we draw up at our destination.  The wide aerodrome stretches before us—­great hangars coloured so as to escape the notice of a Boche overhead—­with machines of all sizes, rising and landing—­coming out of the hangars, or returning to them for the night.  Two of the officers in charge meet us, and I walk round with them, looking at the various types—­some for fighting, some for observation; and understanding—­what I can!  But the spirit of the men—­that one can understand.  “We are accumulating, concentrating now, for the summer offensive.  Of course the Germans have been working hard too.  They have lots of new and improved machines.  But when the test comes we are confident that we shall down them again, as we did on the Somme.  For us, the all-important thing is the fighting behind the enemy lines.  Our object is to prevent the German machines from rising at all, to keep them down, while our airmen are reconnoitering along the fighting line.  Awfully dangerous work!  Lots don’t come back.  But what then?  They will have done their job!”

The words were spoken so carelessly that for a few seconds I did not realise their meaning.  But there was that in the expression of the man who spoke them which showed there was no lack of realisation there.  How often I have recalled them, with a sore heart, in these recent weeks of heavy losses in the air-service—­losses due, I have no doubt, to the special claims upon it of the German retreat.

The conversation dropped a little, till one of my companions, with a smile, pointed overhead.  Three splendid biplanes were sailing above us, at a great height, bound south-wards.  “Back from the line!” said the officer beside me, and we watched them till they dipped and disappeared in the sunset clouds.  Then tea and pleasant talk.  The young men insist that D. shall make tea.  This visit of two ladies is a unique event.  For the moment, as she makes tea in their sitting-room, which is now full of men, there is an illusion of home.

Then we are off, for another fifty miles.  Darkness comes on, the roads are unfamiliar.  At last an avenue and bright lights.  We have reached the Visitors’ Chateau, under the wing of G.H.Q.

No. 2

March 31st, 1917.

DEAR MR. ROOSEVELT,—­My first letter you will perhaps remember took us to the Visitors’ Chateau of G.H.Q. and left us alighting there, to be greeted by the same courteous host, Captain——­, who presided last year over another Guest House far away.  But we were not to sleep at the Chateau, which was already full of guests.  Arrangements had been made for us at a cottage in the village near, belonging to the village schoolmistress; the motor took us there immediately, and after changing our travel-stained dresses, we went back to the Chateau for dinner.  Many guests—­all of them of course of the male sex, and much talk!  Some of the guests—­members of Parliament, and foreign correspondents—­had been over the Somme battlefield that day, and gave alarmist accounts of the effects of the thaw upon the roads and the ground generally.  Banished for a time by the frost, the mud had returned; and mud, on the front, becomes a kind of malignant force which affects the spirits of the soldiers.