I know I felt I had to put into few words everything that I had been brought up to believe in throughout my life .sx This seemed an impossible and almost a ridiculous task .sx I wrote very little and very quickly .sx 'I am a lifelong vegetarian'- 'I believe in the biblical injunction " thou shalt not " '- 'I believe man is a rational being'- I said I was willing to do any sort of work in the Red Cross or St. John Ambulance Brigade , but that I was not willing to serve in the Army , even in the R.A.M.C. , where I should be under military discipline .sx I shall not describe my feelings as a few weeks later I appeared before the Northampton Tribunal in the Town Hall , except to say that I was very shy and quite inexperienced in words .sx My father went with me .sx I sat on a chair in a gangway opposite The Tribunal members with a large number of the public on either side .sx The proceedings were brief and simple :sx I was questioned on what I had written in my application form and about the work I was doing ; my father supported my views ; and the member of The Tribunal who asked me about my pay appeared satisfied that it was 1/6d .sx a day .sx There was no hectoring and no bullying .sx I was given exemption conditional upon my continuing my work .sx I asked no more .sx I was not asking for a logical world .sx But there was the world without as well as the world within .sx For the first time in my life I was living in the country where I could see the beauty of the trees in winter and the slow coming of spring .sx I had seen spring before but never the changes day by day in the countryside :sx I was moved by the awakening of the elms , the budding of the oaks , and the tracery of the beeches ; and I found a communion with Nature greater than that with man , and I saw that man could not disturb Nature's harmony or even separate himself entirely from that harmony .sx On my half-days I explored the countryside on foot or on my bicycle ; I visited Castor and Wansford in England ; I saw Oundle and the great church at Fotheringhay , and the quiet stone of Stamford beside the magnificence of Burghley .sx I thought of John Clare as I cycled through Helpstone , and from the narrow Fen roads I had distant views of Ely in the setting sun .sx I saw my native countryside as I had never seen it before .sx But if the work of Nature suggested harmony , I saw little harmony in the world of man at war .sx But I lived in the companionship and friendliness of common soldiers in the little hospital community .sx I ate with them , I talked with them and I took them out in their chairs .sx They were Regulars , Reservists , Territorials and Kitchener's Men .sx I learnt the names and badges of the regiments , I heard the different accents , I heard of rivalries and quarrels .sx I saw the wounded men arrive , recover , and get their ticket :sx they told me what John Bull said , as if Bottomley were a Biblical prophet ; I was in a literary world of Elinor Glyn , Marie Corelli and Victoria Cross ; I learnt to distinguish Roman Catholics by the forthrightness and foulness of their language ; and I learnt something of the simplicity and the credulity of the common soldier .sx I lived in a world of Army slang- of char , burgoo and pawnee , of mush and rooti , and of pozzywallahs and squarepushing ; and I also met a rich Anglo-Saxon world of words and experiences that had no meaning for me .sx As I wrote letters for some of the illiterate ones , or read letters which they had received , I felt lost in the simple world of sex in which they lived .sx I remember my blushes when a young soldier asked me to read a letter to him ; it was from a servant girl , addressed from 'the Precincts , Peterborough' and started quite simply 'I wish I was in bed with you' .sx I was shown the little cottage across the fields where a local prostitute lived , heard of her technique for keeping her husband away and I knew her likely customers among the troops .sx I was introduced to what I had never really believed existed when the tough-looking Irish Reservist with the smashed elbow , the doorkeeper of a Dublin Hotel , showed me his notebook with the list of prostitutes' names and addresses for his hotel guests .sx The Easter Rebellion in Ireland brought a tense atmosphere , the Irish soldiers became centres of interest with small groups in excited conversation or argument and there was quarrelling among the washers-up over their extra beer .sx A few sat alone in their suffering .sx I heard of life at the Front from men who had been in the Expeditionary Force .sx An old Regular Soldier sat talking to me one day .sx His experiences of war had not shocked him or embittered him , but they had made him see something else in human nature , something that he had not realized existed before .sx He had invented a word to describe some of the things he had seen :sx it was brutalitarianism .sx As I lived with the wounded men I found a friendship and a kindness that I had never met before and a sympathy that bridged our differing attitudes to war .sx There is the picture of the Long Gallery as I saw it the first evening in the soft lighting of the oil-lamps and the little lamps on the lockers , with the blue uniforms , the Steinway Grand and the paintings .sx Then there is another picture in the morning light when the wards are tidied for the doctor's round , the nurses are busy , the men are in bed or standing by their lockers , and the talk is of lead-swinging and of tickets .sx The regular visits by Dr. Walker and the inspections by Colonel Openshaw or Medical Red Hats from London or Cambridge , or by Harvey Reeves and his staff