Calais, Saturday.

Belgian officers, parks of Belgian military automobiles; up-country a little way the Germans going down in tens of thousands to win their “gate to England”—­yet we came across on the Channel boat last evening as usual and had little trouble finding a room.  There were tons of Red Cross supplies on board—­cotton, chloroform, peroxide; Belgian soldiers patched up and going back to fight; and various volunteer nurses, including two handsome young Englishwomen of the very modern aviatrix type—­coming over to drive motor-cycle ambulances—­and so smartly gotten up in boots and khaki that a little way off you might have taken them for British officers.  At the wharf were other nurses, some of whom I had last seen that Thursday afternoon in Antwerp as they and their wounded rolled away in London buses from the hospital in the Boulevard Leopold.

This morning, strolling round the town, I ran into a couple of English correspondents.  There were yet several hours before they need address themselves to the arduous task of describing fighting they had not seen, and they talked, with a good humor one sometimes misses in their correspondence, of German collectivism and similar things.  One had spent a good deal of time in Germany.

“They’re the only people who have solved the problem of industrial cities without slums—­you must say that for them.  Of course, in those model towns of theirs, you’ve got to brush your teeth at six minutes past eight and sleep on your left side if the police say so—­they’re astonishing people for doing what they’re told.

“One day in Dresden I walked across a bit of grass the public weren’t supposed to cross.  An old gentleman fairly roared the instant he saw me.  He was ready to explode at the mere suggestion that any one could think of disobeying a rule made for all of them.

“‘Das kann man nicht thun!  Es ist verboten!’”

The other quoted the answer of an English factory-owner to some of his employees who did not want to enlist.  “They’ve done a lot for working men over there,” the man said.  “Accident-insurance, old-age pensions, and all that—­what do we want to fight the Kaiser for?  We’d just about as soon be under Billy as George.”  And X------said to them:  “If you were under Kaiser Billy, you’d enlist right enough, there’s no doubt of that!”

Boulogne, Saturday.

He sat in the corner of our compartment coming down from Calais this afternoon, an old Algerian soldier, homeward bound, with a big, round loaf of bread and a military pass.  He had a blue robe, bright-red, soft boots, a white turban wound with a sort of scarf of brown cord and baggy corduroy underneath, concealing various mysterious pockets.

“Paris?  To-night?” he grunted in his queer French.  The big Frenchman next him, who had served in Africa in his youth and understood the dialect, shook his head.  “To-morrow morning!” he said.  He laid his head on his hand to suggest a man sleeping, and held up three fingers.  “Three days—­Marseilles!” The old goumier’s dark eyes blazed curiously, and he opened and shut his mouth in a dry yawn—­like a tiger yawning.