LAND AND WATER. 
May 29, 1915. 
succour, as. in blood and agony, they, the brave, went from 
the light and swt. tiiess of life to the silence of their lonely 
graves. 
" Thoiifjh I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
Thou art vith me." 
Take comfort, poor widowed girl and desolate mother. 
They were not left alone. Love, greater than yours, upheld 
them, and around them was the everlasting mercy. 
, » » * 
Sorrow multiplies on sorrow ! To-day and to-morrow the 
vreifht of our woe increases and the earth groans with our 
aniniish. We remember the land across the sea where, even 
to the borders of another sea, they weep with us for these who 
will not come again. And to what end ? To what end do we 
bear the burden that presses upon us ? For what avails valour 
and glory and conquest if these our sons are slain ? 
" lilest are the departed who in the Lord are sleeping. They 
rest from their labours and their works do follow them." 
Oh, sorrowing souls, look up 1 Not alone for valour and 
glory, for country and King were the lives laid down. It is 
the battle of Christ we fight ! That His message of mercy and 
love might be preserved to a stricken world, they, your gallant 
oiJHs, endured and agonised and died! Rise up! With 
streaming eyes but steadfast hearts, rise up, and leave them, 
the con.;eciated, in their Fatlier's gracious keeping. 
Through the vast cathedral poured the sonorous measures 
of the Dead March. Wave upon wave it soared to the 
distant arches and echoed about the tombs of the mighty 
dead. The piercing call of the "Last Post" shrilled out, 
and ill the pause we seemed to hear the cry come back : " Yea, 
we are here, we, whose bodies lie around you ! We, who of 
old fought and died that you who came after might enter into 
your heritage. Sons of our sons, keep faith." Surely they 
thrilled, those spirits of the departed, when we lifted up our 
voices and hailed you: "Oh, Canada! " land of our birth, 
young mother of brave men. And surely they rejoiced, the 
glorious company of soldiers, saints, and martyrs, as we sang 
anew our fathers' s6i%t our battle cry of old: " For Christ 
and King." 
* » * 
Oh, men of Canada, true descendants of the race whicli 
bred you, well have you proved your right to sing that song. 
The sacred love of altar and of throne flames in you as it 
flamed in your fathers before you. And against it the legions 
of fear and torment and death hurl themselves in vain. And 
behind your steadfast fortitude, as behind a rampart, your 
people stand and look forward unafraid. For they know that 
the loyalty and the faith and the honour of their country, 
and all that they cherish and hold dear, are safe in your 
hands. 
Ele.\nor McLaren Brown. 
Reproduced by special permi-idon of the proprietors of 
the Canadian Gazette. 
A DAY WITH THE FRENCH AMBULANCE SERVICE 
GOOD news flies fast, even when it is not true. It 
must have been long before the attack had 
begun that the rumour reached us at Mont- 
didler that the French had carried a strongly 
entrenched position at Andechy. We received 
no orders then and there, but we were told to be ready early 
next day and to set out with every available car. All that 
night at intervals we heard the prolonged roll of distant guns. 
The morning was cold and clear and brilliant, a day in har- 
mony with news of victory and the excitement which the 
prospect of fresh work brought to us, whose routine had been 
for weeks to ply between hospital and station, station and 
hospital, to wait and loaf about far behind the line in case we 
should be wanted. W^e knew that the capture of Andechy 
meant that the Germans would have to fall back some miles; 
back, in fact, to some such position as they at present occupy 
at this part of the line, one far nearer Roye than Montdidier. 
