" Looking from the angle of one of these extensive passages, so as to command a view right and left, there was a narrow path each way as far as the eye could reach, through a double line of low, wooden trestles, with planks laid upon them; on these were the beds of the patients. Here and there would be seen a small group of surgeons in consultation on some serious case; in smaller and more frequent groups, other surgeons with their attendant orderlies dressing wounds; wounded officers would sometimes come out a little way from their wards and be seen talking to some of the men; small congregations of convalescent officers and others would occasionally pass out of one of the side- wards, the chaplains', where they had been attending one of the frequent daily services.
"When it is remembered that the narrow path between the beds was the one thoroughfare of the place, it may be easily conceived that there were few moments during the day in which there were not many passing and re-passing. This was a great inconvenience, but one unavoidable from the nature of the building. The whole surgical and other staff, all the orderlies, every officer from the wards, their servants, every one with business to transact with any of the above — all had to find their way through the double line of patients. There was, therefore, not the slightest privacy, and until night, over a great extent of the building, little quiet.
"Here, again, it was wonderful how in a few days one's every sense seemed to adapt itself to the scene; the picture of war's work, hateful as it was, was on so large a scale that in its very magnitude the greater part of the horrors of its details was lost. Had you taken any twenty yards of a ward, and given your undivided attention to all it set before you, there was scarce one sense or feeling which would not have been touched most deeply; but, when it came to be each day a walk of miles of such hateful scenes, I am sorry to say one became but too hardened to them; the very abuses of the place, involving such a mass, seemed somehow to be less hateful than when, by any chance, they came before you in the case of some few individuals.
" How strange it is to know that all this vast collection of our emaciated and maimed fellow-creatures had been brought to this condition, as it were,
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of deliberate purpose; that possible exposure to pestilence and privation had been a part of a deliberate compact with those so many of whom it was thus to destroy; that these masses of men, on whom the sabre, the rifle, the shell, the bayonet, had worked such mutilation, had been trained to do just that same work on others, and had bravely done it."