LAST DAYS IN FLANDERS

19 May.—In order to get material for my lecture to munition-workers I was very anxious to see more of the war for myself than is possible at a soup-kitchen, and I asked at the British Mission if I might be given permission to go into the British lines. Major —— in giving me a flat refusal, was a little pompous and important I thought, and he said it was impossible to get near the British.

To-day I lunched on the barge with Miss Close, and we took her car and drove to Poperinghe. I hardly like to write this even in a diary, I am so seldom naughty! But I really did something very wrong for once. And the amusing part of it was that military orders made going to Poperinghe so impossible that no one molested us! We passed all the sentries with a flourish of our green papers, and drove on to the typhoid hospital with only a few Tommies gaping at us.

I was amazed at the pleasure that wrong-doing gives, and regretted my desperately strict past life! Oh, the freedom of that day in the open air! the joy of seeing trees after looking at one wretched line of rails for nine months! Lilacs were abloom in every garden, and buttercups made the fields look yellow. The air was misty—one could hardly have gone to Poperinghe except in a mist, as it was being so constantly shelled—but in the mist the trees had a queer light on them which made the early green look a deeper and stronger colour than I have ever seen it. There appeared to be a sort of glare under the mist, and the fresh wet landscape, with its top-heavy sky, radiated with some light of its own. Oh, the intoxication of that damp, wet drive, with a fine rain in our faces, and the car bounding under us on the "pavÉ"! If I am interned till the end of the war I don't care a bit! I have had some fresh air, and I have been away for one whole day from the smell of soup and drains.

How describe it all? The dear sense of guilt first, and then the still dearer British soldiers, all ready with some cheery, cheeky remark as they sat in carts under the wet trees. They were our brethren—blue-eyed and fair-haired, and with their old clumsy ways, which one seemed to be seeing plainly for the first time, or, rather, recognising for the first time. It was all part of England, and a day out. The officers were taking exercise, of course, with dogs, and in the rain. We are never less than English! To-morrow we may be killed, but to-day we will put on thick boots, and take the dogs for a run in the rain.

Poperinghe was deserted, of course. Its busy cobbled streets were quite empty except for a few strolling soldiers in khaki, and just here and there the same toothless old woman who is always the last to leave a doomed city. At the typhoid hospital we gravely offered the cases of milk which we had brought with us as an earnest of our good conduct, but even the hospital was nearly empty. However, a secretary offered us a cup of tea, and in the dining-room we found Madame van den Steen, who had just returned to take up her noble work again. She was at Dinant, at her own chÂteau, when war broke out, and she was most interesting, and able to tell me things at first hand. The German methods are pretty well known now, but she told me a great deal which only women talking together could discuss. When a village or town was taken, the women inhabitants were quite at the mercy of the Germans.

Continuing, Madame van den Steen said that all the filthiness that could be thought of was committed—the furniture, cupboards, flowerpots, and even bridge-tables, being sullied by these brutes. Children had their hands cut off, and one woman, at least, at Dinant was crucified. One's pen won't write more. The horrors upset one too much. All the babies born about that time died; their mothers had been so shocked and frightened....

Of Ypres Madame said, "It smells of lilac and death." Some Englishmen were looking for the body of a comrade there, and failed to find it amongst the ruins of the burning and devastated town. By seeming chance they opened the door of a house which still stood, and found in a room within an old man of eighty-six, sitting placidly in a chair. He said, "How do you do?" and bade them be seated, and when they exclaimed, aghast at his being still in Ypres, he replied that he was paralysed and couldn't move, but that he knew God would send someone to take him away; and he smiled gently at them, and was taken away in their ambulance.

Madame gave me a shell-case, and asked Mr. Thompson if he would bring in his large piece to show us. He wheeled it across the hall, as no one could lift it, and this was only the base of a 15-inch shell. It was picked up in the garden of the hospital, and had travelled fifteen miles!

