ams, just as at the rail-head at the other end
the great stream of supply divides into many streams, and is lost.

Nor are men the only beings cared for. One of the strangest things I
saw at Boulogne was a horse-hospital, consisting of a meadow of
many acres. Those who imagine that horses are not used in
modern war should see the thousands of horses tethered in that
meadow. Many if not most of them were suffering from shell
wounds, and the sufferers were rather human. I saw a horse
operated on under chloroform. He refused to come to after the
operation was over, and as I left he was being encouraged to do so
by movements of the limbs to induce respiration. Impossible, after
that, to think of him as a mere horse!

But before I left the British lines I did manage to glimpse the British
Army, the mysterious sea into which fell and were swallowed up,
and from which trickled the hundreds of small runlets of wounded
that converged into the mighty stream of pain at Boulogne. I passed
by a number of wooden causeways over water-logged ground, and
each causeway had the name of some London street, and at last I
was stopped by a complicated wall of sandbags with many curves
and involutions. To "dig in" on this particular landscape is
impracticable, and hence the "trenches" are above ground and
sandbags are their walls. I looked through a periscope and saw
barbed wire and the German positions. I was told not to stand in
such-and-such a place because it was exposed. A long line of men
moved about at various jobs behind the rampart of sandbags; they
were cheerfully ready to shoot, but very few of them were actually in
the posture of shooting. A little further behind gay young men
seemed to be preparing food. Here and there were little reposing
places.

A mere line, almost matching the sand-bags in colour! All the
tremendous organisation in the rear had been brought into being
solely for the material sustenance, the direction, and the protection
of this line! The guns roared solely in its aid. For this line existed the
clearing stations and hospitals in France and in Britain. I dare say I
saw about a quarter of a mile of it. The Major in command of what I
saw accompanied me some distance along the causeways into
comparative safety. As we were parting he said:

"Well, what do you think of our 'trenches'?"

In my preoccupied taciturnity I had failed to realise that, interesting
as his "trenches" were to me, they must be far more i