UNDER DI

I met Mr. F. Ware, who told me submarines were about. As I had but just left a much-shelled town, I think he m

t was difficult, I found, to accommodate myself to small things, and one was amazed to find people still driving serenely in closed broughams. It was like going back to live on earth again after being in rather a horrible other world. I

al, etc., was to be evacuated. Dr. Perrin, who was to have taken me back, had to start immediately without me. It was difficult to get news, and hearing nothing I

uch damaged. I stopped at Mrs. Clitheroe's flat, very glad to be ill in peace after my seedy condition in London and a bad crossing. Rested quietly all Sunday in the flat by m

he station work from Dunkirk, as it is 16 kilometres from Adinkerke; but the place itself is nice, and I just have to trust to lifts. I fill my pockets with cigarettes and go to the "sor

is, and that I much enjoyed. Dr. Perrin gave up his little room to me, a

that I had to return to the flat at Dunkirk again to be nursed. My day at La Panne was therefore very sad, as I nearly perished with cold,

kitchen as a bureau, and turned us out on to the platform. I am trying to get Gener

S AT D

has no carpets, no curtains, not a blind that will pull up or down, and rather dirty floors, yet it is so much more comfortable than anything I have had yet

r anything half so good as that fire, or half so homely, half so warm or so much one's own? I lie on three chairs in front of it, and headache an

e sometimes. Miss Logan and Mr. Strickland left this morning. There was a tempest of rain, and I couldn't think of being move

in! Just to see print is a pleasure. I believe I have forgotten all I ever knew before

blown up. The sailors' aeroplane corps is opposite us, and we see Commander Samson and others flying off in the morning and whirling back at night, and then we hear there has been

ORIES O

, and said: "I am a Christian and you are not. I come here for petrol, and I ask it, not for the Red Cross, but in the name of Christ." A

an of awful vulgarity. I asked her if she was bus

own, so I came out here. What is your war

f the men. Some are good workers. Others I call "This-poor-fellow-has-had-none." Nurses may have been up all night, doctors may be worked off their feet, seven hundred men may have passed through the stati

he has been neglected, and she says so, and quite indiscriminately she fills everyone up with soup. Only she is tender-hearted. Only she could never really be hardened by being a nurse. She seizes a little cup, stoops over a man gracefully, and raises

igence and a member of the Empire who won't be bamboozled, when she says firmly and with heat, "Why don't we do something?" She would like to scold a few Generals an

t I have not had time either to write or to read. I think

o distribute letters, and to say that someone is waiting down below and th

and scrubbed. I have thrown away old papers and empty boxes, and ca

OMMUN

edroom carafes. Never is the wax removed. Where it drips there it remains. Where matches fall there they lie. The stumps of cigarettes grace even the insides of flower-pots, knives are wiped on bread, and overcoats of enormous weight (khaki in colour, with a red cross on the arm)

mistake. I wonder if Ch

e happy after these dreary months, and it is only because I can think a little, and because the days are not quite so dark. I think the nights h

unded men. I want to go, and to give them soup and comforts and ciga

e away. It was dull work as I could never leave the flat,

he bottom of the street, and on the people passing to and fro. Then I went down to the dock to try and get a car t

verywhere, and it entails a good deal of unnecessary suffering. Always I am reminded of birds on a small

re was a queer want of courtesy about it. I said that anything would do for my supper, and I went to help get it myself. I spied a roll of cold veal on a shelf, and said helpf

dear Lord, in this world one may certainly take the lowest place, an

bustle goes with the brutality. "You can't come here," "We won't ha

people I know are psychologists, notably --, who breaks his promises and throws all his friends to

hly strung." I wish good old-fashioned bad temper w

utiful things, music, fl

P

d brought me here in her car. Last night I dined with Mrs. Clitheroe. She was less bustled than usual,

ictims. At the station we have mostly "malades" and "éclopés"; in the trenches the soldiers stand in the bitter cold, and oc

the life here? A man looks up patiently, dumbly,

my things and came down to the Villa les Chrysanthèmes, and shared Mrs. Clitheroe's room for a night. In the morning all our party packed up

o "play the game." Maxine Elliott said, "The nervous exhaustion attendant upon discomfort hinders work," and she "does herself" very well, as also do all the men of the regular forc

erything at this time, when one can "command" nothing. If one might for once feel that by paying a fare, however high, one could ensure having something-a railw

cnaughtan'

es Chry

ne, Be

, 28 F

ar Fa

P

hat I think I must write to you all, to thank you fo

our work goes on as before, although it is not on quite the same lines now. I used to make every drop of the soup myself, and give it out all down the train. Now we have a receiving-room for the wounded, where they stay all day, and we feed them four times, and then they are sent away. The whole thing is more military

ny cases, the women are turned out. This was the case at Dunkirk station, which was known everywhere as "the shambles." I myself tried to get the wounded attended to, and I went there with a naval doctor, who told me that he couldn't uncover a single wo

d heroic outlook is a little bit fogged by petty things. One sees the result of it in some wrangli

still put out in boats as they have always done, and are quite undismayed. Our own people here continue to travel by sea, as if submarines were rather a joke, and when going over to

I fancy it is fashionable, but now it contains nothing but soldiers. They are quartered everywhere, and one never knows how long one will be able to keep a room. The stati

but I am at my station all day, and if there is

Close, and to go to tea with them is everyone's ambition. The barge is crammed with things for Belgian refugees, and Maxine told me tha

