A Woman's Experience in the Great War

ic thing about it all seems to me the absolute

coming in and out of the town, or striding quickly into the Palace. Tall and fair, his appearance always seemed to me to undergo an extraordinary change from the

ften to be seen too, driving backwards and forward

leries were shut. Never a note of song or music was to be heard

peculiar tide of life flowed in and out through that vast cityful of people. It was life, vibrant with expectation, thrilling with hope and fear, without a moment's loneliness. They walked about the shady

ns could possibly get through those endless fo

ce had taken them all over. In despair I went to Sir Frederick Greville, the English Ambassador, and after certain formalities and in

le cannon pointed at one; and here and there great reflectors were placed against the dull earth-works to shew when the enemy's aircraft appeared in the skies. Nothing seemed wanting to make those fortifications complete and successful. It was heart-breaking to see the magnificent old chateaux and the beautiful little houses being ruthlessly cut down, razed to the earth to make c

the sadness of it! There were the wire entanglements, untouched, unaltered! The great reflectors still mirrored the sunlight and the stars.

by sentinels who rushed forward with poised

to me like a bit

, on either side the road, lif

came to a sto

ssant variety. Sometimes it would be "Ostend" or "Termond" or "Demain" or "General" or "Bruxelles" or "Belgique,"

ell-fire, and one asked him if he were frightened, was: "One can only die once." And the louder the shells, the quicker he drove towards them; and I used to love the way his old eyes flashed

ever go towards the

is the PAPA of the Commissariat! He does not go n

we ran along the white tree-lined roads through exquisite green country. The roads were crowded constantly with soldiers coming and going, and in all the villages we found the Headquart

endly

at a little place called Heyst-op den Berg, where the sentin

"The Germans are in the next town ahea

n is it?"

t," they

t not?" I asked. "I have been trying

entinels told me smilingly. "Between here an

s horse, came galloping along, shouting as he passed, "The Germans have

ins to a soldier and leapt into a tr

of the motor car, ran through the station, and got into that train ju

saw one little farm after another reduced to a heap of blackened ashes, with some lonely animals gazing terrifiedly into space. Sometimes just one wall would be standing of what was once a home, sometimes only the front of the house had been blown out by shells, and you could see right inside,-see the rooms spread out before you like a panorama, se

oads, and over the deserted fields where never a soul was to be seen, and in my mind's eye, I could follow those peasants, fleeing, fleeing, ever fleeing from

ing taken to warm, comfortable homes and clothed and fed by gentle-voiced English people. And then, waking perhaps in the depths of the night to find themselves in a strange land, how their thoughts would fly, with what awful yearning, back to those

very still in my corner. I asked no questions, and spoke to no one. I knew by instinct that this train was going to take me to a place that I never s

hot, I looked about me, scarcely

peared to have fallen