I am not fond of going to stare at sick people, but I happened for one reason or another to visit several hospitals and I brought away my own very distinct if very hasty impressions. I remember most vividly a hospital installed in a building which in times of peace is an art school. Opposite the door of one ward, by an irony of which the soldiers in the beds could scarcely be aware, stood a Winged Victory of Samothrace. Samothrace itself had a few days before been taken by the Greeks. The Victory was veiled—partly I suppose to keep her clean, and partly out of deference to Mohammedan susceptibilities. But there she stood, muffled and mutilated, above the beds of thirty or forty broken men of Asia. I shall always remember the look in their eyes, mute and humble and grateful and uncomprehending, as we passed from bed to bed, giving them sweets and cigarettes. The heads that showed above the thick coloured quilts were dressed in white skull-caps, for an Oriental cannot live without something on his hair. It is a point both of etiquette and of religion. Those who were farther on the way to recovery prowled mildly about in baggy white pyjamas and quilted coats of more colour than length. Their wearers had an admirable indifference as to who saw them. A great many had a left hand tied up in a sling—a hand, I suppose, that some Bulgarian had seen sticking a gun-barrel out of a trench in Thrace. Some limped painfully or went on crutches. But it was not always because of a bullet. There were a vast number of cases of gangrene, simply from ill-fitting shoes or from puttees too tightly bound which hands were too cold or too weak to undo. There were fewer resulting amputations than would have been the case in other countries. Many of the soldiers refused absolutely to have their legs cut off. Life would be of no further use to them, they said. I heard of one who would not go maimed into the presence of Allah. He preferred to go the sooner as he was. And he did, without a word, without a groan, waiting silently till the poison reached his heart. A European nurse told me that in all her long experience she had never seen men die like these ignorant Turkish peasants—so bravely, so simply, so quietly. They really believe, I suppose. In any case, they are of Islam, resigned to the will of God. After death they must lie in a place with no door or window open, for as short a time as possible. A priest performs for them the last ritual ablution, and then they are hurried silently away to a shallow grave. IV.—RECONNOITRING BY TAXI