At the next station we stopped for a long time, and then the doors of the carriages were opened and we were each given a bowl of soup.  It was very good and thick, and we christened it “hoosh” with remembrance of Scott’s rib-sticking compound in the Antarctic; and there was plenty of it, so we providently filled up a travelling kettle with it for the evening meal.  Then we went on again and crawled through that interminable day over the piece of line between Herbesthal and Cologne.  Evening came, and we thought of the “hoosh,” but when it came to the point no one could look at it, and we threw it out of the window.  A horrible yellow scum had settled on the top of it and clung to the sides, so that it spoilt the kettle for making tea—­and we were so thirsty.

At last, late at night, we saw the lights of Cologne.  We had been thirty-two hours doing a journey that ordinarily takes six or seven.  We were ordered out of the train when we reached the station, and were marched along between two rows of soldiers to a waiting-room.  No porters were allowed to help us, so we trailed all along those underground corridors at Cologne station with our own luggage.  Fortunately it was so late that there were not many people about.  We were allowed to have a meal here, and could order anything we liked.  Some coffee was a great comfort, and we were able to buy rolls and fruit for the journey.

An incident happened here that made my blood boil, but nothing could be done, so we had to set our teeth and bear it.  A waiter came in smiling familiarly, with a bundle of papers under his arm, and put one of these illustrated weeklies beside each plate.  On the front page was a horrible caricature of England—­so grossly indecent that it makes me hot now even to think of it.  As soon as I saw what they were, I went round to each place, gathered them up and put them aside.

As we waited I wondered what was to be the next step, and could not help thinking of my last visit to Cologne two years before.  Then I went as a delegate to a very large Congress and Health Exhibition, when we were the honoured guests of the German National Council of Nurses.  Then we were feted by the Municipality of Cologne—­given a reception at the Botanical Gardens, a free pass to all the sights of Cologne, a concert, tableaux, a banquet, I don’t know what more.  Now I was a prisoner heavily guarded, weary, dirty, humiliated in the very city that had done us so much honour.

After about three hours’ wait we were ordered into another train, mercifully for our poor bones rather a more comfortable one this time, with plenty of room, and we went on our way, over the Rhine, looking back at Cologne Cathedral, on past Essen and Dusseldorf, into the very heart of Germany.  It was rather an original idea—­this trip through the enemy’s country in the middle of the war!