After those who were able to get on their feet had passed out came those who were practically in the throes of death, and those whose minds had been dethroned by suffering and privation. One was able to keep the sob in his throat until _they_ appeared, and then the effort to suppress it was impotent. Indeed, They had a rendezvous with death When Spring brings back blue days and fair, and they are reconciled that he shall take their hands and lead them into his dark land, as Alan Seeger said in those precious lines which will ornament his memory for many a day. The procession slowly wound its way within the gates, and I supposed that they would be conducted and helped lovingly and tenderly to the pavilions ready to receive them; that they would be undressed and given hot, stimulating nourishment by nurses and orderlies recruited, perhaps, from those who had come before and whom nature had been kind enough partially to restore. But immediately they were confronted with a species of Italian bureaucracy which hindered their progress toward this haven of rest and of solace toward which they had been looking forward for many days, perhaps months. They were segregated in a large, barnlike structure a few yards within the gate, permitted to sit on rude, unbacked, uncomfortable benches, and compelled to await their turn until their names and their histories and an enumeration of their possessions could be recorded. I felt that God would have been kind if he had stamped across their brows the letter V to stand for virtue and valor, as he stamped the letter A upon the breast of Arthur Dimmesdale to testify to the people of New England the frailty of that Puritan parson, which was revealed to his parishioners when they gathered together to listen to the confession of his sins and to decide his punishment. There they sat, inanimate, inert, resigned, awaiting what the Italian Government might have in store for them with the same indifference as they awaited that which nature had in store for them. Never again shall I believe that the victim of tuberculosis is optimistic and hopeful. It may be that their obvious and striking forlornness was the expression of starvation and not of disease. Only about thirty per cent of them, I am told, showed signs of active tuberculosis after the ravages of inadequate and unsuitable food have been overcome. I saw and talked with many of their predecessors, and especially those who had been there a number of weeks, sufficiently long for them to have gained in weight and in strength, but even they were still branded with that expression which hopelessness comes nearest to describing.