But it isn’t right.  This damage to human life is horrible.  It is madness to slaughter these thousands of young men.  Almost at last, in a rage, one feels inclined to cry out against the sheer imbecility of it.  Why bring lives into the world and shell them out of it with jagged pieces of iron, and knives thrust through their quivering flesh?  The pain of it is all too much.  I am sick with seeing suffering.

[Page Heading:  DUNKIRK SHELLED]

On Thursday, April 29th, Mr. Cooper, and another man came for us, and we left Boulogne.  At Dunkirk we could hardly credit our eyes—­the place had been shelled that very afternoon!  I never saw such a look of bewilderment and horror as there was on all faces.  No one had ever dreamed that the place could be hit by a German gun, yet here were houses falling as if by magic, and no one knew for a moment where on earth or in heaven the shells were coming from.  Some people said they came from the sea, but the houses I saw hadn’t been hit from the sea, which lies north, but from the east.  Others talked of an armoured train, but armoured trains don’t carry 15-inch shells.  So all anyone could do was to gape with sheer astonishment.

Dunkirk, that safest of places, the haven to which we were all to fly when Furnes or La Panne were bombarded!  Everybody contradicted one, of course, when one declared that no naval gun had been at work, but the fact remains that a long-range field-piece had been hidden at Leke, and Dunkirk was shelled for three days, and, as far as I know, may be shelled again.  The inhabitants have all fled.  The shops are not even shut; one could help oneself to anything!  The “etat major” has left, and so have all the officials; 23,000 tickets have been taken at the railway station, and the road to Calais is{6} blocked with fleeing refugees.

It was rather odd that the day I left here and passed through Furnes it was being shelled, and we had to wait a little while before we could get through; and when I arrived at Dunkirk the bombardment was just over, and a huge shell-hole prevented us passing down a certain road.

Well, I got back to my work at Adinkerke in the midst of the fighting, and reached it just as the sun was setting.  What a scene at the station, where I stopped before reaching home to leave the chairs and things I had bought for the hospital there!  They were bringing in civilians wounded at Ypres and Poperinghe, which place also has been shelled (and yet we say we are advancing!), and there were natives also from Nieuport.

[Page Heading:  WOUNDED WOMEN AND CHILDREN]