Generals, of course, stand for the "larger issues" of the war; it is their decisions that figure in to-morrow's _communiqués_. But at the front, doctors represent destiny in a much more picturesque way: it is no use putting these _blessés_ in an ambulance; death will close over them quite as gently here as twenty kilometres farther to the rear. This man's rheumatism demands that he be sent to Lyons or Marseilles; that one has five days in a base hospital and is in the trenches for the next death revel. A business-like surgeon pronounces his judgments in a ghastly _poste de secours_,--it is nothing compared with "strategical necessities,"--it will have no place beside announcements of yards of trenches taken and yards of trenches lost,--and yet, it is life or death for some brave soldier and all in the world that counts for some family circle. These mountain-tops are often for weeks on end bathed in a heavy mist varied by rainstorms. At such times when there is no work to do,--and very frequently there are no wounded to carry for twenty-four hours or more,--the surgeon, ourselves, the _brancardiers_, and the mule-drivers, close in around the stove. One of these _brancardiers_, or stretcher-carriers, was transferred after being wounded at the battle of the Marne from the front-line troops to the Service Sanitaire, and before the war he had served five years in the Foreign Legion in Africa. His stories of this period are endless and interesting, and, after listening to them for a week, we all go back to our base calling soldiers nothing but _poilus_; coffee, _jus_; wine, _pinard_; canned beef, _singe_; army organization, _système D_. There is also a good deal of reading done by many of the Section on the rainy days of no work. It is part of the daily relieving man's unofficial but well-understood duties to bring along any magazines and newspapers that he can get hold of, and generally, too, books gradually accumulate and grow to be considered as a sort of library that must not be taken away. Indeed, at one _poste de secours_ our library consists at present of two or three French novels and plays, "The Newcomes," a two-volume "Life of Ruskin," "Tess of the D'Urbervilles," and "Les Misérables."