One almost wonders whether it might not be possible to eliminate the personal element in war, so constant is the talk about victorious guns. If guns decide everything, then let them be trained on other guns. Let the gun that drives farthest and goes surest win. If every siege is decided by the German 16-inch howitzers, then let us put up brick and mortar or steel against them, but not men. The day for the bleeding human body seems to be over now that men are mown down by shells fired eight miles away. War used to be splendid because it made men strong and brave, but now a little German in spectacles can stand behind a Krupp gun and wipe out a regiment. [Page Heading: PROTECTION OF LIFE OR PROPERTY] I suppose women will always try to protect life because they know what it costs to produce it, and men will always try to protect property because that is what they themselves produce. At Antwerp our wounded men were begging us to go up to the hospital to fetch their purses from under their pillows! At present women are only repairers, darning socks, cleaning, washing up after men, bringing up reinforcements in the way of fresh life, and patching up wounded men, but some day they must and will have to say, "The life I produce has as much right to protection as the property you produce, and I claim my right to protect it." There seems to me a lack of connection between one man's desire to extend the area he occupies and young men in their teens lying with their lungs shot through or backs blown off. _19 October._--Our time is now spent in waiting and preparing for work which will probably come soon, as there has been fighting near us again. One hears the boom of guns a long way off, and always there is the sound of death in it. One has been too near it not to know now what it means. Yesterday I went to church in an empty little building, but a few of our hospital men turned up and made a small congregation. In the afternoon one or two people came to tea in my bedroom as we could not make our usual expedition to de Poorter's bunshop. The pastry habit is growing on us all. We went to the arsenal to-day to see about some repairs to our ambulances. I saw a German omnibus which had been captured, and the eagles on it had been painted out with stripes of red paint and the French colours put in their place. The omnibus was one mass of bullet-holes. I have seen waggons at Paardeberg, but I never saw anything so knocked about as that grey motor-bus. The engines and sides were shattered and the chauffeur, of course, had been killed. We went on by motor to the "Champs des Aviateurs." We saw one naval aeroplane man, who told us that he had been hit in his machine when it was 4,000 feet up in the air. His jacket was torn by a bullet and his machine dropped, but he was uninjured, and got away on a bicycle.