cases are dropping in (seventeen up to date, I hear), and doctors are busy.
Already in the night smothered cries burst from the walls of these
torture-rooms, and make one conscious that it may be one's turn next. I
have always felt that it is all right up in the firing line, but it is that
dreadful afterwards on the operating-table.... But nurses and doctors are
doing valiantly. There is a German army doctor who knows his business very
well, they say; and his reputation has already spread so far among the men
of our all-nation sailors and marines that they all ask for him. I have
heard that request in four languages already.

To me it seems that by incontestable laws each actor is taking his
proper place, and that each nationality is pushing out its best to the
proper perspective. Ah! a siege is evidently the testing-room of the
gods. If we could only in ordinary life apply the great siege test,
what mistakes would be avoided, what reputations would be saved from
being shattered! Because no weak man would ever be given advancement.




IV

THE BONDS TIGHTEN


25th June, 1900.

* * * * *

On all sides our position has become less secure, less enviable, and