finished with them? Those who were able
would go back to the army, of course. But what of that large
percentage who will never be whole again? The machinery of mercy can
go so far, and no farther. France cannot support them. Occupied with
her own burden, she has persistently discouraged Belgian refugees.
They will go to England probably--a kindly land but of an alien
tongue. And there again they will wait.
The waiting of the hospital will become the waiting of the refugee.
The Channel coast towns of England are full of human derelicts who
stand or sit for hours, looking wistfully back toward what was once
home.
The story of the hospitals is not always gloomy. Where the
surroundings are favourable, defeat is sometimes turned to victory.
Tetanus is being fought and conquered by means of a serum. The open
treatment of fractures--that is, by cutting down and exposing the
jagged edges of splintered bones, and then uniting them--has saved
many a limb.
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