On the Fringe of the Great Fight | Page 9

our men inoculated against typhoid fever. We had arrived in England
with 65 per cent. of the men inoculated, and it was my ambition to get
them all done before the division left for France.
Accordingly I settled down in the Bear Hotel in the little Wiltshire
town of Devizes, the head-quarters of the artillery brigade, and began
my educational campaign.
The old Bear Hotel was one of the famous old coaching houses of
former days; it had seen much life in ye olden times when it had been
the chief stopping place of the bloods of London en route to the famous
City of Bath and the historic Pump Room. It was a homey-looking old
place, with the usual appearance of comfort pertaining to an English
Inn, and the maximum amount of discomfort as judged by our modern
standards. The food was good, and the fire places looked bright and
cheery, like the bar maid behind the polished bar. It was mostly in
looks. No wonder that the British people fortify themselves with
copious draughts of stimulants to help keep out the cold. There were
some magnificent pieces of old furniture and Sheffield plate in the
halls--pieces that many a collector had tried in vain to purchase. My
room lit by two candles in earthenware candlesticks; and with a fire in a
corner grate--at a shilling a day extra--looked cozy enough but the
bedroom furniture was ancient and uncomfortable.
The officers of the Artillery Headquarters lived at the hotel, and I took
my meals with them. Col. Burstall, the officer commanding, gave me
every assistance and issued orders to his officers to aid in every
possible way in the campaign.

My object was to educate all the artillery and cavalry units on the
danger of using impure water, on typhus fever and how it was
conveyed by lice, and on the value and necessity of anti-typhoid
inoculation.
The following day I gave my first talk in a large shed in the town, to
about 700 artillery men of the first artillery brigade. It was a unique
experience, standing on a great stack of boxes of loaded ammunition
beside Colonel Morrison and the medical officer Lt.-Col. McCrae,
talking to the brigade drawn up at attention around us. It was an
attentive audience; the men had to listen, though as a matter of fact,
they really seemed interested. When paraded next day 370 uninoculated
were discovered and given the treatment; the few who refused were
sent to the base depot and replaced by others.
The campaign begun so successfully was carried on from day to day.
Arrangements were made by telephone or wire with the O.C.'s of the
various units, to have their men paraded for my lectures. The weather
was frequently wet, and the talks were given in farm yards, village
squares, churches, schools, hay-lofts, and open fields. In some
instances the units, broken up into small sections, were scattered about
the country so that I would have to talk to 50 men at once instead of
several hundred.
One of the most unique occasions was the Sunday when I addressed the
3rd Artillery brigade, after church parade in the market square of
Market Lavingdon. We arrived early and sat and listened while, from
the little stone church high up on the hill above us, drifted the sound of
soldiers singing. It was unutterably sad to me to hear the full mellow
soldier chorus swelling out on "Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching
as to War." One felt that the words must have had to all of them a
meaning that they never had had before.
Then the brigade formed up and was played by the village band to the
market place where they were drawn up into a square with some gun
carriages in the centre. When all was ready I mounted a gun carriage
and gave my talk with all the earnestness I could muster, while the
villagers congregated at one side, stood and gaped, and wondered what

it was all about.
My talk had settled down into a 20-minute discourse, and I gave
variations of it as often as four times in an afternoon at places 10 miles
apart. In this way one saw a good deal of the Wiltshire scenery in the
late winter season. It was a never-failing source of wonder and pleasure
to me to see the ivy covered banks, the ivy clad trees and the
rhododendrons and holly trees in green leaf in the middle of the winter.
In the garden at the back of the famous old Elizabethan house in
Potterne--a perfect example of the old Tudor timbered style of
architecture--cowslips and pansies were in full blossom, and I was told
the wild violets were in flower in the woods. The trim, well kept
gardens, hedges