It was perhaps the directness of contact that pleased me.

I suppose one felt that here at any rate one was doing immediate practical good, relieving distress and agony that must, by some one, be immediately relieved; and, at any rate, in the first days at M---- when the press of wounded was terrific (we treated, in one day and night, nine hundred wounded soldiers) there could be no doubt of the real demand for incessant tireless work.

But there was in my pleasure more than this.

It was as though, through the bodies of the wounded soldiers, I was helping to drive home the attack upon our enemy.

By our enemy I do not mean anything as concretely commonplace as the German nation.