from Northampton , all mean extra care in sweeping floors and polishing boilers .sx Some of the surgeons never speak to the men but look at the tortured flesh as though it were a bone dug up from the London Clay .sx One morning a red-hatted gentleman calls for a pair of scissors as he examines the front of a soldier's thigh , and without explanation plunges the scissors into the wound , making a great gash in the flesh , and the soldier shrieks and bounds into the air .sx I cannot separate the men from their wounds and suffering .sx The faces of the men , the wounds they bore , the beds they slept in and even names still come back to me .sx There was the garrulous Bracey with the red face , monotonous voice , and stiff knee covered with wounds , who sat on the bed and told his story :sx he said that every anaesthetic took six months off a man's life ; he had already had sixteen , so that meant he had lost eight years- and there were still more operations to come ; yet that was better than being like Cain or Thompson who had each had a leg off , or better still than the little Canadian whom I often carried about in my arms because he had lost both his legs .sx But it was Max the tall Irish Guardsman with his thin waxen face and black hair who distressed me more than any of the others , as he stooped and coughed as he walked about .sx He had a huge wound in his chest which the sisters washed out with long tubes and hissing fluid , and then he coughed and spat as he tried to get his breath .sx When things were bad he sat alone in a corner of the sitting-room , looking beaten and exhausted , a shadow of what he had been .sx He was like a Saint from El Greco .sx Sometimes Max played billiards with the other men , or had a short walk with his friend Mason or with one of the nurses , or a quarrel would flare up and his Irish voice would be heard shouting and swearing round the billiard table .sx When the news of the Irish Rebellion came he sat silent and alone .sx In the end of the Long Gallery was the pale-faced man- was it the one called Manchester ?sx - who limped about with something called phlebitis , a word that carried a threat of disaster .sx In the second bed by the window was the Gordon Highlander with the gaping cavity in his calf .sx One summer evening after an operation , something happened , the bed was soaked in blood and the wounded man lay there still and white , whilst the sisters got tourniquets and dressings and I ran to the other side of the golf course for Matron as the sun was setting .sx By the coke-boiler was the old man who looked so cadaverous and infinitely weary , and sometimes shuffled about the ward racked with pain in his stomach .sx When Sister Dean said , ~'It's easy to see what's wrong with him,' I was too distressed to confess my ignorance .sx I was in the theatre a little later when Dr. Alec operated but could do nothing .sx He found what Sister Dean had expected .sx There was the severe-looking man who went about with the heavy plaster round his neck , looking a little sinister as he stiffly turned his body to talk .sx The machine-gun bullet had entered his neck , smashed up his spine and had come out through his open mouth .sx It could hardly be believed .sx He carried an aura of fear and curiosity because we all wondered what would have happened had his mouth been shut .sx Matron seems to enjoy herself as the men parade for their medicines each day on the landing by the Long Gallery , and for a moment the tired-looking Madonna even smiles , but I often wonder if the medicines do any good as I think of my mother's words to the maidservant , and I was still not quite certain that it had been the outside drain that was meant .sx The wounded men come in and we learn to know them .sx Then a day comes when the doctor or the inspecting surgeon gives them their discharge and they go off to other hospitals or to their Depots .sx The procession goes on and on .sx . Black Watch , Royal Fusiliers , Royal Horse Artillery , Irish Guards , Bedfordshires , Northamptonshires , K.O.Y.L.I. , Manchesters , Lancashires , Gordon Highlanders .sx . It goes on and on .sx . The faces , the wounds , the badges .sx As spring was turning into summer , an incident occurred which momentarily brought the inner and outer world together .sx One Saturday night there was a noisy crowd of men round the billiard table , pockets bulging with flasks after a visit to Peterborough , and there were oaths and swearing and cries of 'pot the red' .sx I was leaving the Pillared Hall with the trolley when Mac lurched up to me , cue in hand , and shouted , 'It's buggers like you who should be in the trenches' .sx There were cries of 'shut up' to Mac as he staggered back to the table .sx All was quiet when I returned .sx On Sunday morning when I came down there was a letter for me on the desk in the orderlies' room addressed in very childish writing .sx It was a note from Mac asking forgiveness for what he had said the night before .sx Would I please understand that he had been drunk and had not meant it ?sx My eyes filled with tears and the beauty of the trees outside disappeared as I read the uneducated little note from the Irish Guardsman .sx That afternoon Mac and I walked slowly by the lake together , stopping from time to time because of his coughing .sx Soon afterwards Mac went to the Depot at Northampton , and whilst there went to tea with my mother .sx Afterwards he sent her a photograph of a group at the Fe@5te on June 1st , with Mrs. Fitzwilliam , Thompson auctioning a bunch of flowers , an unknown figure in a billycock hat , and Mr. Fitzwilliam looking on benevolently .sx