"Silent Death," and are dropped from German aeroplanes. Boy

CIVAL'S

ng in the trenches are in agonies of frost-bite and rheumatism, and now that I can give them these

n anything is a few good magazines and books. I get Punch and the Spectator, but I want the English Review and the National, and perhaps a Hibbert. I enclose ten shillings for these. What is being read? St

n how much I think of him. Bl

s as

ra

s as possible on their person, with the result that they are the strangest shapes and sizes. Still, one hopes the goods are valuable until one discovers that they generally consi

n to 5 o'clock. This includes the men's dinner-hour and the washing of the kitchen. They eat and smoke when I am there, and loll on the little bench. They are Belgians

NG AND

-do people are always asking for something, and they simply whine for tobacco. The fact is, I think, the English are giving things away with their usual generosity and want of discrimination, and-it is a horrid word-they are already pauperising a nice lot of people. I can't help thinking that the thin

ave seen in England. I understand from Dr. Joos and other Belgians who know about these things that there is still a good deal of money tucked away in this countr

ed ladies and with officers in dark blue uniform, who talk loudly and pat the barmaid's cheeks. She seems to expect it; it is almost etiquette. A cup of bad tea, some German trophies examined and discussed, and then I came away with a "British" longing f

e year of deadly dullness in the country-but now it isn't so much a personal matter. War and the sound of guns, and the sense of destruction and death abroad, the

suppose, is the result of being a "cuisinière!" It is rather strange to me, because for a very long time I always seem to have had the best of things. To-day I hear o

of failure about it, and the sense that one is giving up what one has undertaken t

ER OF T

facts. It is also the world's dynamic force. Now, the books of the Bible-especially, perhaps, the magical, beautiful Psalms-are the most tender and sentimental (the word has been misused, of course) that were ever written. They express the

o read my character! "so long," and yet still quite unaware of my message! The humour of it (to us) lies in the little side of it! The dear people who "thought you would like this or dislike that"-the kind givers of presents even-the little people who shop for one! The friends who invite one to their queer, soulless, thin entertainments, with their garish lights; the people who cho

known me." The world comes next in loneliness, but it is big, and with a big soul of its own. The

The men who are prone to say of everyone that they "exaggerate a little,

g a poor wounded limb, and I watch them sleeping heavily, or eating oranges and smoking cigarettes down to the last hot stump, but I don't hear of the heroic stands which I know are made, or catch the volition of it all. Perhaps

OMAN'S

and washing for another week, a man, returning and finding his house in order, and vaguely c

r care to enter a door unless it h

more-be nearer the front or further from it. Or is it that nothing really changes us? Only war pictures and war letters remain as a fixed blazing standard. The soldiers in

ook his old nurse with him on all his campaigns because s

a and Russia much more, in order to keep men most uncomfortably in unroofed graves, and to send high explosives into the air, most of which don't hit anything. Surely, if fighting w

I am able to keep on. A festered hand makes me awkward; and as I wind a bandage round it and tie it with my teeth

nd sit to him in the intervals of soup. That little wooden hospital is the best place I have known so far. Lady Bag

a regiment going into the trenches.

. I went into Dunkirk with Mr. Clegg, and got the usual hasty shopping done. No one can ever wait a minute. If one has time to buy

CH M

where they get the little bit of money which they always seem able to spend on loud-smelling oranges and cigarettes. The place is littered with orange-skins-to-day I saw a long piece lying in the form of an "S" amid the mud; and, like a story of a cen

ll the time. They are a pitiful lot, with earache, toothache, and all the minor complaints which I my

are all being cut down to build trenches. The

itchen work was done. I ate my lunch in a filthy little out-building and then I fled. I had to get into the open air, and I hopped on to an ambulance and drove to Dunkirk. I had a good de

egins we are going to be in for a big thing; one dreads it for the sake of the boys we are going to lose. I want

. Keay

ld Post Off

Mar

arest

L. M.

this is to ask how Lionel is, so I think I may send it. My poor Bet! What anxiety for her! This spring weather is making me long to be at home, and when peo

r. A shilling wire about Lionel would satisfy me-jus

s, my

lov

cnaug

s very pleasant. I can't tell you what it was like to sit down to a pretty, cle

by the King of the Belgians, but don't spread t

e has cost the British 13,000 casualties. Three lines of holes in the ground, and fighting only just beginning again! Bet's fiancé has been shot thr

ught madmen raved. This one fought silently, like a man one sees in a

to me in England, "I suppos

very odd how many small "complaints" seem to attack one. I

ings nice. I had some flowers and a tablecloth. I believe in making a contrast wit

sound of firing is more distant; it is possi

morning. I think she has the most

to work upon. Mrs. -- came and told me to-day that last night "they laughed till they cried" over her attempt at making a pudding. I shoul

s Mary

ld Post Off

Mar

r M

I should like to stay till the end, but if it is likely to go on for a long time, I shall come home. I d

have almost decided to refuse. I have other duties, and I have some important writing to do,

NG FO

ing to be back. Many of my friends go backwards and forwards to

g cup of tea, and the care and comfort are making me much better. I get some soup before I go off to my station, and

quite thin again nursing me. The things you will have to do for me, and all

s tr

cnaug