How hopelessly confused it all seemed!  I could not believe that there was order in the chaos that I saw.  But that was because the key to all that bewildering activity was not in my possession.

Every man had his appointed task.  He was a cog in the greatest machine the world has ever seen.  He knew just what he was to do, and how much time had been allowed for the performance of his task.  It was assumed he would not fail.  The British army makes that assumption, and it is warranted.

I hear praise, even from men who hate the Hun as I hate him, for the superb military organization of the German army.  They say the Kaiser’s people may well take pride in that.  But I say that I am prouder of what Britain and the new British army that has come into being since this war began have done than any German has a right to be!  They spent forty-four years in making ready for a war they knew they meant, some day, to fight.  We had not had, that day that I first saw our machine really functioning, as many months for preparation as they had had years.  And yet we were doing our part.

We had had to build and prepare while we helped our ally, France, to hold off that gray horde that had swept down so treacherously through Belgium from the north and east.  It was as if we had organized and trained and equipped a fire brigade while the fire was burning, and while our first devoted fighters sought to keep it in check with water buckets.  And they did!  They did!  The water buckets served while the hose was made, and the mains were laid, and the hydrants set in place, and the trained firemen were made ready to take up the task.

And, now that I had come to Folkestone, now that I was seeing the results of all the labor that had been performed, the effect of all the prodigies of organization, I began to know what Lord Kitchener and those who had worked with him had done.  System ruled everything at Folkestone.  Nothing, it seemed to me, as officers explained as much as they properly could, had been left to chance.  Here was order indeed.

In the air above us airplanes flew to and fro.  They circled about like great, watchful hawks.  They looped and whirled around, cutting this way and that, circling always.  And I knew that, as they flew about outside the harbor the men in them were never off their guard; that they were peering down, watching every moment for the first trace of a submarine that might have crept through the more remote defenses of the Channel.  Let a submarine appear—­its shrift would be short indeed!

There, above, waited the airplanes.  And on the surface of the sea sinister destroyers darted about as watchful as the flyers above, ready for any emergency that might arise.  I have no doubt that submarines of our own lurked below, waiting, too, to do their part.  But those, if any there were, I did not see.  And one asks no questions at a place like Folkestone.  I was glad of any information an officer might voluntarily give me.  But it was not for me or any other loyal Briton to put him in the position of having to refuse to answer.