We are desperately hard up at home just now, and we are denying ourselves in order to send these charitable contributions to the richest country in the world.  Gorlebeff himself (head of the Russian Red Cross Society) has L30,000 a year.  Armenians are literally rolling in money, and it is common to find Armenian ladies buying hats at 250 Rs. (L25) in Tiflis.  The Poles are not ruined, nor do they seem to object to German rule, which is doing more for them than Russia ever did.  Tiflis people are now sending money for relief to Mesopotamia.  Of the 300,000 Rs. sent by England, 70,000 Rs. have stuck to someone’s fingers.

In Flanders there were many people living in comfort such as they had probably never seen before, at the expense of the charitable public, and doing very little indeed all the time:  cars to go about in, chauffeurs at their disposal, petrol without stint, and even their clothes (called uniforms for the nonce!) paid for.

And the little half-crowns that come in to run these shows, “how hardly they are earned sometimes! with what sacrifices they are given!” A man in Flanders said to me one day:  “We could lie down and roll in tobacco, and we all help ourselves to every blooming thing we want; and here is a note I found in a poor little parcel of things to-night:  ’We are so sorry not to be able to send more, but money is very scarce this week.’”

My own cousin brought four cars over to France, and he told me he was simply an unpaid chauffeur at the command of young officers coming in to shop at Dunkirk.

I am thankful to say that Mrs. Wynne and Mr. Bevan and I have paid our own expenses ever since the war began, and given things too.  And I think a good many of our own corps in Flanders used to contribute liberally and pay for all they had.  People here tell us that their cars have all been commandeered, and they are used for the wives of Generals, who never had entered one before, and who proudly do their shopping in them.

War must be a military matter, and these things must end, unless money is to find its way into the possession of the vultures who are always at hand when there is any carcase about.

5 January.—­Absolutely nothing to write about.  I saw Gorlebeff, Domerchekoff, and Count Tysczkievcz{10} of the Croix Rouge about my plans.  They suggest my going to Urumiyah in Persia, where workers seem to be needed.  The only other opening seems to be to go to Count Groholski’s new little hospital on the top of the mountains.  Mr. Hills, the American missionary, wants me first to go with him to see the Armenian refugees at Erivan, but we can’t get transports for his gifts of clothing for them.

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