June 11th—Cumberland. Speaking to a gathering of village folk on work in France, I invited debate. "If King George 'as got wot Kaiser Bill wants, why don't they go and fight it out themselves?" asked one man. "Wot difference would it make to us if the country is ruled by Germans or Englishmen?" said another, a lazy fellow whose fields had remained fallow for years, quite oblivious of the fact that under German regime he would have been in the firing-line months ago. The rest of the audience shivered with the helpless indecision as to what their right course should be: which shows the little faith felt in the present Government, half hoping for, half fearing the conscription of labour that seems imminent.

That there should exist men who openly confess that from their point of view the end of the war will be disastrous is almost incredible. Yet I have come across a clergyman, working in a Midland manufacturing centre, who has many instances of this indifference to recount.

Is it not useless to hope that this war will be the last? So long as men are actuated by motives of commercial profit and agrarian gain, the dream of Universal Peace must remain a chimÆra; and the present upheaval, essential to the checking and wiping out of Germany's abnormal line of development, is destined to be only the first step towards the Ideal of Progress which Europe (the Central Powers included) had flattered herself to be following.

Most astounding of all is the utter obliviousness on the part of all at home to the seriousness of the shell campaign, illustrated by the ridicule hurled at those of us who uphold the Northcliffe Press.

As I settled into the corner of the railway carriage, after a delightful week-end with a dear friend in Surrey, a batch of illustrated journals and the Morning Post were pressed upon me.

No one can be a more devout devotee of the Morning Post Court Circular than my humble self, knowing full well that to miss that interesting document means a gradual drifting without the pale of one's many acquaintances. Nevertheless, I asked meekly for "The Daily Mail, please!"

"That you, with your love of literature, should read such stuff!" she groaned.

Then, confidently:

"My dear, at any other time I should have cut you dead for such a thing."

There was no time to explain, as the train steamed out, that I go to my newspaper for news and not for literature.

Yet I could not refrain from marvelling at the contumely showered on the only organ strong enough to bring the truth before the public and combat the weaknesses of a desultory Government.

The second astounding thing at home is the fact that no one seems to realise the difference between the Front and the Base.

Anywhere in France—Paris excepted—seems to be "the Front," and no one who has not been privileged to peep behind the scenes seems to realise the gap that intervenes between the fighting line and the back of the Front, as one might call the Base.

And one is introduced to a strange medley of people, all "going to the Front."

Not only veteran soldiers and raw recruits and nurses, but charming women of leisure who contemplate migrating with their retinue somewhere abroad and earning fame "at a canteen or anything that is wanted—just behind the lines!"

Now, although I can claim to have worked longer at our Base than any other British woman (with one exception), to have withstood the inclemency of its climate and its laws successfully for eight consecutive months, and might therefore pretend to be an authority as to where it really is, not a single friend have I succeeded in convincing that I am not a true heroine—risking my life daily with shells bursting all around and the Huns a few yards away. What they want are descriptions of weeping gas victims and death-bed scenes (that in reality are far better forgotten—if it is possible) and incidents such as a youthful convalescent sapper confided to me recently—of the man who, though his head was blown clean off at midday, was found to be convulsively clawing the earth with fingers that seemed yet alive at sundown!

For such yarns there seems to be a great demand, and if I told them that heroism at the Base consisted of maintaining continual cheerfulness in face of odds like bursting boilers which, for want of men, cannot be repaired; if I hinted at the dullness of buttering endless loaves, of wheedling Primus stoves into working order, of changing French money for English at a varying rate of exchange, of living amongst a strange, heterogeneous crowd of people, far away from one's own friends, and stifling longings for one's lares et penates, of the dreadful monotony and various other details of barmaiding, amateur and otherwise, I should not be believed.

Therefore, with many a wiser, I seek shelter behind a discreet silence, except when the insistence of the "Do-tell-me-all-about-it! Have-you-seen-lots-of-horrors?" girl elicits an ironical reply to the effect that most of our time is spent in champagne lunches and moonlight picnics.

June 12th. I must not omit to note the very interesting meeting with Mr. Henry James—the American author—who has so enthusiastically cast in his lot with the Allies. It was at a tea at the American Embassy. On being introduced, having heard of our work in France, he made no secret of his views.

"You young people are wonderful. You are achieving what no other generation could ever, will ever, achieve! After all, this is a young people's war!"

I went home with a heart throbbing with pride at belonging to a generation that, swept by the great driving spirit (maybe something analogous to Maeterlinck's "Spirit of the Hive") from little ruts in life into the great vortex of war, has already proved its metal.

Over and over again one is struck by the extraordinary altruism that is displayed by those taking part in what, after all, is but a tremendous life-and-death struggle.

Everywhere esprit de corps prevails amongst the men. Take the private. Maybe he reared poultry in some out-of-the-way farm in Somerset. Maybe his pathetically wizened face tells of a childhood in the slums. Whatever his life was before, he is Private Tommy Atkins now, of the Blankshires—the finest regiment, the finest company, the finest platoon in the British Army; a V.C. regiment he will announce with pride, as he sits down by the dusty roadside to enjoy the ten minutes' halt in what seems an interminable route march.

And the very Temporary Lieutenant whom one knew only a year ago as the "knut," as, in the newest check trousers À l'AmÉricain, he lounged bemonocled in the Park, what of him? Was he not correct—very correct and always correct, as he patronised every function of the season—blasÉ, bored and boring, always ready to criticise every affair with an amusing cynicism?

He, too, chameleon-like, has taken on the tone of his surroundings. Behold him in khaki, a born leader of men! His boredom has become sangfroid, his cynicism has blossomed into a brisk humour that keeps the mess alive, his subservience to the law of the "correct thing" has taught him to face every undreamt-of tight corner with a nonchalance wonderful to behold.

Yes, Henry James is right. "It is a Young People's War." It may be an ironical fate that designs the younger generation to lay down their lives for the political blunders of the older—but the true tragedy is not in the youths cut down in the flower of their manhood, nor the girls broken in health by the magnitude of the task they have tackled; the true tragedy is in the derelict "dug-outs" vainly hunting for jobs, the aged women wringing their hands, with the cry, "We are too old to help!"

And when our American friend, speaking of his countrymen's work and schemes for ameliorating the lot of starving Belgium, remarked that our work will not have finished with the cessation of hostilities, for then alone will the full pinch and hardships of war be felt, the destitution shorn of the gilding of excitement and uncertainty, I knew he spoke truly.

The end of the last month all eyes were focused on Italy's rupture with Austria (we note that diplomatic relations with Germany are not broken off, no doubt for reasons commercial). To all who have travelled much in that land of sunshine it was apparent that, whichever way politics might trend, public feeling (barring that section of the proletariat under strong Papal influence) would always be with the Allies; nor was it possible to imagine any alliance between Italy and her hereditary foe, the Hun, other than an alliance of convenience. The Italian's contempt for Teuton boorishness is as ineradicable as the Italian's confidence in the brilliant future awaiting his own kingdom.

June 14th. Two days later the Coalition Ministry, which we pray fervently may remedy our shortage of war materials, was formed. Now, attention is turned towards the East, the Cameroons, the Dardanelles. Mr. Winston Churchill has raised our hopes to the tiptop of expectation with his mysterious promises of some unparalleled and crushing success in Gallipoli. So much so, that everyone speaks with confidence of the termination of the war within a few months.

Yesterday some were only restrained from hoisting flags by the desire to see the rumours confirmed. Alas! on opening the morning papers we were but greeted with the news of fresh Austrian successes.

June 20th. With the receipt of "Marching Orders" this morning, England and Home seemed suddenly very dear. Like a dream they come back, those places I have visited—the peaceful Lakes; the cheerful Felixstowe hotel, where one could revel in the soft, subdued lights and pretty frocks; Bedford, which with all its khaki seems to be playing at war more than any other city, and where one or two people are still extant who saw the Russians come through from Archangel at the beginning of operations, and even touched the snow on their caps! And the different country houses, the different friends, how little touched they seem by it all! True, in one or two once over-pretentious houses the food is less lavish, the staff less numerous, the clothes less exaggerated; which seemed a great improvement.

Only I seem changed, and all the things we once accepted as necessities of life are become luxuries, from books and baths to the once despised draught of clear cold water!

Yes, as to the sound of the soft-toned grand we sat by the fire enjoying the ever sweet smell of burning logs, whilst, with the inscrutable smile of one to whom the mysteries of Life and Death are revealed, the death mask of the woman who was found in the Seine looked down from her oak beam, and the hour-glass speeded its atoms along the road to eternity, for the first time France and work seemed anything but attractive.

June 29th. It is worth the journey to be amongst our men again, to be welcomed as they alone welcome one, with hearty handshakes and hopes that one has "come back to stay."

Things have progressed a good deal, too, in our small world. In the beginning, were one only rich enough, or endowed with a title sufficiently illustrious or notorious (it mattered not which), one might rent an hotel or a chÂteau, turn it into a French or Belgian Red Cross Hospital, and resort to a little harmless hospital work in France whenever London became boring.

True, the authorities never encouraged these little pleasure trips, but now that Boulogne has been definitely declared within the War Zone, entrance and egress are a very different matter, and it requires quite an amount of strategy for anyone not affiliated to some recognised society, and armed to the teeth with permits, to get here at all.

There seems also to have been a systematic "rounding up" of undesirables, and one by one the so-called "officers," who, in the beginning, had made the nights hideous with their champagne suppers, have disappeared.

Naturally, we too have progressed.

In place of skeleton buildings, well-planned camps lie along the shore, complete even to their Imperial red letter-boxes. Once swampy convalescent camps display smart flower gardens, whilst Thomas Atkins moves about less molested by demands for souvenirs, and somewhat solaced for his enforced absence from home by the welcome accorded to him by his Allies. If the average man's vocabulary does not run much beyond the five phrases, "Bong jour!" "Compris?" "No bon!" "Nar poo!" ("Je ne peux pas!") "Promenade ce soir?" the few exceptions have made remarkable progress.

One wonders what the residents of Brighton would say if a number of friendly French workmen erected all along the Downs a miniature village of asbestos and corrugated iron huts, interspersed with tents and planted with trim little gardens of bright flowers and evergreens; installed pillar-boxes bearing French arms, their electric power-station, their orderly-and mess-rooms, surrounded the whole by a mass of barbed wire, and having notified everywhere that this was Hospital No. ——, to which there is "No Admittance," proceeded to explain smilingly to the bewildered Brightonians that the huts are stable enough to last for seven years.

If one could fathom the conflicting feelings of Brighton under these conditions, one might have some small understanding of the astonishment with which our Allies, already hard stricken by war, contemplate the problem of this little Britain in France.

And there certainly are problems. Take, for instance, the guarding of the roads. Naturally enough, even in the British War Zone the French are loath to give up command of the road. One cannot expect them to forget completely that only one hundred years ago we were on a hostile and not on a friendly mission! And so until recently they guarded the barriers with fixed bayonets. Alas! the valiant men whose zealous watch was apt to prove irksome have now been called up to the firing-line. We shall no longer be tempted (those of us who are facetiously inclined) to play pranks.

There was a certain art in producing, instead of one's military pass, a card of membership of some long-forgotten club or any legal-looking document, providing it bore a portrait affixed, and, brandishing it in the watchful guard's face with a loud "Laissez-passer militaire," dash on to one's destination. An old Hippodrome ticket has been known to act as well. Ten chances to one, being unable to read English, the guard would let one through, and the delay would be amply repaid by the good laugh.

But as I said, the many minor barriers have disappeared, and there is no bluffing the men who guard the entrance and egress to the town.

June 30th. Since the German introduction of methods of warfare that would shame a savage—the poison gas, the sinking of the Lusitania—the whole attitude of our men towards the enemy has changed, and one can safely predict that next Christmas there will be no exchange of civilities and cigarettes with the Huns as there was last.

Even at home the sluggards seem to be rousing; and the "Frightfulness" whereby the Germans hope to scare Britain into a compromise is, on the contrary, acting as a much-needed tonic.

One is struck out here by the psychology of the youthful subalterns. The high anticipation of "getting out," the silent horror of which they say so little when they are brought face to face with the "Real Thing," and which, once conquered, leads to a resigned fatalism.

It's the same with all of them. "Che sarÀ, sarÀ, and if we are to be hit, well, the sooner it's over the better, only it would be nice to know if it's to be an arm, or sight or—the other thing. No matter, anyhow. We shall know it soon enough, and in the meantime there is that long-delayed ninety-six hours' leave in the future to dream of——"

Aye, that leave that many of them will never get!