When my train drew out, the khaki-clad lieutenant and his assistants were still at work.  One car was emptied.  They moved on to a second.  Other willing hands were at work on the line that stretched along the stone flooring, carrying the wounded to ambulances, but the line seemed hardly to shrink.  Always the workers inside the train brought another stretcher and yet another.  The rumble of the trucks had ceased.  It was very cold.  I could not look any longer.

It took three hours to go the twenty miles to Calais, from six o’clock to nine.  I wrapped myself in my fur coat.  Two men in my compartment slept comfortably.  One clutched a lighted cigarette.  It burned down close to his fingers.  It was fascinating to watch.  But just when it should have provided a little excitement he wakened.  It was disappointing.

We drifted into conversation, the gentleman of the cigarette and I. He was an Englishman from a London newspaper.  He was counting on his luck to get him into Calais and his wit to get him out.  He told me his name.  Just before I left France I heard of a highly philanthropic and talented gentleman of the same name who was unselfishly going through the hospitals as near the front as he could, giving a moving-picture entertainment to the convalescent soldiers.  I wish him luck; he deserves it.  And I am sure he is giving a good entertainment.  His wit had got him out of Calais!

Calais at last, and the prospect of food.  Still greater comfort, here my little card became operative.  I was no longer a refugee, fleeing and hiding from the stern eyes of Lord Kitchener and the British War Office.  I had come into my own, even to supper.

I saw no English troops that night.  The Calais station was filled with French soldiers.  The first impression, after the trim English uniform, was not particularly good.  They looked cold, dirty, unutterably weary.  Later, along the French front, I revised my early judgment.  But I have never reconciled myself to the French uniform, with its rather slovenly cut, or to the tendency of the French private soldier to allow his beard to grow.  It seems a pity that both French and Belgians, magnificent fighters that they are, are permitted this slackness in appearance.  There are no smarter officers anywhere than the French and Belgian officers, but the appearance of their troops en masse is not imposing.

Later on, also, a close inspection of the old French uniform revealed it as made of lighter cloth than the English, less durable, assuredly less warm.  The new grey-blue uniform is much heavier, but its colour is questionable.  It should be almost invisible in the early morning mists, but against the green of spring and summer, or under the magnesium flares—­called by the English “starlights”—­with which the Germans illuminate the trenches of the Allies during the night, it appeared to me that it would be most conspicuous.

I have before me on my writing table a German fatigue cap.  Under the glare of my electric lamp it fades, loses colour and silhouette, is eclipsed.  I have tried it in sunlight against grass.  It does the same thing.  A piece of the same efficient management that has distributed white smocks and helmet covers among the German troops fighting in the rigours of Poland, to render them invisible against the snow!