The other day I went to see for myself some of the poor refugees at Coxide. There were twenty-five people in one small cottage. Some were sleeping in a cart. One weeping woman, wearing the little black woollen cap which all the women wear, told me that she and her family had to fly from their little farm at Lombaertzyde because it was being shelled by the Germans, but afterwards, when all seemed quiet, they went back to their home to save the cows. Alas, the Germans were there! They made this woman (who was expecting a baby) and all her family stand in a row, and one girl of twenty, the eldest daughter, was shot before their eyes. When the poor mother begged for the body of her child it was refused her.

The Times list of atrocities is too frightful, and all the evidence has been sifted and proved to be true.

20 May.—Yesterday I arranged with Major du Pont about leaving the station to go home and give lectures in England. Then I had a good deal to do, so I abandoned my plan of visiting refugees with Etta Close, and stayed on at the station. At 5.30 I came back to La Panne to see Countess de Caraman Chimay, the dame d'honneur of the Queen of the Belgians; then I went on to dine with the nurses at the "Ocean." Here I heard that Adinkerke, which I had just left, was being shelled. Fortunately, the station being there, I hope the inhabitants got away; but it was unpleasant to hear the sound of guns so near. I knew the three Belgian Sisters would be all right, as they have a good cellar at their house, and I could trust Lady Bagot's staff to look after her. All the same, it was a horrible night, full of anxiety, and there seems little doubt that La Panne will be shelled any day. My one wish is—let's all behave well.

I watched the sunset over the sea, and longed to be in England; but, naturally, one means to stick it, and not leave at a nasty time.

21 May.—Yesterday, at the station, there was a poor fellow lying on a stretcher, battered and wounded, as they all are, an eye gone, and a foot bandaged. His toes were exposed, and I went and got him rather a gay pair of socks to pull on over his "pansement." He gave me a twinkle out of his remaining eye, and said, "Madame, in those socks I could take Constantinople!"

The work is slack for the moment, but a great attack is expected at Nieuport, and they say the Kaiser is behind the lines there. His presence hasn't brought luck so far, and I hope it won't this time.

I went to tea with Miss Close on the barge, and afterwards we picked up M. de la Haye, and went to see an old farm, which filled me with joy. The buildings here, except at the larger towns, are not interesting or beautiful, but this lovely old house was evidently once a summer palace of the bishops (perhaps of Bruges). It is called "Beau Garde," and lies off the Coxide road. One enters what must once have been a splendid courtyard, but it is now filled indiscriminately with soldiers and pigs. The chapel still stands, with the Bishops' Arms on the wall; and there are Spanish windows in the old house, and a curious dog-kennel built into the wall. Over the gateway some massive beams have been roughly painted in dark blue, and these, covered in ivy, and with the old dim-toned bricks above, make a scheme of colour which is simply enchanting. Some wind-torn trees and the sand-dunes, piled in miniature mountains, form a delicious background to the old place.

I also went with Etta Close to visit some of the refugees for whom she has done so much, and in the sweet spring sunshine I took a little walk in the fields with M. de la Haye, so altogether it was a real nice day. There were so few wounded that I was able to have a chat with each of them, and the poor "ÉclopÉs" were happy gambling for ha'pence in the garden of the St. Vincent.

In the evening I went up to the Kursaal to dine with Mrs. Wynne. Our two new warriors who have come out with ambulances have stood this absolutely quiet time for three days, and are now leaving because it is too dangerous! The shells at Adinkerke never came near them, as they were deputed to drive to Nieuport only. (N.B.—Mrs. Wynne continues to drive there every night!) Eight men of our corps have funked, no women.

I am going to take a week's rest before going home, in the hope that I won't arrive looking as ill as I usually do. I hardly know how to celebrate my holiday, as it is the first time since I came out here that I haven't gone to the station except on Sundays.

23 May, Sunday.—I went to Morning Service at the "Ocean" to-day, then walked back with Prince Alexander. In the evening we drove to the Hoogstadt hospital. The King of the Belgians was just saying good-bye to the staff, after paying a surprise visit. He has a splendid face, and the simplicity of his plain dark uniform makes the strength and goodness of it all the more striking.

As I was waiting at the hospital the Germans began firing at a little village a mile off. It is always strange to hear the shells whizzing over the fields. We drove out to see the Yser and the floods, which have protected us all the winter. With glasses one could have seen the German lines.

