S2{} Ten Years of my Life. 



logne. Everything there was perfect. The immense stores 

 were well filled, and supplies arrived regularly. Applications 

 made from different parts were carefully and liberally attended 

 to and answered with a promptitude which was especially 

 praiseworthy and beneficial. Men, mostly selected from the 

 nivT-rcantile members of the associations, accompanied such 

 convoys — people who had business habits and who understood 

 how to distribute the things with order and in a judicious man- 

 ner, and compared with whom the knights of Malta and St. 

 John were at a great disadvantage. • 



These knights have been much abused and ridiculed, and, 

 though it cannot be denied that they offered many weak poiiits 

 and furnished ample material for ridicule and censure, it is 

 only just to consider what can be said in their defence. 



I'hey were all noblemen, and mostly wealthy ; owners of 

 great estates ; princes, counts, and barons with a long pedi- 

 gree, living mostly in their castles. Leaving the management 

 of their estates and households and the care of their broad 

 acres almost always to their stewards, they lived an easy 

 life, were used to command as masters, — in a word, were 

 aristocrats to the core. It is true all of them had been soldiers, 

 but it was mostly long ago, and if they retained any habits of 

 their soldier life they were not those of a private or corporal 

 or poor plodding subaltern ofiicer, who had to turn every 

 thaler six times in his hands before he spent it. The war of 

 1866 was so very short that not much experience could be ac- 

 quired in it by such knights as attended it. Now they were 

 called to fulfil the traditional duties of their order, of which 

 perhaps only very few, if any, had a definite idea. To expect 

 such services of them as were required centuries ago from 

 members of their order was out of the question. They were 

 now great lords, and Christian humility is not the first among 

 their virtues. If they condescended to accept an oftice it 

 could be only one becoming their social position. Many say 

 that it was a mistake to place them as they were placed, assert- 

 ing that they did more harm than good ; an opinion held espe- 

 cially by the medical gentlemen, who perfectly understood 

 their business, and knew exactly what was required for wounded 

 and sick, having acquired ample experience in attending all 

 the year round in hospitals, which was of course by no means 

 the case with these knights. 



