EDITORIAL
Copyright, Underwood, N.Y.
tals could accommodate. These were
put into hastily run up sheds—“little
cemeteries for living beings.” Nojine
has thus described them: —
Just glance at one of these “infernos” in
the month of December. Outside it is freez-
ing; inside, in spite of the musty and sickening
stench, the cold is intense. On all sides is
filth, nothing but filth, and on it and amongst
it crawl millions of greasy, gray lice. The
silence is only broken by the sighs and groans
of the sick and hungry—for all in here are
both sick and hungry. Death, the liberator, is
also here. He is in every corner, at the doors,
Japanese Wounded Ready to be Carried to Hospitals
at the windows, crawling along the floors and
along the bed-boards; he envelopes every-
thing—and waits. At the front a man dies
suddenly, and all is over. In the hospitals
death is fought. But here, here, everything
is in his power—he only has to wait. Sec-
ond after second, minute after minute, hour
after hour, men pass into eternity, into obli-
vion. There are hundreds of cases of scurvy.
They lia side by side on the floor, on the bed-
boards, underneath them, just as they were
placed when they came in—some in great-
coats, some in tunics, some in miserable boots,
some barefooted. The faces are shapeless,
swollen, and distorted, and upon the yellow