Spring is coming late, and with a marvel of green. A wind blows in from the sea, and the lilacs nod from over the hedge. The tender corn rustles its soft little chimes, and all across it the wind sends arpeggio chords of delicate music, like a harp played on silver strings. A great big horse-chestnut tree, carrying its flowers proudly like a bouquet, showers the road with petals, and the shy hedges put up a screen all laced and decorated with white may. It just seems as if Mother Earth had become young again, and was tossing her babies up to the summer sky, and the wind played hide-and-seek, or peep-bo, or some other ridiculous game, with them, and made the summer babies as glad and as mischievous as himself. Only the guns boom all the time, and my poor little French Marines, who drink far too much, and have the manners of princes, come in on ambulances in the evening, or at the "poste" a hole is dug for them in the ground, and they are laid down gently in their dirty coats.

Mother Earth, with her new-born babies, stops laughing for a moment, and says to me, "It's all right, my dear; they have to come back to me, as all my children and all their works must do. Why make any complaint? For a time they are happy, playing and building their little castles, and making their little books, and weaving stories and wreaths of flowers; but the stories, the castles, the flowers I gave them, and they themselves, all come back to me at last—the leaves next autumn, and the boy you love perhaps to-morrow."

Oh, Father God, Mother Earth, as it was in the beginning will it be in the end? Will you give us and them a good time again, and will the spring burst into singing in some other country? I don't know. I don't know.

Only I do know this—I am sure of it now for the first time, and it is worth while spending a long, long winter within the sound of guns in order to know it—that death brings release, not release from mere suffering or pain, but in some strange and unknown way it brings freedom. Soldiers realise it: they have been more terrified than their own mothers will ever know, and their very spines have melted under the shrieking sound of shells, and then comes the day when they "don't mind." Death stalks just as near as ever, but his face is suddenly quite kind. A stray bullet or a piece of shell may come, but what does it matter? This is the day when the soldier learns to stroll when the shrapnel is falling, and to look up and laugh when the murderous bullet pings close by.

War souvenirs! There are heaps of them, and I hate them all; pieces of jagged shell, helmets with bullets through them, pieces of burnt aeroplanes, scraps of clothing rent by a bayonet. Yesterday, at the station, I saw a sick Zouave nursing a German summer casquette. He said quietly, being very sick: "The burgomaster chez moi wanted one. Yes, I had to kill a German officer for it—ce n'est rien de quoi—I got a ball in my leg too, mais mon burgomaster sera trÈs content d'avoir une casquette d'un boche." Our own men leave their trenches and go out into the open to get these horrible things, with their battered exterior and the suggestion of pomade inside.

Yesterday, by chance, I went to the "Ierlinck" to see Mr. Clegg. I met Mr. Hubert Walter, lately arrived from England, and asked him to dine, so both he and Mr. Clegg came, and Madame van der Gienst. It was so like England to talk to Mr. Walter again, and to learn news of everyone, and we actually sat up till 10.30, and had a great pow-wow.

Mr. Walter attaches great importance to the fact that the Germans are courageous in victory, but their spirits go down at once under defeat, and he thinks that even one decisive defeat would do wonders in the way of bringing the war to an end. The Russians are preparing for a winter campaign. I look at all my "woollies," and wonder if I had better save some for 1916. What new horrors will have been invented by that time? I hear the Germans are throwing vitriol now! In their results I hate hand grenades more than anything. The poor burnt faces which have been wounded by them are hardly human sometimes, and in their bandages they have a suggestion of something tragically grotesque.

26 May.—We had a great day—rather, a glorious day—at the station yesterday. In the morning I heard that "les anglais" were arriving there, and, although the news was a little startling, I couldn't go early to Adinkerke because I felt so seedy. However, I got off at last in a "camion," and when I arrived I found the little station hospital and salle and Lady Bagot's hospital crowded with men in khaki.

We don't know yet all that it means. The fighting has been fierce and awful at Ypres. Are the hospitals at the base all crowded? Is there no more room for our men? What numbers of them have fallen? Who is killed, and who is left?

