For the first time on this journey I encountered difficulty with the sentries.  My Red Cross card had lost its potency.  A new rule had gone out that even a staff car might not carry a woman.  Things looked very serious for a time.  But at last we got through.

There were many aviators out that bright day, going to the front, returning, or merely flying about taking the air.  Women walked along the roads wearing bright-coloured silk aprons.  Here and there the sentries had stretched great chains across the road, against which the car brought up sharply.  And then at last Dunkirk again, and the royal apartment, and a soft bed, and—­influenza.

Two days later I started for the French lines.  I packed a small bag, got out a fresh notebook, and, having received the proper passes, the start was made early in the morning.  An officer was to take me to the headquarters of the French Army of the North.  From there I was to proceed to British headquarters.

My previous excursions from Dunkirk had all been made east and southeast.  This new route was south.  As far as the town of Bergues we followed the route by which I had gone to Ypres.  Bergues, a little fortified town, has been at times owned by the French, English, Spanish and Dutch.

It is odd, remembering the new alignment of the nations, to see erected in the public square a monument celebrating the victory of the French over the English in 1793, a victory which had compelled the British to raise the siege of Dunkirk.

South of Bergues there was no sign of war.  The peasants rode along the road in their high, two-wheeled carts with bare iron hoops over the top, hoops over which canvas is spread in wet weather.

There were trees again; windmills with their great wings turning peacefully; walled gardens and wayside shrines; holly climbing over privet hedges; and rows of pollard willows, their early buds a reddish brown; and tall Lombardy poplars, yellow-green with spring.

The road stretched straight ahead, a silver line.  Nothing could have been more peaceful, more unwar-like.  Peasants trudged along with heavy milk cans hanging from wooden neck yokes, chickens flew squawking from the onslaught of the car.  There were sheep here and there.

“It is forbidden to take or kill a sheep—­except in self-defence!” said the officer.

And then suddenly we turned into a small town and came on hundreds of French omnibuses, requisitioned from all parts of France and painted a dingy grey.

Out of the town again.  The road rose now to Cassel, with its three windmills in a row on the top of a hill.  We drove under an arch of trees, their trunks covered with moss.  On each side of the highway peasants were ploughing in the mud—­old peasants, bent to the plough, or very young boys, who eyed us without curiosity.

Still south.  But now there were motor ambulances and an occasional long line of motor lorries.  At one place in a village we came on a great three-ton lorry, driven and manned by English Tommies.  They knew no French and were completely lost in a foreign land.  But they were beautifully calm.  They sat on the driving seat and smoked pipes and derided each other, as in turn they struggled to make their difficulty known.