_Saturday, --st._--Bombs were dropped in the Citadelle moat to-day. The Citadelle is now a casualty clearing station. This is not incongruous with its history. It was besieged in the fifteenth century. No doubt there were casualties within it then--though, judging its defensive properties at this distance of time, there were more without: many more. It's tremendously strong still--an incredible depth of dry moat, thickness of wall, and height of rampart surmounting it: outer ramparts on three sides from which the defenders retired across the bridges--still standing--after they had done their worst. And there are bowels in the place from which galleries set out to neighbouring villages whence reinforcements used to be brought up. You can walk miles in these galleries beneath the Citadelle itself, without journeying beneath the surrounding country; for the ground-plan of the Citadelle is not small. A walk round the walls will lead you a mile and a half, traversing buttresses and all: the buttresses bulge hugely into the moat-bed. The whole area is terraced, originally for strategic purposes. The buildings are many and strong and roomy. A fine hospital it happens to have made. The multiplicity of buildings offers all a C.O. could ask in the way of distribution of wards and facilities for segregation, and isolated buildings for stores, messes, Sisters' quarters, officers' quarters, operating-theatres, laboratories. His convalescents can bask and promenade on the ramparts in the winter sunshine, and stroll healthfully through the groves and about the paths of the area. In the wide level, grassy, moat-basin the orderlies play their football matches and the C.O. takes his revolver practice. The ghastliness of the wards is all out of harmony with this. There is a gas-ward, hideously filled--blackened faces above the ever-restless coverlets. The surgical wards in a station so near the line hold the grimmest cases--cases too critical for movement down to a base: head wounds, abdominal wounds, spinal cases that can bear transport no farther, and that have almost no hope of recovery as it is. Men plead piteously here for the limbs that a cruelly-kind surgeon can do nothing with but amputate. "Doctor, I've lost the arm; that won't be so bad if you'll only leave the leg." The plea is usually put in this form, which implies the power of choice in the M.O. between alternatives; whereas the gangrenous limb leaves him no room for debate. In a station so close, too, the operating-theatre cannot afford to be either small or idle--no mere cubicle with two tables; but two large wards with six tables each, and (when a push has been made in the line) with every table in use late in the night: a bloody commentary on the righteousness of war. CHAPTER IV THE CAFÉ DU PROGRÈS