The South African War, of which this Tale is told, is already near to be
forgotten, although there are many to whom it still remains the most
tragic memory of their lives.
War is ever the same: an arena, aglare with pomp and pageant, for the
display of that most elemental and most savage of human passions, the
lust to kill, as well as a dumb torture place where are put to the test
man's fortitude and his capacity for the endurance of pain.
This brief narrative is concerned not with shouting hosts in defiant
array, but with the moaning and distorted forms of men who have been
"scorched by the flames of war." It deals with the grey hours after the
great, world-echoing display is over, with the night that ends the
gladiator's show, when the arena is occupied only by the maimed, the
dying and the dead.
It is admitted that in the South African War the medical needs of the
Army were efficiently and promptly supplied. This account serves to
show of what kind is the work of the Red Cross in the field. It may
serve further to bring home to the reader the appalling condition of the
wounded in war when--as in the present campaign in the Near East--the
provision for the care of the sick is utterly inadequate, if not
actually lacking.