Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/38

20 The alteration impressed us most, perhaps, in the two great university towns, Oxford and Cambridge. We wandered through quadrangles and halls, missing caps and gowns, seeking the familiar atmosphere of undergraduate activity. Instead we found proctors who displayed their brief rolls of foreigners and the physically unfit.

" The others," they explained gravely, "have gone to the war."

And war was here as thoroughly as it was in London and among the hedges. For, although we found few caps and gowns, there was khaki in plenty. Several of the colleges had been turned into training schools for officers. Men of university age and appearance went through evolutions and studied tactics in ancient quadrangles, preparing themselves to replace the Oxford and Cambridge men already killed or rendered unfit for service.

There were hospitals, too. Figures on crutches or grotesquely bandaged, struggled about the grounds, or across the commons, a couple of years ago noisy and active with the play of whole-bodied, careless youngsters.

It was among the convalescents in Cambridge that I found a veteran of those terrific first days—one of the survivors of hell of Mons