No one else has heard a man shouting for water; no one else knows that a man wants soup.  The man may have appendicitis, or colitis, or pancreatitis, or he may have been shot through the lungs or the abdomen.  It doesn’t matter.  The casual visitor knows he has been neglected, and she says so, and quite indiscriminately she fills everyone up with soup.  Only she is tender-hearted.  Only she could never really be hardened by being a nurse.  She seizes a little cup, stoops over a man gracefully, and raises his head.  Then she wants things passed to her, and someone must help her, and someone must listen to what she has to say.  She feeds one man in half an hour, and goes away horrified at the way things are done.  Fortunately these people never stay for long.

Then there is another.  She can’t understand why our ships should be blown up or why trenches should be taken.  In her own mind she proves herself of good sound intelligence and a member of the Empire who won’t be bamboozled, when she says firmly and with heat, “Why don’t we do something?” She would like to scold a few Generals and Admirals, and she says she believes the Germans are much cleverer than ourselves.  This last taunt she hopes will make people “do something.”  It stings, she thinks.

I could write a good deal about this “solitary winter,” but I have not had time either to write or to read.  I think something inside me has stood still or died during this war.

21 February, Sunday.—­The Munro corps has swooped down in its usual hurry to distribute letters, and to say that someone is waiting down below and they can’t stop.  They eat a hasty sardine, drink a cup of coffee, and are off!

To-day I have made this flat tidy at last, and have had it cleaned and scrubbed.  I have thrown away old papers and empty boxes, and can sit down and sniff contentedly.  No convoy-ite sees the difference!

[Page Heading:  THE COMMUNAL LIFE]

I think I have learnt every phase of muddle and makeshift this winter, but chiefly have I learnt the value of the Biblical recommendation to put candles on candlesticks.  In the “convoi Munro” I find them in bottles, on the lids of mustard-tins, in metal cups, or in the necks of bedroom carafes.  Never is the wax removed.  Where it drips there it remains.  Where matches fall there they lie.  The stumps of cigarettes grace even the insides of flower-pots, knives are wiped on bread, and overcoats of enormous weight (khaki in colour, with a red cross on the arm) are hung on inefficient loose nails, and fall down.  Towels are always scarce; but then, they serve as dinner-napkins, pocket-handkerchiefs, and even as pillow-cases, so no wonder we are a little short of them.  There is no necessity for muddle.  There never is any necessity for it.

The communal life is a mistake.  I wonder if Christ got bored with it.

On Sundays I always want to rest, and something always makes me write.  The attack comes on quite early.  It is irresistible.  At last I am a little happy after these dreary months, and it is only because I can think a little, and because the days are not quite so dark.  I think the nights have been longer here than I ever knew them.  No doubt it is the bad weather and the small amount of light indoors that make the days seem so short.