July 1st. In place of the old hotel, where operations are still being carried on, our new hut has sprung up. The dimensions, let me see, are somewhere about 120 feet by 40 feet. Beside the platform at the far end lies the library, to fill which our store of books is to be greatly enlarged. Behind the counter are situated the ladies' room, the store-room, the mess-room, to beautify which I am busy all day making curtains, etc.

The kitchen is so small that it is not easy to get range and sink and boilers fitted in, but a patent coal-shed adjoining, by means of which one may shovel coal straight from the shed on to the fires through a lifting door, is a convenience. We glory in a bath for the resident secretaries, and if other sanitary accommodation is of the most primitive, we console ourselves that, being under military inspection, it is bound to be hygienic.

Our hut has the advantage of standing in its[Pg 209]
[Pg 210]
[Pg 211] own field, which, though none too even for cricket pitches, should make an excellent football ground, to popularise which we have decided to have a formal opening ceremony, preceded by sports.

In the interim of getting things ready for the hut I am lending a hand at an Expeditionary Force canteen. The work, being in a camp where all the men have been under fire, is intensely interesting. But, of course, the social element is lacking.

Apart from the amusements and distractions offered, the men seem to appreciate the Y.M.C.A. so much, because within the shelter of its walls they can forget for the moment the stringent military discipline under which they live.

July 2nd. In my hotel are quartered the latest "Lena Ashwell Concert Party," whose good humour keeps the whole place alive. The place is so noisy that it is impossible to sleep. Said the humorist of the party, "That reminds one of the tale of the man in an hotel who was greatly disturbed by someone walking about in the room above. The second night things were no better; the third, the place shook as if he were jumping the house down. Going upstairs he tapped at the door and said, 'I say, old fellow, do you mind letting me get a little sleep? You've kept me awake three nights with your noise.'

"'Am I disturbing you?' came the rejoinder. 'I'm so sorry. You see, I'm under doctor's orders, and he's given me some medicine and told me to take it two nights running and skip the third!'"

July 3rd. It is no easy matter now to get a photograph taken, even of so harmless a thing as a grave. Nevertheless, in reply to a request from a woman whose son is buried here, we resolved to leave no stone unturned to obtain the necessary permits. And, as we waited for the signing and countersigning of the valuable documents at the Commandant's office, whilst outside the "Caterpillars" rumbled past, taking their heavy guns up to the front, we wondered whether the same stringent regulations apply to the many "neutral" seamen, whose business, on cargo steamers, brings them into the port.

July 9th. By the evening the usual septic throat had claimed me victim, and in spite of strenuous efforts to attribute it to imagination, it is necessary to bow to the verdict that quarantines one as a "Query Diphtheria" case.

Faced with the idea of being isolated in a bathing-box ward and nursed by orderlies, there is nothing left for it but to take the landladies' advice and pray. Really, their faith is wonderful. They pray for everything; and seeing old Madame has a very short memory, and is always losing things for which she proceeds to pray without making the least effort to find them, St. Antony must be getting rather tired of this house!

Blinding rain in a jerry-built summer villa is not exactly cheerful, in spite of the Madonna lilies with which it is possible to adorn one's attic.

July 15th. The finishing touches are being put to the new building. My "Query Diphtheria" throat proved to be a false alarm, and now, having toiled for nine hours, behold me taking a moment's rest on the veranda, whilst thirty men—voluntary fatigue parties, who came in response to a hint that their assistance would be appreciated—are at work on different jobs.

Ten are darkening the table legs with permanganate of potash. Some are cleaning windows and others pasting on our "Dutch" frieze, whilst a little Scotty, who has been lent us as an orderly to help over these first days, and whose dialect is so broad that even his own compatriots sometimes fail to interpret, is watering and hanging geraniums we have had out from England. Yes, there is a breath of home about our hut. Bright English pottery adorns the shelves, bright curtains relieve the Mediterranean blue of the walls, and, as I said before, our plants, straight from Covent Garden, make the veranda as unwarlike as it is possible to make it.

July 16th. Our hut certainly opened with Éclat! In spite of the fact that at midday the place was still full of French painters and workmen, we managed to be superficially in order by four o'clock when the D.D.M.S. declared the building open.

No sooner had the decorators laid down their tools at midday for lunch than we bundled their ladders and paints outside and set to work to get the hall straight.

In spite of the rain and biting wind, our campaign for opening with sports in the afternoon was carried through; and after the many kindly speeches and wishes for the welfare of the work, I distributed the prizes from the platform, and we concluded with a concert.

