Madame A——­ had asked me to drop in at the nurses’ mess for luncheon in case I got back from the trenches in time, and this, by dint of hard riding, I was just able to do.  Three or four powerful military cars drawn up at the hospital gate indicated new arrivals, but as to who they were I had no hint until I had pushed in through the flap of the mess tent and found M. Venizelos seated on a soap-box, vis-a-vis Madame A——­ at a table improvised from a couple of condensed milk cases.  At the regular mess table, sitting on reversed water-buckets, were three French flying officers and a civilian whom I recognized as the private secretary of M. Venizelos.  Two nurses were just rising from unfinished plates of soup in response to word that a crucial abdominal operation awaited their attendance at the theatre.

“Most of the Provisional Government has come out to pay us a visit this morning,” said Madame A——­, showing me to a blanket-roll seat at one end of the mess table, “and we are lunching early so that it can get back to Saloniki to take up the reins of State again.  The General has carried off the Admiral and the Foreign Minister, but I have managed to keep the President for our banquet.  He has made the round of the hospital and spoken to every man here—­that is,” she added with a catch in her voice, “to all that could hear him.  We’ve—­we’ve lost three men this morning just because there wasn’t staff to operate quickly enough.”

[Sidenote:  A strange banquet at which the guests contribute.]

That was, I think, one of the strangest little “banquets” I ever sat down to.  Every one travels more or less “self-contained” in the Saloniki area, and whenever a party is thrown together the joint supplies are commandeered for the common good.  The mess menu was a simple one of soup, tinned salmon, rice, and cheese, but by the time M. Venizelos’s hamper had yielded a box of fresh figs, a can of the honey of Hymettus, and a couple of bottles of Cretan wine, and the French officers had “anted up” cognac, some tins of flageolet for salad, and a tumbler of confiture, and the English nurse had brought out the last of her Christmas plum-cake, and I had thrown in a loaf of Italian pan-forte and a can of chocolates, the little crazy-legged camp-table had assumed a passing festal air.

[Sidenote:  No one speaks of war at the feast.]

A number of toasts were proposed and drunk, but no one spoke of the nearer or remoter progress of the war.  M. Venizelos adverted several times to the wonder of the spring flowers as he had seen them from the road, especially the great fields of blood-red poppies, and I overheard him telling Madame A——­ some apparently amusing incidents of his early life in Crete.  But it was not until, the banquet over, he had settled himself in his car for the ride to Saloniki that he alluded to any of the things with which his mind must have been so engrossed all the time.