All questions are idle for the moment. Only I have a postcard to say that Colin is at the front, so I suppose until the war is over I shall go on being very sick with anxiety. At night I say to myself, as the guns boom on, "Is he lying out in the open with a bullet through his heart?" and in the morning I say, "Is he safe in hospital, and wounded, or is he still with his men, making them follow him (in the way he has) wherever he likes to lead them?" God knows, and the War Office, and neither tells us much.

The men at the station were nearly all cases of asphyxiation by gas. Unless one had actually seen the immediate results one could hardly have credited it. In a day or two the soldiers may leave off twitching and shuddering as they breathe, and may be able to draw a breath fairly, but an hour or two after they have inhaled the deadly German gas is an awful time to see one's men. Most of them yesterday were in bed, but a few sat on canvas chairs round the empty stove in the salle, and all slept, even those in deadly pain. Sleep comes to these tired soldiers like a death. They succumb to it. They are difficult to rouse. They are oblivious, and want nothing else. They are able to sleep anywhere and in any position, but even in sleep they twitch and shudder, and their sides heave like those of spent horses.

It struck me very forcibly that what was immediately wanted was a long draught for each of them of some clean, simple stimulant. I went and bought them red wine, and I could see that this seemed to do good, and I went to the barge and got bottles of whisky and a quantity of distilled water, and we dosed the men. It seemed to do them a wonderful lot of good, and in some way acted as an antidote to the poison. Also, it pulled them together, and they got some quieter sleep afterwards.

Towards the afternoon, indeed, all but one Irishman seemed to be better, and then we began to be cheery, and the scene at the station took colour and became intensely alive. The khaki-clad forms roused themselves, and (of course) wanted a wash. Also, they sat on their beds and produced pocket-combs, and ran them through their hair. In their dirt and rags these poor battered, breathless men began to try to be smart again. It was a tragedy and a comedy all in one. A Highlander, in a shrunk kilt and with long bare legs, had his head bound about with bandages till it looked like a great melon, and his sleeve dangled empty from his great-coat. Others of the Seaforths, and mere boys of the Highland Territorials, wore khaki shirts over their tartan, and these were bullet-torn and hanging in great rents. And some boys still wore their caps with the wee dambrod pattern jauntily, and some had no caps to wear, and some were all daubed about with white bandages stained crimson, and none had hose, and few had brogues. They had breathed poison and received shrapnel, and none of them had slept since Sunday night. They had had an "awful doing," and no one knew how the battle at Ypres had gone, but these were men yet—walking upright when they could, always civil, undismayed, intelligent, and about as like giving in as a piece of granite.

Only the young Scottish boys—the children of seventeen who had sworn in as nineteen—were longing for Loch Lomond's side and the falls of Inversnaid. I believe the Loch Lomond lads believed that the white burn that falls over the rocks near the pier has no rival (although they have heard of Niagara and the Victoria Falls), and it's "oor glen" and "oor country" wi' them all. And one boy wanted his mother badly, and said so. But oh, how ready they were to be cheery! how they enjoyed their day! And, indeed, we did our best for them.

Lady Bagot's hospital was full, and we called it her garden-party when we all had tea in the open air there. We fed them, we got them handkerchiefs, our good du Pont got them tubs, the cook heaped more coal on the fire, although it was very hot, and made soup in buckets, and then began a curious stage scene which I shall never forget. It was on the platform of the station. A band appeared from somewhere, and, out of compliment to the English, played "God Save the King." All the dirty bandaged men stood at attention. As they did so an armoured train backed slowly into the station and an aeroplane swooped overhead. At Drury Lane one would have said that the staging had been overdone, that the clothes were too ragged, the men too gaunt and too much wounded, and that by no stretch of imagination could a band be playing "God save the King" while a square painted train called "Lou-lou" steamed in, looking like a child's giant gaudy toy, and an aeroplane fussed overhead.

Everyone had stories to tell, but I think the best of them concerns the arrival of the wounded last night. All the beds in Lady Bagot's little hospital were full, and the Belgians who occupied them insisted on getting up and giving their places to the English. They lay on the floor or stood on their feet all night, and someone told me that even very sick men leapt from their beds to give them to their Allies.

