Expose him to
frightful ordeals of terror and pain, and he will emerge grumbling about
some petty grievance or carrying on a flirtation with another man's wife
or squabbling about sectarian dogmas or gambling on magazine
competitions or planning new businesses--in fact, behaving precisely as
the natural lord of creation always does behave. No member of our
hospital staff, I imagine, will ever forget the arrival of the first
batch of exchanged British wounded prisoners; It was the most tragic
scene I have ever witnessed. It is a fact, for which I make no apology,
that tears were shed by some of those whose task it was to welcome that
pitiful band of martyrs. We had received convoys of wounded many a time,
but _these_ broken creatures, so pale, so neglected, so thin and so
infinitely happy to be free once more, had a poignant appeal which must
have melted the most rigid official. (And we are neither very official,
here, nor very rigid.) Well, amongst these liberated captives was one
who told a sad tale of starvation at his internment camp. There is
little doubt that it was a true tale, in the main.
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