been able to get us any stores?” “Ought we to have ‘laissez-passer’s’ or not?” She goes to all the heads of departments, is the only good speaker of French, and has the only reliable information about anything.  All the men acknowledge her position, and they say to me, “It’s very odd being run by a woman; but she is the only person who can do anything.”  In the firing-line she is quite cool, and so are the other women.  They seem to be interested, not dismayed, by shots and shrapnel.

16 October.—­To-day I have been reading of the “splendid retreat” of the Marines from Antwerp and their “unprecedented reception” at Deal.  Everyone appears to have been in a state of wild enthusiasm about them, and it seems almost like Mafeking over again.

What struck me most about these men was the way in which they blew their own trumpets in full retreat and while flying from the enemy.  We travelled all day in the train with them, and had long conversations with them all.  They were all saying, “We will bring you the Kaiser’s head, miss”; to which I replied, “Well, you had better turn round and go the other way.”  Some people like this “English” spirit.  I find the conceit of it most trying.  Belgium is in the hands of the enemy, and we flee before him singing our own praises loudly as we do so.  The Marines lost their kit, spent one night in Antwerp, and went back to England, where they had an amazing reception amid scenes of unprecedented enthusiasm!  The Government will give them a fresh kit, and the public will cheer itself hoarse!

[Page Heading:  MEN’S ATTITUDE TOWARDS WOMEN]

I could not help thinking, when I read the papers to-day, of our tired little body of nurses and doctors and orderlies going back quietly and unproclaimed to England to rest at Folkestone for three days and then to come out here again.  They had been for eighteen hours under heavy shell fire without so much as a rifle to protect them, and with the immediate chance of a burning building falling about them.  The nurses sat in the cellars tending wounded men, whom they refused to leave, and then hopped on to the outside of an ammunition bus “to see the fun,” and came home to buy their little caps and aprons out of their own slender purses and start work again.

I shall believe in Britishers to the day of my death, and I hope I shall die before I cease to believe in them, but I do get some disillusions.  At Antwerp not a man remained with us, and the worst of it was they made elaborate excuses for leaving.  Even our sergeant, who helped during the night, took a comrade off in the morning and disappeared.  Both were wounded, but not badly, and two young English Tommies, very slightly wounded, left us as soon as the firing began.  We saw them afterwards at the bridge, and they looked pretty mean.

To-night at dinner some officers came in when the food was pretty well finished, and only some drumsticks of chicken and bits of ham were left.  I am always slow at beginning to eat, and I had a large wing of chicken still on my plate.  I offered this to an officer, who accepted it and ate it, although he asked me to have a little bit of it.  I do hope I shall meet some cases of chivalry soon.