Transcriber’s Note In the following transcription, italic text is denoted by _underscores_ while bold text is denoted by =equal signs=. Small capitals in the original text have been transcribed as ALL CAPITALS. For technical reasons it has been necessary to split some long paragraphs into two in order to allow the correct positioning of illustrations in the HTML version of the transcription. See end of this document for details of corrections and other changes. ————————————— Start of Book ————————————— THE MINOR HORRORS OF WAR [Illustration: Photograph of enlarged model of the house-fly (_Musca domestica_) in the American Museum of Natural History, New York. (From Gordon Hewitt.) P. 57. [_Frontispiece_ ] THE MINOR HORRORS OF WAR BY A. E. SHIPLEY, Sc.D. HON.SC.D. PRINCETON, F.R.S. MASTER OF CHRIST’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND READER IN ZOOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY ILLUSTRATED LONDON SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 1915 [All rights reserved] HENRICO ARTHURO ADEANE MALLET ET HENRICO ANTONIO PATRICIO DISNEY ALTERI MARI AERE ALTERI UTRIQUE FIDELISSIME PATRIAM TUTANTI PREFACE The contents of this little book hardly justify its title. There are whole ranges of ‘Minor Horrors of War’ left untouched in the following chapters. The minor poets, the pamphlets of the professors, the people who write to the papers about ‘Kultur’ and think that this is the German for Matthew Arnold’s over-worked word ‘Culture,’ the half-hysterical ladies who offer white feathers to youths whose hearts are breaking because medical officer after medical officer has refused them the desire of their young lives to serve their country. Surely, as Carlyle taught us, ‘_There is no animal so strange as man!_’ These ‘Minor Horrors of War,’ and many besides, have for the moment been neglected in favour of certain others which attack the bodies, the food, or the accoutrements of the men who are giving all that they have to give, even unto their lives, for their homes and for their country.