July 18th. And now we are all suffering from a disease that might be called "Hut fever"; its symptoms, a readiness to do anything to get the place in order and (in spite of the still wet green paint that leaves anyone who is careless enough to lean against the doors a souvenir not easily eradicated) to make it into the finest centre at the Base.

The men themselves are equally enthusiastic, and one of them, the local versifier, brought us a poem penned for the occasion, which I quote as it stands:

Thus the American journalist who called on us to-day won our hearts completely by designating the hut as the "Grosvenor Square of Boulogne."

The place is kept lively by the Canadians, who are stationed close by, and who, with their music and overseas songs that carry one straight out on to the prairies of "God's Own Country," never leave us a dull moment.

Their ideas of justice, however, are rudimentary and original. To-day the French girl whom, in default of an orderly, we keep to do the rough work, was in trouble. She is an odd little creature of about twenty-six, eternally brandishing imaginary knives at an imaginary husband who ill-treats her. "The Little Savage" (thus we dubbed her because of the way in which she holds her food in her mouth and tears at it with both hands) had put her beautiful two-year-old boy out to nurse when she came to work, and, on returning to see him, discovered that he had been kidnapped by her parents-in-law.

After much ado with the police, and searching and wrangling at relatives' houses, it transpired that, owing to her own peccadilloes, the poor creature could not claim the custody of her child.

Crying like a wild thing, brandishing her helpless little fists, calling down invectives against the laws whose aid, only a few hours previously, she had been invoking, the girl returned; as I stood there, trying to bring her to her senses with soothing words and a cup of coffee, one of the Canadians came up and listened, open-mouthed, to her story.

"Give me the child's address," he exclaimed, his great solemn eyes fixed on the hysterical girl. "Law or no laws, it's hers. I'll steal it back for her and brain that rotten husband when he comes out of the trenches—and anyone else who gets in the way!"

Although there are so many tales illustrative of the Canadian lack of class distinction being told on all sides, I cannot refrain from noting down one told me by a Canadian to-day who fails utterly to see the humour of it. A certain important general came along to a Canadian camp to see his friend who was in command.

"Well, and what do you want?" asked the private on guard at the entrance.

"I want to see Colonel Birkdale," replied the General.

The private raised his voice. "Say, Birkdale," he shouted, "come right here, there's a general wants to see you!"

"What else could he do?" asked the narrator of me. "He couldn't go off and fetch the old man if he was on guard, could he?"

July 23rd. In spite of the conquest of German South-West Africa and the advance of four hundred yards in Gallipoli, the situation seems as indefinite as ever. Yet in the lull on the West is to be felt the presaging of the advance, in anticipation of which we live on the tip-top of expectation. This time there will be no shortage of ammunition, they tell us; but, as Mr. Asquith says, we must "Wait and see!" In the meantime we are less busy, and able to enjoy exhilarating walks along the hospital-lined shore; or inland, to where that ruined Jesuit monastery that has sheltered so many Indians and figured so often in the papers as the "Ruins of Ypres," to rejoice the heart of an unsuspecting public, rises an impressive pile against the sky.

Everywhere one notes the comparative opulence of our men, drawing from 1s. 2d. to 6s. per day, as compared with the French soldiers, who, less well nurtured, only receive ½ d.!

And if the tremendous wastage that went on during the early months has now ceased; if loaves and meat are no longer buried in large quantities daily, at least one could find quite a number of poverty-stricken French families able to subsist happily on the "leavings" of the camps hard by.

July 29th. I cannot help recalling how surprised everyone looked at home if I spoke of "Blighty," or a friend who was now a T.C.O. (Train Conducting Officer), and another who had been promoted to D.D.M.S. (Deputy Director Medical Supplies). I believe they thought it "swank," though they themselves had added "strafing" and "hating" (in the European-war sense) to their vocabulary.

Let us do ourselves justice! We at the Base are so accustomed to our own "jargon" that it comes as second nature to us.

We are often asked for "a cup of you and me and a wad" (tea and bit of bread and butter), or told that, although a man has spent all his "toot" (money) on "pig's ear" (beer), he would be glad of a pinch of "Lot's wife" (table salt) to eat with a sandwich, as the "shakles" (stew) was so undercooked as to be uneatable; and I defy anyone not to lose reckoning of the rights and wrongs of their own language when every other man states his wants in a terminology of his own. "Five steps to heaven" is, perhaps, the favourite term for Woodbines; "Cape of Good Hope" stands for soap; "jankers," confinement to barracks.

And is not every third office blazoned with hieroglyphics of some sort? Does not every third man wear some kind of distinctive brassard with its distinctive letters?