God help us, what a mixture it all is! Here were men talking of the very sound of bayonets on human flesh; here were men not only asphyxiated by gas, but blinded by the pepper that the Germans mix with it; and here were men determined to give no quarter—yet they were babbling of Loch Lomond's side and their mothers, and fighting as to who should give up their beds to each other.

Of course the day ended with the exchange of souvenirs, and the soldiers pulled buttons off their coats and badges out of their caps. And when it was all over, every mother's son of them rolled round and went to sleep. Most of them, I thought, had a curious air of innocence about them as they slept.

27 May.—I took a great bundle of newspapers and magazines to the "Jellicoe" men to-day. English current literature isn't a waste out here, and I often wonder why people don't buy more. They all fall upon my tableful, and generally bear away much of it.

The war news, even in the ever optimistic English press, is not good, but not nearly as bad as what seems to me the real condition of affairs. The shortage of high explosives is very great. At Nieuport yesterday Mrs. Wynne said to a French officer, "Things seem quiet here to-day," at which he laughed, and said, "I suppose even Germans will stop firing when they know you have no ammunition."

In France the armament works are going night and day, and the men work in shifts of 24 hours—even the women only get one day off in a week—while in Glasgow the men are sticking out for strict labour conditions, and are "slacking" from Friday night till late on Tuesday morning, and then demanding extra pay for overtime. And this in face of the bare facts that since October the Allies have lost ground in Russia; in Belgium they remain as they were; and in France they have advanced a few kilometres. At Ypres the Germans are now within a mile of us, and the losses there are terrible. Whom shall we ever see again?

Men come out to die now, not to fight. One order from a sergeant was, "You've got to take that trench. You can't do it. Get on!"

A captain was heard saying to a gunner subaltern: "We must go back and get that gun." The subaltern said, "We shall be killed, but it doesn't matter." The captain echoed heavily, "No, it doesn't matter," and they went back.

Sir William Ramsay, speaking about the war, says that half the adult male population of Europe will be killed before it is over. Those who are left will be the feeble ones, the slackers, the unfit, and the cowards. It is good to be left to breed from such stock!

It is odd to me how confusing is the want of difference that has come to pass between the living and the not living. Cottages and little towns seem to be part of nature. One regrets their destruction almost as one regrets the loss of life. They have a tragic look, with their dishevelled windows and stripped roofs and skeleton frames. Life has become so cheap that cottages seem almost as valuable. "It doesn't matter"—nothing matters. I rather dread going back to London, because there things may begin to seem important and one will be in bondage again. Here our men are going to their death laughing because it doesn't matter.

There is a proud humility about my countrymen which few people have yet realised. It is the outcome of nursery days and public schools. No one is allowed to think much of himself in either place, so when he dies, "It doesn't matter."

God help the boys! If they only knew how much it mattered to us! Life is over for them. We don't even know for certain that they will live again. But their spirit, as I know it, can never die. I am not sure about the survival of personality. I care, but I do not know. But I do know that by these simple, glorious, uncomplaining deaths, some higher, purer, more splendid place is reached, some release is found from the heavy weight of foolish, sticky, burdensome, contemptible things. These heroes do "rise," and we "rise" with them. Could Christ himself desire a better resurrection?

28 May.—I am busy getting things prepared for going home—my lecture, two articles, etc. I did not go to the station to-day, but worked till 3 o'clock, and then walked over to St. Idesbald. How I wish I could have been out-of-doors more since I came here. It is such a wonderful country, all sky. No wonder there are painters in Belgium. During the winter it was too wet to see much, and I was always in the kitchen, but now I could kiss the very ground with the little roses on it amongst the Dunes. Larks sing at St. Idesbald, and nightingales. Some fine night I mean to walk out there and listen.

29 May.—To-day, according to promise, Mr. Bevan took me into Nieuport. It was very difficult to get permission to go there, but Mr. Bevan got it from the British Mission on the plea that I was going to give lectures at home.

