I know I felt I had to put into few words everything that I had been brought up to believe in throughout my life . this seemed an impossible and almost a ridiculous task . I wrote very little and very quickly . I am a lifelong vegetarian - I believe in the biblical injunction thou shalt not kill - 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 . 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 . my father went with me . I sat on a chair in a gangway opposite the tribunal members with a large number of the public on either side . the proceedings were brief and simple : 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 &amp;sol; 6 d a day . there was no hectoring and no bullying . I was given exemption conditional upon my continuing my work . I asked no more . I was not asking for a logical world . but there was the world without as well as the world within . 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 . I had seen spring before but never the changes day by day in the countryside : 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 &apos;s harmony or even separate himself entirely from that harmony . 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 . 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 . I saw my native countryside as I had never seen it before . but if the work of nature suggested harmony , I saw little harmony in the world of man at war . but I lived in the companionship and friendliness of common soldiers in the little hospital community . I ate with them , I talked with them and I took them out in their chairs . they were regulars , reservists , territorials and Kitchener &apos;s men . I learnt the names and badges of the regiments , I heard the different accents , I heard of rivalries and quarrels . I saw the wounded men arrive , recover , and get their ticket : 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 &apos; names and addresses for his hotel guests . 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 . a few sat alone in their suffering . I heard of life at the front from men who had been in the expeditionary force . an old regular soldier sat talking to me one day . 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 . he had invented a word to describe some of the things he had seen : it was brutalitarianism . 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 . 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 . then there is another picture in the morning light when the wards are tidied for the doctor &apos;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 . 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 . 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 . one morning a red-hatted gentleman calls for a pair of scissors as he examines the front of a soldier &apos;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 . I can not separate the men from their wounds and suffering . the faces of the men , the wounds they bore , the beds they slept in and even names still come back to me . 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 : he said that every anaesthetic took six months off a man &apos;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 . 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 . 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 . 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 . he was like a Saint from El Greco . 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 . when the news of the Irish rebellion came he sat silent and alone . in the end of the long Gallery was the pale-faced man - was it the one called Manchester ? - who limped about with something called phlebitis , a word that carried a threat of disaster . in the second bed by the window was the Gordon Highlander with the gaping cavity in his calf . 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 . 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 . when Sister Dean said , it &apos;s easy to see what &apos;s wrong with him , I was too distressed to confess my ignorance . I was in the theatre a little later when Dr Alec operated but could do nothing . he found what Sister Dean had expected . 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 . the machine-gun bullet had entered his neck , smashed up his spine and had come out through his open mouth . it could hardly be believed . he carried an aura of fear and curiosity because we all wondered what would have happened had his mouth been shut . 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 &apos;s words to the maidservant , and I was still not quite certain that it had been the outside drain that was meant . the wounded men come in and we learn to know them . 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 . the procession goes on and on &amp;hellip; black watch , royal fusiliers , royal horse artillery , Irish guards , Bedfordshires , Northamptonshires , K.O.Y.L.I , Manchesters , Lancashires , Gordon Highlanders &amp;hellip; . it goes on and on &amp;hellip; . the faces , the wounds , the badges . as spring was turning into summer , an incident occurred which momentarily brought the inner and outer world together . 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 . I was leaving the pillared Hall with the trolley when Mac lurched up to me , cue in hand , and shouted , it &apos;s buggers like you who should be in the trenches . there were cries of shut up to Mac as he staggered back to the table . all was quiet when I returned . on Sunday morning when I came down there was a letter for me on the desk in the orderlies &apos; room addressed in very childish writing . it was a note from Mac asking forgiveness for what he had said the night before . would I please understand that he had been drunk and had not meant it ? my eyes filled with tears and the beauty of the trees outside disappeared as I read the uneducated little note from the Irish guardsman . that afternoon Mac and I walked slowly by the lake together , stopping from time to time because of his coughing . soon afterwards Mac went to the depot at Northampton , and whilst there went to tea with my mother . afterwards he sent her a photograph of a group at the f&amp;ecirc;te 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 . 