We knew it must have been a tough piece of work and that 
the casualties must be heavy, for not only our cars but those 
of the American hospital had all been ordered out to supple- 
ment the Service de Sante. The road was running with 
water as we swished across the high open plateau and on 
down into the woods below. The woods, all glittering wet, 
were full of soldiers; red breeches and blue coats could be 
seen everywhere moving about in between the bare poles of 
the undergrowth, and the smoke of wood fires rose and curled 
among the trees. Some of the men were dragging branches 
to throw on the flames, others were drying their clothes, flap- 
ping them in the smoke; some were lying, huddled up or 
stretched out, asleep upon the dead leaves. By the roadside 
a group of ofiicers were munching their breakfast, with maps 
upon their knees, and here and there a horse was tethered to 
a tree. There seemed to be a gaiety and animation in the 
scene which freed the spirits. It was a fresh side of war to 
us, a very different one from the wards of hospitals, or the 
sheds and offices of railway stations, where men lay upon 
floors bandaged and inert, or sat disconsolate in rows, their 
arms in slings, with pink tickets tied on to their buttons, 
waiting, interminably waiting, to be hoisted into trains. 
But these soldiers did not hail us demonstratively, as those 
going into action invariably hailed us. On the contrary, they 
stared gravely at us as we passed; all except an Arab, tur- 
baned and white-robed, with a liigh yellow forehead and the 
face of a laughing philosopher, who was driving a hooded 
waggon packed with loaves; he grinned at us with all his 
teeth and called out " Ingleesh." 
Presently we stopped to ask the way to Warsy of a 
bespattered cyclist, and from him we learnt that the troops 
in th« woods were not men resting after a victory, but sur- 
vivor» who had lost half their comrades in a gallant but un- 
BUCceKsful attack. It had been a terrible affair. There was 
dist'.css in his expression. " But we will drive the grey moles 
rvt next time," he said as he hopped on his machine again. 
Warsy was almost axle deep in slu?h and full of soldiers. 
Soldiers were beating linen under the arch of the well where 
the women used to do the village washing; they sat in rows 
along the churchyard wall, and stood about listlessly in 
groups. Perhaps their listlessness sprang from that relief at 
having come out of danger, which is really an intense form of 
living, making a man content with the stone he touches or 
the sight of the sky and the graps, and mere nearness to 
another human being a deep kind of satisfying intercourse. 
The wounded had been taken to two places in Warsy, the 
chateau and the church, but it was only in the chateau that 
there were surgical appliances; the floor of the church had 
only been cleared and straw put down for the wounded to lie 
on until they could be taken away. We went to the chateau 
first. 
The side of war that the surgeon or the Red Cross worker 
sees is the side which the imagination is most reluctant to 
contemplate. In well-appointed hospitals the proofs on 
every side that everything that it is possible for human 
skill to do is being done is extraordinarily quieting both 
to the onlooker's distress and to the wounded themselves; 
but in such places as these so little is possible. The salon of 
the chateau had been hurriedly turned into an operating 
room. The pictures, books, and ornaments were as their 
owners had left them. The grand piano served as a second 
dressing-table. Several cars were quickly filled up here with 
wounded, some of whom it would have been better not to 
move, but room had to be made for more desperate cases. 
The rest of our cars went round to the church. It was a large 
church, and the floor of it was covered with wounded men, 
up to the altar. Some seemed too exhausted to care, some 
were propped up, sitting against the walls, some were 
frightened about themselves, as well as in pain, some were 
smoking cigarettes, some were sleeping, some were dead. It 
took many journeys to empty. When night came the huge, 
shadowy place was lit by the little flames, no bigger than a 
penknife, of votive candles; and with the dark the guns 
began again. It m.ight be thought that such scenes of dis- 
tress must shake the nerves, at least of men who know that 
to-morrow or the day after they may also be among the 
victims. But it seems in the magnitude of the disaster there 
is something which steadies. Into each man is borne a sense 
of his own insignificance. The clearing hospital at Montdidier 
Station, where the cases were taken and swiftly examined and 
distributed, some to go by train, some to remain in the hos- 
pitals in the town, was crow^ded to overflowing. At one time 
there were more than thirteen hundred wounded there. They 
lay side by side in the lean-to shelters of tarpaulin as close 
together as men sleeping in tent. There had been engage- 
ments at other points on the line, and the cars had been 
bringing them in from all sides. Yet in twenty-four hours 
it, too, was once again quite empty. The French organisa- 
tion is certainly very prompt in emergencies. 
Desmond MacCarthy. 
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