"The worst of going to Nieuport," said Major Tyrell, "is that you won't be likely to see home again."

Mr. Bevan called at 10 o'clock with the faithful MacEwan, and we went first to the Cabour hospital, which I always like so much, and where the large pleasure-grounds make things healthy and quiet for the patients. Then we had a tyre out of order, so had to go on to Dunkirk, where I met Mr. Sarrel and his friend Mr. Hanson—Vice-Consul at Constantinople—and they lunched with us while the car was being doctored.

At last we started towards Nieuport, but before we got there we found a motor-car in a ditch, and its owner with a cut on his head and his arm broken, so we had to pick him up and take him to Coxide. It was a clear, bright day, with all the trees swishing the sky, and Mr. Bevan and MacEwan did nothing all the time but tell me how dangerous it was, and they pointed out every place on the road where they had picked up dead men or found people blown to pieces. This was lively for me, and the amusing part of it was that I think they did it from a belated sense of responsibility.

It is as difficult to find words to describe Nieuport as it is to talk of metaphysics in slang. The words don't seem invented that will convey that haunting sense of desolation, that supreme quiet under the shock of continually firing guns. Hardly anything is left now of the little homely bits that, when I saw the place last autumn, reminded one that this was once a city of living human beings. Then one saw a few interiors—exposed, it is true, and damaged, but still of this world. Now it is one big grave, the grave of a city, and the grave of many of its inhabitants. Here, at a corner house, nine ladies lie under the piled-up dÉbris that once made their home. There some soldiers met their death, and some crumbling bricks are heaped over them too. The houses are all fallen—some outer walls remain, but I hardly saw a roof left—and everywhere there are empty window-frames and skeleton rafters.

I never knew so surely that a town can live and can die, and it set one wondering whether Life means a thing as a whole and Death simply disintegration. A perfect crystal, chemists tell us, has the elements of life in it and may be said to live. Destruction and decay mean death; separation and disintegration mean death. In this way we die, a crystal dies, a flower or a city dies. Nieuport is dead. There isn't a heart-beat left to throb in it. Thousands and thousands of shells have fallen into it, and at night the nightingale sings there, and by day the river flows gently under the ruined bridge. Every tree in a wood near by is torn and beheaded; hardly one has the top remaining. The new green pushes out amongst the blackened trunks.

One speaks low in Nieuport, the place is so horribly dead.

Mr. Bevan showed me a shell-hole 42 feet across, made by one single "soixante-quinze" shell. Every field is pitted with holes, and where there are stretches of pale-coloured mud the round pits dotted all over it give one the impression of an immense GruyÈre cheese. The streets, heaped with dÉbris, and with houses fallen helplessly forward into their midst, were full of sunshine. From ruined cottages—whose insecure walls tottered—one saw here and there some Zouaves or a little French "marin" appear. Most of these ran out with letters in their hands for us to post. Heaven knows what they can have to write about from that grave!

Some beautiful pillars of the cathedral still stand, and the tower, full of holes, has not yet bent its head. Lieutenant Shoppe, R.N., sits up there all day, and takes observations, with the shells knocking gaily against the walls. One day the tower will fall or its stones will be pierced, and then Lieutenant Shoppe, R.N., will be killed, as the Belgian "observateur" was killed at Oostkerke the other day. He still hangs there across a beam for all the world to see. His arms are stretched out, and his body lies head downwards, and no one can go near the dead Belgian because the tower is too unsafe now. One day perhaps it will fall altogether and bury him.

Meanwhile, in the tower of the ruined cathedral at Nieuport Shoppe sits in his shirt-sleeves, with his telephone beside him and his observation instruments. His small staff are with him. They are immensely interested in the range of a gun and the accuracy of a hit. I believe they do not think of anything else. No doubt the tower shakes a great deal when a shell hits it, and no doubt the number of holes in its sides is daily becoming more numerous. Each morning that Shoppe leaves home to spend his day in the tower he runs an excellent chance of being killed, and in the evening he returns and eats a good dinner in rather an uncomfortable hotel.

