Women, with whom for a little while I could call myself comrade, I think of you now and marvel at you!  The call of the wild had brought some of you out to those fields of death.  The need of more excitement than modern life gives in time of peace, even the chance to forget, had been the motives with which two or three of you, I think, came upon these scenes of history, taking all risks recklessly, playing a man’s part with a feminine pluck, glad of this liberty, far from the conventions of the civilized code, yet giving no hint of scandal to sharp-eared gossip.  But most of you had no other thought than that of pity and helpfulness, and with a little flame of faith in your hearts you bore the weight of bleeding men, and eased their pain when it was too intolerable.  No soldiers in the armies of the Allies have better right to wear the decorations which a king of sorrow gave you for your gallantry in action.

18

The Germans were still trying to smash their way through the lines held by the Belgians, with French support.  They were making tremendous attacks at different places, searching for the breaking-point by which they could force their way to Furnes and on to Dunkirk.  It was difficult to know whether they were succeeding or failing.  It is difficult to know anything on a modern battlefield where men holding one village are ignorant of what is happening in the next, and where all the sections of an army seem involved in a bewildering chaos, out of touch with each other, waiting for orders which do not seem to come, moving forward for no apparent reason, retiring for other reasons hard to find, or resting, without firing a shot, in places searched by the enemy’s fire.

The enemy had built eight pontoon bridges over the Yser canal, but all of them had been destroyed.  This was a good piece of news.  But against it was the heavy loss of a Belgian company holding another bridge further down the river.  At Dixmude the Belgians held the outer streets.  Outside there had been heavy trench fighting.  The enemy had charged several times with the bayonet, but had been raked back by the mitrailleuses.

Things were going on rather well at most parts of the line.

The French batteries were getting the range every time, and their gunners were guessing at heaps of German dead.  The Belgian infantry was holding firm.  Their cavalry was out of action for the time, trying to keep warm on the roadsides.

That was all the truth that I could get out of a tangle of confused details.  All through another day I watched the business of battle—­a strange, mysterious thing in which one fails to find any controlling brain.  Regiments came out of the trenches and wandered back, caked with clay, haggard for lack of sleep, with a glint of hunger in their eyes.  Guns passed along the roads with ammunition wagons, whose axles shrieked over the stones.  For an hour a Belgian battery kept plugging shots towards the