February 2nd. This morning, in company with our chief, Mr. H——, I went over to prospect in the new sphere of action. The lower part of the hotel that the Association has taken is devoted to a canteen, whilst on the first floor there is a library and writing-room, and above, seven spacious rooms lie empty until such a time as the hostel is started. The hostel is a grand scheme for billeting gratis the relatives of badly wounded men, who could otherwise not afford the journey.

My heart sank at sight of the minute kitchen, the range of which seemed literally hidden by pots and pans; but no doubt one day we shall get it in order.

The secretary—a Scottish padre—is full of enthusiasm for football, with which he hopes to keep the men at the base well amused.

In the afternoon, on exploring for myself, I discovered that the most interesting feature of the place is the isolation compound that lies alongside the enteric hospital. Here all infectious illnesses are treated in bathing-boxes rigged out as wards; here are patients indulging in every conceivable disease, from mumps and measles to diphtheria, typhoid and the dreaded spinal meningitis.

Farther along, attached to the Casino, whose spacious gaming rooms make wonderfully cheerful wards, is a smaller hotel, where the men suffering from skin diseases are treated. One's heart goes out to these men, especially the wounded ones, who through no fault of their own are afflicted with the foul diseases that follow in the train of war.

The main road is lined with hospitals—the "British," the "Anglo-American," the "Rawal Pindi" (so called because the unit was mobilised in that far-away Indian station), and others.

The great objection to the converted hotels is the smallness of the well-appointed rooms, which gives one the desire to knock down intervening walls and form them into one spacious room to save the sisters' feet and the patients' voices!

One is lost in admiration now at the organisation of things, just as two months ago one was appalled by the state of unreadiness. Nothing that can be done for our men is omitted.

February 3rd. For the last time I watch the moon wane, the sun rise over the mist-bathed harbour. Will the picture I have learned to love so well ever fade? The countless masts rising to the sky, the water dashing over the distant breakwater, the clock at the Gare Maritime, now visible, now obscured by smoke from the packet-boat's funnel.

The incoming destroyers, the sister hospital ships lying abreast, the distant windmill on the hill, round which many corrugated iron buildings are springing up (bakeries, they say), the weather-beaten tars, the women, their backs bent with the weight of their sacks of mussels and cockles, tramping along barefooted or in sabots, the ceaseless stream of ambulances.

February 8th. Laden with parting gifts and consoled by parting regrets (strangest among them those of our padre, who will miss having someone to darn his socks!), we found ourselves at our new domain—the American girl and I.

Certainly the circumstances of our arrival were far from favourable, for my colleague fell very ill the day we arrived, and after a night spent on the floor of her ten-by-eight-feet-long room (oh, those boards!—my bones still ache, my head swims in memory of them), we installed her in a military hospital, and set to work to "carry on."

Two other workers have arrived from England; neither of them having done hard manual labour before, they are apt to find this somewhat strenuous, though to our more veteran hands it is child's play. Footsoreness, too, that bane of all amateur workers, is their portion.

There are times when one wonders if all new things are horrid!

This morning, at Mattins in the little tin church, for instance, when the convalescent soldier organist, with the angelic face and absolute lack of any musical instinct, crashed out his last discordant notes, when the congregation, consisting of three nurses, the old, old man who took round the plate, and two maiden ladies who acted as choir, trooped into the sunshine, I could not but cast a longing thought at St. John's, with its dim religious glow and mellow organ and congregation of muddy soldiers.

February 12th. Besides getting the place in order, we are busily employed in thinking out new dishes for the men. To the ordinary store of cakes and drinks we have already added custard, stewed fruits, and bread puddings.

In spare moments I catalogue the library, and have evolved a good system by which the men fill in the register themselves on taking out a book, thus dispensing with a librarian. The library book is like this:

February 16th. Yesterday, a train being derailed close by here on its way up to the front, and the men left stranded, we took them up a supply of cigarettes and chocolates that good friends at home had sent out.

The canteen is growing like wildfire, and we are heart and soul in our work, which we estimate by the material return in the till each evening. We have trebled the receipts in two weeks, which shows how the men are flocking to it.

February 18th. The day—the great day of the German blockade. We are wondering how far the enemy will really carry out his scheme. Certainly no mail boat has come in to-day, and we are without letters or newspapers. The suspension of communication with England is nothing new, but we are speculating if this time it will be a matter of weeks instead of days.

Being hors de combat with a sore throat—the toll exacted apparently by this germ-filled place from every worker who comes to stay—I have leisure to note our surroundings. The walls of the large, airy room, which though devoid of all save the necessities of life is luxury embodied by reason of its cleanliness, are bare except for a few unpaid bills held together by a file, a few hastily scrawled quotations from favourite authors to remind us that we once had time to indulge in beautiful pictures, to roam into the realms of beautiful books.

By the window, acting as a couch, are two large wooden cases in which gramophones for the men had been sent out, and which prove a great attraction to the friendly little mice who come out and hold long confabulations, not only under cover of night, but frequently, when things are quiet, by day. They are welcome enough to the wooden boxes, but when they take to running over our beds, our clothing as it lies on the chairs, and finally even over our faces, they can hardly expect to be well received!

The view from the window is superb. Before us, in front of the little grey church, the river runs down to the sea, now gently, now turbulently. To the right a peep of the ocean. To the left the bridge, through the arches of which is a glimpse of landscape as peaceful as any Tuscan village, and over which the trains pass intermittently up to the front by day and by night. They rush past with a whistle that is more of a shriek and a groan, as if they themselves realised the value of their burden—the guns, the ammunition wagons, the trainloads of men in khaki or in blue clustered along the edge of the overcrowded trucks designed to carry "eighteen horses or thirty-six men."

In contrast with the rushing up-trains the loaded ambulances crawl creakingly down at a snail's pace.

God! That such things should be! If the heart of the world were big enough, surely it would break at so much misery, so much destruction. For what have all previous generations laboured, legislating, studying to salve human ills? For this! Wanton destruction, rapine, murder.

February 21st. These are exciting times. Last night there was the sound of guns at sea. An engagement off Dover is recounted, but papers no longer get through to us. A sudden explosion about five o'clock the same day, and the subsequent report of a sunken hospital ship, afterwards said to have been a neutral (Dutch?) liner, leaves us with but the vaguest idea of what really happened.

Just as the doctor, a kindly little man, who was invalided down some weeks ago from his field ambulance at B——, had appeared, stethoscope in hand, all attention was riveted on a funeral that passed by—that of a nursing sister who has just died of the fatal spotted fever. The flower-bedecked coffin, the whole available hospital unit marching slowly with arms reversed, made an impressive sight. One wondered if she had ever received so much attention in her lifetime as at her death. The doctor told me that in India, where the intense heat is sometimes conducive to suicide, the fear of not having a military funeral often acts as a deterrent.

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No sooner was the cortÈge past than a broken aeroplane rolled by on a heavy trolley, and left us wondering if that was the crash we heard yesterday.

An air raid on Calais, packet-boat nearly sunk, torpedoes off Boulogne—it almost seems as if we are going to see the real thing.

Martial law here has become very strict. The roads are guarded so that one cannot move an inch without showing passports. Lights have to be out by 9 P.M., and even my diary has to be penned behind a screen of bedclothes with the aid of a candle stump. Seeing that we only finish work at 9 P.M., have to get home, eat our supper, and go to bed in the dark, it is rather tiresome, and we are now engaged in rigging up light-proof curtains.

On returning to work after my first committee meeting—the very existence of which proves the method that is creeping into the erstwhile chaos—I was greeted by the news of our Dardanelles Expedition which is now occupying all our attention.