In the cathedral, and amongst its crumbling battered aisles, a strange peace rests. The pitiful columns of the church stand here and there—the roof has long since gone. On its most sheltered side is the little graveyard, filled with crosses, where the dead lie. Here and there a shell has entered and torn a corpse from its resting-place, and bones lie scattered. On other graves a few simple flowers are laid.

We went to see the dim cellars which form the two "postes au secours." In the inner recess of one a doctor has a bed, in the outer cave some soldiers were eating food. There is no light even during the day except from the doorway. At Nieuport the Germans put in 3,000 shells in one day. Nothing is left. If there ever was anything to loot, it has been looted. One doesn't know what lies under the dÉbris. Here one sees the inside of a piano and a few twisted strings, and there a metal umbrella-stand. I saw one wrought-iron sign hanging from the falling walls of an inn.

Mr. Bevan and I wandered about in the unearthly quiet, which persisted even when the guns began to blaze away close by us, whizzing shells over our heads, and we walked down to the river, and saw the few boards which are all that remain of the bridge. Afterwards a German shell landed with its unpleasant noise in the middle of the street; but we had wandered up a by-way, and so escaped it by a minute or less.

In a little burned house, where only a piece of blackened wall remained, I found a little crucifix which impressed me very much—it stood out against the smoke-stained walls with a sort of grandeur of pity about it. The legs had been shot away or burned, but "the hands were stretched out still."

As we came away firing began all round about, and we saw the toss of smoke as the shells fell.

31 May.—We went to Steenkerke yesterday and called on Mrs. Knocker, and saw a terrible infirmary, which must be put right. It isn't fit for dogs.

At the station to-day our poor Irishman died. Ah, it was terrible! His lungs never recovered from the gas, and he breathed his last difficult breath at 5 o'clock.

In the evening a Zeppelin flew overhead on its way to England.

There is a nightingale in a wood near here. He seems to sing louder and more purely the heavier the fighting that is going on. When men are murdering each other he loses himself in a rapture, of song, recalling all the old joyous things which one used to know.

The poetry of life seems to be over. The war songs are forced and foolish. There is no time for reading, and no one looks at pictures, but the nightingale sings on, and the long-ago spirit of youth looks out through Time's strong bars, and speaks of evenings in old, dim woods at home, and of girlish, splendid drives home from some dance where "he" was, when we watched the dawn break, and saw our mother sleeping in the carriage, and wondered what it would be like not to "thrill" all the time, and to sleep when the nightingale was singing.

Later there came the time when the song of the throbbing nightingale made one impatient, because it sang in intolerable silence, and one ached for the roar of things, and for the clash of endeavour and for the strain of purpose. Peace was at a discount then, and struggle seemed to be the eternal good. The silent woods had no word for one, the nightingale was only a mate singing a love-song, and one wanted something more than that.

And afterwards, when the struggle and the strain were given one in abundant measure, the song of the nightingale came in the lulls that occurred in one's busy life. One grew to connect it with coffee out on the lawn in some houses of surpassing comfort, where (years and years ago) one dressed for dinner, and a crinkly housemaid brought hot water to one's room. The song went on above the smug comfort of things, and the amusing conversation, and the smell of good cigars. Within, we saw some pleasant drawing-room, with lamps and a big table set with candles and cards, and we felt that the nightingale provided a very charming orchestra. We listened to it as we listened to amusing conversation, with a sense of comfortable enjoyment and rest. Why talk of the time when it sang of breaking hearts and high endeavour never satisfied, and things which no one ever knew or guessed except oneself?

It sings now above the sound of death and of tears. Sometimes I think to myself that God has sent his angel to open the prison doors when I hear that bird in the little wood close beside the tram-way line.

On Thursday, June 3rd, I drove in the "bug" to Boulogne, and took the steamer to England. I went through a nasty time in Belgium, but now a good deal of queer affection is shown me, and I believe they all rather like me in the corps.

The following brief impression of Miss Macnaughtan's work at the soup-kitchen forms the most appropriate conclusion to her story of her experiences in Belgium. She cut it out of some paper, and sent it home to a friend in England, and we seem to learn from it—more than from any words of her own—how much she did to help our Allies in their hour of need: