administrative," and he seemed gently grieved that it should be so.
He brought us into wards, long, airy and many-windowed, places of exquisite neatness and order, where calm-faced sisters were busied, and smart, soft-treading orderlies came and went. Here in white cots lay many bandaged forms, some who, propped on pillows, watched us brighteyed and nodded in cheery greeting; others who lay so ominously still.
But as I passed between the long rows of cots, I was struck with the look of utter peace and content on so many of the faces and wondered, until, remembering the hell whence they had so lately come, I thought I understood. Thus, bethinking me of how these dire hurts had been come by, I took off my hat, and trod between these beds of silent suffering as softly as I could, for these men had surely come "out of great tribulation."
In another ward I saw numbers of German wounded, most of them bearded; many there were who seemed weakly and