Macnaughtan, the authoress, who took it up as her special charge.  She had a little passage screened off, and in this were fitted up boilers for coffee and soup, tables for cutting up meat and vegetables, and even a machine for cutting up the bread.  It was all most beautifully arranged, and here she worked all day long, preparing for the inevitable crowd of wounded which the night would bring.  How it was all managed was a mystery to me, for there was not enough food in Furnes to feed a tame cat, let alone a trainload of famished soldiers, and I am looking anxiously for her next book in the hopes of finding the solution.

The trains themselves were well equipped, though nothing to the hospital trains of England.  The more severe cases were carried in long cars on a double row of stretchers, and they looked very comfortable on a cold night, with their oil-lamps and a coke stove in the centre of each car.  A stretcher is, perhaps, not exactly a bed of roses for a wounded man, but when one considers what pain is involved in moving a man who is badly wounded, there is obviously a great advantage in placing him on a stretcher once for all on the battle-field, and never moving him again until he can be actually placed in bed in a hospital.  On the train the men were looked after by the priests, splendid fellows who never seemed tired of doing all they could for the soldiers.  One found the Belgian priest everywhere—­in the trenches, in the hospitals, and in the trains—­unobtrusive, always cheerful, always ready to help.  From the brave Archbishop Mercier to the humblest village cure, regardless of their comfort and careless of their lives, they have stood by their people in the hour of their trial.  May their honour be great in the hour of Belgium’s triumph!

XIX.  Furnes—­The Town

Like so many of the cities of Belgium, Furnes is a town of the past.  To stand in the great square, surrounded by buildings which would delight the heart of any artist, is to travel back through three centuries of time.  Spain and the Renaissance surround us, and we look instinctively towards the Pavilion for the soldiers of Philip, or glance with apprehension at the door of the Palais de Justice for the sinister form of Peter Titelmann the Inquisitor.  Around this very square marched the procession of the Holy Office, in all the insolent blasphemy of its power, and on these very stones were kindled the flames that were to destroy its victims.  But all these have gone; the priest and his victim, the swaggering bravo and the King he served, have gone to their account, and Furnes is left, the record of a time when men built temples like angels and worshipped in them like devils.