In the evening I dined quietly on the barge with Miss Close and Maxine Elliott.  We had a game of bridge—­a thing I had not seen for a year and more (the last time I played was down in Surrey at the Grange!), and the little gathering on the old timbered barge was pleasant.

Some terrible stories of the war are coming through from the front.  An officer told us that when they take a trench, the only thing which describes what the place is like is strawberry jam.  Another said that in one trench the sides were falling, and the Germans used corpses to make a wall, and kept them in with piles fixed into the ground.  Hundreds of men remain unburied.

[Page Heading:  GERMAN PRISONERS]

Some people say that the German gunners are chained to their guns.  There were six Germans at the station to-day, two wounded and four prisoners.  Individually I always like them, and it is useless to say I don’t.  They are all polite and grateful, and I thought to-day, when the prisoners were surrounded by a gaping crowd, that they bore themselves very well.  After all, one can’t expect a whole nation of mad dogs.  A Scotchman said, “The ones opposite us (i.e., in the trenches) were a very respectable lot of men.”

The German prisoners’ letters contain news that battalions of British suffragettes have arrived at the front, and they warn officers not to be captured by these!

12 May.—­To-day, when I got to the station, I was asked to remove an old couple who sat there hand in hand, covered with blood.  The old woman had her arm blown off, and the man’s hand was badly injured.  We took them to de Page’s hospital.

The firing has been continuous for the last few days, and men coming in from Ypres and Dixmude and Nieuport say that the losses on both sides have been enormous.  There were four Belgian officers who lived opposite my villa, whom one used to see going in and out.  Last night all were killed.

At Dixmude the other day the Duke of Westminster went to the French bureau to get his passport vise.  The clerks were just leaving, but he begged them to remain a minute or two and to do his little business.  They did so, and came to the door to see him off, but a shell came hurtling in and killed them both, and of a woman who stood near there was literally nothing left.

Last night ——­ and I were talking about the gossip, which would fill ten unpublishable volumes out here....  Why do these people come out to the front?  Give me men for war, and no one else except nuns.  Things may be all right, but the Belgians are horrified, and I hate them to “say things” of the English.  The grim part of it is that I don’t believe I personally hear one half of what goes on and what is being said.  They are afraid of shocking me, I believe.

The craze for men baffles me.  I see women, dead tired, perk up and begin to be sparkling as soon as a man appears; and when they are alone they just seem to sink back into apathy and fatigue.  Why won’t these mad creatures stop at home?  They are the exception, but war seems to bring them out.  It really is intolerable, and I hate it for women’s sake, and for England’s.