The same high-crowned roads, with pitfalls of mud at each side; the same lines of trees; the same coating of ooze, over which the car slid dangerously.  But a new element—­khaki.

Khaki everywhere—­uniforms, tents, transports, all of the same hue.  Skins, too, where one happens on the Indian troops.  It is difficult to tell where their faces end and their yellow turbans begin.

Except for the slightly rolling landscape and the khaki one might have been behind the Belgian or French Army.  There were as usual aeroplanes overhead, clouds of shrapnel smoke, and not far away the thunder of cannonading.  After a time even that ceased, for I was on my way to British General Headquarters, well back from the front.

I carried letters from England to Field Marshal Sir John French, to Colonel Brinsley Fitzgerald, aid-de-camp to the “Chief,” as he is called, and to General Huguet, the liaison between the French and English Armies.  His official title is something entirely different, but the French word is apt.  He is the connecting link between the English and French Armies.

I sent these letters to headquarters, and waited in the small hotel for developments.  The British antipathy to correspondents was well known.  True, there were indications that a certain relaxation was about to take place.  Frederick Palmer in London had been notified that before long he would be sent across, and I had heard that some of the London newspapers, the Times and a few others, were to be allowed a day at the lines.

But at the time my machine drew into that little French town and deposited me in front of a wretched inn, no correspondent had been to the British lines.  It was terra incognita.  Even London knew very little.  It was rumoured that such part of the Canadian contingent as had left England up to that time had been sent to the eastern field, to Egypt or the Dardanelles.  With the exception of Sir John French’s reports and the “Somewhere in France” notes of “Eyewitness,” a British officer at the front, England was taking her army on faith.

And now I was there, and there frankly as a writer.  Also I was a woman.  I knew how the chivalrous English mind recoiled at the idea of a woman near the front.  Their nurses were kept many miles in the rear.  They had raised loud protests when three English women were permitted to stay at the front with the Belgian Army.

My knees were a bit weak as I went up the steps and into the hotel.  They would hardly arrest me.  My letters were from very important persons indeed.  But they could send me away with expedition and dispatch.  I had run the Channel blockade to get there, and I did not wish to be sent away with expedition and dispatch.

The hotel was cold and bare.  Curious eyed officers came in, stared at me and went out.  A French gentleman in a military cape walked round the bare room, spoke to the canaries in a great cage in the corner, and came back to where I sat with my fur coat, lap-robe fashion, over my knees.